ON THE UNEMPLOYED.

MR. W. R. BOUSFIELD, M.P., writing in the Contemporary, expresses a common feeling of disappointment over the Report of the Select Committee on the Unemployed. The Committce has, he holds, not grappled seriously with the problem; has not recognised the different kinds of persons unemployed; has shown no symptom of knowing there are such questions as these :

How are we to deal with the lazy vagabonds who form the lowest substratum of the unemployed? Can anything, and if so what, be done for the man who has permanently lost his employment, and wants helping to a new trade? How can we help the man who, through misfortune, is rapidly becoming "unfit," and sinking into the lowest class of unemployed? Can agencies of this class do anything for those who become temporarily unemployed in the winter? Most of the "considerations" of the Committee regarded as having any bearing on these and similar questions are simply ludicrous. They go chiefly to show that schemes of this kind cost money-which we might perhaps have expected.

WHAT HOLBORN GUARDIANS DO.

Over against the Committee's objection to farm and labour colonies, the writer sets the successful working by the Holborn Guardians of Mitcham Workhouse, which is simply "a farm and labour colony manned by paupers." Not taking the cost of maintenance of paupers into account, the workhouse showed a profit for the year of £100. The whole of the produce of the farm, of the shoemaking and tailoring departments, was consumed in the Guardians' own establishments. Properly organised the produce of such labour should come into the open market only to a very small extent.

The writer finds that "the chief merit of the Report is that it recognises that the problem is one for practical experiment, and that it recommends the Local Government Board to encourage such experiments." An Elizabethan statute empowers guardians to "set the poor on work" and to defray the expenses thus incurred, among which, however, wages are not specified. This defect is partly made good by an Act of George III.

THE ONE THING NEEDFUL NOW.

Without further legislative powers there is already room for a wide range of experiment:The essential condition for such progress at the present moment is ample freedom for the various authorities to work on their own lines. That we shall have foolish as well as wise attempts is certain, but the survival of the fittest schemes, and the extinction of the unfit, will result, and the evolution of successful methods of treatment is certain, if only there be a sufficient variety of schemes for natural selection to work upon. But it must be natural selection, and not merely the selective fancy of the officials of the Local Government Board.

The writer suggests that guardians with organisations of labour under them like that at Mitcham might admit to their workshops on wage-payment able-bodied applicants for outdoor relief, who were able and willing to work. The wages should be chiefly in kind; and if the plan succeeded, for these "firstclass applicants" franchise disabilities might be abolished.

AND ITS ANNUAL BILL OF FARE.

MR. HOLT SCHOOLING finishes his series of pictorial statistics on "Hatches, Matches, and Despatches" in the Pall Mall Magazine for December. His first point is to show a strange sort of gallantry on the part of the King of Terror, who all through allows to a woman a greater expectation of life than to a man.

At birth she has an advantage of three years and three months, and fifty years later the surviving woman is still a better life than the surviving mn to the extent of one year and nine months. Even at the advanced age of ninety an old woman will, on the average, outlive an old man by three calendar months.

WHEN MOST PEOPLE DIE.

The people of England and Wales die, it appears, at the rate of over 1,500 a day, or 65 an hour, or more than one a minute. They die fastest un ler the age of five, and next fastest between 65 and 74.

The ten most fatal classes of disease are, as arranged in order of destructiveness :

1. Diseases of the respiratory system (bronchitis, pneumonia, etc.).

2. Diseases of the nervous system.

3. Discases of the circulatory system (heart disease).

4. Phthisis or consumption.

5. Old age.

6. Diarrhoea and dysentery.

7. Cancer.

8. Accident, negligence, suicide.

9. Small-pox, scarlet fever, enteric fever, and diphtheria. 10. Diseases of liver, ascites.

These "enemies are represented in Mr. Schooling's picturesque way as darts of different lengths, striking at a map of England. No. 1 is more than twice as deadly as any other class. Nos. 2, 3, and 4 are nearly equal. There is a great drop to 5, then a smaller drop to 6, 7, 8, and 9, which are about the same; No. 10 again marks a drop of about one-half of 9.

