THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL ELECTION.

SOME MORALS FOR POLITICIANS.

THE overwhelming victory of the Progressives at the fifth London County Council Election leads two writers in the Fortnightly Review to moralise concerning the lessons which these continued victories of the Progressives teach to Liberals. Mr. H. L. W. Lawson writes an article full of information and of good sense concerning the work of the County Council. He points out that on the second of last March, London gave what was more nearly a unanimous vote than the giant city ever gave before. If the result had been fully anticipated, it would have been possible to have won even more seats than those which were captured by the majority. The Progressive victories were won as much in the villa constituencies as in those inhabited by the workingclasses. The charges against the Progressives had been found to be unproven, and they had been sufficiently long in power to make the prognostications of coming tyranny and spoliation sound ridiculous.

The Bridges Committee have constructed one splendid tunnel under the Thames at Blackwall, are now engaged in " forming a crossing to connect Greenwich and Millwall," and have obtained Parliamentary power to make a like connection between Rotherhithe and Shadwell. Woolwich ferry, early declared fr e, has been utilised both for day and night service. Lambeth Bridge is under reconstruction, and by this Committee, as the authority for prevention of floods under the Act of 1879, much has been done to ensure the safety of the riverside. The Building Acts Committee have not only had to administer many Acts of Parliament; they actually had to draft and carry through Parliament the main Act, which enables them to check in London the extravagance and monstrosity of building that make the typical American city a thing of hideousness once seen, not easily to be forgotten. But for them, in the last few years of active trade, new blocks of flats and offices would have towered to the sky, shutting out light and air from our narrow and tortuous streets. When the London County Council came into being the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, though far from inefficient, was lamentably inadequate, starved as it had been by the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Council is unhampered by the Parliamentary restriction of the rate to d. in the £, and it has a force of nearly 1,200 officers and men, and nearly 200 stations of various kinds. Its Fire Brigade Committee mapped out London on a proper scale of safety. In his annual speech the Chairman said, "London pays far less attention to the work than if it had a less conscientious or a less prudent Committee whose mismanagement would allow of a great periodical conflagration." The principal work of the Highways Committee is the management of the tramways in South London. It has never been forgotten by the constituencies of North London that the Moderates in 1897 forced the Council to give a fresh lease to the North Metropolitan Tramway Company, and that in consequence, until 1910, the Council must sit still and allow those who live in districts north of the Thames to lack all the advantages that they have conferred, or are about to confer, upon the districts south of the Thames. In the south, where the Council works as well as owns the tramways, nearly £50,000 was paid last year in aid of the Council's rate; the service has been improved, and d. fares extended, with the additional boon of working-class return fares; the men employed have one day's rest in seven and a sixty-hours' week; and the traffic receipts beat the most successful year of the Company's working. Last month a trial was made of the system of electricity, which will soon be applied to 115 miles of line. London is, in fact, in sight of a belated revolution in tramway communication that will be of untold benefit to working people.

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"TILL THE POOR HAVE BREATHING SPACE." In the Housing question Mr. Lawson proclaims that the London County Council is the only local authority which has tried to put the later sections in the Housing Acts into operation. They are housing now 17,000 persons, and they are about to lay out 11⁄2 millions sterling at Lordship Lane, Tottenham, in a comprehensive plan for housing some 50,000 more. Open spaces for the recreation and enjoyment of the people have been multiplied tenfold since the Council began its work. The parks have been marvellously improved and rendered more attractive for the community. They have immensely improved the arrangements for the treatment and disposal of sewage, and they have so far purified the lower reaches of the Thames that fish are increasing year by year. In looking after the prevention of fraud in weights and measures, they have made such an improvement that the number of convictions for dishonesty in the sale of bread and coal have been reduced from 444 in 1890 to 40 in 1899. The Council has done a great deal in technical education to make up for the admitted inefficiency of our system. It has endowed and supervised all the polytechnics and schools of handicrafts and arts which are worthy of support. It has given a large and well selected number of scholarships, and has done its best to give the lads of London a good commercial training. All this good work has been done almost exclusively by the Progressives, for the Moderates have notoriously shirked work. On the whole, they have only put in half the number of attendances that are credited to the majority.

