Aggregate attendance at same......... House-to-house visits by deaconesses, doctors, missionaries, probationers and others to the

homes of the poor.

8,629

Publications sold, or given out from stores..... 2,196,728 Letters and parcels received at Head Office dur

158,030

197,657

The following trades are taught to members of this family: Baker, blacksmith, brushmaker, carpenter, engineer, harness-maker, matmaker, printer, shoemaker, tailor, tinsmith, wheelwright.

The doors of the Home stand open night and day for all children really friendless and destitute. No one with these qualifications is ever turned away. In one year young people were admitted from Berlin, Brazil, Cape Town, Constantinople, France, Illinois, Memel (Germany), Mexico, New Orleans, New Zealand, Russia, Syria.

II. SOME THINGS DONE DIRECTLY.

It is idle to attempt to describe all that Dr. Barnardo has done and is attempting to do. He is a centre of spiritual, social, intellectual activity, perpetually in motion. He began by caring only for the saving of the city Arab; he now finds the whole social problem on his hands. He is facing the whole vast complicated congeries of difficulties which baffle churches and governments, and facing them also with marvelous success. Round his Homes have grown up a veritable church militant, the most amazing octopus of our time. Nothing that is human is alien to Dr. Barnardo. He imports cargoes of timber from the forests of Norway, and plants out human seedlings in the prairies of Manitoba. He is surgeon, editor, preacher, teacher, Jack-of-all-trades, and a past master in all. One day he brings 3,700 of his children from all his Hoines to the heart of the west end. It is a small army a larger army than that with which Britain has won many of her most brilliant victories. Under his able direction they concentrate at the Albert Hall to meet the Prince and Princess of Wales, bringing with them a vast paraphernalia illustrative of all their enterprises, their works and their sports. With a skill the late Sir Augustus Harris could not have excelled, he puts this gigantic troupe through a programme lasting nearly four hours, a programme that goes without a hitch, that keeps every one from Prince to press man enthralled in unflagging interest, and that fascinates and delights every one, with one of the prettiest spectacles ever seen in London. And the troupe, what is it? One and all they are children, some mere babies, but all, whether old or young, perishing fragments of shipwrecked humanity, snatched one by one from the mælstrom of our cities. But for him these little ones would have been in the workhouse, in prison, in the grave, or worse still, in the kennel and in the slum preparing before they were well in their teens to perpetuate their kind. And, then, after having

Yet that spectacle, so prodigious, so enthralling, only represented one section of Dr. Barnardo's work. One of the most interesting and the most hazardous of his innumerable enterprises was not represented there. This is the good doctor's remedy for baby farming, which, as the recent case of Mr. Dyer shows, is usually baby slaughtering. For Dr. Barnardo is himself a baby farmer! Here is his account of what he calls his system of auxiliary boarding-out- -a foundling hospital on a new principle, with results which are in amazing contrast to those achieved in the magnificent institutions of Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the state foundling hospitals 50 per cent. of the children die. In Dr. Barnardo's system only two have died out of three hundred. He limits his operations to the first born illegitimate. He assumes, and rightly, that the woman who first becomes a mother without having provided her child with a lawful father has already suffered enough for her sin without being driven into hell as a collateral incident of a slip made often in ignorance and even in innocence. So this is his way of dealing with an application on behalf of the first and only child of an unmarried mother already in or about to be employed in service:

We first take great pains to ascertain whether the mother is really penitent and desirous of living a better life, and whether the assistance we are asked to render the child will tend toward the latter result. Having satisfied ourselves as to these two pre-requisites, we then place ourselves in communication with a lady who is willing to give the girl employment, if only the burden of the child can be taken off her. After being quite satisfied with the bona fides of all concerned, and also satisfied that it is impossible for us to reach the father so as to compel him to maintain the child (this is with us an essential which we never overlook), we then authorize the mother to seek out some decent poor woman who will be willing to become foster-mother to the child. This done, an agreement is entered into by the mother that she will pay the foster-mother 5s. per week. We take into consideration the earnings of the mother, her state of health, and her stock of clothing, and we agree to assist the case to the extent of a sum which never exceeds 3s. 6d. per week, but which often is not more than 1s. This money is not paid to the girl herself, nor to the foster-parent, but to the lady, who is thereby charged with some responsibility for the good conduct of the mother. Before we make each month's payment we have to be satisfied afresh that the mother is still in service, pleasing her mistress, and going on respectably. We also satisfy ourselves from time to time that the foster

parent is a suitable and proper woman to have charge of the baby, and that the latter is being well cared for and looked after.

