for fixing rates" may make such charges as they think will pay the operating expenses involved. The remainder of the expenses of the water department will fall on the general tax levy, except that extensions of water mains must be paid for by the owners of abutting land-just as street and sewer extensions are paid for in most cities. Heretofore, owners of vacant land have had their property improved at the expense of the water consumers. Apparently the new law aims to levy a just tax upon the owners of buildings protected against fire and of vacant land enhanced in value by the water system almost as much as it aims to increase public comfort and cleanliness.

Sunday Work in Massachusetts

Of

In response to an act of the Legislature a year ago, the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics has made a careful inquiry into the amount of Sunday labor now performed in the Commonwealth. It finds that of 1,075,000 persons engaged in gainful occupations, probably 150,000 are expected to labor on Sunday. these about two-thirds are engaged in domestic service, in which the conscience of mistresses often secures servants a free half-day on Sunday, accompanied by a free half-day during the week. The immense amount of Sunday work performed by women for their own households is, of course, unrecorded. The manufactories of the State, which employ one-half of the working population, perform practically no Sunday work whatever. Mercantile business makes almost as good a showing. It is only in news and transportation service that the proportion of men employed on Sundays is large or increasing. The newspaper offices canvassed report that of the 1,429 persons employed by them 811 work on Sundays-though generally for shorter hours. The telephone and telegraph companies report that their working force is 443 on Sundays, as against 2,185 on week-days. The express companies employ 305 persons on Sunday, as against 1,778 during the week. The railroad and street railroad companies, however, perform the great body of the Sunday work that has recently grown up. Not until 1881, says the Springfield" Republican," "did the Massachusetts Legis

lature permit the Railway Commission to license the running of such Sunday trains as the public convenience demanded, including excursion trains at lower than the regular rates. Since that time there has been a gradual extension of the Sunday service. On the steam railroads the average number of persons employed on Sundays is now 6,718, as against 27,480 on week-days; and on the street railways it is 8,282 on Sundays, as against only 10,326 during the week. On the street railways nine hours generally constitute a day's work on Sundays, as against ten on weekdays, but there is no regular rest-day for the men who do Sunday work, and one can be obtained only, with loss of pay, on application to the management. This is certainly a wrong. The Legislature that permits Sunday work should stipulate that employees shall have one free day in every seven. It is unfortunate that the present report intimates that employees prefer a week-day for rest. If this be true, it is impossible to account for the tradesunion agitation against Sunday work.

Chino-American Com

ence.

merce

Whether we will or no, our commerce has entered upon a new phase of its existIt is no longer enough that it be sufficient for its own needs; it must now be sufficient for the needs which have come to it.

In their recent books on China, Mr. Colquhoun and Lord Charles Beresford show how seriously both British and American commerce are menaced by the closing up of part of China through now acknowledged foreign spheres of influence, such as Russia's in Manchuria and Shinking. Since their books were written, however, the welcome announcement has come that, though Port Arthur must be an exclusively Russian port, Talienwan will be opened on equal terms to the commerce of all nations. While this is a gratifying exception to Russia's general policy, it cannot be taken as indicating anything but her interest in keeping one port open to our railway machinery and material, which she is using exclusively in building her great Trans-Siberian railway through

Manchuria and along the Amur to the completed portion from the west, which now reaches Lake Baikal. The entire railway completed and railway supply factories erected, Russia is quite likely again to close Talienwan to foreign trade. The recent history of the only other important Manchurian port, Niuchang (where within five years American imports have risen from fifteen to fifty per cent. of the total), shows that Russia is beginning to defy treaty rights there.

We cannot help being more and more alive to those rights in China when we regard the continually increasing importance of our trade with that country. It is not only a rapidly growing trade; it is a unique trade. In the column of gains made by non-Asiatic countries in their last year's commerce with China over that of previous years, we stand alone. Nor is ours merely a gain where all others lose; it is a gain even greater than the loss sustained by Great Britain, the largest trader in the Orient. In one department, however, this transfer is specially impressive: no longer does Manchester compete with us in the export of cottons to China; we now have the lion's share. While in recent years our rival's interest has declined fourteen per cent., ours has increased over a hundred and twenty per cent., and cotton forms two-fifths of China's entire import trade. As to our entire export trade to China, it has increased, according to Mr. Colquhoun, one hundred and twenty-six per cent. in ten years. It is already twice as large as the German export trade to that country. Mr. Fowler, our Consul at Chifu, reports that at least three-fifths of the greatly increased imports into China during the past two years are due to the purchases from the United States. Last year's Chinese foreign trade was valued at between two hundred and fifty and three hundred million dollars. It has doubled during the past decade.

