AT THE MEETING OF THE CENTURIES. A POET'S VISION OF THE NEW CENTURY. MR. STEPHEN PHILLIPS contributes to the Nineteenth Century a five-page poem entitled “Midnight-the 31st of December, 1900." He describes how "the Voice of the Lord" foretells what He will accomplish in the years to come. He will " come as a Healer of cities." The huge, ugly, industrial Babylons will be transformed into cities of wide and silent highways with electric transit; "coloured peace, lucid leisure," mild climate: motive power will be supplied by the tides. Nation will be bound to nation : forces of annihilation shall be devised so potent as to make war impossible. Nation shall unite and use a common language. Men shall ride on the air and use the waves of the æther as wheels. Telephonic and other appliances shall make speech audible from India to England, and scenes in China visible in England. Men will not merely ride the air; they will walk the sea without fear. Then shall 66 pass the delusion of death": "ye shall shed your bodies and upward shall flutter to freedom." So, the Almighty proclaims, "the contest of ages is ending."

The poem may be described as a chapter out of Isaiah done into terms of modern science and then translated into rhythmical English. It will bear frequent quotation. DREAMS OF MEN OF SCIENCE.

Mr. Frederick Dolman has been interviewing for the Strand Magazine some of the leading men of science of the day as to the dreams of the nineteenth which may become the realities of the twentieth century. The following were the answers received :

SIR NORMAN LOCKYER. (South Kensington.) SIR W. H. PREECE. (Inventor with Marconi of wireless telegraphy.)

SIR JOHN WOlfe Barry. (Engineer of the Tower Bridge.)

SIR WILLIAM CROOKES.

MR. J. H. SWAN, F.R.S. (Electrician and inventor.)

M. BERTHELOT

(Sec. to French Academy of Science.)

SIR HENRY ROSCOE.

(Former President of the British Association.)

MR. THOMAS BRYANT. (President of the Royal College of Surgeons.)

:

GREATEST NEEDS OF THE NEW CENTURY. The Temple Magazine for January begins with a symposium on "The Greatest Need of the Century." What is this?

Dean Farrar answers : "More strenuousness, more self-denial, a deeper conviction of the truth that there is

66

one thing only-Righteousness-which exalts a nation." F. C. Burnand, editor of Punch, says Money." Rev. Silas Hocking: "A genuine ethical revival." Rural Dean Grundy : A sense of duty instead of a love of pleasure." Clement Shorter: To "solve the problem of the undeserved poor." Dr. Jessop: "That the financial position of the Church of England shall be very largely strengthened. Max O'Rell: "A Press upright and noble." Rev. A. Rowland: "Strenuous self-denial for the sake of higher aims in life." Canon Daniell: "More conscience for the founding and maintaining of our homes." Rev. H. R. Haweis: "More prophets, fewer parrots; more thought, less talk; more fact, less fancy; more faith, less form." Mr. H. W. Massingham: "To teach the Individual Truth, the State Justice, and the Church Christianity." Canon Hay Aitken : "Another Pentecost." Keir Hardie: "Men." "A revival of the sense of reverence."

Rev. F. B. Meyer :

HOW CHRISTIANITY HAS WORKED. The North American Review for December contains a scathing article by Mr. Frederic Harrison on "Christianity at the Grave of the Nineteenth Century." The article might be even better described as "The Grave of Christianity in the Nineteenth Century," so unqualified is his condemnation.