While these conditions obtain we continue to pay our promised contribution toward the child's maintenance. The remainder has to be paid by the mother herself. If she pays 2s. 6d. a week, or £6 10s. a year, this leaves her, if she is earning £14 or £15 a year, enough to clothe herself if she exercises proper economy. It does not leave her free to live a careless, extravagant, or vicious life; and, moreover, we accompany our contribution with this distinct warning, that if at any time she relapses into a vicious or immoral life, we will at once cease our payments, and she will lose all title to further consideration. Meanwhile, having some portion of the cost to bear, and having constant access to her infant, the maternal instinct is awakened and kept alive and become in itself a potent factor in the permanent reclamation of the mother.

So well is this worked that of the three hundred cases dealt with up to date only in a single case has the mother lapsed into immorality, and in only two have the babies died. But for Dr. Barnardo at least one hundred of these mothers would have been on the streets or bearing other bastards, and at least one hundred and fifty of the children would have died under various forms of slow torture.

A PALACE OF PAIN.

Dr. Barnardo is, as everybody knows, a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, and has always taken a keen interest in the medical and surgical side of his rescue work. From a very early date in its history he came to the conclusion that, other things being equal, the sick, or blind, or incurably-crippled “waif and stray " was in a more pitiable plight than his healthy brothers and sisters, and had stronger claims for relief. And so, while some doors of hope were closed against the street wastrell with, say, virulent opthalmia, or a twisted backbone, or loss of vision, or partial paralysis, or any other of the ills of humanity that are often due to neglected childhood, his door was thrown widely open to all such, if only they were absolutely destitute. This last condition he insists upon in all cases as a sine qua non in order to gain admission. The practical result of this beneficent rule is that Dr. Barnardo's hands are always full of the lame, the halt and the blind. When rejected at almost every door they come to him. To-day quite five hundred children, all afflicted with some form of malady, are under his care, and his system of dealing with certain of these is, in many respects, worthy of more notice than it receives. Take one class of little sufferers, the cripples, for example Dr. Barnardo won't segregate them. He writes: "Unless my cripple waifs are actually needing surgical or medical care in bed, I prefer to let them live and mix daily with healthy children of their own age. The deformed or crippled youngsters are thus taught almost to forget their affliction, instead of being always shut up with it as in a cripples' home. They pursue the active, happy, industrious

--

life of their healthier mates, and the latter develop wonderful gentleness and generosity in dealing with their crippled chums.' To deal effectively and thoroughly with the vast mass of suffering childhood which appeals almost daily to Dr. Barnardo, he founded in Stepney Cause way, near the Central Home, a Hospital for Waif Children, which was rebuilt in the Queen's Jubilee year, and hence entitled "Her Majesty's Hospital," although, I believe, the gracious lady who rules over this realm has never even so much as heard of the beneficent and Christlike deeds which are being daily wrought under cover of her name in the children's palace of pain in Stepney. The hospital has ten wards and eighty-four beds, splendid staff of devoted nurses, a resident physician, consultant surgeons, etc., etc., and in a single year deals with close upon seven thousand little patients. It was to lift the financial burden of the maintenance and cure of his sick children off his shoulders that in January, 1892, Dr. Barnardo founded "The Young Helpers' League," of which their Royal Highnesses the Duchess of Teck and the Duchess of York became respectively the president and vice-president. Under such auspices the league has flourished and grown apace, 13,074 companions having paid their subscription last year and contributed the respectable sum of £6,567 to the doctor's funds. Like the Primrose League, but with nobler aims, this league of well-to-do children has local habitations and lodges, each having its organization and officers. The ambition of each habi tation is to contribute annually the £30 needed for the up-keep of a cot in one of Dr. Barnardo's three hospitals.

I only mention this bcause it is the newest of his many schemes, and because it is one which ought to be imitated everywhere:

III. SOME GREATER THINGS DONE INDIRECTLY.

I have referred to what Dr. Barnardo has done, directly and by his own right hand; but it is prob able that the indirect result of his work is still more far-reaching. For the last twenty years there was a great controversy between the elect and expert wisdom of the representatives of the English nation and this east end surgeon-philanthropist evangelist on the question of the outcast homeless child. The state had all its prestige, all its authority, all the experience of the Local Government Board, all its inspectors, Parliament in the plentitude of its authority, and local representative boards in all their wealth of detailed knowledge. On the other hand was one man, beaten by roughs, anointed with no ointment but that of the slop-pail, calumniated by Roman Catholics, slanged by Sadducees and slandered by Pharisees. He put his opinion before the world, however, with courage. He said that the state was entirely mistaken in its method of dealing with destitute children:

Workhouse girls were turned out into a world of the daily routine of which they knew almost nothing; their ignorance placed them at an enormous disadvantage;

people discovered that their education in household matters had been worse than neglected; their moral fibre was unequal to the strain of temptation, and when they came out from the hothouse atmosphere of the workhouse they were unable to endure the colder air of every-day life. The moral wrecks for which this vicious system of workhouse training is responsible can be counted by the hundred and by the thousand-and the workhouse was not so very long ago practically the only refuge for destitute or orphan lower-class girls who found themselves thrown upon the world.