The specific demands from China for American products include flour and breadstuffs; raw and manufactured cotton; oil, timber, leather, paper, iron and steel products; machinery and hardware ; locomotives, cars, and rails; sewing-machines, clocks, and watches; telephone and telegraph supplies; electric railways and lights; chemicals and medicines. If the maintenance of this trade were merely

Mr.

a sectional issue, there might be a question as to the advisability of our making a strong stand, says Mr. Barrett (formerly our Minister to Siam) in the latest "North American Review"). The fact is, however, that China affords a market to arouse the interest of every section of our country. All the flour and timber, and a large portion of other kinds of food and raw products, which the Pacific States can supply are wanted by China, which needs also the manufactured cotton, iron, steel, and miscellaneous products of the North and East, together with vast quantities of petroleum; " and there is no reason why a demand should not be developed for the Central West's great staple, maize, such as there has been created for flour." Barrett calls special attention to the declaration by some of our consuls and trade experts a few years ago that wheat flour would never be accepted in large quantities by the Chinese. The exporters of California and Oregon were advised not to try to build up a market. Yet the development of our flour trade with China is even more remarkable than that already reported for cotton. During the past decade the shipments, for instance, from Portland, Oregon, to Hong-Kong have increased sixteen hundred per cent. Mr. Barrett acutely says that the most remarkable result of the Spanish war has been in our becoming the paramount Power of the Pacific. We have assumed an unavoidable responsibility, not only in occupying the Philippine Islands, but also in our attitude toward China. Commercially our opportunities in China are greater than they ever will be in the Philippines, he declares; therefore, while we are setting matters right in our new possessions, we must not allow them to retrograde where our old-established treaties are being stretched by China's neighbors. We cannot go to war to prevent Chinese disintegration, but if we see that an ultimate and definite break-up there is inevitable, we must leave no stone unturned to preserve old treaty rights in a new form with the new Powers in control.

To the importance of taking as energetic a stand as possible in preserving our rapidly increasing interests in China, Dr. Schurman, President of our Philippine Commission, is the latest witness. He has just arrived in this country after spend

ing six months in the Orient. The great question there, so newspaper interviews report him as saying, is that of China:

Both Englishmen and Japanese see the necessity of maintaining China intact, but it is feared, now that Russia has taken Manchuria, that it will try to encroach gradually on some of the other eighteen provinces of China, and when it gets them it will do as that country has done hitherto-put a duty on all foreign goods. Englishmen and Japanese feel that America should stand with them in preventing

the dismemberment of China. . . China should maintain its independent position, but its doors should be kept open. It means much to England and Japan and not less to America. There is a hope in the Orient among reading men that China itself may become aroused so that it may itself hold its domain intact. But it is not yet sufficiently awakened. That is the sad phase of it. The Chinese are a patient, industrious people. They can live in any climate, away in the arctic or far south in the tropics. They can make money anywhere. Such a race, it is felt, ought to arouse itself in this dilemma.

The policy of preserving China intact seems now a belated one, in view of the fact that Russia is absorbing the northern provinces, Germany an eastern province, France the extreme south, and even the British Government's representative in the House of Commons is silent on the "independence of the Government at Peking." These facts, however, only demand closer attention to our commercial outlook. We believe, in the words of the writer of an article in the August "Atlantic Monthly," that, secure in a splendid isolation, and confident in the permanent sufficiency of our domestic market, we have too often regarded the Oriental problem as academic, and its solution as immaterial to our welfare. Admiral Dewey's guns, however, stirred us to a keen sense both of our needs and of our responsibilities. Our advent to "a seat in the court martial of Powers which is trying the case of China" may or may not change the verdict of the majority in favor of summary decapitation and dissection. At all events, that advent means a protest against spheres of influence which endanger our treaty rights-it has had success already in inducing the tardy opening to foreign trade of Kiaochau by Germany, and of Talienwan by Russia; but it must not lead us into further complications than those which may attend that insistence.