REMARKABLE LIFE-SAVING APPARATUS.

The enormous saving of life due to sanitation appears in the last thirty years. The death rate per thousand, which was pretty much the same from 1838 to 1870, has dropped since the latter date from 22 4 to 18.7 in 1895, as may be seen from the following table for England and Wales:

-

Deaths per

Deaths per 1000 living.

Period.

Period.

1000 living.

22.4

Frauce

The six Powers combined

THE RACE BETWEEN FRANCE AND THE UNITED KINGDOM,

It is interesting to observe that the United Kingdom, after peopling or appropriating one-third of the habitable globe, is still the most fruitful. The race between France and the British Isles in respect of homne population, which began with France in a preponderance of two to one, is now decided in our favour:

When this century opened France had a population of 27 to 28 millions; we, in 1801, were under eleven millions in England, Wales, and Scotland, with, say, four millions more in Ireland. In 1891 France's population was 38 millions, and the population of the United Kingdom was also over 38 millions. In 1896-a census year for France-our population is from 39 to 40 millions, and the result of the French census for April, 1896, shows a population of only 38 millions-so that during the course of the century, and before its close, this country has turned the 1801 home population [of about one-half of France's 1801 population] into an actual majority.

WOMAN'S PLEA FOR THE FRANCHISE.

HOW IT FARES IN THE UNITED STATES.

THE Bishop of Albany, Dr. Doane, contributes to the North American Review for November an article which he calls "Some Later Aspects of Woman Suffrage." There is very little in it to call for special attention, but the Bishop places upon a pinnacle a certain Mrs. W. Crannell, who appears to have attended both the Republican and Democratic Conventions of this year in order to speak against the plea put forward by other women for the franchise. Both Conventions refused to admit a plank in favour of women's suffrage into their programme. The Republicans put in a clause which meant nothing; the Democrats did not even do that. And why, asks Bishop Doane:

Mrs. Crannell knows; for, under God, it was due to her quiet, clear, strong, dignified presentation of the argument against woman suffrage that the plank proposed by Mrs. Blake was not introduced into the Republican platform; and that the whole thing was treated, in the Democratic Convention, with "a silence that was almost contemptuous."

In the Forum for November, Dr. W. K. Brooks writes an article which he calls "Women from the Standpoint of a Naturalist." The only good thing about the article is the title. One does not need to be a naturalist in order to repeat such platitudes and fallacies of the dominant male as these:

If one who is not an expert in social science may be permitted to have an opinion, it seems clear to a zoologist that the only plea for female suffrage which can be admitted is the claim that it would benefit the community as a whole by strengthening democratic constitutional government.

Many thoughtful persons are convinced that the average woman is far more likely than the average man of the same condition in life to act upon some other motive than mature disinterested judgment, and that the enfranchisement of women might add to the number of voters, already far too numerous in our country, who are led by tradition or self-interest or emotion, rather than by intelligent zeal for the welfare of the whole nation.

IS MANKIND PROGRESSING?

THIS large question is investigated by Elisée Reclus in the long and thoughtful paper which opens this month's Contemporary. The writer begins by defining what he means by progress :

Whether progress brings happiness or not, it ought above all to be understood as a complete development of the individual, comprehending the improvement of the physical being in strength, beauty, grace, longevity, material enrichment, and increase of knowledge-in fine, the perfecting of character, the becoming more noble, more generous, and more devoted. So considered, the progress of the individual is identified with that of society, united more and more intimately in a powerful solidarity.

THE BLISS OF THE SAVAGE.

