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p without trial for years-one man for ten years-simply at the will of the Governor-General." They were romptly liberated. Henceforth no prisoner is detained orty-eight hours without either a trial or an investigation. Every Saturday night General Wood reviews all the prisoners. His methods are military and summary. His ntentions are explicit, even though he has for a time to olerate the old gaolers :

"We've got the old crew here yet," explained the General, vith a smile. "I haven't reached the bottom of the hole, and hey know all about the old prisoners. When everything is leared up, I'll put some good men in. And I'll also paint and whitewash and fumigate every square inch in the place. More lead bodies came out of this building than out of any other in he city, you know. Yellow Jack had his stronghold here."

ONE MAN TOO MANY FOR A MOB.

These drastic reforms naturally rouse resistance. A bloody riot broke out at San Luis, a town twenty miles out. General Wood got the news while he was down with a raging fever. He staggered to his carriage, drove down to the telegraph office, and for three hours dictated instructions. Next day, still racked with fever, he went down by special train and investigated matters on the spot. On September 22nd, a mob of infuriated Cubans attacked the Spanish Club, opposite the General's office, where he was sitting, writing, defended by a solitary sentinel with a rifle :

He picked up his riding-whip, the only weapon he ever carries, and, accompanied by the one American soldier, strolled across to the scene of the trouble. The people in the Spanish Club had got it pretty well closed up, but the excited Cubans were still before it, throwing things and shouting imprecations, and even trying to force a way in by the main entrance.

"Just shove them back, sentry," said General Wood, quietly. Around swung the rifle, and, in much less time than is taken in the telling, a way was cleared in front of the door.

"Now shoot the first man who places his foot upon that step," added the General, in his usual deliberate manner. Then he turned and strolled back to the palace and his writing. Within an hour the mob had dispersed, subdued by two men, one rifle, and a riding-whip. And the lesson is still kept in good memory.

A FOUR MONTHS' RECORD.

The change effected by this Paladin of the dustcart in four months is thus summarised by Mr. Lewis :

The rescue of the population from starvation to a fair satisfaction of all their daily necessities. The conversion of one of the foulest cities on earth to one of the cleanest. The reduction of an average daily death of two hundred down to ten. A considerable progress in a scheme of street and road improvement that will add immensely to the convenience and beauty of the city. A radical reform in the Custom House service, resulting in increased revenues. A reduction in the municipal expenses. The correction of numerous abuses in the management of gaols and hospitals, and in the care of the inmates. The liberation of many prisoners held on trivial or no charges. The reformation of the courts and a strict maintenance of law and order. The freedom of the Press. A restoration of business confidence, and a recovery of trade and industry from utter stagnation to healthy activity.

And yet men say the age of chivalry is past!

"MODERN MYSTICS" is the title of a sympathetic study by Rev. M. Kaufmann in the March Sunday at Home. He welcomes the mystic movement of to-day as an attempt to bring the world back from materialism to a more spiritual conception of the universe. He mentions among present day mystics the names of Huysmans, Maeterlinck, Sinnett, Anna Kingsford, Shorthouse, Tolstoi, Crookes.

INTERNATIONAL SANITARY CONTROL.

A STIFF SUGGESTION FROM AMERICA. DR. WALTER WYMAN, supervising Surgeon-General of the Marine Hospital Service, writes in the February Forum on Quarantine and Sanitation. His paper ends with a suggestion which shows how the new opportunities and new responsibilities presented by recent expansion appeal to the American imagination. He insists that American predominance in Cuba will mean the almost entire extirpation of yellow fever. But Havana, even if thoroughly purified, may be reinfected from insanitary ports in Central and South America. Therefore Uncle Sam must set about the sanitation of the entire Western hemisphere. This is what the valorous doctor himself says:

It is, therefore, worth serious consideration whether anything less than the total elimination of yellow fever from the American continents should be attempted; and it should be remembered that this disease is practically limited to the Western hemisphere. It is not pure optimism to suppose that an international sentiment may be awakened which will cause yellow fever in a given port, and the faulty sanitation which it implies, to be an opprobrium upon the Government in possession of the offending port. Every nation should be held responsible for conditions, within its borders or dependencies, tending to propagate epidemic diseases and to threaten other nations with which it expects to maintain a friendly commerce. As soon as the cities of our own dependencies are freed from fever by sanitation, it would be appropriate for this Government to invite in convention representatives of each of the other American republics; the convention to be composed of public sanitarians, civil engineers, and financiers, whose duty it should be to prepare a treaty providing for the examination of the chief yellow fever ports by a commission representing the republics concerned. Each country should obligate itself to put into effect the measures recommended by this commission, or measures of its own which should meet with the commission's approval.