These two parties differed toto cœlo as to how to deal with the child of the state. Dr. Barnardo, a mere nobody, was contemptuously silenced and left severely alone to work out an experiment in his own way at his own cost in his charming Village Homes at Ilford, and in his larger boarding-out scheme, while the state, so omniscient and so omnipotent, decided that the right way of dealing with the problem was by building great barracks which it called district schools, into which it packed the unfortunates toward whom it stood in relation of parent. It did so, it went on doing so, and it is doing so this day. But after a time the scandals of district schools became noised about.

It was said that the state was rearing its daughters for the streets and its sons for the jail. Hideous stories were whispered as to little ones blinded for life by state caused ophthalmia. And as these rumors spread from mouth to mouth, Parliament was at last induced to inquire into these matters, and the Local Governmnt Board appointed an official departmental committee to look into these matters. The report of that committee, published this year, settles the controversy once for all. After all these years the State is compelled to admit that it was wrong-utterly, horribly, shamefully wrong -and that Dr. Barnardo was right, absolutely right. in his theory of the way in which the children of the state should be treated. So now the district school is doomed, and in future the state, sitting at the feet of Dr. Barnardo, is to try to see whether by segregation instead of aggregation, by homes instead of barracks, by personal love and personal interest instead of official routine and official discipline, it may perhaps achieve with all its resources 50 per cent. of the good results of the Barnardo Homes. But what of the scores of thousands of children of the state who have morally, socially, and often physically perished before the state could be induced to admit that it was mistaken?

Another matter in which Dr. Barnardo has been the pioneer of a great social movement, certain to acquire much greater importance in the next century, is in the work of emigration. The prejudice against emigration is dying hard. But in emigration lies the key to the solution of the social prob

lem. And Dr. Barnardo is the only man who has tackled this subject on a large scale with conspicuous success. The results of his long experiencehe has emigrated more than 8,000 boys and girls to the British Colonies, mostly to Canada-are embodied in the following rules :

(a) That only the flower of my flock shall be emigrated to Canada-those young people, namely: 1, Who are in robust health, physical and mental; 2, who are thoroughly upright, honest and virtuous; and 3, who, being boys, have been industriously trained in our own workshops; or who, being girls, have had careful instruction in domestic pursuits.

(b) That continuous supervision shall be exercised over all these emigrants after they have been placed out in Canadian homesteads; 1, By systematic visitation; 2, by regular correspondence. Emigration without continuous supervision, particularly in the case of young children, is in my opinion presumptuous folly, and simply courts disaster. It may be added that for emigrants who retain their situations and do well for certain defined periods a system of prizes is in operation, which has hitherto worked very successfully as an incentive and encouragement.

(c) That in the case of the total failure of any emigrants the colonies shall be safeguarded by their return at our expense, whenever possible, to England.

The result has been most satisfactory. In early years my emigrants were offered twice as many places as there were children to fill them, and I had to reject one-half the applications for their services. Now it is quite usual for one of my parties to be applied for by would-be em ployers five or six times over. The Dominion of Canada during 1894 has been passing through a period of severe industrial depression, which, it might have been imagined, would have operated to diminish the number of openings for our emigrants. As a matter of fact, however, there has come in from all parts of the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific seaboard, from Halifax to Vancouver, a steady and increasing demand, far beyond my power to supply unless the means at my disposal for emigration purposes are largely extended.

Compared with the work he has done, our representative boards have done next to nothing. But when they have to cope with the matter seriously, they will have to sit at the feet of Dr. Barnardo.

It is an interesting question whether a really intelligent and benevolent despot would not make over the whole of the children of the state to Dr. Barnardo, allowing him the money now paid for dealing unsuccessfully with the little ones, in order that he might make a success of it. As there is no chance of the advent of such an entity, it may be well if all our Board of Guardians were to ask themselves whether in dealing with their destitute children it would not be well to take a leaf out of Barnardo's book. They have the official responsibility. They have the command of the rates, they have the children. Why not deal with them à la Barnardo ? W. T. STEAD.