He next considers the condition of primitive or savage peoples, and compares it with that of civilised nations. He points out that the former is simple and consequently readily coherent and conformable to its ideal; while the latter is, though immense in range and infinitely superior in the forces at work, yet incoherent and inconsistent. Thus the simple Negritos are superior to us in goodness, justice, reverence, truth, and are absolutely devoted to the common interest. The Aleutians are much more highly civilised, with knowledge of art and science, yet a state of peace show similar innocence, remaining in " and perfect social equilibrium":

It is, then, established by the observation of facts and the study of history that many tribes, so far as the material satisfactions of life go, arrive at a state of perfect solidarity, both by the common enjoyment of the products of the earth, and by an equitable distribution of resources in case of dearth. . . Community of work and of life carries with it a sense of distributive justice, perfect mutual respect, a wonderful delicacy of feeling, a refined politeness in words and in acts, a practice of hospitality which goes as far as the complete abnegation of self and the abandonment of personal property. .. The man in a state more nearly approaching nature than the civilised man also possesses another immense advantage. He is more intimately acquainted with the animals and the plants, with the powerful scent of the earth, and the gentle or He feels in perfect terrible phenomena of the elements. unity with all that which surrounds him, and of which, in his way, he comprehends the life as if all things moved with a rhythm which he himself obeyed.

FOUR IMMENSE GAINS.

to science and invention; and fourthly, there is the intellectual advance seen in our analysis and synthesis of nature and mind; "psychology has become an exact science."

APPROACHING THE CAPITAL PROBLEM.

M. Reclus now moves to his main question:

Thus admirably furnished with tools by its progress in the knowledge of space and of time, of the intimate nature of things and of man himself, is mankind at the present time prepared to approach the capital problem of its existence, the realisation of a collective ideal? Certainly. The work, if not of assimilation, at least of appropriation of the earth, is nearly terminated, to the profit of the nations called civilised, who have become by this very fact the nurses and educators of the world; there are no longer any barbarians to conquer; and consequently the directing classes will soon be without the resource of employing abroad their surplus national energy.

THE TWO FIRST DUTIES.

The internal problems will come to the front. The first is that of bread for all: the second is education for all, or bread for the mind. These once solved, not in the present beggarly manner, "the sense of justice being satisfied by the participation of all in the material and intellectual possessions of humanity, there would come to every man a singular lightening of conscience," the sense of cruel inequality being a poison in the cup of all human joy.

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY.

If ever-and it appears to lie in the path of evolution-if ever the great organism of mankind learns to do what social organisms of not very large dimensions did and are doingthat is to say, if it complies with these two duties, not to let any one die of hunger or stagnate in ignorance-it will then be possible to attempt the realisation of another ideal, which also is already pursued by an ever-increasing number of individuals-the ideal of reconquering from the past all that we have lost, and becoming again equal in force, in agility, in skill, in health, and in beauty with the finest, strongest and most skilful men who have ever lived before us."

M. Reclus observes that "those of our young people who are brought under very good hygienic conditions and undergo physical training, grow in form and strength equalling the most handsome savages," while far surpassing them in intelligence; and concludes that man need not become "only an enormous brain swathed in wraps to keep him from taking cold.”

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A NEW RETURN TO NATURE."

The modern man may also reconquer the real intimate comprehension of nature which the savage enjoys; he can re-enter the primitive cradle, relishing more keenly the return to the kindly maternal earth because of the light shed over it by science.

Complete union of Man with Nature can only be effected by the destruction of the frontiers between castes as well as between peoples. Forsaking old conventions, it is necessary that every individual should be able, in all brotherliness, to address himself to any one of his equals, and to talk freely of all that interests him.

Has humanity made real progress in this way? It would be absurd to deny it. That which one calls "the democratic tide" is nothing else but this growing sentiment of equality between the representatives of the different castes, until Under a thousand apparent recently hostile one to the other. changes in the surface, the work is being accomplished in the depths of the nations.

So M. Reclus answers his question with a comprehensive affirmative, "Humanity has really progressed from crisis to crisis and from relapse to relapse, since the beginning of those millions of years which constitute the short conscious period of our life."

SHAKESPEARE'S CHARACTERISTICS.

BY THE MASTER OF BALLIOL.

A GREAT theme nobly handled is brought before the readers of this month's Contemporary Review. One of the most thoughtful of living minds gives his idea of what is specially distinctive of our greatest dramatist. Professor Edward Caird begins his account of “Some Characteristics of Shakespeare" by emphasising the extreme difficulty of his task. He finds no other way of discovering Shakespeare's limits than by considering what he has not spoken of or laid stress on; and thus comes to note "the somewhat aristocratic limitations of his political sympathies" and "the want of any indication of insight into the secrets of the religious life."

