with heart may the poor be helped and not pauperized. The second thing the girl learned was that the poor could not be helped at all except as their dwellings and other surroundings were bettered.

With these two convictions firmly in mind, Octavia Hill set out to work " on her own hook" and on her own special line of action, namely, to rid the poor of some of the rapacious landlords. But her endeavor was to be no charitable endeavor, as the word charity was then understood. She sternly ruled out any gifts of money to the poor, and, what was more, in the rent-collecting upon which she entered, there was to be an immediate notice to quit if a tenant failed to pay. Miss Hill did not try at first to collect rents for others. Fortunately, she was able to borrow £3,000 ($15,000) from a friend-no less a personage than John Ruskin-who, to his lasting credit, had entered heartily into her scheme. She took over the unexpired term of the lease of three houses, fairly well built dwellings, but deplorably dirty and neglected. First of all, she repaired and cleaned these dwellings. dwellings. And then she charged a rent to bring a return not exceeding five per cent on the capital invested. As soon as her tenants began to enjoy the blessings of cleanliness and of abundant air, light, and water, it became easier for them to learn to be punctual in meeting the moderate rents asked, and rarely did they fail when pay day came round.

The success of this scheme now assured, Miss Hill branched forth into another, and, in our opinion, a necessary corollary of proper housing-a playground. To this end she bought six squalid houses, crowded with inmates and facing a bit of desolate ground occupied by dilapidated cow-sheds and manure-heaps. Here again John Ruskin's

name

was associated with Octavia Hill's. While the houses were being cleaned and repaired they had the ground cleared and trees planted, and they arranged with welfare workers to teach the children games and sports. Thus were provided also "outdoor sitting-rooms for the weary housewife," as Miss Hill once described them. The second scheme was, of course, even more successful than the first. It led to large results, for Octavia Hill promptly organized the Commons Preservation Society to preserve and provide open spaces and playgrounds for the city people; indeed, to her activity in raising a fund of $1,500,000 London owes the preservation of a great part of

Hampstead Heath from private encroach

ment.

As time went on, and as other blocks of houses came under Miss Hill's management, a third feature was added. She had already provided for better houses and for more space; but when Ruskin planted creepers by the walls of some of her dwellings, he immediately suggested the idea of "bringing beauty home to the poor." Accordingly she formed the Kyrle Society, to bring beauty by whatever means-by the decoration of houses, by flowers, by the cultivation of a taste for music, or painting, or literature. To this end she built at the back of her own house a large room where she could meet her tenants for the purpose of talk or entertainment.

Her tenants themselves did not fail to appreciate, as such people always will appreciate, Octavia Hill's combination of the qualities that also distinguished the late General Booth- -an equal amount of shrewdness and sympathy. As such, her counsel was vital to the success of the London Charity Organization Society, the establishment of which was due to her more than to any other single agency, and to the famous Women's University Settlement in Blackfriars Road, whose members have co-operated with Miss Hill in "working" a dozen streets of houses in Southwark. Seven years ago Miss Hill was deservedly appointed a member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, for she and her associates then had charge of nearly six thousand dwellings. Her books, "Homes of the London Poor" and "Our Common Land," show how eminently practical her work was. As such it should be endur

ing.

Almost at the same time there passed away in this country Ellen Collins, New York City's Octavia Hill. These two women were alike in the fact that, before any one else saw how bad housing underlies more of the mischief that is abroad in a great city than do most of its other causes, they saw and understood. What is more, they attacked the evil where few in their day had the courage, and fewer the will, to meet it. The American woman's efforts, however, began somewhat later than did the English woman's.

About a generation ago, three of the worst tenements in New York City were bought by Ellen Collins, who set about redeeming them and their tenants. Later she added three adjoining tenements. All had been filled with

The

brothels and were the haunts of thieves. whole neighborhood was the lowest in the city. It was characteristic of Miss Collins that she should have chosen to settle just there. In her small body lived a spirit of unconquerable faith in her fellow-men as children of God. She believed that, if given the chance to work out of their slough, they would quickly seize it. Fair play between landlord and tenant was her simple creed-the square deal—and it worked, as it always does when the profession is real.

