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Civil Service Law and bring it into disrepute." Although this must be regarded as obiter dicta, we hope that the Governor will take the hint in considering the Civil Service Law to which we referred last week, and which has passed the Legislature and is now before him. Our object in this paragraph is simply to state the decision of the Court of Appeals, not to re-argue the case; it is, however, legitimate to say that the general interpretation of the word "practicable" furnished by this decision seems to us rational and just.

The New York Legislature, which adjourned last week, passed one antimonopoly measure which would have been considered revolutionary five years ago, and rejected another anti-monopoly measure which even longer ago would have been recognized as conservative by nearly all men opposed to class privileges. The anti-monopoly measure accepted was the progressive inheritance tax bill, championed by Comptroller Roberts. This measure places taxes ranging from 1 per cent. on personal estates of $10,000 to 10 per cent. on personal estates of $4,000,000, with 4 or 5 per cent. added in case the inheritance passes to heirs outside the immediate family of the decedent. The anti-monopoly measure rejected was that reducing the price of gas in New York City to $1 per 1,000 cubic feet-or to 33 per cent. more than has for several years been found profitable in Cleveland, Ohio. This bill, however, was defeated only by means of a substitute reducing the price of gas to $1.20 this year, and making a similar five-cent reduction each succeeding year until the $1 rate is established. The difference between the two bills, based upon the present consumption of gas, was said to mean $8,000,000 to the gas com. panies and to the public. Among the other acts of the Legislature, the important ones were the passage of the Greater New York Charter Bill, the amendment of the Raines Law so as to make it an effective anti-saloon measure, and the passage of Governor Black's civil service law taking the "starch" out of the reform system. The anti-trust bills passed are not regarded as important by either

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A law signed by Governor Morton early in 1895, which excited active interest and co-operation, as well as opposition, provided for the establishment of high schools in the city of New York. As soon as the bill became a law and a Board of Superintendents was appointed under the law, a committee of the Board of Education and of this Board of Superintendents was appointed to adopt a course of study for the new high schools. As a result of investigation in this country and abroad, and after consultation with the highest educational authorities, this special committee has now made public its course of study for the high schools. It is said that nothing of like character exists on this side of the Atlantic, and that the idea has been borrowed from the schools of Germany. The committee in its report says that this higher commercial course is "designed to give the student a very thorough business education, so extended as to give instruction in the higher commercial operations, and to form the foundation of a liberal education at the same time." The course provided for covers four years. Bookkeeping, English, and German are studied through the four years. Other studies are: stenography, business forms and customs, banking, finance, and economics, commercial geography and commercial arithmetic, Latin and American literature, civics and modern and ancient history, constitutional and commercial history, two branches of the natural sciences. Students will be prepared for the classical and scientific courses of the city colleges.

The committee state frankly that the success of this course of study depends on the kind of men they can find to put

at the head of the high schools, and! the courses of study presented will doubt less be somewhat changed on consultation with these principals, as it is the intention and acknowledged principle laid down by the entire Board of Education of New York to-day, and provided for in the chapter on education of the Greater New York Charter, that the principals shall be brought into closer relations with the management of their own schools, and have a voice in the selection of teachers and in the decision of all affairs relating to their own schools. New York is to be congratulated on the progress she has made and the promise that lies in the future. The next ten years will see the public schools of New York taking rank with the best in the country. Bills have been reported favorably from the Assembly's City Committee, which authorize New York City to raise $12,500,000 for school buildings and sites. One bill provides for bonds to the amount of $10,000,000 for the common schools. Another bill authorizes $2,500,000 for high-school buildings. There is every indication that these bills will pass. That New York must make ample provision for the future is proved by the increase in attendance since 1891. In 1891 the children attending the public schools in New York numbered 137,849. That was an increase of 1.25 per cent. over the preceding year. In 1896 the average attendance was 175,000, an increase of 7.14 per cent. over the attendance of 1895. It is estimated that 1897 will find the school average attendance at 188,000, an increase of 7.42 per cent. over 1896. This rapid increase justifies the seemingly large expenditures which the Board of Education demands.

