Referendum, What Englishmen Think of the, 463. Representative Government: Is It a Failure? 336. Rhodes, Cecil, The Story of, 728. Riley, James Whitcomb, as a Sign Painter, 356. Rosebery, The Earl of : First Day of Rosebery's Government, 400. Character Sketch, 422. A Cromwellian Premier, 526. Royal Academy, An American in the, 685. Royal Academy, Six Popular Painters of the, 689. Russia: The Music of Russia, 88. The Peasant Emperor, 269. Close of the Russo-German Tariff War, 401. Russian Famine Relief Commission, 725. ST. PAUL, A Jewish View of, 716. Salaries, Official: Do We Pay Enough? 77. Samoa The Samoan Question, 517, 518. Sand, George: George Sand's Religious Faith, 222. Sargent, John S.: An American in the Royal Academy, 685. Satolli, Mgr., on the Papacy, 584. Sayings, Notable, in English History, 705. Science: What Killed Hindu Science? 344. Scientific Problems of the Future, 471. Schreiner, Olive, 218; portrait, 218. Schumann, Grieg on, 222. Scottish Review reviewed, 360. Scribner's Magazine reviewed, 105, 232, 363, 488, 617, 741. Sea Islands Hurricanes, 317. Senate, Obstruction in the, 73, 389. Senatorial Gossip and Scandal, 648. Ship Canals: See under Canals. The King of Siam, 601. Women and Jewels in Siam, 216. Slave Trade, Crushing the African, 271. Social Problem, A Solution of the, 321. South, Industrial Crisis of the, 325. Southern Magazine reviewed, 235, 449, 619. Stanley, Dean, and Renan, 603. Starved Rock, Illinois, 212. Stonewall Jackson, The Real, 353. Louisiana versus Free Sugar, 391. Comparison of Votes on the McKinley and Wilson Tax, The Income: The Income Tax, 70, 195. The Income Tax and the Democratic Position, 138. The Income Tax in England, 323. Catholic Scheme of Graduated Income Tax, 323. David A. Wells on the Income Tax, 462. The Income Tax as a Sectional Issue, 521. Taxation Art and the Single Tax, 214. Telegraph Cables Across the Pacific, Proposed, 460, 517. The South Carolina Liquor Law, 199, 325, 523. A Proposed Temperance Law, 398. The Liquor Problem in Several States, 651. A Coming Temperance Congress, 652. The Actor and His Role, 209. The Theatres of Our Ancestors, 209. Theology: Japanese "New Theology," 717. Tolstoi's Condemnation of the Churches, 207. Tramps, 201. A Talk with a Tramp, 323. A Study of City Tramps, 453. The Rights of Tramps, 608. Tricoupis, the Greek Prime Minister, 601. Tucker, Miss Charlotte (A. L. O. E.), 477. Character Sketch, 172. Prof. Huxley's Tribute, 227. UNEMPLOYED, The : Relief in American Ci ies, 29, 179, 295, 319. The Problem of the Unemployed, 73. University Extension in Germany, 203. Utah's Approaching Statehood, 14. VACCINATION, History of, 713. Vance, The Late Senator, 528; portrait, 528. Vatican Council, Cardinal Gibbons' Reminiscences of, 586. Verne, Jules, Life and Work of, 217; portrait, 217. Village Life, Organizing English, 464. Villager, The French, 465. Village Homes, Picturesque, 477. Virginia's Historic Shrines, Rescue of, 680 Von Bulow, Anecdotes of, 718. WAGNER and Grieg, 481. Werner, Hildegard, 480. Westminster Review reviewed, 359. Westösliche Rundschau, 491. Willard, Frances: Miss Willard as "Preceptress," 96. Wolseley, Lord, on Napoleon, 224. Woman at Home, The, 361. Women : Women and Jewels in Siam, 216. Woman Suffrage in New Zealand, 474. Why Women Ought Not to Work, 475. The Women of Hungary, 40. The Question of Woman Suffrage, 650. Is the Representative American Woman Womaly 708. Women as Public Speakers, 709. The Pioneer Woman in American Literature, 708 World's Fair in Retrospect, 198. World's Fair: Chicago After the Fair, 14. YORK, The Duchess of, 226. Young England Magazine, 216. THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS, AMERICAN EDITION, EDITED BY ALBERT SHAW The Review of Reviews is published each month in New York and London, the two editions differing in many features, With portraits of Hon. William L. Wilson, Miss Clara TERMS: -20 arar in advance; 25 cents a number. Foreign postage $1.00 a year additional. Subscribers may remit to us THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS. VOL. IX. NEW YORK, JANUARY, 1894. No. 1 THE THE PROGRESS OF THE WORLD. HE two foremost topics of the day are the proposed changes in the tariff, and the relief of the unemployed. At no previous time in the history of the United States have so many people been out of work. Thousands of factories are closed altogether; and thousands of others are running with reduced forces. The depressed condition of trade has so lessened the volume of traffic that the railroads have been compelled to dismiss thousands of employees, while many roads have cut down the wages of the men retained. The curtailed purchasing power of the working people, due to the diminished proportions of the total wage fund, has affected merchants and middlemen of all classes, and they in turn have been compelled to reduce the number of their employees. The causes that have produced this condition of things are doubtless very complex. Probably the greatest cause has been the timidity and hesitancy of capital, on account of the protracted agitation of monetary and tariff questions. Evidently, the collapses of credit in Australia and Argentina, which compelled European investors to withdraw great quantities of capital from the United States, played their part in disturbing the business situation here. What is wanted now, more than all things else, is a cessation of tariff tinkering and currency tinkering for partisan ends. An