John Sherman is the most striking example of the stability of public life in our day. He went from Ohio to Washington as a member of the House of Representatives in 1855, continued in that body until 1861, served in the Senate from that time ⚫ until 1877, was secretary of the treasury for the next four years, returned to the Senate in 1881, has been re-elected once since, and, when his present term expires in 1893, will have held office at the national capital continuously for 38 years, without being considered by anybody too old to begin another six years' term at the age of seventy. Justin S. Morrill entered the House from Vermont the same day with Mr. Sherman, served 12 years in that branch, and has completed his twenty-fourth year in the Senate, with another term just awarded him by his State at the age of eighty. Henry L. Dawes, of Massachusetts, joined Sherman and Morrill on the floor of the House in 1857, remained in that branch for 18 years, and will complete another 18 years in the Senate with the expiration of his present term in 1893. Although Mr. Dawes reached Washington two years later than Mr. Sherman and Mr. Morrill, he had, unlike them, already held office repeatedly in his State, so that his public life is really much the longest, dating back to his election to the Legislature in 1848, and with only a break of a single year (1851) covering the entire period of 43 years since then. So, too, George F. Edmunds entered the Vermont Legislature in 1854, a year before his long-time colleague, Mr. Morrill, took his seat in Congress, and he was a member of one or other branch of that body seven of the twelve years before he went, in 1866, to the Senate, where he undoubtedly might remain indefinitely if he would consent to serve. The resignation of Mr. Edmunds closes a record which was already without a precedent-the representation of a commonwealth in the Senate by the same two men for a continuous period of 24 years-with the result that their small State has long held the chairmanships of the two most important committees, on finance and on the judiciary.

The South would match the longest records of the North but for the break caused by the war and the disabilities under which so many of her most prominent men labored during the reconstruction era. John H. Reagan entered Congress with Mr.

Dawes in 1857, but he had been a deputy surveyor of public lands as far back as 1839, and served in that capacity, as member of the Legislature, or as judge, half of the 18 years from 1839 until 1857; while he has held office, either at Washington or under the Confederate government, all of the time since 1857, except from 1865 to 1875, while the Republicans were in power in Texas. Isham G. Harris was elected to the Tennessee Legis lature in 1847, the year before Mr. Dawes went to "the Great and General Court" of Massachusetts; began four years' service in the lower branch of Congress in 1849; became governor in 1857, and filled three terms of two years; and returned to Congress, this time in the upper branch, in 1877. He is now serving a third term, which will not end until 1895. Zebulon B. Vance, of North Carolina, was sworn in as a member of the House of Representatives at Washington the same day with Dawes and Reagan in 1857, after having been elected county attorney in 1852 and member of the Legislature in 1854; he served as congressman until his State seceded in 1861, and was its "war governor" from 1862 until the Federal authorities assumed control; he claimed an election to the United States Senate in 1870, but the Republican majority would not concede him the seat; he was again elected governor in 1876; in 1879 he went to the Senate with indisputable credentials, and he was recently re-elected for the term ending in 1897. His colleague, Matt W. Ransom, entered public life the same year, being elected in 1852 attorney-general of North Carolina, in which office he served three years; was a member of the Legislature in 1858, 1859, and 1860; was elected to the United States Senate two years later than Mr. Vance, but was more fortunate in immediately securing the seat; has served continuously since 1872, and is now upon a term which will not expire until 1895. Of the 76 members of the Senate from the older States when the Fifty-first Congress met, ten had served in that body continuously for 12 years, two for 14, three for 16, one for 17, one for 22, and one for 23 years, not counting Sherman and two or three others who had been senators and then had dropped out to return later.