As soon as the Board of Education in New York City took final action in regard to the establishment of high schools, by deciding to open the old East Twelfth Street School as a Girls' High School, the question of the appointment of a principal became prominent. The impression went forth that the Board of Education would discriminate against women, and consider only men as candidates for the position of principal of the school. This is not true. The Chairman of the High

School Committee of the Board of Educaton has invited those who advocate the appointment of women to this position to send the names of their candidates, with their credentials, to the committee. Those who advocate the appointment of women have, too many of them, taken the position that it would be absurd to put a man in the place; that the girls in a high school need the guidance of a woman; that only a woman could understand them and their needs. They would not, however, debar men from positions as teachers in the high school The opponents to the appointment of a woman principal assume and declare that a woman would never succeed as the principal of a high school. Neither of these positions is tenable. While women make success'ul presidents of women's colleges and principals of high schools, it is absurd to take the position that a woman cannot succeed as the principal of a high school in New York. With men standing at the head of women's colleges and successfully conducting them, and equally successful as principals of girls' high schools, it is equally absurd to make the declaration that a man is unfit for the principalship of a girls' high school. Character, ability, experience, equipment, not sex, must de cide the question.

For several months there have been disagreements between the New York State Government, the Board of Managers of the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents in the City of New York, and the Board of Health of the city. The Society which controls the House of Refuge was organized in 1824 by private citizens, and supported by gifts and endowments. In 1853 the present Refuge was built, with the co-operation of the city. The State undertook to maintain the institution, but it has been under the control of a self-perpetuating Board of Managers; and the Society and the State have been for a long time at loggerheads, with the most disastrous results. Accord-ing to the report of the Board of Health, the plumbing and other sanitary arrangements for the building are just about what they were forty-five years ago. The managers have long been asking for appropriations from the State Government to

improve the sanitary conditions of the House of Refuge; but the State Comptroller has opposed this expenditure unless the property is given into the possession and control of the State. The Medical Superintendent of the House of Refuge has now resigned, and his resignation has been followed by that of the Ophthalmologist. These two gentlemen constituted the entire medical staff of an institution containing 820 boys and girls between the ages of twelve and eighteen years, who have been committed by the magistrates in the first, second, and third judicial districts of the State. These embrace New York and fifteen other counties. More than three-fourths of those committed to the House of Refuge are from New York and Brooklyn. The resignation of the two medical officers precipitated the action of the Board of Health, and the Board immediately condemned the House of Refuge, and issued an order prohibiting it from receiving any persons as inmates until further orders from the Board of Health. The whole evil grows out of the attempted partnership between a private corporation and the State. The partnership should be dissolved and the State should be given control of the institution, or the private beneficence should assume the cost as well as the care of it. Any scheme by which the State pays the bills, and a private, irresponsible body spends the money, is sure to land in difficulty, sooner or later.

The annual report of President Dwight, of Yale University, records great advances in both material and intellectual riches, and points out with equal force the many present opportunities for further advancement. During the last ten years fifteen new buildings have been erected, five made over, and one bought, and in the same time over $4,000,000 have been received in the way of donations. But President Dwight well says that "the law of all growing life is that it continually asks for more. When the asking ceases, the life begins to decline and decay." Yale's increase in the number of students has fully kept pace with its increase in buildings and funds, and its immediate needs are many, if it is

to carry out its ideal of university study and life. Prominent among these needs President Dwight places the further endowment of the library, which has already a fund of $300,000 (the Sloane bequest) toward this end; the founding of a school of architecture in connection with the Art School, to be modeled on the plan of the École des Beaux Arts, and to occupy a building, with equipment, to cost $250,000; a new Medical School building; a new building for the department of physiology and morphology in the Sheffield Scientific School, which, by the way, is this year to celebrate the close of its fiftieth year of constantly growing usefulness; the establishing of libraries for the departments; the extension of graduate fellowships and scholarships to fully sustain the recent remarkable growth in this department of the University-and in this connection President Dwight recommends that some of these scholarships should be purely honorary (that is, without money income attached), in order to recognize the work of graduate students who do not need financial aid An interesting part of the report deals with the inevitable destruction in the near future of the "Old Brick Row," or rather the three buildings of it which still remain. The proposed Quadrangle has been planned for a quarter of a century, has now been partly carried out, and, of course, the sentimental interest attached to the old buildings cannot be allowed to stand in the way of completing the work. Really, South Middle College is the only one to which historic interest attaches, and that will doubtless be left for at least a few years.