afflicted nation would shed tears of gratitude if a non-partisan tariff commission and a non-partisan currency commission could be appointed to report a tariff measure by February 1, and a currency measure by April 1, both reports to be accepted unanimously by Congress and signed by the President, with concurrent resolutions by Congress, by State legislatures, by Boards of Trade, and various other public bodies, to the effect that the two measures ought by common consent and understanding to remain substantially unchanged for ten years. The continual agitation of the tariff question in this country can be compared to nothing but the continual recurrence of revolutions in some South American countries. The existing partisan treatment of the question is as disastrous to business as a civil war, and it is absurd beyond the power of words to characterize it. Since the days of the endless metaphysical discussions of the schoolmen, there has been nothing more fatuous and more hopelessly stupid than the attempt to reconcile the American tariff system either with doctrinaire protectionism or with doctrinaire free-trade. Practical men ought to be able to construct a workable tariff, and party zeal ought to borrow patriotism enough to let that tariff alone when it is constructed. The Wilson If a country is to have a general and highly complicated system of combined revenue and protective tariff imposts, the one clear maxim to be asserted over and over again concerning it is this: Change it only for the best of causes, and do not change it too frequently. And the reason for this maxim lies in a principle which we may express as follows: It is upon the whole easier for business to adjust itself to the tariff than for the tariff to adjust itself to business. Herein is to be found the chief objection to the new Wilson tariff measure. Like the McKinley measure, this Noth also is a general and highly complicated system of combined revenue and protective tariff imposts. It is just as truly a protective tariff in all its principles and methods as any of its predecessors,-providing one is willing to admit that a fence remains a fence even when some of the top boards are knocked off. The Wilson bill in no sense involves a reversal of the plan of Republican tariffs; it is simply an elaborate revision of them. The practical difficulties met by the Wilson committee have been enormous. ing illustrates them better than the mere statement that within some two weeks after Mr. Wilson and his Democratic colleagues had finished and announced their work, they made more than two hundred additional changes in it. Business had begun to adjust itself to the tariff of 1890. If the Wilson bill is adopted,-as, after much discussion and amending, it is likely to be,-business must begin some months hence to shape itself to the altered schedules, with no warrant for a feeling of permanence and security. For, if the Republicans should be returned to power in 1896, they would probably rebuild the tariff fence in a different enough way to require general readjustments once more. Would it not have been in better keeping with announced HON. WILLIAM L. WILSON, OF WEST VIRGINIA, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Democratic principles if the Wilson bill had been framed upon more permanent and radical lines, with a view to a material change of policy several years hence? What possible objection could there be to a long notice? Some of the McKinley schedules were arranged to go into effect several years after the bill was adopted. It would be entirely feasible for Congress to declare that the new tariff would go into operation in 1895; making the date exactly five years after the McKinley act took effect. This would serve at least three good purposes. It would, first, enable the Democrats to prepare a measure much more faithfully in accord with their platform; second, it would relieve the existing uncertainty that paralyzes industrial activities, and, third, it would form a valuable precedent against rapid and haphazard tariff changes. The country is in no haste for a myriad of puzzling and embarrassing changes of detail in the tariff schedules, while the main outlines of the system remain. alone until that date, the country would be satisfied. The six years would give trade and industry the necessary chance to prepare deliberately for the change, and the transition would not be violent when it came. The free-trade ideal, which the Democrats espoused with such enthusiasm at Chicago, would by this means be ushered in completely and triumphantly in a short period. But, in our candid opinion, the plans now decided upon by the Wilson committee, far from doing anything at all towards promoting the transfer from a protective to a purely revenue policy, will have just the opposite effect by provoking a reaction that will restore the Republicans and perpetuate the Republican tariff policy. Resumption of specie payment was accomplished by the simple and obvious plan of announcing a date far enough ahead to allow the country to accommodate itself to the approaching fact. The question to-day is not whether the Wilson bill is better than the McKinley bill, but whether it is worth while to further disturb business by substituting one makeshift policy for another. Why not tolerate the existing makeshift, which has the advantage of being a known quantity, upon the understanding that in the year 1900 we shall enter upon an era of free trade? |