THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF THE STATES. OBSERVATIONS FROM MANY STANDPOINTS.

As might be expected the magazines are full of articles concerning the Presidential election. On the whole there is a tendency on the part of the writers in the periodical press to approve the choice of the American people.

1.-DR. ALBERT SHAW'S Judgment.

I give the first place as usual to the judgment of Dr. Albert Shaw in the American Review of Reviews for December. He almost alone among American editors seems to have preserved the judicial balance. Dr. Shaw says:-

Whatever else was demonstrated by the course of the campaign and the result of the election, there was shown beyond all question the essential conservatism and sagacity of the American people. The pessimists who have been pronouncing universal suffrage a failure, and popular self-government a disappointing experiment, can find no confirmation of their views in any fair interpretation of this last election. Speaking broadly, the whole American people can be better trusted to govern the country honestly, wisely and with patient self-control, than any selected element or section of the people could be trusted.

Even if it were our opinion-which of course our readers know it is not-that a popular verdict in favour of the free coinage of silver would in fact have resulted advantageously for the country, we should nevertheless look upon the outcome of the election last month as a magnificent vindication of the capacity of the American people for self-government. No great popular verdict was ever given in a fashion more deliberate, intelligent and untrammelled. The American people simply declared at the polls that they could afford to keep on the hum-drum, safe side. The 7,000,000 men or more who voted for McKinley were not acting under any dictation or duress. Whatever moral coercion of employed men by employers may have been attempted, it could not have affected the result to any appreciable extent. Nor was this a -vote-buying campaign on either side. Never since the war have the voters in so large proportion carried their honest manhood into the campaign, or based their action so wholly upon their sincere convictions. It does not follow in the least that the country is satisfied with all things as they are, or that public opinion would not favour many judicious reforms. But it is demonstrated, once and for all, that the country will not sanction economic experiments so fundamental in their nature as the free coinage of silver would be under existing circumstances. The verdict is conclusive.

If in view of facts now known the campaign were to be tried over again, it is not likely that the Southern vote which was cast for free silver on November 3rd could be polled again. In short, although Mr. Bryan carried a large number of States and will have a respectable vote in the Electoral College, the cause he advocated was one that in its very nature could not survive a defeat. Mr. Bryan scems not to have comprehended this fact, for he has announced his intention to devote the coming four years to the free-silver propaganda in preparation for the campaign of the year 1900. He will not find it so easy as he imagines to reassemble that army which had enlisted for ninety days only, and which was dispersed on November 3rd. He will find, for example, that Tammany, ardent as it was in the silver cause for a few brief weeks, can never be rallied again under that banner. It is a lost cause so far as practical politics is concerned, and the sooner Mr. Bryan discovers that fact the better it will be for his future career. His gifts and aptitudes are varied, and he may yet perform useful service and attain honours worthy of his ambition, if he does not allow a single idea-a fallacious one at that to take complete possession of his mind.

2.-BY THE EDITOR OF THE "NATIONAL REVIEW." Mr. Maxse, the editor of the National Review, who crossed the Atlantic in order to be able to follow the fortunes of Mr. Bryan on the spot, sends to his Review

from Denver the following summary of the cause of the Republican victory :

(1) The fear of anarchy; (2) The "honest" dollar; (3) The dread of a financial and commercial catastrophe; (4) The belief in approaching prosperity; (5) The enormous campaign fund expended by Mr. Hanna, the Republican manager, believed to amount to at least £2,000,000 (two millions); (6) The poverty of the Democratic Party exchequer, which from first to last expended about £100,000; (7) The wisdom of the Gold Democrats in throwing practically the whole of their votes for Major McKinley, and ignoring the rather futile candidature of their own nominee, General Palmer. This third Party played a most important part, and probably decided the issue in the critical States.

3. GOOD FOR ENGLAND.

MR. F. H. HARDY writes on the "Lessons from the American Election" in the Fortnightly Review for December. The following are his conclusions:

Three lessons of deep import and wide interest may be drawn from the recent contest.

First, the "masses" in both Europe and America are less poisoned with class hatred than the anarchist or socialist would have us believe.