How does Christianity work out at the end of the Nineteenth Century? Here is Mr. Harrison's answer: While all men are lost in doubt and apprehension as to what they are doing, the Church, become the domestic chaplain of the governing class, is ever ready to supply the majority with hypocritical glozings:

What have the Churches done to purify and check all this? Who would care if they did try? Who would believe them in earnest in doing so? What were they doing and saying yesterday? They were offering up, from ten thousand altars, prayers. to the God of Battles to bless our arms-that is, to enable us to slaughter our enemies and possess their land. Not a voice comes from the official Churches to raise a doubt as to the justice, good faith, and Christian charity of those who have thrust England into a wanton war of spoliation. Not a word is breathed from their pulpits of respect for the brave civilians who are defending their homes and their freedom. These republicans, we are told, gather round their hearthstones, whole families. together, fathers, sons, grandsons, kneeling down in prayerthey do sincerely believe in their God and His readiness to hear them and their wives, sisters, and daughters arm them for the front; and ere they engage in battle their camp rings with hymns of prayer and praise. At home our own preparation for war is sounded in slang from drinking saloons, which is echoed back in pale and conventional litanies from the altars of the State Church. This is how Christianity works out in practice at the close of the nineteenth century.

PAST AND PRESENT.

Our present condition is merely the outcome of national decay in every department of life :

Compare the early part and the middle of the reign of the Who will dare to Queen with the last two or three decades. say that its close can compare with its promise-in poetry, in romance, in literature, in philosophy, or in science? Allow what we will for the personal equation whereby the elder naturally looks back to the memories of the temporis acti, grant all the tendency we have to be slow to recognise latent genius. in the budding, still it would be dishonest to claim for recent years an intellect as powerful and as solid as that which we knew in the middle of the reign. I insist on no particular writer, I rely on no special school. Names will occur to allDr. Arnold and his son, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning, Macaulay, Carlyle, Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer, Disraeli, Hallam, Millman, Freeman, Froude, Ruskin, the Brontës, George Eliot, Kingsley, Trollope. All the work, or all the best and permanent work, of these was completed and had

passed into the fabric of English literature before the Imperialist era began some twenty-five years ago. Have their successors quite equalled them?

MANNERS AND MORALS.

In science, in philosophy, we have fallen as low. Our politics are degraded, and

there has come over us a positive turn for vulgarity of thought, manners and taste. We seem to be declining on what the poet calls "a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart" than of old. It is a common observation that the widowhood and retirement of the Queen have been followed by a deplorable decline in the simplicity, purity, and culture which marked the dominant society in the days of her married life. Fashion, as it is called, is now at the mercy of any millionaire gambler, or any enterprising Monte Cristo from across the seas.

Our ideals have decayed together with our manners and morals :

cause.

All this combined to materialise, to degrade, the national life. It is not so much that we have glaring examples of folly, vice, extravagance, brutality, and lust. There are such examples in most ages, and they may be personal, independent of any general The gloomy feature of our time is the wide diffusion of these evils amongst all these classes, and, what is far worse, the universal dying down of high standards of life, of generous ideals, of healthy tastes-the recrudescence of coarse, covetous, arrogant, and braggart passions. We who live quiet lives, far apart from what calls itself the great world, have no direct experience of these things; but we cannot resist the common testimony of those who know that, during the reign of the Queen, wanton extravagance in dress, in living, in gaieties, has never been so crazy as now, with such sordid devices to scrape together the means for extravagance, such open sale of rank and person by those who claim to lead society and to dictate taste.

WAR AND BUSINESS.

The great social and humanitarian movements which marked the middle of the century have died away or proved unfruitful. Bismarck and Beaconsfield have become guides, where the memory of Gladstone, Bright, and Cobden is derided. War has become the servant of trade :

.

Mammon would not be behind Moloch, but resolved to show that Blood and Iron meant good business, as well as glory. Gigantic speculations were started in all parts of the planetrailways across whole continents, mines which produced the income and wielded the resources of an average State, plantations and settlements as big as many a great kingdom. And all these were put upon a footing that was half military-like an ocean liner constructed to be used as an armed cruiser. Trade and business, war and conquest, were mixed up in equal shares. Under some charter, or other guarantee of complicity, from the State, the adventurers issued forth to fill their pockets, to beat down rivals, and extend the Empire in a kind of nondescript enterprise, which was partly commercial, partly imperial, partly buccaneering, but wholly immoral and perilous to peace. It was somewhat like those piratical enterprises under Drake and Raleigh, in the days of Elizabeth, when the Queen and her courtiers took shares in buccaneering adventures to plunder the people of Spain without declaring war.