A PENAL TARIFF.

Since obligations without penalties would be worthless, the treaty should provide that if, after a sufficient time, these improvements are not made, each of the other nations interested should impose such discriminative tariff or tonnage tax or quarantine restraints upon the offending nation as would cause it in its own interests to comply with the terms of the treaty. Provision might also be made in the treaty that if, by chance, the necessary funds were lacking, a loan to provide them should be raised by pro rata assessment upon the other countries. This suggestion may seem to some impracticable; yet when one reflects upon the constant dread, the great mortality, the burdensome restraints on vessels and persons, and the destruction of commercial prosperity, caused by this Western pest, no effort to suppress it can be considered too great. I am assured by those who are intimately associated with the representatives of the Central and South American republics in Washington that the plan is by no means impracticable, but is rather one which, if the initiative be taken by the great republic of the United States, will be gladly and quickly entered into by the other republics of the Western hemisphere.

It could be shown, in favour of such a treaty, how greatly it would benefit each of the countries entering into it, by relieving their commerce from present burdensome and expensive quarantine restrictions. Its effect would be far-reaching, and would mark an epoch in the matter of health laws and sanitation.

This bold project puts beside the Zollverein (Customs Union) and Kriegverein (Union for Defence) a third form of preparative for political combination, the Health Union.

IN the January number of the Deutsche Rundschau, Professor Ludwig Stein has a solid but interesting article on Human Society as a Philosophical Problem.

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MR. RHODES AS THE NATIVES' FRIEND. REV. DONALD MACLEOD, in Good Words for March, concludes his sketch of a run to the Cape." He mentions that Jameson's raid would probably have reached Johannesburg had not two of his troopers who were sent to cut the wires to Pretoria got too drunk to [carry out their orders. Along the uncut wire went the alarm. Dr. Macleod reports the impression he gathered concerning Mr. Rhodes, whom he did not see :

He is, undoubtedly, the one great statesman South Africa possesses. His is an heroic figure, although the heroism is not 'unmixed. He is a great admirer of the First Napoleon, as his library shows, and there is a certain affinity between the two men.... But his enthusiasm is wholly unselfish. . . . Money, as such, he does not seem to care for. . . . His generosity is proverbial and is displayed. . . in the confidence he places in people. . . He has doubtless done things that his greatest admirers regret notably his connection with the Raid-but in spite of all he is one of the most romantic and strongest personalities of our time.

66

IN PRAISE OF THE COMPOUND" SYSTEM. Some critics of the great man may be surprised to find the reverent doctor strongly applauding Mr. Rhodes' native policy :

Hitherto, outside the missions, the best work for the natives has been done by Mr. Cecil Rhodes. And this man, even more than any public man in Africa, seems to be grappling with the native question-whether for humanitarian or utilitarian reasons makes little matter. The "compound" system he has established at Kimberley is an instance of his practical statesmanship. The natives who engage themselves for three months only at the diamond mines are, during that time, shut in the compound, into which no intoxicant is allowed to enter. Within the compound they receive a lesson in self-government as well as in severing industry. perThe experienced missionary to whom allusion has been already made told me of the delight he felt in visiting the compound on a Sunday and on seeing the order and good feeling which prevailed. The natives were occupied as seemed to them best. The Christian natives were reading or holding meetings-for there is a chapel which the various sects are entitled to use at certain hours. while groups of Christians seemed to be studying God's Word together, there could be seen in another corner bands of

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heathen celebrating their native rites, and all, heathen and Christians, living together in order and good fellowship. My good friend thanked God for what Mr. Rhodes had done by the establishment of the compound system.

COMPULSION, BUT CONSISTENT WITH FREEDOM.

The Glengrey Act is another piece of wise statesmanship in which he takes an interest. The object of the Act is to give legislative sanction to certain native agricultural settlements or "communes." These are self-governed, except that in important meetings the governor of the district presides. Each member of the commune receives an allotment which he must cultivate carefully for three years; no man is forced to work— but the man who refuses to work must pay a not very burdensome but sufficiently effective tax. This is undeniable compulsion, but in a form consistent with freedom. One awaits the full result of this experiment, and if successful we may hope to see it widely extended.