Second, a great nation over sea has awakened to the fact that national independence must not blind them to the interdependence of nineteenth century commercial life; that they must realise that hurt to one member of the family of nations brings in time injury to all.

Third, that a vote is not prized by the class of citizen best fitted to exercise the franchise, aud, as a necessary conse quence, good citizens must be driven to the polls by a political machine," controlled by "professional" politicians.

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As touching exclusively the life of the Republic, I think the Election has done great good. It has startled the sluggard into a new conception of his duties as a citizen. There is another fruit of this campaign which works for better commercial relations between the two English-speaking nations. And it is simply this. We have found England right, ourselves wrong, on a great economic question. We now see that England's repeated warnings as to the result of currency tinkering had sound basis in truth. A very natural sequence of this common view on currency matters will be a new disposition to give careful, open-minded study to English views on Free Trade. The McKinley-Bryan campaign opened under the influence of a most bitter anti-English feeling, to which thousands surrendered their judgment. That campaign has closed, I firmly believe, with the American people entertaining a higher regard for English opinion than was ever entertained before; consequently there now exists a firmer basis for international friendship.

4. A VINDICATION OF PROVIDENCE.

The Honourable T. C. Platt wrote an article in the North American Review for November on the "Effect of Republican Victory" before the election, in which he Says:

The election of McKinley will settle many things. It will clear the air: it will be the beginning of a new era in the development of this country. The nightmare of Populism, Anarchy, and Socialism will have been banished, and will not return to trouble our sleep in the future.

The gem of the article, however, which would have delighted the heart of Matthew Arnold, is the following sentence:-

The country has passed through a fearful period during the past four years. It has been an experience to try the souls of men, and make one almost lose faith in the ever-watchful care of Divine Providence. Millions of dollars have been lost, and there has been almost a complete stagnation in every line of business.

It is indeed difficult to continue to believe in the ever-watchful care of a Divine Providence which allows

THE ELECTRIC EYE.

GOING ONE BETTER THAN RÖNTGEN.

MRS. M. GRIFFITH heads her lively paper in Pearson's "an electric eye, the marvellous discovery of an Eastern professor which distances the Röntgen rays as they distance photography." The Eastern professor is Jagadis Chunder Bose, M.A. (Cantab.) and D.Sc. (London), professor at the Calcutta Presidency College, from whom these words are quoted :

We hear little and see still less. Our range of perception of sound extends through only eleven octaves, there are many notes which we cannot hear. Our range of vision is still more limited, a single octave of ethereal note is all that is visible to us. The lights we see are few, but the invisible lights are many.

He has discovered that these invisible lights penetrate earth, wood, pitch, brick, granite, and still retain their active properties. These electric waves have different angles of refraction for different bodies; and by discerning their refractive angle, we have a test of the genuineness of the substance through which they pass:

The great difficulty in these investigations was the detection of the invisible light. It was necessary to perfect an artificial "electric eye" that could see the invisible. The electrical eye is worked on somewhat similar principles to the real eye; there is a sensitive layer on which the invisible light falling gives rise to an electric impulse, which is carried by conducting wire and produces a twitching motion to a part corresponding to the brain. This movement is made manifest by the magnified motion of a spot of light reflected from the moving part. It is wonderful to watch the movement of this spot of light in response to the invisible light acting in the artificial cye.

This invention has, besides its critical value, a practical value of a wide range:

Again, for signalling purposes at sea, these ether waves have a tremendous future before them. At present there is no light which is powerful enough to penetrate a thick fog on a stormy sea to any distance, but rig up an electric generator on the lighthouse which can flash the ether waves through the fog, as easily as the sun's rays can pierce a clear atmosphere, and we see the possibilities of electric waves.

Every ship must be provided with an electric eye, and as it comes within the sphere of influence of the ether waves from the electric lighthouse the "eye" will "see "the invisible light and the captain of the ship will realise his dangerous position.

Such a discovery seems to come fitly enough from the East and from the land of the Mahatmas.

THE MOTHER PAINTER OF MOTHERHOOD.
A ROMANCE IN ART.