THE ALLEGED "APATHY" OF LONDON.

Mr. Lawson dispels a popular delusion as to the prevalent abstention from voting at the London County Council election. He says that the average number of electors who voted at municipal elections in provincial towns is thirty-five per cent. ; in London it is forty per cent., yet in Parliamentary contests it is 75 to 80 per cent. in London, and in provincial elections it is 90 per cent. All this good work has been done with very slight increase of the rates. The county rate was 12 d. in the pound in the first year of the Council's existence. It is

now

IS. Id., the increase of 1d. in the pound being divided equally between the interest and repayment on the debt and the increase of annual maintenance. In twelve years it has only added five and a half millions to the debt, of which two and a half millions were applied to remunerative purposes. The new Council will endeavour to complete the acquisition of the tramways, and will apply itself vigorously to the carrying out of schemes for improving the housing of the poor. They will also establish a good steamboat service on the Thames, and replace the water companies by a water trust, which will obviate water famines by giving London a constant supply of pure water.

MORAL ELIMINATE THE CAPITALIST.

Mr. Lawson's paper is followed by one written by Mr. G. F. Millin, who declares that the victory of the Progressives should teach our political parties a very important lesson; the Liberal party would do well to take it to heart. Why have the Progressives won in London? They have done so by adopting a programme of municipal socialism, and endeavouring to use the organisation of municipal government for the purpose of improving the public services, lowering the public charges, improving the treatment of the men employed, and lightening the public burdens. Mr. Millin maintains that this idea of using the administration for the purpose of dispensing

with the private capitalist, is the question of the future, and, together with the settlement of the land question, will dominate the future of parties. But the Liberal Party must deal boldly and radically with the ownership and future accumulations of capital. Especially must they grapple with the drink traffic by way of the municipalisation or nationalisation of the trade. At present the vast organisation of private capitalists has £240,000,000 invested for making a profit out of the drinking habits of the people. The ideal of the Liberal Party of the future should be absolutely to veto all trading in drink for private profit, and consequently the extinction of all motives for pushing trade and encouraging consumption. The Progressives have swept the field in London, and the Liberals will sweep the field whenever they take up the same attitude towards capitalism in all its forms, not an attitude of hostility, but an attitude of entire disregard for its interests whenever those interests clash with the real well-being of the people.

THE VOTERS AND HOW THEY VOTED.

[February 25.

recent elections. The percentage of voters to population varies from 2014 in Lewisham to 7'6 in Whitechapel. As a rule the middle-class residential and the central districts have twice as many voters as the poor districts. An analysis of the election returns shows that the apathy was greatest in the divisions where the Conservatives are strongest, which helps to demonstrate how completely the political machine collapsed. The Progressives not only won eighteen seats, but were returned by enormous majorities. At the General Election a number of Councillors thought that their success as Progressives would enable them to get elected as Liberals. With the exception of Mr. John Burns, who holds a unique position independent of parties, every one of them failed. Mr. Jeffery, in Chelsea, was defeated by 1,331 votes for Parliament, but returned to the County Council with the handsome majority of 1,900. Mr. Allen Baker, a popular Councillor for East Finsbury, aspired to represent it in Parliament, but lost by 347 votes. He held his seat in the Council by a majority of three to one. Mr. Torrance, the present Chairman of the Council, was defeated for Parliament by 1,619 votes, and returned to the Council with a majority of 1,738. The same thing happened in Greenwich, Walworth, and Stepney, where sitting Progressive Councillors sought Parliamentary honours.