The tenth annual report of the Commissioner of Labor Statistics in North Carolina has just been published. There are 200 cotton, woolen, knitting, and hosiery mills in the State, with slightly over 1,000,000 spindles. There are 25,000 operatives, 6,000 of whom are children and 18,000 adults-10,500 women and 7,500 men. Over one-half of the children employed are under sixteen years of age. The wages differ in different localities. The average pay for skilled labor is $1 per day. Women's wages range from 60 cents to $1; unskilled men, 50 cents to $1, the average being 66 cents.

The wages of unskilled women are as low as 40 cents, the average being 47 cents. The average for children is 32 cents. In two

counties ten to eleven hours constitute a day's work; in thirteen counties, eleven and a half hours; in ten counties, twelve hours. The average working time in these mills is eleven hours per day. Most of the mills run fifteen hours a day, but they pay for extra time. It is claimed by the mill-owners that it is a rare thing to see children under twelve years of age in any of the mills.

A notable good work is being performed by the Legal Aid Society of this city. There are always those too poor to pay the necessary expense of having their wrongs righted. From those, however, who are able, the stigma of being applicants for charity is removed by the Society's requirement of a small fee. Last year, through the Society's endeavors, more than $70,000 was paid by persons wrong fully retaining that amount to nearly 7,500 persons rightfully entitled to it. Another signal service last year was the initiating of proceedings for destroying the "bucket-shops" and "policyshops"-gambling establishments which vitiate the moral atmosphere wherever they exist. The Society's attorneys have not a little to do with educating ignorant applicants as to the prevailing ideas of right and wrong. It often happens that persons deem themselves wronged who are either not wronged at all, or have themselves transgressed the bounds of propriety. The Society desires to increase its work by having a representative in each police court-practically in every court at all times. The greatest work of the Society is really an indirect it spreads abroad the feeling that the poor can get justice done. This feeling is now a strong one, since the Society has existed for over twenty years, and during that time has taken care of over 80,000 cases.

one;

The ceremonies attending the completion of General Grant's Tomb on Riverside Drive, in New York City, are in progress as this paper goes to press.

The presence of the President and VicePresident of the United States, the Cabinet, the Justices of the Supreme Court, a large representation from the two branches of Congress, the Ambassadors and Ministers of many foreign countries, the Governors of many of the States, and other distinguished guests, adds dignity to a spectacle in itself impressive, and in its meaning significant and inspiring of patriotism. New York City has just pride in its fulfillment of the pledge made by it to erect a fit and stately monument to the National hero who chose that city for his last resting-place; it has pride also in the beautiful spot where the mausoleum stands, and in the noble river which flows beside it; it has pride in the vast plans for improving and beautifying the city now being carried out in the region above the Harlem; it may reasonably have pride in its municipal admincompared with the maladministration of istration for the past year or two as with the present administration of not a previous years, and, indeed, as compared few of the great American cities. Let us hope that this local pride, which New York has often been accused of not pos

sessing at all, but which is brought into
view by such public occasions as the
present, may grow in intensity until the
Greater New York may be materially and
imitated at home and abroad.
in spirit and purpose an example to be

Direct Primaries

The conviction that the reform of the the overthrow of political corruption and primaries constitutes the next step toward ring rule is taking root in all parts of the country. In different States entirely

independent movements are gathering strength, all directed to the same end, that of enabling all the voters in each party to

choose their candidates, instead of delegating the choice to the men in control of party machinery and nominating conventions. This democratic system-the "Crawford County System "-has already been voluntarily established by one party organization or another in many rural counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, California, and fully half of the Southern States. The present movement is

to require its adoption in the cities, where the evils of the boss system have become intolerable.