PERHAPS the finest thing in the Century for Decembr is Lee Bacon's account of Virginie Demont-Breton, "the strongest woman figure painter in France," and president of the union of women painters and sculpters. Her story is a prophetic suggestion of the enrichment of life we may hope to receive from opening all careers to female talent. The lady is a daughter of the eminent painter M. Jules Breton, and granddaughter of de Vigne, another noted artist. Her husband is also a painter. She fell in love with him at first sight, when she was fourteen, and he, a youth of nineteen, came to her father's studio. After two years had passed she saw him again. The third time he came he proposed to her, while she was sitting to him for her portrait. Their life-work is thus the same, and forms a romance in art. She is above all others the painter of motherhood-real mothers and real children, not idealised abstractions- -as the beautiful reproductions in the Century attest.

Mme. Virginie Demont looks back to her earliest childhood to find the first traces of the maternal instinct, the power in almost all of her important pictures. She cannot remember a time when she did not think of children--of her own childr n that were to be. The children who now exist influenced her life long before they were born. When she became a mother the little ones resembled strongly the children she had depicted in her paintings years before. She has lately written: Maternity is the most beautiful, the healthiest glory of woman; it is a love dream in palpable form, and comes smilingly to demand our tenderness and our kisses; it is the inexhaustible source whence feminine art draws its purest inspirations." Love is the inspiring motive of almost every one of her pictures.

When true mothers with hereditary genius for art turn painters, we may expect in time a portrayal of motherhood diviner than anything that even Raphael or Murillo has produced and Madame Demont-Breton may be hailed as a welcome pioneer in this direction:

The walls of the twin ateliers . . . attest to the industry of both husband and wife... Each studio is supplied with its upper and side lights; husband and wife work side by side.

Each

In Madame Demont's studio the walls are covered with studies and pictures of children of all ages and conditions, from the infant in arms to older ones clinging about the mother's knee. Some are asleep, others taking first steps, others digging in the sand or dipping in the waves. figure of each picture is studied over and over, first in ono attitude then in another, in one drapery, then in another, first in one combination of colours, then in another, until the general harmony is gained. The love of childhood in all its phases is depicted everywhere. The Virgin and Child is a frequent theme with Virginie Demont, and her career can scarce closo before she gives to the world a Holy Family worthy to hang side by side with the best examples of the masters of Italian, Flemish, or Spanish art.

THE Warden of the Browning Hall, York Street, Walworth Settlement, sends me the following appeal:"Christmas is here again. The shops are crowded with good things to make Christmas a glad time for young and old, and to the children of the rich Santa Claus will assuredly come bearing rich freight of gifts. But to many a home in Walworth Christmas means not a festival, but pinching times, for work is slack and money scarce, when food and fire and clothing are most needed. The readers of the REVIEW OF REVIEWS last year gave our big family of six hundred children a happy Christmas. This year the family is much larger, and needs everything for Christmas-toys, sweets, books, clothes, boots--or the wherewithal to supply them."

PRIDE OF ANCESTRY IN A DEMOCRACY.

A IIINT FROM THE UNITED STATES.

MR. EDWARD PORRITT contributes to the Leisure Hour for December a paper full of information, but little known on this side of the Atlantic, as to the growth of hereditary aristocracy in the United States. It would seem that the celebration of the centenary of the Declaration of the Independence led to the founding of various societies such as the Sons of the Revolution, and Sons of the American Revolution, as well as the related society of Daughters of the Revolution and Colonial Dames, all of which were founded for the purpose of marking off their members from the common herd, of marking off as it were, certain families belonging to a hereditary class, superior, at least, by ancestral achievement to the millions who have no ancestors. Mr. Porritt says of the Sons of the Revolution:

The purposes of both societies arc social, educational, and patriotic. Their aim is to perpetuate the memory of the men who, by military, naval, or civil services, achieved the independence of America, and to further the celebration of the anniversaries of such events as Washington's birthday, the Battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill, the Declaration of Independence, the capitulation of Saratoga and Yorktown, and the formal evacuation of New York by the British army on December 3, 1783.

To secure admission to the Sons of the Revolution, documentary proof must be forthcoming that the candidate is of Colonial ancestry, and that one of his ancestors served in the Revolution, either in the naval or military forces or in a civil capacity. Such services must have been rendered between April 1775 and April 1783, between the outbreak at Lexington and the end of the war.