"The Best Governed City in Europe." THIS is the proud distinction of Berlin, according to Mr. Sydney Whitman in Harper's for April. He eulogises the swift orderliness of the traffic arrangements. "Everything the eye can see tends to convey an overwhelming impression of order, high-strung activity, and, above all, of cleanliness." The postal service of Berlin has long been the model (as yet unattainable) for the rest of Europe. The city and its splendid suburb of Charlottenberg are "fast becoming a nucleus of palaces." The working classes are better off than the middle classes were a hun

dred years ago. Yet of half a million taxpayers in Perlin, nearly 300,000 have incomes between £50 and £150 per annum; only twelve persons have an income over £50,000, and only one person reaches 100,000 a year. There is a remarkable absence of the submerged element. Berlin furnishes some of the most stalwart of Prussians to the army.

On the subject of an alliance between the two great English-speaking peoples Mr. Harrison is categorical. A closer friendship is desirable, but the Anglophiles whose policy is to support us, right or wrong, are only endangering any chance of real friendship, which Mr. Harrison sees cannot be based upon common complicity in predatory enterprises. A quid pro quo friendship between nations has nowadays no chance of permanency. Mr. Harrison cannot tolerate the argument that because we sympathised with America during the Spanish War America must out of gratitude sympathise with us in South Africa. He rightly regards the two wars entirely different in aim and methods, and proves his sincerity by declaring that if the United States should persist in keeping Cuba the difference would largely disappear :—

as

Does not a flood of gush and unreason rather thwart than promote a good understanding? There will be an ebb. Neither the British people nor the American people will surrender their right of free judgment and criticism of the acts of their own government much less of the acts and policies of the other. Surely every American speaker and writer is not now perforce either a supporter of Mr. Chamberlain's aggressive colonial policies, or an ingrate. Our freedom of judgment and criticism is surely not smaller than that of a Liberal Member of Parliament. Government in Great Britain, even more than in the United States, is by party, and the control shifts. Is it not too hard a test of friendliness to say that each must shift its sympathies when the majority in the other shifts?

SOUTH AFRICA.

The South African War Mr. Harrison will not have at any price. He is ready to admit the righteousness of external intervention against a State which abuses its powers, but the police must not appropriate the property they recover from the highwayman. But he sees very well that intervention in South Africa was in no way justified, and therefore the robbery of the Boer independence was still less so. The faults of the Boer Government in no way infracted the recognised rights of aliens. Any other Government than the Boer would not only have refused concessions, but would have absolutely refused to discuss them. As to the franchise fraud, he says :—

The idea of a war waged to enforce, as an international right, the privilege of British subjects to renounce their allegiance to the Queen, and to assume a condition in which they might be obliged to take up arms against her, would be a taking theme for a comic opera. And the interest and amusement would be greatly promoted if the composer should, in the opening act, introduce the "Ruler of the Queen's Navy" overhauling an American merchantman in 1812, and dragging from her decks men who had renounced their allegiance to Great Britain to become American citizens, to man the guns of British warships!

Mr. Harrison's deepest disgust is expressed against some American journals which have been consoling themselves by the prospect of increased trade with the new" Crown Colonies":

Never before has American sympathy failed, or been divided, or failed to find its voice, when a people were fighting for independence. Can we now calculate commercial gains before the

breath of a dying republic has quite failed, or the body has quite taken on the rigor mortis? If international justice, government by the people, the parity of the nations, have ceased to be workable things, and have become impracticable, shall we part with them with a sneer, or simulate regret, even if we have lost the power to feel it? May not one be allowed to contemplate the heavens with suppressed aspirations, though there are no sumers" there? Do we need to make a mock of the stars, because we cannot appropriate them-because they do not take our produce? Have we disabled ourselves?

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THE MINERAL WEALTH OF THE PACIFIC NORTH-WEST.

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ENGLISHMEN will read with considerable relief Mr. D. B. Boyle's article in the Engineering Magazine for March upon the coming industrial Empire of Puget Sound. In these times when the supremacy of England in all engineering articles is vanishing largely owing to the vast deposits of iron and coal found in America, it is satisfactory to know that Canada also possesses untold mineral wealth. Mr. Boyle deals chiefly with the future promise of the cities of Pacific North America. In order that their development may be permanent, it is necessary that they should not simply be the forwarding ports for goods from the Eastern States to China and other Oriental countries, but that there should be great national resources in their immediate neighbourhood. And this condition is indeed fulfilled. Mr. Boyle says:

Iron ore is known to exist in almost limitless quantities, and that is all that is known about it. It awaits an available market for the products of iron, or, it would be more correct to say, the possibility of manufacturing these products in competition with other parts of the world. In two metals only is this territory deficient-nickel and tin; the latter disability it shares with the whole of North America, the former with all of it except the Canadian province of Ontario.