All of the present tendencies are in the direction of greater

stability in public life. The man who enters a Washington department through one of the lowest clerkships, after passing a competitive examination, can count upon keeping his place indefinitely if he continues efficient, with the prospect of promotion to higher grades from time to time. The man who aspires to a congressional career, if he once secures an election to the House from a district controlled by his party, may in most of the States expect a series of re-elections as the reward of conspicuous merit, with the chance of some day changing his seat to the Senate chamber. Even if he reaches the upper branch rather late in life, he will not find his age an insurmountable obstacle to his long continuance in a body which contains several members who have been chosen to new terms after reaching seventy. The man who would leave a name as a judge may reasonably hope that, if he reaches the bench of an inferior court, he will not suddenly be turned adrift after a brief term, but that he will be advanced to higher rank as vacancies occur, and so be able to spend all his active years in the employment which he would most enjoy. In short, the Republic seems to be steadily recovering from its strange delusion that public life is the one occupation in the world where experience is of no value, and where the best service is to be secured by the most frequent changes.

EDWARD P. CLARK.

THE GREATHEAD UNDERGROUND ELECTRIC

RAILWAY.

ON November 4, 1890, there was opened with much ceremony in London a subterranean railway, carrying passengers from the Monument in the city to the Swan in South Lambeth, a distance of about three and a half miles, and at a depth of between 40 and 60 feet below the surface of the streets. This road is called the City and South London Railway. It is composed of two tunnels, which in their course underlie the River Thames, and pass under the mammoth Hibernia Wharf warehouses, the abutments of London Bridge, and the massive viaducts of the Southeastern Railway. The mode of traction is electricity, which at. the same time serves to light the carriages and the stations.

When Mr. James H. Greathead, the inventor of the system of tunneling which is known by his name, proposed this line from London Bridge through the densely populated portions of the southern or Surrey side of London, and succeeded in obtaining the indorsement of Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker, two of the leading engineers of England, he had, notwithstanding this indorsement, to fight, at the outset, many very serious difficulties in the way of inducing capital to enter into the project and of obtaining the necessary parliamentary concessions for the work of construction in the metropolis of London.

The old underground railway system of London, although carrying an enormous traffic, had not been a financial success. It is also a constant source of complaint to its patrons by reason of the offensive odors which permeate the tunnel, and its dampness and draughtiness. The traction of the old underground railway of London is by steam locomotives; and however successful the smoke-consuming contrivances of the engines, they cannot destroy wholly the emanations of ashes, and sulphurous gases of various kinds, which arise from the decomposition and direct consumption of coal, this being of necessity bituminous, as England has

no anthracite coal. The contents of gas pipes, sewer pipes, and water-service pipes, all of which are more or less leaky, saturate and drench the brick arches of the old underground railway sys tem of London with unwholesome moistures and smells, each brick being a lung which takes in and inhales this moisture and these odors from surrounding material and exudes and exhales them into the tunnel. These were the main reasons that caused Londoners and the English Parliament to be reluctant to extend a system of subways which in one form or another were open to such strong objections.

Mr. Greathead was compelled, therefore, to prove theoretically to both Parliament and the capitalists of England that his system overcame these objections, one and all, before he could obtain either concession or cash. That accomplished, he, for two and a half years, proceeded to build his road; and from the first day of its opening, on November 4, 1890, until the present day, every train has passed through the tunnel successfully, and, with trivial exceptions, on time. The passage of the first train demonstrated the validity of the inventor's claims before Parliament in behalf of this intermural system of rapid transit, and of its superiority over every other system yet devised, as a means of moving daily the population of a great city from one point to another. Every successive train brushed aside objections and objectors until at present there is a consensus of opinion, in England at least, that the solution of the question of rapid transit for cities has been found.

Given a built-up city with its lines of traffic and intercommunication already established, a new system which is to supplement and, in part, replace the existing lines, should meet six serious and important requirements:

(1) During construction, there must be no opening of streets to interfere with existing traffic; (2) in its operation, it must not impede existing means of traffic, by carriage, omnibus, street ears, and the like; (3) it must do little or no damage to property during its construction and by reason of its operation; (4) it must, when in operation, be a wholesome and pleasant means of transit; (5) it must be rapid; and (6) it must pay its projectors and promoters.

The Greathead system of tunnelling places the tunnel so far