Unlike the Society of the Cincinnati, membership in the newer societies of the Revolution is open to the descendants of men who were of the rank and file of the Colonial forces, and of men whose services to the Revolution were of a civil character. Up to the end of 1896 between thirteen and fourteen thousand members had been admitted to the two most important societies.

These societies have, Mr. Porritt thinks, not been without their uses. He says:

They have given the Stars and Stripes a more prominent place in the daily life of the American people than ever before. These are the public results of the new movement. On the members, the Revolutionary Societies have conferred a social distinction, somewhat difficult to make clear to people in an old and settled country like England, but one which is greatly prized in the United States, especially in the smaller and more provincial centres of population. Each of the societies publishes an annual. In this are the names and full pedigrees of the members, and among the members themselves the Revolutionary Society Annuals are prized in the way that Debrett and Burke are popularly supposed to be prized in England by the people whose names appear in those volumes.

To understand how eager people are to be of these societies, it is only necessary to pay a few visits to a public library. The librarians tell, with a little impatience at having to make the admission, that 75 per cent. of the people who use the reference library do so solely in order to make genealogical researches. Town histories, town records, which give the names of those who took part in the Indian wars, and the military lists of the Colonial period, are the volumes in demand. These books are hunted through with the greatest earnestness by people who are anxious to be of one or other of the Revolution Societies.

It would be an interesting inquiry to find out whether in this country it would be possible to establish a society, say, of the direct descendants of men who fought in the Civil Wars for the purpose of commemorating the great principles that were then contended for. It might be

necessary to have separate societies for Cavaliers and Puritans, but it would be just as well if something could be done in this country to give the ordinary common man, whose forefathers fought in the rank and file at Naseby and at Marston, some of the realising sense of their connection with the glories of our past that has always been enjoyed by the hereditary aristocracy. The Americans have given us in this matter a useful hint, and I should not be surprised if sooner or later we were to found in this country a society of "Sons of the Empire," or of "Men of the Commonwealth," or of some other title which would tend to link together men and women of all classes, who could trace their descent in direct line from men and women who played a part in the stirring scenes of our past history. The aristocracy and gentry have too much monopolised the benefit of tradition of ancestral valour; it is equally the inheritance of the whole people. A CHILDREN'S PARADISE;

OR, A FAIRY TALE OF THE NEW EDUCATION. IN the Forum for November Miss Gertrude Buck, of the University of Michigan, contributes an article entitled "Another Phase of the New Education." The title is not very attractive, but the article is charming. It is the first popularly-written description that I have ever seen of the practical carrying out of the "culture epoch" theory of education. This theory is based on the principle that as every child repeats in his own development the history of the race, therefore his education should follow as closely as may be the lines of progress drawn by the civilisation of the race.

Miss Buck describes the working of the normal school at Detroit under Miss Scott. The general system she characterises as follows:

A certain period in the history of world-civilisation, studied in all its aspects and relations, constitutes the central core or nucleus for the work of a given grade, from this differentiating all the various branches of study-the history (political, industrial, social, and religious), the literature and language, the art, the ethics, the natural science, the number or arithmetic, the drawing, and music.

All this sounds very ambitious. Perhaps it would be well to see what is actually done to this end in the Detroit school. A CLASS OF HIAWATHAS.

And this is how it is done. In the first grade, children between five and six are introduced to the life of primitive men, the savage, the hunter, the nomad. Every day the teacher tells them a story about Hiawatha, only one incident being selected for each day, but everything is gone into with the greatest minuteness and detail. On the day of Miss Buck's visit the subject was the scene where, with his bow and arrow, Hiawatha went into the forest, and a rabbit leaped out of his pathway saying, "Do not shoot me, Hiawatha." The children have to do everything as if they were little Hiawathas. They have bows and arrows, and dress their dolls in the exact costume described by Longfellow. Animal and Indian pictures cover the walls. They have to make models in clay of everything they describe, and, in short, they have to live as Hiawatha did as nearly as they can, the object being to stimulate their natural curiosity, to reproduce their observations truthfully, to be brave and uncomplaining, and to feel a kinship with all animal and plant life. In addition to this, of course, they learn both reading and writing, simple arithmetic, and a great deal of natural history, but it is all bound up in Hiawatha, who becomes the hero of the class, which lives his life and follows his example.