TIMBER FOR 700 YEARS. The development of the country will, the writer considers, begin first with the timber. He says:

It is beyond the limit of any merely human descriptive powers to do justice to the timber wealth of the Pacific Coast. It has been calculated with reference to British Columbia alone that at the present rate of consumption it would take 700 years to exhaust the more available supplies of timber; and as, under the husbandry of nature, forests will renew themselves in less time than 700 years, the calculation is merely a way of indicating that the timber resources of the Pacific Coast are practically inexhaustible. It is not too much to say, then, that for all trade and commerce into which wood and the products of wood enter, and for all manufactures in which wood and the products of wood are consumed, the Pacific Coast possesses resources incalculably greater than any other portion of the globe, civilised uncivilised.

or

The water supply of these districts is also unsurpassed :

The same excessive humidity which has clothed the Pacific Slope in the temperate zone with inexhaustible forests, makes those mountain ranges vast reservoirs of water, of which the overplus plunges down in a thousand cataracts to the sea, forming an available source of power unexcelled, and probably not even approached, in any portion of the world. In all this territory it would not only be unnecessary-it would be almost impossible-to establish any manufacturing industry beyond the radial limit of electrical energy generated by water.

Harmsworth's Magazine for April contains a highly laudatory sketch of Lord Avebury, better known as Sir John Lubbock, and his work and life at his Kentish home. In " Editing a City" an interesting account is given of the work of the County Council in the last ten

years.

AMERICAN COMPETITION.

THE VIEWS OF AMERICAN EXPERTS. Cassier's Magazine for March contains an interesting series of short articles by some of the most prominent engineers and business men in the United States upon the question of American competition. The compendium is most opportune, as there is no subject more widely discussed, nor one which commands more absorbing interest in both engineering and general circles.

THE LABOUR TROUBLES OF GREAT BRITAIN.

The first article is by Mr. H. F. T. Porter, of the Bethlehem Steel Company. He points to the labour question in England as one of the chief causes for the success of American competition. He says :—

The labour troubles which during the last few years have paralysed industry in Great Britain, granted a favourable opportunity to enter that market, which American enterprise, now ready for foreign conquest, has not been slow to seize.

The attacking power of the great industrial combinations, with thousands of employees and enormous capital, directed by the master minds of a few men, would, even under ordinary circumstances, be great; but under the favourable conditions existing in Great Britain, it has been irresistible.

Mr. Porter, however, does not fail to warn Americans to be careful, or the same unhappy results may be repeated in the United States :

The recent labour troubles also in the Middle West cannot be viewed without great apprehension. Knowing the effect of similar disturbances in Great Britain, unless like occurrences are summarily checked, it is a foregone conclusion that American trade ascendency, recently acquired from Great Britain, will be soon restored to its recent possessor.

AMERICAN MACHINES.

Mr. Henry Birse, of the Newark Machine Tool Works, attributes the success of American manufacture largely to the superior tools used. After declaring that it is useless to discuss "the indisputable fact that, in mechanical engineering, we are in advance of the world," he says:

All the best types of American machines are copied, more or less, in Europe at present, and, granting that the originals are better than the copies, we are driven to admit, if we want to be fair, that the difference between them is no longer extreme.

Mr. Birse insists that there must be some different arrangement with regard to the extremely high American tariff, because reciprocity is essential to trade, and a country which is only willing to sell and not to buy will get into trouble.

SUPERIOR WORKMEN.