At the beginning of the legislative season we noticed that Governor Pingree had urged this reform in. Michigan; three weeks ago we noticed that Wisconsin reformers were urging it before the Legislature of their State; and two weeks ago we learned from Minnesota that a similar measure had received most encouraging support in one branch of the Minnesota Legislature. The Minnesota bill, which had been drawn by Judge Hicks, of Minneapolis, without conference with the Wisconsin reformers, follows substantially the same lines. It very sensibly grafts the reform of the primaries upon the Australian ballot system. Voters at the primaries are to receive official ballots upon which the names of all candidates for each office are to be printed. In this way the candidates proposed by a group of independents will be presented to all the voters in the same way as the candidates named by the machine. The power of the voters is not restricted to the election of delegates to a nominating convention, but the voters are themselves to have the responsibility and privilege of naming the candidates for every office. Around these primary elections are to be thrown all the safeguards that now surround the general election.

opposition might be divided among many, and the triumph of the machine be assured. Against this danger the South Carolina system endeavors to provide by requiring a new election in some cases where no candidate receives a majority of the whole vote, though, as a rule, the choice of the plurality is the choice of the majority.

Direct primaries will undoubtedly leave some power in the hands of the machine, just as the Australian ballot system left some power in the hands of the votebuyers; but the restriction of power will be as great in the one case as in the other. To force the machine to submit its choice to the approval of the voters of the party would insure better nominations, even where the machine triumphs. The fact that the opponents of the Hicks Bill were unwilling to avow their friendship for machine-made nominations was evidence of the strength of popular feeling against the evils of the present system. In Minnesota Judge Hicks secured for his measure the powerful support of the St. Paul "Pioneer Press," whose continued advocacy of its fundamental principle promises its adoption in the near future. The position of the "Pioneer Press" is briefly as follows:

That the revolt against the present system is daily gaining force and power there can be no doubt, nor can there be any doubt that it is only a question of a few years at the most before it is swept out of existence. The tendency is toward replacing the power in the hands of the people, and either this measure or another which also relegates the convention of delegates to the lumber-room will have to be enacted. The present system is intolerable. No man, unless he has

A primary election thus conducted would be worth attending, and citizens with any sense of public duty would no more think of refusing to exercise their privilege of choosing candidates than they devoted himself for hours to a study of the situanow think of refusing to exercise the often less important privilege of choosing between candidates. It is needless to say, this measure to transfer the power of the politicians to the rank and file of the voters was rejected upon its first presentat.on, but Judge Hicks was able to rally 36 out of 98 members of the Minnesota House to its support. More encouraging still were the objections urged by the majority. Like the Australian ballot system, the measure was opposed on the ground that it was "impracticable" and "expensive." It was also opposed on the ground that it would not deprive the politicians of their power. The machine, it was said with some force, would unite its vote upon one candidate, while the vote of the

tion, has the faintest conception of what he is
voting for as primaries are now conducted. He
may vote for a set of delegates to secure the ele c-
tion of a particular man to a particular office, but
even then it by no means follows that those dele-
gates will or ever intended to vote for his candi-
date. As for the rest of the ticket, it is deter-
mined by mere log-rolling combinations, Except
in times of extraordinary public commotion, when
the people under stress of some flagrant outrage
rise in a body, their influence is not worth a pica-
yune. The three or four men in each precinct
who make their living by politics, or like the ex-
citement of the game, practically dictate who
shall or who shall not be voted for in that precinct.
Knowing that it is useless, and often worse than
useless, to attend primaries, not one man in ten
who cannot give days to "politics"
goes near
them. But under the system proposed every
voter could express his will as to the candidates
for every office. If it did nothing else, it would
quicken interest in the primaries, for the remedy

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