L

In the next room we pass from Hiawatha to the

boy Kahlu of the early Aryan period, and the schoolroom is, as far as possible, transformed into the likeness of a one-story log house built on the side of the walls, where the boy tended his sheep, and made fire by the rubbing of sticks, and counted his flocks and herds. This marks the next step in advance from that of the hunter. This is how the children are impregnated with something of the poetry and culture of ancient Greece:

ACTING THE PART OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS,

About

In the next room the scene had shifted to Greece. the walls hung representative specimens of Greek art, in photographs, bas-reliefs, and statuettes. The Apollo Belvedere, the Venus of Milo, Diana, Mercury, Hebe, the Sleeping Ariadne, Aurora, Clytie, Niobe, and many others embodied concretely the motto on the board, "The True, the Good, and the Beautiful." As I came in, a little boy, perhaps eight years old, was telling the story of Baucis and Philemon with exquisite clearness and precision of phrase, and then another related the story of Rhocus, and the children "acted it out," a little girl taking the part of the dryad, a boy that of Rhocus, another that of the bee, while three or four boys acted the role of the playmates of Rhocus. This "acting out" I found to be a favourite means all through the school for representing the stories told. The children take any parts, inanimate and non-sentient as well as human. In fact, the nature-work is very commonly reproduced in this fashion. The Greek doll and Greek house, as well as a Greek temple, built by the children, represented some of the hand-work in this room. Greek words were written upon the blackboard (in Greek characters) to show how Cleon wrote; illustrations of scenes from the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," the characteristic Greek border, and sketches of the flowers, leaves, and insects especially beloved of the Greeks, also adorned the blackboard.

OLD ROME AND OLD ROMANCES.

There is a Roman room in which Horatius, the Roman boy, is the hero. Roman life is reproduced, and the military and patriotic spirit is cultivated, and the ethical principle of power through law forms the ethical order of the study. From Rome they pass to the country of old romance, where the children are modelling a relief map in clay representing the scene of King Arthur's death. Then an eight-year-old girl took Tennyson's "Mort d'Arthur," and read it aloud to the class, which it was noted always preferred to use the archaic rather than the modern prosaic terms. From the age of chivalry they pass to another room, to the Renaissance, with Columbus as its central figure. The first half-year of the fourth grade is devoted to the Puritans in England, Holland and America. Cromwell, Hampden, Milton, Bunyan, William of Orange, and Miles Standish are the heroes.

A study of sociology is pursued in the eighth grade. In the first half-year the state is the special subject for study, its ethical core being the idea of justice, as a necessary outgrowth of the intertwining of the individual with the co-operative social structure. The formal side of this study is commonly taught under the head of "Civil Government." The meaning of these forms becomes intelligible in connection with the generalisations previously made; and the thought of justice is elaborated in a somewhat detailed study of the "Divine Comedy." In the second half-year the central idea is love, instead of justice, and the social institution is the family, not, as before, the state. The family is studied as a co-operative unit, and the fact of love and family relationship is frankly recognised as the highest spiritual co-operation. Love-stories of the pure sort are read and told in class-"Paul and Virginia," for instance, "Evangeline," "The Tempest," and one or two others-with an attempt to preserve and even increase the sacredness of the family relation in the minds of the children.

Altogether it reads like a fairy story, but if so, it is a fairy story of real life, for the work is going on to-day.

"WAKE UP, JOHN BULL!” EXAMPLES AND WARNINGS FROM ABROAD. THERE seems to be good reason for believing that ministers have taken to heart the warning so clearly expressed by public opinion during the recess in favour of pressing forward a Secondary Education Bilf next session. Whatever exaggerations there may be in Mr. Williams' book "Made in Germany," the substance of which is republished in the penny pamphlet "Wake Up, John Bull," issued from this office, there is no denying that Germany is forging ahead. The Daily News, Mr. Ritchie, and Sir Thomas Farrer have endeavoured to belittle the significance of the facts and figures brought together by Mr. Williams, but one and all have to admit that there is great need for action, and I am glad to see that a Secondary Education Bill is to be introduced next session. Three months ago at headquarters it was not expected that this would be done. Lord Rosebery and Mr. Balfour have both borne strong testimony to the need for improving the method of training our people. According to the Duke of Devonshire, the Secondary Education Bill is to be one of the Ministerial proposals next year.