THE FUTURE OF ANGLO-SAXONISM.

Lord Charles Beresford writes in the North American Review on "The Future of the Anglo-Saxon Race." It is not a very acute piece of criticism, and is only interesting because it expresses apprehensions not by any means confined to the writer. The question which he sets himself out to answer is :

Whether the Anglo-Saxon will follow the path of degeneracy, as other nationalities have done, or whether there is some vitality in the blood and in the heart of the dominant race of to-day which will keep it from decay and preserve it from the fate of its predecessors.

But he somewhat spoils the unity of the question by declaring that the United States owes its vigour to the constant admixture of foreign blood, which we do not obtain. If this is so, he ought to have observed that the question of Anglo-Saxon progress cannot be answered as a single one. Nor is it very easy to understand what Lord Charles Beresford means by such a sentence as this :Increase of territory and population is one of the necessary penalties of Empire." He might as well say that increase of wealth was one of the penalties of saving. On the same level is his argument that it is unjust to attack "the land hunger of the Saxon race . . . because the whole history of the Anglo-Saxon rise and development is to be found in this extension of boundaries."

66

DANGERS AHEAD.

He

Perhaps Lord Charles Beresford is more plausible as a prophet than as a political philosopher. Let us see. sees, at any rate, that "there are rocks ahead"

In the Motherland, the corruption of money has wrought fearful havoc in the ranks of Society. In the United States there are ominous mutterings of the coming storm. The Plutocrat is gaining power each day on both sides of the Atlantic, and the Democrat is likely to be crushed under the heel of a worse tyrant than a King who wore the purple, or any Ecclesiastical Dignitary who set up claims to temporal power.

British society has been eaten into by the canker of money. From the top downwards, the tree is rotten. The most immoral pose before the public as the most philanthropic, and as doers of all good works. Beauty is the slave of gold, and Intellect, led by Beauty, unknowingly dances to the strings which are pulled by Plutocracy.

THE WORM WHICH DIETH NOT.

The old order of kingly supremacy at least cherished ideals, says Lord Charles. The order of Wealth has not that advantage :—

The sea which threatens to overwhelm it is not the angry waters of the Latin races, or of envious rivals, but the cankering worm in its own heart, the sloth, the indolence, the luxurious immorality, the loss of manliness, chivalry, moral courage and fearlessness which that worm breeds. This danger, which overthrew Babylon, Persia, Carthage, Athens, Rome and many other mighty nations and races in the past, now threatens the race to which we belong; but to it we oppose what they never possessed, on anything like the same principles or to the same extent as we the power of democracy. "The voice of the people is the voice of God," says an old Latin proverb, and in the main that is true. The masses may err, they may misinterpret their own wishes. They may need powerful and educated leaders, able to guide popular sentiment into the right channels, and to prevent it doing damage by overflowing its banks, but the voice of the people in the end is right, because in the mass they are neither self-seeking nor self-serving; for it is impossible for a mass to be swayed by purely selfish interests.

Lord Charles ends his article by declaring that the Anglo-Saxons must work together if they are to fulfil their destiny. Apart from the meaninglessness of this phrase, it is hard to see how, if our danger is social corruption and wealth, working together will help us to improve. If Lord Charles's apprehensions are correct, it would be more reasonable for him to recommend each Anglo-Saxon nation to ally itself with a poor country where "kingly ideals" are still cherished, and where the "order of wealth" is not yet established. But our writer does not see this. He says in effect, "We are in danger of rotting within; let us combine and we shall get well again." As if sticking two rotten apples together would ever make one sound one. But probably Lord Charles's diagnosis is as absurd as his cure. He is emphatically one of those men who write because they are distinguished, but would never become distinguished because they wrote.

THE NEW INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION:
IT PAYS TO BE HUMANE.