Most of the writers agree in saying that the American workman is the chief agent in enabling American manufacturers to take first place in the world. Mr.. Walter McFarland, of Pittsburgh, says :—

It appears, also, that the American workmen are much better time-keepers and far less given to dissipation than those in Great Britain. One of the best firms of British shipbuilders, who have had no trouble with their men for years, recently stated that there is a loss of time, amounting to nearly 20 per cent., due largely to drunkenness. If anything approaching these figures is true generally, there can be no surprise that firms open to competition from well managed American works should have a hard time.

Colonel E. A. Stevens, the President of the Hoboken Land and Improvement Company, is even more emphatic

The great advantage of America lies in the ambition of the American craftsman. Great may be our natural wealth of ore and coal, perfect our plants, inexhaustible our capital, but all of

them will not keep us in the industrial leadership without the men who can, and will, make the best use of them all. One of the most successful manufacturers in the United States has been quoted as saying that if he had to choose between his great plants, on the one hand, and the organisation then working them, on the other, he would take the organisation. In other words, he considers the brains of his staff of greater value than his enormous and costly establishments.

Mr. E. D. Meier, of the Heine Safety Boiler Company, says that "the American mechanic, no matter of what race, works harder than his European colleague."

LACK OF TRADES UNIONS.

Almost all are agreed in condemning the trades unions of Great Britain, and consider them as one of the chief causes why England lags behinds. Arthur Brown, of Rogers, Brown and Co., thinks that American supremacy is due first of all to cheaper and more abundant raw material; also to superior labour, more progressive management and better plant. But when considering the last-named, he says, "Will British and German rivals adopt American weapons and beat Americans with them?" He tells a story of Sir H. S. Maxim anent trades unions :

In Great Britain trades unionism devotes its energies to reducing the per diem output of each man to a minimum, in order that employment may go further and wages be higher. Sir Hiram S. Maxim, in a late address, gave an instance of a small gun attachment which the labour union committee classified as a day and a quarter's work. He invented a machine to make it, but the men would produce the piece only in a day and a quarter, even with the machine. He then hired a German workman, who easily produced thirteen pieces in a day.

THE JIG-HABIT.

All are agreed that the system of interchanging parts, which is so largely prevalent in America, is one of the chief causes why articles can be produced so cheaply.

Mr. Oberlin Smith, speaking of this characteristic of his countrymen, says :—

Furthermore, he has applied to their production, wherever possible, the system of interchanging parts, and the using of special tools, thus enormously decreasing the time and cost of many articles in comparison with older methods of producing them. Such contriving and using of special tools as practised by the Yankee (this word being here used as typical of the ingenious, mechanically-minded American) has been termed by the writer in a former article upon this subject the “jig-habit.” The general conclusion arrived at may be expressed in Mr. H. R. Towne's words :

Industrial supremacy belongs to that country which enjoys the cheapest materials, the most improved machinery, and the most efficient labour. Heretofore these advantages have been Great Britain's; to-day they are America's.

Mr.

THERE is not much in the Atlantic Monthly for March which appeals to interest on this side of the ocean. Woodrow Wilson, in face of an admitted reaction against democracy, stands up gallantly for its efficiency. The successful achievement of Australian federation leads Mr. J. W. Root to expatiate on the difficulties and dangers -constitutional, political, international and financialinvolved in any scheme of pan-Britannic confederation. Mr. Dreher's letter from Germany records the trend of secondary and university education in the direction of modernisation, the vast movement of population to urban centres, and the culmination of the great wave of prosperity which has been rising during the last five years. Mr. G. S. Hellman takes occasion, from the success of works like "The Jungle Book," to study "animals in literature" as a perennial source of interest.

THE CHINESE EMPRESS.

BY LADY MACDONALD.