The old tenements were dark and filthy. She let light into the hallways, and the piles of dirt by the sinks disappeared. She put sanitary plumbing in, and a janitor to see that her rules were obeyed. She broke the saloonkeeper's lease, and ever after, to her financial loss, refused to let him come back. The lewd women and the thieves took themselves off. A few of the worst tenants went with them. The rest stayed and came up to her every expectation. She made the rents as low as consistent with a business investment that was expected to return a fair interest. Before long her tenants planted flowers in the yard, and the flowers remained unmolested. The whole block became as orderly as any in the city. The houses ran themselves. With forty-five families in the building, it was never necessary to put up a to let " sign.

The late W. Bayard Cutting, with his brother Fulton, built improved tenements a year or so after Miss Collins made her start. These were the beginnings of tenement-house reform in New York City.

Miss Collins sought out the worst of her kind, pinned her faith to them, and won. When she was getting old and tired, and planned to give up her personal management of the property she had redeemed, her tenants went to her in a body and begged her not to desert them, and she did not. In recent yearsshe gave the mortgage she held to a young relative, who has taken over the fight with the powers of darkness, including the saloon-keeper, and is winning out too.

Miss Collins lived to be eighty-four years old. The last time she appeared in public print was when Tammany, in the Gaynor mayoralty campaign, lampooned her along with R. Fulton Cutting, Mr. Schiff, and others, for supporting the budget inquiry. They did not know-how should they?—that they were trying to heap ridicule on a woman who deserves to be set beside Josephine Shaw Lowell and Richard Watson Gilder as among

It is often said that "the good die young." But here were two good women who lived to a great age. And the two greatest cities in the world are immeasurably better because in them those women lived and labored.

A correspondent who has had an unusual opportunity to familiarize himself with governmental questions in various parts of the world takes issue with the following paragraph from a recent editorial article which appeared in The Outlook:

The American Government should be a Government by the people, not by representatives of the people; representatives are selected, not to rule the people, but to carry out the will of the people.

"I am at a loss," says our correspondent, "to know how the people can run the Government and still have representatives. can understand that representatives may misrepresent the people at times, but the remedy for this lies with the voters. You surely cannot expect 11,000,000 voters to give sufficient time from their busy, workaday lives to identify themselves individually with matters of legislation, and to enforce their will upon their representatives as each new issue comes up for discussion. You might as well ask the people to edit and manage The Outlook or The Encyclopædia Britannica,' or to manage the Steel Corporation. Government by representatives is the only practical expedient or means by which the people can rule themselves. If this method shall fail, then democracy fails with it. But it has not yet failed. I should be glad if The Outlook would tell us definitely how the people can deal successfully with the thousand and one questions of political reform and social justice, unless they delegate the power to legislate on these questions to their chosen representatives."

This letter represents admirably a very common confusion of thought regarding representative government. The Outlook certainly does not expect "the people to run the Government;" it does not expect that the people themselves will be able to manage successfully" the thousand and one questions of political reform and social justice." It does expect that they will delegate to their representatives the power to deal with details.

But here we part company with our correspondent. He apparently believes that ours is a Government by representatives; we consider it to be a Government by the people through representatives. Government should spring from the people as its source, and should be administered by the representatives to whom the people delegate the power to manage details.

The people determine whether there shall be a Panama Canal, whether it shall be as free as the ocean, or whether fees shall be charged to ships that pass through it. The representatives settle the engineering questions connected with its construction and the financial questions connected with the collection of those fees.

The people determine whether there shall be a Protective Tariff; the representatives manage the details of imposing and collecting that tariff.

The people determine whether there shall be an Income Tax; the representatives decide all the details connected with the administration of the Income Tax Law.