WHEN the Nineteenth Century began, the old industrial revolution was in process. It rooted in the discovery of the superior productivity of machinery driven by steam. It resulted in the great factory and in the crowded town. The beginning of the Twentieth Century sees another revolution under way. This springs from the discovery of the superior productivity of well-cared-for workpeople. Machinery still goes on multiplying, improving, producing: it makes use of new sources of motive power: but man has proved to be the finest and cunningest and most productive machine of all, and to be not less responsive to improved care and thoughtfulness. Moralists have long ago preached in this strain: governments have enforced a rudimentary recognition of the principle by peremptory Factory Acts. The new feature of the situation is the growing perception in the mind of the employer that this sort of thing is not merely good morals, and good politics, but good business as well. It pays to treat your employees well. It increases and improves output to feed and house them well, to keep them clean, and generally to make them comfortable. American manufacturers have taken an honourable lead in the new departure; though happily they do not stand alone. The printed organs of American capitalists are ever and anon insisting on the solid commercial advantage which accrues from taking the workman into consideration and into confidence. Keen, hard-headed Yankees write in a way which the old-fashioned British employer would denounce as "sentimentalism" and "philanthropic humbug," were it not that these same Yankees-who make friends of their workpeople, and ask their opinion and consult their comfort-are pushing him terribly hard in his own markets. The pinch of American competition will be a blessing in disguise if it presses into John Bull's slow brain the idea that disregard of the labourer's happiness spells bankruptcy. When it is once demonstrated clear as Euclid in the firm's ledgers that 'tis prosperous to be just" and humane, what paradises our factories will become ! The application of steam to machinery will scarcely have produced as great a social transformation as the application of humanity in a large and generous way to the worker.

66

IN CLEVELAND, OHIO.

66

This trend of magazine opinion and manufacturing practice is strikingly illustrated in the December number of The World's Work. In it Mr. R. E. Phillips writes on the betterment of working life and argues that "philanthropy has been superseded by profitable mutual interest." He describes what has actually taken place in Cleveland, Pittsburg, and Dayton, Ohio. The Cleveland Chamber of Commerce has appointed a committee "to act as adviser on social betterment," with " social engineer" as chairman. About thirty factories and stores in that city are now carrying out plans for improving the lot of their employees.

A HARDWARE COMPANY.

a

The Cleveland Hardware Company wishing to keep their men by them at lunch, provided a lunch room and a more varied bill of fare. Then a branch of the Cleveland Library was established and lends on an average more than a book per month for each man :

Work and conditions suggested further improvements. In the A rolling-mill, for instance, prostrations frequently occurred. change was made in the time-schedule. For two shifts of 12 hours were substituted three of 8 hours each. The result was, to the men, better health, fewer prostrations, and the same

In

SAVINGS IN SICK TIME.

are

the dry-colour department shower-baths compulsory, and a clean suit of clothes is provided for each workman every day. As a consequence of this plan

during the four months since its adoption not a single case of sickness nor a symptom of poisoning has occurred. Formerly, at least 20 per cent. were constantly ill.

Formerly the average time in the dry-colour department was a month and a half. Since then, no one has left through sickness. "These results mean financial advantage, personal betterment and working harmony."

REST-ROOMS FOR MEN.

Rest-rooms for men have followed in the wake of restrooms for women. A Street Railway Company in Cleveland used to leave its conductors and motor men to hang about outside the stables until the runs began. "Now a room inside has been fitted up and comfortably furnished," with a billiard table among other things. Whereof, electors of Councils which run their own tramways will do well to take note.

The Cleveland Twist Drill Company has provided a similar room, for smoking, reading, lunch; and pays for suggestions made by workpeople for improving their condition! Profits have been increased by these suggestions. For workers in front of furnaces shower baths were put in, and thirty minutes each day allowed for use. More work and better is done in nine and a half than formerly in ten hours. The baths, too, have made the men more fit and more accurate in their handling. Air-pipes put into the annealing-room have led to one-fourth greater output for the company.