WHY GERMANY IS GAINING GROUND.

Dr. Dillon, writing in the Fortnightly Review on "German Policy" incidentally calls attention to the fact that Germany is undoubtedly beating us, not because German goods are cheap, but because German education is better than ours. In this country the great idea is to pay for passing examinations, whereas, says Dr. Dillon

In Germany, love of knowledge for its own sake, apart from its practical and profitable utilisation, is studicusly instilled and successfully communicated to the rising generation, and the result is writ large, among other things, in the vast strides made by German commerce throughout the world. Their country bristles with technical schools, with commercial training colleges, and with special educational institutions for every kind of theoretical learning and practical skill, from the method of dairy farming to the theory of transcendental æsthetics. Their best statesmen are practical psychologists: their average ambassadors not only know the language, history, and literature of the countries to which they are accredited, but likewise the commercial advantages which may be obtained for German merchants there. System, order, thoroughness, characterise everything they set their hands to, with the sole exception of colonial enterprise, which needs that clearness of eye and steadiness of hand that only actual experience can confer.

And the result, says Dr. Dillon, is that it is the bitter truth, however much it may be gainsaid by optimistic ministers, that our commercial defeat is the result of commercial inferiority.

THE YELLOW MAN WITH THE WHITE MONEY.

German competition, however, is the competition of the skilled, highly trained, and competent producer, and we can compete by making our people equally skilled and equally competent, but there is no such possibility of levelling up or levelling down with regard to the threatened competition of the Asiatics.

In the North American Review for November, the United States Minister of Siam, the Honourable John Barrett, sets forth what he considers to be the plain truth about Asiatic labour. He has studied the subject carefully for years. He is not an alarmist, for he devotes the first part of his paper to exposing the falsity of all of the alleged facts upon which much of the scare was based, but he is constrained to add his testimony to the reality of the dangers with which we are threatened by the competition of the Yellow Man with the White Money.

The cost of keeping a big healthy labourer, well fed, does not exceed 24d. a day in China, and 5. in Japan, and probably costs much less. Japan is subsidising steamships running to Australia, the United States, and South America. He believes that Shanghai is destined to be the New York of China, and Hankow its Chicago. The number and size of modern manufactories in Shanghai, he says, is surprising. There are six cotton mills, eight cotton gins, and twenty steam silk spinning mills, to say nothing of one paper mill. Nearly all these are founded with Chinese capital. The most interesting experiment that he reports from China he found

in Wuchang, the capital of Hupeh Province, in the heart of China, the home of the celebrated Viceroy Chang Chih Tung, and opposite Hankow, on the Yangtse. Here is an immense establishment controlled by the Viceroy, employing 3,500 hands, running 40,000 spindles. It occupies four large buildings, with two more in course of construction, lighted by electricity and heated by steam, constructed of pressed brick, with corrugated-iron roofs, provided with machinery of the latest designs, and powerful engines.

Employees in such a factory in Massachusetts would earn $1.25 to $4, gold, per day. Employees in this factory in Hankow or Wuchang, to the number of 3,500, receive on an average 150 cash, or 15 cents, silver, per day; that is, only 8 cents, gold! And the Viceroy was thinking of reducing the wages because the mills were not profitable! The manager, an Englishman, stated that they did not pay.

Mr. Barrett does not think Japanese competition is likely to be so formidable in the long run although it may be more speedily felt:

Japan in July boasted of sixty-five cotton-mills with approximately one million spindles. In 1893 there were forty; in 1890, thirty; in 1888, twenty. The highest wages paid to native employees in the cotton-mills are seventy-five cents, silver, per day, the lowest five cents (female labour); the average twenty-five cents for fairly-skilled male labour and eighteen cents for similar female labour. Large numbers of women and children earn only five to ten cents.

HOW THE AMERICANS BEAT US.