Another result is one which may and should affect us nearer home-the reali

zation of the fact that we are demanding ultra protection here, but free trade abroad.

Metaphysical Healing

A correspondent in another column. makes as strong a case as, in our judgment, can be made for the doctrine that Christian Scientists should be allowed by the State to practice their healing art on the hypothesis that disease is only a mortal thought and can be cured by thinking. The question thus raised is a large one, and involves the whole problem of the relation of law to liberty.

In most modern communities the principle is recognized that the State has a right to regulate all employments which, for any reason, involve a hazard to the community. On this principle the State, at least in many cases, regulates the sale of dynamite, gunpowder, poisons, and alcoholic liquors; on this principle it forbids men to practice law or medicine, to put up drugs for the sick, or to act as pilots or engineers, without previous special education and training, attested by an official examination. In our judgment, these prohibiting provisions might well be extended to plumbers and motormen, perhaps to other employments. We see no reason why Christian Scientists should claim exemption from this general principle of law.

In New York State, to practice the healing art a coarse of special instruction is required by law, which necessitates ordinarily three years at the least. The curriculum in the Christian Science College, when there was one, lasted three weeks, and involved twelve lessons of one half-day each. Mrs. Eddy informed the public that "persons contemplating a course at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College can prepare for it through 1.0 books except the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.' Ought the State to allow any one to set up as a healer on the basis of twelve lessons, occupying three months, and embracing only two books? We reply unhesitatingly in the negative.

Suppose a Mormon were to set up as a pilot, claim divine guidance, and insist on his right to take steamships in and out of New York Harbor on the strength of

Nor does this position deny the right of a Christian Scientist to go without a doctor, or even to avail himself of a mental healer. It denies the right of the mental healer to practice his mental heal ing as a profession, for pay. And it is idle to assume, as is sometimes done, that the mental healers do not practice mental healing for pay. Mrs. Eddy tells us that pay is itself a help in the healing. "Christian Science," she says, "demonstrates that the patient who pays whatever he is able to pay for being healed is more apt to recover than he who withholds a slight equivalent for health." The healer prescribes no drug for the patient, but he prescribes a fee for himself.

Nor does the fact that the mental healer prescribes no drug take him out of the category of professional physicians. The practice of medicine does not consist in the prescription of drugs. In many cases no drugs are prescribed. The practice of medicine consists in a knowledge of the body and the laws which regulate the functions, and of such counsel to the patient based on that knowledge as will enable him to comply with those laws. Sometimes it involves prescription of medicine to aid; sometimes it consists wholly of advice what food to eat and what bodily habits to maintain. Any one who undertakes for pay to heal disease is a medical practitioner, whether he administers drugs or not, whether he calls himself allopath, homeopath, eclectic, or mental healer, whether he calls the trouble which he is called in to remedy a disease or a mortal thought.

We hold, then, that the State has a right and a duty to determine, by such tests as it chooses to prescribe, who is competent to practice the healing art, and that men

Valets and Heroes

Goethe's famous interpretation of that cheap proverb, "No man is a hero to his valet," is so familiar that it is almost safe to take it for granted that every one knows it; but the truth in that interpretation is so profound that, like all other great commonplaces, it ought to have endless repetition. No man is a hero to his valet, said Goethe, because it takes a hero to recognize a hero. In other words, the man with the spirit of a valet finds the valet in all his associates; the man with the spirit of a hero finds a touch of heroism in his fellows. Most of the judgments of men and women which are uttered in conversation are worthless as estimates of character; their only value lies in the light which they throw upon the temper and point of view of the would-be judges. The wise man never accepts the judgment of other people about his fellows, except in those very rare cases in which he finds a man or woman of distinctly judicial temper directed by large intelligence. The wrongs inflicted by inadequate and misleading judgments are frightful when one stops to think of them. In every community there are men and women who are totally misunderstood by their neighbors because some energetic and voluble person has formed and conveyed to the community a misleading impression in regard to them. When one remembers how the estimate of a character affixes itself to that character and becomes accepted as a standard judgment, it is amazing with what carelessness such opinions are expressed. The lack of care on the part of some people in passing judgment upon their fellows is so great that it amounts practically to unscrupulousness.

No one should ever express an opinion about another unless he is willing to put