HIS ENVIRONMENT.

But from his environment and actual lifework is to be drawn a positive estimate :

Shakespeare was, in a sense, the highest flower of the movement to which we give the name of the Renaissance, the most perfect outcome of the new birth of human life and thought in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Now, what did this new birth consist in? It was a movement by which insurgent humanity threw off the external yoke of the Latin Church, with its dualistic morality, its transcendent theology, and its philosophy of foregone conclusions, and returned upon itself to enjoy the riches and fulness of its own natural life, and to discover in that life all that had hitherto been sought, as it were, in the clouds.

Politically, the time was one of national rather than of democratic freedom: Shakespeare's ideal was " an England gathered into an army against its foes, around a heroic king like Henry V." Both in religion and politics the period was one of emancipation without being one of internal conflict; and consequently "a great age for poetry."

HIS TWO CHIEF GIFTS.

Passing from the age to the man, Dr. Caird asks:When we say that Shakespeare was the greatest dramatic genius which the world has ever seen, what exactly does this imply? It implies, I answer, an extraordinary measure of two characteristic gifts: on the one hand, that gift of sympathetic insight by which the individual escapes from himself into another individuality, so as for the moment to see the world with that other's eyes; and, on the other hand, the gift of rising above all special interests of individuals to a central point of view, and so of realising how in the drama of life those individualities play upon each other, and by their action and reaction bring about the crisis which manifests their nature and decides their fate. Each of these gifts is closely connected with the other.

If we divide great men into men of action and men of thought or universal receptivity, Shakespeare belongs to the latter class, "perhaps we may say that Shakespeare is nearer to Hamlet than to any other of his characters." He suggests a man likely to become passion's slave, finally saved from moral shipwreck not through preventive prudence, but through the self-despair and selfdisgust which followed as inevitable recoil" on selfindulgence.

66

66 HIS ULTIMATE SECRET."

Just this universality of his sympathies leads him to evolve the catastrophe from within, as the rebound of the deed upon the doer, "the outward play of accident" being almost exclusively "the opportunity to let character display itself and work itself out".

He is active, we might say, by excess of passivity. He so lives in each of his characters that nothing external, nothing unmotived by their own feeling and thought, seems to happen to any one of them. The presentment of the issues is so natural and complete that they become all but transparent. . .

And this, perhaps, is the ultimate secret of great dramat e work and the reason why, in spite of the fearful catastrophe, a tragedy of Shakespeare sends us away, not with a mere feeling of horror and dismay, but with a sense of reconcilement. In the tragic crisis the movement of life has brought about a full statement of its problem; and fully to state the problem of life is almost to solve it.

STRONG BY VIRTUE OF "HIS WEAKNESS."

These two notes, of an "all but unlimited passivity of sympathy" and a consciousness of the law of life immanent in every character, are characteristic of the genius essentially dramatic:

And Shakespeare was the ideal dramatic poet, just because his all-tolerant soul set up no barriers between him and other men. We are, therefore, I think, entitled to say that he was the very reverse of a man of action, that he was one whose strength grew out of what might be called his weakness and impersonality of nature. For sympathies so open and impartial could not fail in the end to become just, and so to liberate him from the toils in which they seemed to ensnare him. HIS PERIOD OF CURSING AND BITTERNESS." Dr. Caird considers this picture to be confirmed by all that we know of his life. The joy of living appears unchecked in his earlier plays. But about 1600 begins his period of disillusionment :

If it be true of Shakespeare, as it was of Goethe, that he sought in art deliverance from thoughts and feelings which were overburdening his soul and poisoning his life, assuredly the author of " Lear," and Hamlet," and “Macbeth,” and "Timon" had some "perilous stuff" weighing upon his heart at this time. Out of these plays one might collect a richer vocabulary of cursing and bitterness, the materials for a more emphatic commination service against man and nature, a more complete exposure of the seamy side of life, and a more fierce arraignment of the whole scheme of earthly things than, perhaps, is to be found in all literature besides.