While these warnings abound with regard to foreign competition with the British manufactures, evidence is not wanting as to an increase in the severity of the competition which is choking the life out of British agriculture. This touches on the second section of the pamphlet "Wake up, John Bull," which embodies the finding of the Recess Committee in Dublin against which I am sorry to say Mr. John Dillon has lifted up his voice. In the North American Review for November, Mr. W. S. Harwood writes an article, "What the Country is Doing for the Farmer," from which it appears that severe as American competition in food supplies has been in the past it is likely to become much more severe in the future. Mr. Harwood gives a very interesting and substantial account of the efforts that have been made to give the American farmer a scientific education and to promote a scientific study of what may be called the latest possibilities of agriculture.

Connecticut established the first experiment station in the United States in 1875, and there are now forty-six stations in the United States, several of which have sub-stations for the carrying on of field experimental work. Each station receives the sum of 15,000 dols. per annum from the general government for its maintenance, and there are various bequests from private individuals and from individual States increasing this amount handsomely in some instances. It requires about eight hundred thousand dollars per year to pay the expenses of the stations.

Mr. Harwood mentions one very interesting statement which if it be verified, will show that money spent in experiment stations is about the most profitable investment which can be made. He says:

The investigations have shown that it is wholly feasible to produce a type of wheat, absolutely original in nature,

which will increase the yield of wheat in this country, and perhaps in the rest of the world in similar latitudes, by an enormous percentage.

The work that has been done in these experiment stations is very varied, and covers every department of farm operations. He says:

Thirty stations are studying problems relating to meteorology and climatic conditions. Forty-three stations are at work upon the soil, investigating its geology, physics, or chemistry, or conducting soil tests with fertilisers or in other ways. Twenty stations are studying questions relating to drainage or irrigation. Thirty-nine stations are making analyses of commercial and home-made fertilisers or are conducting field experiments with fertilisers. Forty-eight stations are studying the more important crops, either with regard to their composition, nutritive value, methods of manuring, and cultivation, and the best varieties adapted to individual localities, or with reference to systems of rotation. Thirty-five__stations are investigating the composition of feeding stuffs and, in some instances, making digestion experiments. Twenty-five stations are dealing with questions relating to silos and silage. Thirty-seven stations are conducting feeding experiments for beef, milk, mutton, or pork, or are studying different methods of feeding. Thirty-two stations are investigating subjects relating to dairying, including the chemistry and bacteria of milk, creaming, butter-making, or the construction and management of creameries. Botanical studies occupy more or less of the attention of twenty-seven stations, including investigations in systematic and physiological botany, with a special reference to the diseases of plants, testing of seeds with reference to their vitality and purity, classification of weeds and methods for their eradication. Forty-three stations work to a greater or less extent in horticulture, testing varieties of vegetables and large and small fruits. Several stations have begun operations in forestry. Thirty-one stations investigate injurious insects with a view to their restriction or their destruction. Sixteen study and treat animal diseases or perform such operations as the de-horning of animals. At least seven stations are engaged in bee culture, and three in experiments with poultry. The influence of the graduates of these agricultural institutions upon the farmers in the vicinity to which they go after being graduated is very great.

At present there are nearly five thousand students in agricultural colleges:-

Nearly four thousand have been graduated since these institutions were established. Nearly eleven millions of acres of land have been granted to these institutions by the general government. The value of the buildings and grounds of the various institutions is about sixteen millions of dollars; of libraries, a little over one million of dollars; of scientific apparatus, two million five hundred thousand dollars; while the annual revenue amounts to over four millions of dollars. THE SECRET OF GERMAN SUCCESS.

Mr. B. H. Thwaite, writing in the Nineteenth Century for December on the "Commercial War between Germany and England," gives many instances and illustrations of the way in which German science and German thoroughness have succeeded in beating the English out of the market. He says:

The main secret of Germany's great industrial progress may be summed up in the words, polytechnic education and philosophic training.

The refined precision and the advanced scientific attainments of the controllers of German metallurgical processes have enabled the day-by-day production of finished metal in sheets, the thinness, pliability, and evenness of structure of which are admittedly impossible of attainment in Staffordshire. Our easy laissez-faire policy, and reliance on an assumed superiority-because our fathers succeeded we ought to succeed -will not do.

But Mr. Thwaite is no alarmist, and he concludes his article with words of encouragement.