A FACTORY MADE BEAUTIFUL.

The story of the Dayton Cash Register Company reads like a romance. A consignment of cash registers valued at £6,000, and shipped to England, were all sent back on account of defective workmanship. The company set about improving its human machinery. It arranged classes, lectures, and printed matter, to instruct its employees in the details of the business. It offered payment it tackled their conditions:

for suggestions.

Then

The first effort in this direction was to make the factory surroundings and working-rooms as attractive as possible.

Flowers, shrubs, and vines were planted wherever possible, near the factory. A lawn of several acres took the place of weeds and stone. The appearance of the whole factory, from one of unattractive dinginess, was changed to most attractive brightness and cheerfulness. The next steps were to clean the factory buildings, to enlarge the windows, to paint the exterior a bright and attractive colour, and to provide a force of janitors, uniformed in white, to care for the factory and grounds.

Medicines and baths were provided free. Hours were reduced for men from 10 to 9, for women from 10 to 8; and more work was done than in the longer hours. A "travelling" library is wheeled in once a week; the girls have learned to read better works; they have bought a piano for their rest room. Whence enthusiastic as well as intelligent co-operation in the company's service. Absence of girls through sickness formerly averaged 5 or 6 out of 52; now averages 1 out of 115.

WHAT BACKYARDS MAY BECOME.

Here is an admirable device which has already been mooted in South London :

The suburb in which the factory is situated was formerly known as "Slidertown." The people who lived there were for the most part poor, living in tumbledown huts and shanties. They cared little for making their homes attractive. ... Through the initiative of the company's officers, the name was changed to "South Park." An effort was made to interest the people living there in its improvement. With this end in view a series of prizes, amounting to 250 dollars a year, was offered for the most attractive front and back yards, the best effects in window-boxes, and the most effective results in vine-planting. To show the people how to go about such improvements, lectures, illustrated by stereopticon views, were given by the company. In these practical methods of gardening were indicated. The result was that Slidertown began to justify its name of South Park. The entire aspect of the place changed. Flowers, vines, shrubs, were to be seen everywhere. One of the streets facing the factory was pronounced to be the most beautiful street in the world, considering the size of the lots and the houses.

A cottage was purchased by the Company and made "a House of Usefulness" for all manner of guilds and clubs, Mothers' Unions, Kindergartens, Sunday School, Mr. Phillips adds :

etc.

From every point of view the plan here outlined is a paying

business investment.

The writer accompanies his description with striking pictorial illustrations of the change. In a word, the factory seems to be expanding into a Social Settlement-with results.

The Retort Invincible.

IN a weather causerie in Gentleman's, Mr. Wm. Allingham records this anecdote concerning prediction in another sphere :

Dr. Shorthouse, of a famous sporting paper, had six sporting prophets writing in its columns one season. In a certain handicap there were seven starters. Each of the six tipsters forecasted a different winner, yet the seventh horse simply romped in first. A friend of Dr. Shorthouse, who had often tried to impress upon him the danger of a multitude of counsellors, ran up to him in the ring and triumphantly exclaimed, "Here's a pretty thing, Shorthouse! Six of your fellows have tipped six different horses for this particular race, and the only one they did not name is first past the post! What do you think of that?" To him calmly replied the Doctor, "My dear sir, it only proves there is room for another prophet!"

"FALSE MESSIAHS" form the theme of a series of romantic narratives by A. M. Hyamson in Gentleman's.

MR. CHAMBERLAIN AND OLD AGE PENSIONS. MR. JOHN HULME contributes to the Temple Magazine a sketch of Mr. Winston Churchill, M.P., and certainly does not leave the warts out of the portrait. He professes great admiration for his subject, but says more or less politely that he is no speaker, has shown no knowledge of politics beyond South African affairs, is impatient of opposition, etc. But the passage in the paper which has already attracted most attention concerns Mr. Chamberlain and Old Age Pensions. It' consists of the report of a conversation in a saloon carriage between Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Churchill, Mr. Crisp and "a friend of my own who is an enthusiast on the question of supporting the indigent aged" :

One of the party said:

"Now, Mr. Chamberlain, seeing that your Party is once more in power, I hope you won't forget to deal promptly with the question of old age pensions."