PRESID

RESIDENT FRANCIS A. WALKER'S restatement of the arguments for international bimetallism* comes at a time when it can hardly fail to be widely read and carefully pondered. President Walker has been for nearly forty years a writer and an authority of very high rank on monetary questions. During all that time he has been, as he reaffirms in the preface of his new book, a "bimetallist, of the international type, to the very centre of his being." He now declares that he has had no occasion to change the opinions expressed in his well-known treatise on money which appeared in 1878. While students already familiar with President Walker's earlier writings will find no novel views set forth in the present volume, as regards the general theory of bimetallism, they will find a great deal of interesting and instructive comment on the earlier and later financial experience of the nations, and especially a clear-cut delineation of the world's existing monetary conditions as a bimetallist sees them.

THE LESSONS OF HISTORY.

From necessity the book is very largely historical, as is indicated by the first five of the eight chapter headings: The Early Production of the Precious Metals," "Augustus to Columbus," "Bimetallism in England, 1666 to 1816," "French and American Bimetallism to 1851" and "French Bimetallism to 1873." Speaking of the bimetallic system maintained by France through the period of gold depreciation after the Californian and Australian discoveries, President Walker says:

Again, and this time in an overwhelming degree, the validity of the bimetallic system was established. The maximum momentary effect of more than doubling the world's stock of gold was to pull the metals apart by 4 per cent., while the permanent effect upon the ratio was only 1 in 100. During all this period the variations from the legal ratio in France seldom exceeded the cost of mintage and of transporting specie to the French mint. Thus Europe was saved from a catastrophe the destructive effects of which can hardly be conceived; and the bimetallic system emerged from this extraordinary trial unbroken and triumphant. We have seen how freely the validity of this cause has been admitted by monometallists like Chevalier of France, Lexis of Germany, Cairnes, Bagehot, Jevons, Giffen and Farrer of England. We have seen how full has been the recognition and acknowledgment, by these and other economists holding the same faith, of the benefits conferred upon mankind by the establishment and maintenance of an approximate par of exchange between gold and silver, the world over, through the action of France. This recapitulation of French experience with bimetallism is President Walker's answer to those who ask to-day, "Is it feasible?" He amplifies his

*International Bimetallism. By Francis A. Walker, Ph.D., LL.D. 12mo., pp. 302. New York: Henry Holt & Co. $1.25.

argument on this point with the citation of abundant historical precedent.

THE ADVANTAGES OF BIMETALLISM.

To the other question, Cui bono? President Walker makes a very definite and compact reply. He enumerates the advantages of international bimetallism under three heads:

First, the establishment of an approximate par of exchange between the gold using and the silver using nations. Twenty-five years ago the world might be said to be divided about equally between these two groups. The preponderance of per capita wealth and of general industrial and commercial power was on the side of the gold using nations; but, on the other hand, the preponderance of territory and population was enormously on the side of the silver using nations. As Mr. Bagehot remarked: "It used to be said, until a few years ago, that England and Portugal were the only countries where gold was the standard of value; and there were certain countries which had a double standard, but those were not very inany; and all the rest were silver. Silver is the normal currency of the world; and from a natural cause, because silver is a much cheaper metal, and is suited to those small transactions which constitute the bulk of the dealings of mankind." Midway between the silver standard and the gold standard countries stood a small group of States which had undertaken to mediate between the two; to establish an approximate price of silver in terms of gold, of gold in terms of silver. This, as we have seen, was effective at least so far as to reduce the fluctuations of the metals within a very small range; and thus to create an approximate par of exchange. The influence of such a cause upon the world's trade, and, by consequence, upon the world's production, could not fail to be of immense benefit to mankind. Without such a bimetallic "link," trade between gold using and silver using countries would necessarily have been subject to frequent and often extensive fluctuations in the gold price of silver or the silver price of gold. What this means we have seen for ourselves within the past few years, during which silver has more than once fallen, in relation to gold, in the course of a single year, to a greater extent than it did during the two hundred years preceding 1873. Such fluctuations in the relative values of the two money metals continually involve international trade in embarrassment and disturbances of a most serious character; and often reduce it to mere gambling. Without some tie which can hold the two metals at least near to each other, during the time between the manufacture and sale of commodities and the receipt of the proceeds, the producer in a gold country can never tell for how much silver he must sell his goods in order to make himself whole and perhaps win a profit; the producer in a silver country can never tell for how much gold he must sell his goods in order to make himself whole or perhaps win a profit. The range of possible losses or possible gains from this source are such as to be altogether out of proportion to the range of the ordinary chances of industrial and commercial enterprise. A manufacturer, for example, assuming for the moment that the entire operation would be conducted by himself, might produce goods of the