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THINNING THE RANKS OF SKILLED LABOUR. "LABOUR-SAVING Machinery and Low-Wage Workers" is the ominous heading of Mr. H. F. L. Orcutt's second paper on Machine Shop Management in Europe and America," which appears in the Engineering Magazine for February. He points out that the new machines can for the most part be worked by low-wage operators. "Skilled labour is called for only on the part of the tool-maker or foreman, who can easily keep in order eight or ten machines." His wages are high, but being distributed over a lot of ten machines they add little to the cost of production :

The tendency in European machine shops is to maintain a large number of workers at a wage-rate not equal to the best, but perhaps a little in excess of that of the ordinary American operators, and to depend throughout on a class of skilled workers, instead of organising the factory on labour-saving methods, investing in labour-saving machinery (which never goes on strike), and paying high wages to the few. Even to the uninformed observer, the number of "fitters" in the European machine shop is strikingly large as compared with the number of men doing hand work in the average American shop. Fitting can never be done away with entirely, and a certain amount of hand labour will always be necessary, but to work as near to the finished surface as possible with machinery, and to leave little for the fitter to do, is the aim of the American manufacturer, and it must be the aim of those who would compete with him.

WANTED: Few skilled, MANY UNSKILLED. Proceeding to the question, what constitutes the most effective plant for the production of machine tools, Mr. Orcutt answers :

It is that plant which produces the greater part of its work by unskilled workers operating labour-saving machinery kept in order and supervised by the skilled labour of the higher wageearner. On the contrary, an uneconomical, low-wage-earning factory is one which is equipped with ordinary machines, operated by so-called skilled labour receiving a uniform rate of wages, where the net results are a product which is expensive and neither uniform or of the highest grade. Of the former type is the usual American machine shop; of the latter the average European machine shop. The average wages paid in the American factory are higher than those in the European, and are, in special cases, in excess of anything ever received by the European engineer." However, the value of the product of the American shop exceeds, proportionally, that of the European by more than the excess in wages.

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One crumb of comfort falls at the end of the paper to British producers :

It is interesting to note that American manufacturers have not a reputation for supplying the uniform quality of tool steel produced by the best English makers. Many of the best makers of machinery in America purchase their tool steel from England.

AUTOCRACY VERSUS DEMOCRACY

AS FACTORS OF ECONOMIC PROGRESS. "RUSSIA as a World-Power" is the title of a suggestive paper by Mr. Charles A. Conant in the February issue of the North American Review. The Peace Rescript is, he says, only of a piece with the general economic purpose which dominates Russian policy to-day. He quotes as a correct diagnosis Arthur Raffalovich's statement that "the economic life of Russia has become the centre around which converges all the care of the Government, the interest of the public, and the attention of foreign observers. ... The whole energy of the State is being bent to the creation of a nation capable of competing in the field of manufactures, industry, commerce and credit with the great Western nations and with the United States." RUSSIA RULED BY EXPERTS.

But there is something of a portent in the contrast drawn-in an American magazine-between the economic efficiencies of autocratic and democratic forms of government. Says the writer :

In a

The absence of Parliamentary institutions, in spite of its latent evils, gives force, directness and promptness to every measure decided upon for the development of the country. democratic State, it is necessary to convince the majority of the people before any great reform can be accomplished. In Russia it is necessary to convince only the Tsar and the Council of Ministers, which is made up of men trained for statecraft and undeterred from following their economic convictions by the exigencies of party politics. The leading statesmen of Russia are educated in the best schools of economics of France and Germany, they usually serve the State for many years when their services are efficient, and their combined experience and wisdom is applied to the important problems with which the Government has had to deal in raising Russia from the condition of feudal times to a rank among civilised Powers.

66 TWO STRIKING ILLUSTRATIONS."

There have been, within the limits of a little more than a generation, two striking illustrations in Russia of the difference between the power and efficiency of an absolute government in dealing with serious national problems, and a government where it is necessary to convince a majority of the people before action can be taken.

These two illustrations of the directness of the Russian Government in proceeding toward an object, determined after consideration to be a desirable one, are of special interest to Americans, because they run parallel with two of their own great problems of the same period-the abolition of slavery and the restoration of order to the currency system.

EMANCIPATION EAST AND WEST.

Russia liberated the serfs by a ukase of the Tsar, at almost the very moment when the States of the American Union were plunging into civil war upon the same subject. She resumed specie payments upon the gold standard in 1897, after a series of well-considered steps which have made her currency system one of the most secure in the world. Each of these measures was carried out within a few years after the plans were matured, without bloodshed or popular upheaval, or paralysis of industry and credit. While the final steps were being taken for the liberation of the serfs, upon a basis which compensated the owners and set the liberated class at once upon the footing of responsible property-owning subjects, the great Republic of the West was fighting a costly civil war, whose result was the liberation of the servile race, but without providing homes or a future for its members.

STABLE CURRENCY-HOW SECURED.'