66

"Of course they will," remarked Mr. Churchill, looking inquiringly at Mr. Chamberlain.

"I know of no more interesting or likely field of legislation,” continued my friend the first speaker.

"It is certainly a very important one,” added Mr. Churchill ; "the visits I paid to the Oldham workhouse and the sights I have witnessed elsewhere having impressed me deeply on the matter." The Master of Highbury turned his eyes upon both his questioners, knocked the ashes off his cigar, gazed forth into the night for a moment, then throwing himself back into his seat, he, with a good-humoured smile, and in a half-interrogative, half- exclamatory tone, said, "What! from South Africa to the Submerged Tenth!" σε of "Of course," said another member of the little party, course, Mr. Chamberlain will bring in a Bill dealing with the matter?"

But the Master of Highbury would promise to do no such thing. "Why, the British people look upon you as pledged to the measure!"

"I know they do," said Mr. Chamberlain, rousing himself and becoming animated, "I know they do. And yet in no speech I have ever uttered will it be found that I have definitely pledged myself to any such thing."

"But how has the idea got abroad, then?"

"Well, it was just in this way: During the last time I was out of office, I began turning over in my mind this problem of providing for the declining days of the poorer class. I had no definite scheme of my own in view; but clung to the notion that if a number of capable intellects were brought to bear upon the question, something feasible might be evolved.

"So I began discussing the matter with several of my friends, and, after a while, succeeded in getting sanctioned the formation of a committee, which any member of the House of Commons who took an interest in the subject was asked to join. Now, how many of the Liberal Party do you think responded to the invitation?"

"I don't know."

"A solitary one!" said Mr. Chamberlain, throwing up his hands with a gesture of amazement. "However, we went on with our work, and no doubt you know all about our taking evidence from the representatives of Friendly Societies, and also from others. As a result of our labours I recommended the granting of five shillings a week by the Government to such as had attained a certain age, and shown themselves deserving of such aid by their own endeavours. This, however, did not, for some reason, meet with the approval of the Friendly Societies, and now, I acknowledge, I see no way out of the difficulty. Therefore, to say I definitely pledged myself to do anything in the matter is a mistake. I voluntarily grappled with the question to the best of my ability, but definitely pledged myself to nothing."

Mr. Churchill looked puzzled but remained silent.

Mr. Churchill is not the only follower of Mr. Chamberlain whose one resource on this question has been to "look puzzled and remain silent."

THE INTELLECTUALISING OF COMMERCE. MODERN industry seems to be compelling a humaner consideration for the worker. Modern commerce in its turn seems to be demanding from its votaries something like a wide academic culture. The other day we noted a French Chamber of Commerce which insisted on philosophy as an essential element of a commercial education. A similar tendency is evidenced in the December number of The World's Work. Mr. H. H. Lewis contributes a collection of opinions from persons able to speak with authority on the question, "Are Young Men's Chances Less?" The answers suggest that the consolidation of capital now going on increases opportunities for firstrate young men with wide outlook, resourceful initiative, and organising brain. Says one man : Great industrial concerns are frequently embarrassed because they cannot find men who can command big salaries." It is the old story of "plenty of room at the top."

THE DEMAND FOR COLLEGE MEN.

Still more remarkable is the cry in shrewd, go-a-head, businesslike America for "college-trained minds." British business men might perhaps expect such a cry in pedantic Germany, but when the Yankee trader clamours for University men, it must mean not pedantry but business. A lawyer says: "The corporate tendency of to-day has created an active demand for, and put a premium upon, college-trained minds, both in business and in professional pursuits." An engineer adds: "The man who has the advantage of an education in a technical school, and possesses business ability, will be rushed right along to the top."

AN ASTOUNDING CONTRAST.