The people determine whether Senators shall be elected by the Legislature or by popular vote; the representatives of the people arrange the rules which shall govern the Senate when it is elected.

The people determine whether Presidents shall be nominated by a small committee or by direct primaries; the representatives devote themselves to seeing that the will of the people is carried out in this particular.

The great body of American voters to-day are what is called Progressive. Their will is that their Government shall be a Progressive Government.

The great political issue in this country to-day is whether the representatives of the people shall devote themselves to managing the details of great questions which are determined by the people, or whether the representatives shall decide the fundamental questions for the people. When representatives misrepresent the people, our correspondent is entirely right in saying that "the remedy for this lies with the voters." We are to-day actually seeing the process by which the voters remedy misrepresentation.

"Boss" government differs from popular government in one characteristic essential. The bosses believe that they, instead of the people, should determine the fundamental questions of government. It is for that reason that they are called by the people

so we must conserve the resources of the land on which they live. We must conserve the soil so that our children shall have a land that is more and not less fertile than that our fathers dwelt in. We must conserve the forests, not by disuse but by use, making them more valuable at the same time that we use them. We must conserve the mines. Moreover, we must insure so far as possible the use of certain types of great natural resources for the benefit of the people as a whole. The public should not alienate its fee in the water power which will be of incalculable consequence as a source of power in the immediate future. The Nation and the States within their several spheres should by immediate legislation keep the fee of the water power, leasing its use only for a reasonable length of time on terms that will secure the interests of the public. Just as the Nation has gone into the work of irrigation in the West, so it should go into the work of helping reclaim the swamp lands of the South. We should undertake the complete development and control of the Mississippi as a National work, just as we have undertaken the work of building the Panama Canal. We can use the plant, and we can use the human experience, left free by the completion of the Panama Canal

in so developing the Mississippi as to make it a mighty highroad of commerce, and a source of fructification and not of death to the rich and fertile lands lying along its lower length.

In the West, the forests, the grazing lands, the reserves of every kind, should be so handled as to be in the interests of the actual settler, the actual home-maker. He should be encouraged to use them at once, but in such a way as to preserve and not exhaust them. We do not intend that our natural resources shall be exploited by the few against the interests of the many, nor do we intend to turn them over to any man who will wastefully use them by destruction, and leave to those who come after us a heritage damaged by just so much. The man in whose interests we are working is the small farmer and settler, the man who works with his own hands, who is working not only for himself but for his children, and who wishes to leave to them the fruits of his labor. His permanent welfare is the prime factor for consideration in developing the policy of Conservation: for our aim is to preserve our natural resources for the public as a whole, for the average man and the average woman who make up the body of the American people.

"T

HE Political Debating Society and Anti-Business Association at Washington adjourned yesterday," announces the New York" Sun" (Ind.). Thus is Congress described.

As to organization, in the House a Democratic majority controlled; in the Senate a Republican majority. But, as the Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune" (Rep.) says, "the upper house was in a disorganized condition;" there was consequently "a lack of responsibility and an indefiniteness of aim that made it almost impossible to consider legislation with the single purpose of promoting the public welfare." Added to this "was the determination of the Democratic majority in the House to prevent, as far as possible, the approval of any measure which might reflect credit on

the Taft Administration."

But in predict

ing that the Democratic House of Representatives had made Democratic victory possible by the great things it has accomplished," the Leavenworth, Kansas, "Times" (Rep.) declares that "Speaker Clark has fallen into error."

If the House has accomplished any "great things," the country has not taken note of it. If Democratic victory is possible, it is not because of the things the Democrats have done in this Congress, but because of Republican dissension.

The session has been, the Scranton "Tribune Republican" (Rep.), says, "prolonged, turbulent, and inefficacious. But it has been genuinely representative."

The muddled state of public opinion throughout the Nation. has been perfectly reflected in both branches of the National Legislature.