HIS EMERGENCE INTO JUSTER VIEWS.

We find him " continually recurring to the idea of

suicide." But

Art had given Shakespeare the power to say, and to say out, what he suffered, to console himself by the supreme consolation of consummate expression. In such expression he rose above his sorrow, and said, or at least felt, what he makes us feel, that there is a harmony which includes the discords of existence. By the very depth of his sympathy Shakespeare becomes just and recognises a justice in the world.

Of his profession Shakespeare seemed often to cherish a low and resentful estimate; but while fretting under its Bohemianism, he felt its advantages.

WAS HE AN AGNOSTIC?

Of his specifically religious attitude, Dr. Caird's closing sentences bear weighty witness :

Shakespeare is no dogmatist or theorist; he certainly tells us nothing of his views as to the ordinary religious creed of his day, and some have even called him an Agnostic. But, in any deeper sense, it would be altogether untrue to call him so. For, even in his darkest tragedy, it is a moral principle which rules the evolution of events and brings ca the tragic crisis. Shakespeare, as we have seen, is throughout faithful to the principle of Heraclitus; it is a man's character that is his fate. And it would be the reverse of the truth to assert that, in its ultimate result and outcome, his view of life is sceptical or despairing. On the coutrary, we are able to say that the man who most profoundly measured all the heights and depths of human nature, and saw most fully all the humour and pathos, all the comedy and tragedy of the lot of man upon earth, was not embittered or hopelessly saddened by his knowledge, but brought out of it all in the end a serene and charitable view of existence, a free sympathy with every joy and sorrow of humanity, and a conviction that good is stronger than ill and that the "great soul of the world is just."

CATERERS FOR THE COMMON PEOPLE.. "ROUND the London Restaurants" is the title of an interesting paper by Mr. W. J. Wintle in the November Windsor. The writer tells of visits paid, but perhaps the interest centres in his interview with Mr. John Pearce, the managing director of "Pearce and Plenty" and the British Tea Table Company.

FROM GUTTER HOTEL" TO THE B. T. T. This is Mr. Pearce's account of his career :

You see, he said, I went to work when I was nine years old, through the loss of both my parents, and I have had to work hard all my life. In 1866 I started with a coffee-stall at the corner of East Road and the City Road, and for thirteen years I was there every week-day morning at four o'clock. I always had a notion of trying to attract the' working classes, so I called my stall "The Gutter Hotel," and the name caught on famously. You see I keep a drawing of the concern hung up in my office to remind me of the pit from whence I was digged. Well, by being very careful I managed to save a little money, and in 1879 I opened a shop in Aldersgate Street, but moved in 1882 to Farringdon Street, where I started the big place with the two bent mirrors in front, to show the public how they looked before and after trying my beef-steak puddings.

I ran this place myself for four years, and supplied 6000 meals a day, so I fancy I know a little about how the workingclasses feed. But in 1886 a few wealthy gentlemen, who were interested in the experiment, formed a company, and now we have twenty-two houses, while the British Tea-Table Company, which is an outgrowth of Pearce's Refreshment Rooms, Limited, and is under the same management, has twenty-four houses, making a total of forty-six establishments. Fourteen of these have temperance hotels connected with them. In Pearce's refreshment rooms we supply 50,000 persons every day, consisting almost entirely of workmen.

WEEKLY WAGE AND WEEKLY FORESIGHT.

An instructive induction ma le by him about the working-men is worth remembering :—

My experience proves that they live up to their income. Here is a curious fact. If you show me our takings for any day, I can at once tell the day of the week. On Monday we get plenty of large silver, but it gradually dwindles from day to day, until on Friday we take more halfpence than anything else. Monday is our worst day, because so many of the men bring cold meat with them to their work, but the next worst day is Friday, when we find a great demand for haddocks and eggs. I used to put this down to religion, for many of our customers are Irish Catholics, until I noticed that the men who have such a light dinner on Friday often come back in the evening after paytime and indulge in a good square meal. So it is evidently more poverty than piety.

METEOROLOGY AND MEAT.