Here is truly an amazing statement from the President of Cornell University :—

"Judging from our experience at Cornell University, there never has been a time when there were so many demands for able and well-trained young men as at present,' says President Schurman. "Perhaps the majority of these applications come from concerns supported by large combinations of capital. As the success of this sort of business depends upon the ability with which its affairs are managed, young men of character and brains are indispensable, and wonderfully high salaries await those who can earn them. I think that the opportunities for young men under the present system of large combinations of capital are greater than ever before in the history of the world."

The words which we have italicised truly give Britishers-in trade and in University life-plenty to think about. Fancy the Master of Balliol being deluged with applications from City men for managers and organisers from Oxford !

GRADUATES AS TRADE ORGANISERS.

Another University president writes that of the young men under him those who choose academic careers "lack force" :

I have concluded, and the conclusion saddens me, that most youths of force prefer commercial careers. The stronger boys go into business or into the active professions.

College-trained captains of industry, both in Germany ,and America, seem to leave small chance for the untrained “fathers' sons" who direct British producers. If British working-men do not wish to see the bread taken from their mouths, they will have to set about a drastic reform of our Universities. This will be their best return for "University Extension." They must teach our teachers their business.

The English voter apparently has no confidence in either his wife's sense or discretion, for the women rarely know in a Parliamentary election how their husbands are going to vote; in Municipal and School Board elections they are able to give the fullest information, but the Parliamentary vote is a sacred trust, a secret guarded most jealously.

She quotes the "lidy" who tells you : "Both sides is alike; not a pin to choose, and he don't hold with neither." She tells of one case in which "votes were given with great confidence to a candidate because his mother-in-law canvassed for him, which satisfied them he must be all right, for very little cordiality exists in the lower classes in that relation":

One delightful old lady, on being asked for her vote, answered at once, "Certainly, Miss, will you take it with you?" mistaking the instructions for voting, as her newly-acquired privilege. Another widow who, on being canvassed, replied, "I have never voted in my life, and I am not going to use my poor dead 'usband's vote." After many calls and inquiries one voter's so-called wife said, "There's no use you a-comin' 'ere; 'e won't be 'ome for the election. The fact is 'e's a-spendin' 'is 'oneymoon in the country with another lidy."

THE WORKING CLASSES AS ELECTORS.

Here is Lady Jeune's impressions of the working classes as revealed in a general election :-

Electioneering brings one into closer contact with the working classes for the time, than any other occupation, as one sees them at all times, and in all ways. Though they are often ignorant and narrow, they are a wonderful revelation of contentment, good common sense, a love of fair play, and a strong sense of political morality. They may wilfully shut their eyes to facts, and for their own particular purpose, interpret things in their own way, but they are clear and quick-witted, and ready to see the weak points in the armour of those who go to them. They have had the same requests made before, the same promises remain unfulfilled, and in a pitying way they give their support; knowing, with the best and most honest intentions, human power is limited. They give you credit for honesty, but they pity and laugh at you for thinking you can carry out all that everyone else has failed to accomplish. They love a fair stand-up fight, and they each want their man to win. It is difficult to understand how they can be Conservative, leading the life of hard work and labour which is their lot, but that they are genuinely Conservative no one can deny. In their way they are proud of English institutions, they are loyal and devoted to the Queen, proud of feeling that the country is strong and powerful in the councils of the world, deeply interested in the doctrine of Imperialism, and strongly imbued with the conviction that a Conservative Government means Jingoism, which they understand as a glorification of the Empire; and that a Liberal Government means snubs and ridicule abroad. It is not a question of profession, trade, or environment, for undoubtedly the staunchest Conservatives come out of the poorest streets in London. We are so imbued with the idea that a great leader is always a necessity that we are apt to lose sight of the fact that, more often than not, the names of the leaders of either political party are unheard. They care far more about questions than leaders.

From all which it appears that it is not the electors alone who have been educated by Lady Jeune's canvassing experience.