66 AMIABILITY verging on weakness" was the verdict of the Chinese Secretary of the British Legation who accompanied the wives of the Ambassadors when they visited the Dowager-Empress in March, 1995. So at least says Lady Macdonald in the excellent article which she has contributed to the Empire Review for April, entitled "My Visits to the Dowager-Empress of China." Her one impression is that the Empress is not so black as she is painted :

What she certainly seems to be on the surface, is a woman swayed hither and thither by the counsels of her advisers, of whom the vast majority are certainly phenomenally ignorant of anything outside the "Middle Kingdom," and in addition arrogant and anti-foreign. I should say the Dowager-Empress

Lady Macdonald says when she first was received by the empress

She was sitting behind a long narrow table decorated with fruit and flowers watching our entry with the keenest interest, and no less keenly did we look at this formidable lady to whom is imputed such an iron will and unbending character. Though over sixty she is still a young looking woman with jet black hair and kindly dark eyes; in repose her expression is stern, but when she smiles it lights up and all traces of severity disappear; her face is not of the ordinary Chinese or Manchu type, and she might in another part of the world pass for an Italian peasant. In stature she is short and slight, but wearing the Manchu shoe adds at least three inches to her height; her hands and feet are small and well formed, the greatest disfigurement, from our point of view, being the two gilt nail protectors three inches long, which she, in common with all the Princesses, wore on one hand

to protect the nails beneath from breaking. She was richly dressed in a yellow brocaded coat lined with fur, and blue silk embroidered petticoat down to her feet, her hair being dressed à la Manchu in two big bows showing on either side of her head from which dangled pearl ornaments, and a bandeau with graduated pearls, the largest as big as a chestnut, encircled the front of her head. Her face was entirely unpainted, differing in this respect most markedly from all the other Court ladies. In front of the table behind which her Imperial Majesty was installed, and a little to one side, sat the Emperor. It was a pleasurable surprise to us all to find him taking part in the audience, as we were told only the Empress was to receive us. A sad-eyed delicate looking youth showing but little character in his face, he hardly raised his eyes during our reception.

HER SPEECH AND HER MANNERS.

The Empress has a harsh voice, disagreeable to listen to, and talks in a louder key than is usual for a Chinese lady. Our little speeches over I ascended the dais from the right, courtsied to the Emperor who shyly shook hands with me, courtsied again to the Empress, and was going off left, when she called me back and pressed on my finger, over my glove, a gold filigree ring ornamented by a solitary pearl.

After lunch the Empress

began an animated conversation with us through our own interpreters, and the two Chinese whom I have mentioned; the latter always went down on their knees when addressing the Empress, but beyond this and a respectful space kept round her, I particularly noticed that all her ladies and courtiers appeared quite at their ease in her presence, and talked to each other, perhaps in slightly lowered tones, but as if quite accustomed to her presence and in no way intimidated by it. Our conversation was of necessity of the most banal; she addressed each of us in turn, and when a pretty wistful-faced little lady came in, clad in the same gay colours as the other Princesses, she presented each of us to her as the Emperor's wife.

A VERY WOMAN.

On their second visit, in March 1900, says Lady Macdonald

the Empress came into our box during the theatrical performance, and spent some time with u, examining our rings and trinkets and the texture of our dresses. The Empress was much amused by the Dutch lady's pince-nez, which she was trying to conceal, as it is considered the height of ill-breeding to wear glasses when conversing with anybody. Her Imperial Majesty tried them on, peeped through our opera glasses, and generally behaved with the naïve curiosity of a mere woman; she showed us two strings of good-sized pearls which hung from her wrists, told us that a large and very yellow diamond which she evidently prized most highly came from Europe, allowed us to examine the embroidery on the outside jacket she was wearing and turned it back to show us the fur lining, and then contrasted her tiny feet with ours.

HOUSE-DECORATING as an occupation for women is the subject of a sensible interview in the April Young Woman with Mrs. Keightley-herself an expert in the business. She dwells on its essentially womanly character. There is a sketch of woman in a very different role-of Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond's adventures with a camera in Arctic Norway.

THE Cosmopolitan for March has many beautiful pictures of woman, horse, and child. A. Van Cleef contributes sketch and samples of the Bavarian King's gallery of beauty. Mary Blossom illustrates charmingly the development of child-photography. Lavinia Hart offers picturesque peeps behind the scenes. Of the more serious articles, Sir Robert Hart's on the Boxer movement claims separate notice. G. F. Seward pleads for gradual withdrawal from the Philippines, as soon as any reasonable authority by natives can be left in control.