A generation later, when the Russian Minister of Finance was calmly proceeding by successive steps to plant the credit of Russia upon an unassailable basis, the American Union was again torn with dissensions, banks were failing and industry was paralysed, and Congress was sitting in extra Session to undo the financial blunders to which the clamour of special interests

and political cowardice had led a few years before. . . . The relative cost of the liberation of the serfs in Russia and the w for the preservation of the Union in the United States stands in the relation of about 500,000,000 dols. in the case of Russia, 6,844,571,431 dols. in the case of the United States.

RUSSIA'S INDUSTRIAL ADVANCE.

The writer mentions several facts illustrative of Russia's rapid economic development in late years. In the pro duction of petroleum she is now a serious competitor a the United States. Of a total of 205 mineral joint-stock companies constituted in 1898, 125 had come into bei since 1894. Russian labour laws limit the hours of adr males as well as of women and children. Inspectors of labour were increased in 1897 from 151 to 171. Technical schools and schools of commerce are being multiphed A school of navigation has been opened at Odessa Professional primary schools, schools of agriculture and horticulture, are also being planted. The deposit and cheque system is making rapid progress. Popular banks for assisting peasants and mechanics are quickly spread ing over Russia. The extension of railways is notorious

THE PRACTICAL PURPOSE OF THE RESCRIPT. The writer proceeds :

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It is not surprising that Russian statesmen, with the vista the economic empire of the future within their grasp, hamperel by no necessity for pandering to the clamour of the moment order to keep themselves in office, should have determined the Russia would gain enormously in the race with other indust nations by devoting her whole energies to economic develop ment. Hence the proposition of the Tsar, that the world by aside its arms and give its people an opportunity to devon themselves to industrial pursuits, looks directly to the futur dominance of Russia in the commerce and finance of the world ... Ten years of such economic development as Russia witnessed in the ten years just passed will make her enormous stronger than she is to-day; thirty years will make her a irresistible. . . . With a Government controlled by the singe purpose of promoting national advancement, with the best economic knowledge of all peoples at her command, almost unlimited natural resources, and with an equipment producing plant and saved capital sufficient to permit constant accelerating progress, Russia promises in another generation to be the great competitor of the Anglo-Saxon race for the commercial and military supremacy of the world.

THE London Quarterly Review begins with this quarte a new series. The form is slightly elongated, and the articles, formerly anonymous, are now all signed. The first paper is a jubilant estimate, by Dr. C. J. Little, of Evanston, Illinois, of "The Effect of the Recent War upon American Character." He does not fear that the American will become the chief of Jingoes. He has too much love of home for that. But he is eager to have his share in the great theatre of life in Asia and in Europe. Mr. J. Scott Lidgett interprets the present crisis in the Church of England by the light of "Essays in Aid," and concludes that the demands of these He looks forward to essays mean disestablishment. a revival of Evangelical religion with a wider social application and a new theology." Mr. R. C. Cowell contributes a warm appreciation of Walt Whitman as the wound dresser, and tells how he wrecked his health in hospital work during the Civil War. There is actually in this official organ of Methodism-a paper on Sport in the Caucasus," by Mr. H. D. Lowry. The editor, writing on Methodism and the Age, claims that Methodism has solved the problem of proper balance of clergy and laity which Anglicanism is just beginning to attack. Other contributors are E. Martin Pope, M. L. C. Miall, F.R.S., Sydney R. Hodge, Agnes Smith Lewis and Urquhart A. Forbes.

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A SINGLE-TAX MILLIONAIRE.

"THE TOLSTOI OF AMERICA."

"THE eye of the needle seems to have undergone considerable" expansion" in the United States, if one may judge by the news one hears from time to time of the increasing number of "camels" that find their way through. The story of the latest immensely rich man who essays to enter into the kingdom of evangelic equality is told by Mr. Maurice Low in the National Review for March. He says:

Millionaires in this land of plenty, where to be the possessor of anything less than a million is abject poverty, are always doing sensational things. The latest Croesus to attract the attention of the public is Tom (Tom is his name, not Thomas) L. Johnson, who has given up the flesh-pots of Wall Street to go out into the wilderness and preach the doctrine of Henry George. Johnson is a wonderful man, the man the world. needs every once in a while to shake it up and force it to think.

HOW HE MADE HIS PILE.

A poor boy, he won his millions by his sheer indomitable pluck and inventive genius and power of organisation. Entering as a boy in the employment of a small tramway company (streetcar lines, as they are called here), he soon mastered the details of the business, and then turned his attention to making certain improvements badly needed. These patents brought him a small capital, which he used to purchase a broken-down tramway line. Here his genius rapidly showed itself. His property, from being on the verge of bankruptcy, quic':ly commenced to pay dividends, and Johnson was enabled to branch out on a still larger scale. Continually watching for improvements, he invented steel rail, and that and other patents, some of them of his own invention, others which he controls, have placed millions in his pocket.