Another fact appears which the sociologist will care to note, as to the influence of temperature on appetite. Mr. Pearce says:

The weather makes a great difference in such a business as ours. A fall in the temperature means a rise of 25 per cent. in the sale of bread and butter. So much is this the case that we take careful note of the temperature every morning, and regulate our supplies accordingly.

ANNUAL HECATOMBS TO THE DINNER-GOD.

Of the annual output-would not "input" be a better term?-the following figures are given:

The weight of beef, mutton, pork and veal consumed during the course of the year would equal the weights of a drove of oxen numbering 995, a flock of sheep numbering 1002, a herd of pigs numbering 1415, and 121 calves. Here are some more startling figures for the year. We consume 990 tons of potatoes and 902 tons of flour. The eggs total up to 1,870,000, and as we sell them slightly under cost price, taking the year as a whole, this represents a very considerable loss in our annual accounts. We use 99,000 gallons of milk,

13 tons of cocoa, 58,300 pounds of tea, and 385,000 pounds of sugar, while we get through 110 tons of jam, 24 tons of pepper, 4 tons of mustard, and 2640 gallons of vinegar. As a small offset against the profit of all this I may mention that we break 30,060 cups, 27,432 plates, and 12,648 saucers every year. You will bear in mind that these figures refer to Pearce's Refreshment Rooms only, and do not include the British Tea-Table establishments.

It is pleasant to know that with a total staff under him of eight hundred persons, this director finds the chief reason of domestic servants going to ruin in that their lives are spent in practical slavery. "If they had more time for themselves, they would devote far more energy to their employer's service." The annual trip of his employees to Ramsgate is paid for by the sale of their kitchen refuse, grease, bones, and the rest.

There are, it appears, some thirty vegetarian restaurants in London, supplying twenty thousand luncheons daily, and the first was opened only fifteen years ago. But twelve out of the thirty have rooms for flesh-eaters, where they can gratify their carnal preferences. Vegetarian restaurants are said to clear one hundred per cent. profit.

MEMORIES OF CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.

MISS GRACE GILCHRIST contributes to Good Words a paper full of pleasant reminiscences of Christina Rossetti, who used to be a frequent guest at Mrs. Gilchrist's. She recalls the "first memorable visit" of the poetess to the home of the Gilchrists among the Surrey hills:

She was then a dark-eyed slender lady in the plenitude of her poetic powers, having already written some of her most perfect poems. To my child's eyes she appeared like some fairy princess who had come from the sunny south to play with me. In appearance she was Italian, with olive complexion and deep hazel eyes. She possessed, too, the beautiful Italian voice all the Rossettis were gifted with-a voice made up of strange sweet inflections, which rippled into silvery modulation in sustained conversation, making ordinary English words and phrases fall upon the ear with a soft, foreign, musical intonation, though she pronounced the words themselves with the purest of English accents. Most of all I used to wonder at and admire the way in which she would take up, and hold in the hollow of her hand, cold little frogs and clammy toads, or furry many-legged caterpillars, with a fearless love that we country children could never emulate. Even to the individual whisk of one squirrel's tail from another's, or the furtive scuttle of a rabbit across a field or common, nothing escaped her nature-loving ken: yet her excursions into the country were as angels' visits, "few and far between;" but when there, how much she noted of flower and tree, beast and bird!

Miss Rossetti, it appears, was extremely shy. On the first visit she was too timid to venture down from her room, and Mr. Gilchrist had to go and bring her down. This, says Miss Gilchrist, was significant of "the sweet modest nature, from which all her growing fame could not detract an iota of that shy girlish humility which clung to her through life":

The great charm of her personality was an unaffected simplicity which, wedded to her rare gifts, was irresistibly winning. This sweet simplicity of nature lent its charm to her treatment of children, for she read the heart of a child unerringly.

Miss Gilchrist concludes:

The enduring charm of Miss Rossetti's poetry will rest in its entire spontaneity; for surely no poet since William Blake has sung with less premeditated art than Christina Rossetti. And her pure, fragrant life fulfilled her poems; for its serene and tender humanity fitly enfolded the immortal heart of purest song.