A CONVERT TO HENRY GEORGE.

Unlike other manufacturers, Mr. Johnson became a free trader. He read Henry George's Progress and Poverty, and became a disciple of the single taxer. Believing that George's theory was right and would lead to improving social conditions, Mr. Johnson threw himself into the movement with all the energy which had marked his business career, and ran for Congress as a means of spreading the gospel. Beaten the first time, the second he was triumphantly elected, and was one of the foremost in urging the passage of the Free Trade Wilson Tariff Bill, which after having passed the House was defeated in the Senate. Now, having amassed millions, he has retired from his numerous enterprises to spend the rest of his life in preaching the gospel to which Henry George devoted his life.

"A TOLSTOI MADE PRACTICAL."

Johnson is the Tolstoi of America, but a Tolstoi without visions; a Tolstoi made practical, who has studied life from men, who has learned his lessons from the books of trade, and there is no school more exacting than that, or which demands greater alertness of its graduates. This man, keen, cool, and selfpossessed; courageous, thoroughly sincere, mentally and physically robust, animated by a high purpose, a friend of humanity, goes forth to preach the faith in which he believes, because, as he says: "As to when and where this movement will finally ripen and bear fruit, that is of minor importance, as is the question of who leads and who follows. I am convinced that single tax is the only remedy for existing evils, and am willing to dedicate the balance of my life to advocating the cause and in showing that this philosophy is the only solution of our vexed labour problems."

NORTHERN peculiarities of speech are the subject of a pleasant little study by M. C. F. Morris in the March Leisure Hour. The difference of the Yorkshire words and idioms from ordinary English and their similarity to Scandinavian dialects are strikingly shown.

PEARLS: NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL. M. DASTRE contributes to the first February number of the Revue des Deux Mondes a very interesting paper on the production of fine pearls both by natural and artificial means.

We have lately been interested in the announcement that a syndicate in London were placing upon the market considerable quantities of pigeon-blood rubies which were products of the laboratory and not of the mine, and now

it seems that as far back as last November the French Academy of Sciences received a report on the experiments of a M. Boutan in making artificial pearls. The curious part of it is that in spite of the advances made in biology we are still ignorant of the precise manner in which the natural pearl is produced inside the oyster, and our imitations of nature must therefore be empirical and consequently not always trustworthy. There is no need to follow M. Dastre in his investigations into the ancient repute of the pearl as a gem. It is enough to say that the principal fisheries of pearls are those of Ceylon, the Coromandel Coast, those which have existed from time immemorial in the Persian Gulf, and those of the Red Sea, the Antilles, and Australia. M. Dastre contrasts the intelligence of the Indian Government, which carefully regulates the fisheries within its control and draws from them an important revenue, with the entire neglect by France of her fisheries in the Gambier and the Tuamotu Islands.

It is interesting to note that M. Dastre does not expect much danger to the market value of the natural pearl from the competition of the artificial one. The artificial cultivation of the pearl oyster appears to be a matter of considerable difficulty, which is always likely to handicap the artificial pearl in competition with the spoils of the pearl divers. By artificial pearl is meant, of course, some foreign body introduced into the oyster and clothed by it in the course of years with the mother-of-pearl covering with which the creature also covers its shell. The objection to introducing this foreign body into the oyster is that the result is not so fine as the pearls which are produced by natural means by the oyster itself. Curiously enough, in the last century a Swedish naturalist attempted to produce the real article by irritating the oyster, but though a merchant of Gothenburg bought his scheme for a large sum, he seems never to have carried it out. The Chinese, who are not celebrated as a nation for humanity, introduce into the unfortunate oyster all kinds of irregularly shaped foreign bodies, such as little dragons and idols, which must irritate the creature much more than a perfectly rounded object. As for the experiments of M. Boutan, their object was apparently not commercial but scientific. In conclusion, M. Dastre gives some interesting figures as to the value of famous pearls. It seems that the modern collections of pearls do not really rival the magnificence of those possessed by the wives of famous Romans, and nothing, M. Dastre thinks, could compare with the magnificence of one necklace possessed by Lollia Paulina.

Old Age Pensions in Germany.

OLD Age Insurance in Germany is sketched in the March Leisure Hour by M. A. M. The writer does not think the German system of old-age pensions could be adopted in England with advantage. "It may suit Germany," he says; "it would certainly not suit England." It is "complicated beyond the power of the ordinary working man to comprehend." The invalided or aged workman has to master a "maze of regulations and instructions" before he can set about presenting his claim.

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