Catholic claims was not only begun at an early age but was continued till the last year of his life. He was a man of strong individuality, not always perfectly balanced in judgment, but highly respected and greatly beloved by a host of people. The publication of the correspondence between Lord Salisbury and Mr. Olney looking toward an agreement for a permanent tribunal of arbitration between the United States and Great Britain is in itself a significant sign of the friendly spirit now existing between the two nations, and of the sincerity of the efforts to reach a mutual understanding. So far as the correspondence in itself shows, this understanding is still in the future, though semi-official reports from Washington state that considerable advance has been made since the letters now published were written. It is to be noted as another sign of amicable feeling that with regard to the Venezuelan question (which is inevitably, though we think unfortunately, under consideration simultaneously with the broader question of international arbitration) the English diplomats show no disposition to resent the action of our Government in interfering between the two original disputants. On the contrary, Lord Salisbury has frankly admitted in Parliament that Great Britain has more than once acted in the same way, and he even expresses a preference for dealing with the United States rather than with Venezuela directly. He still maintains, however, that it is unfair to submit to arbitration British claims to territory upon which bona-fide British colonists have settled under the assurance that the land was part of the British Empire. To this Mr. Olney rejoins with acuteness and apparent reason that the fact that some settlers may have occupied certain lands in this way does not in the least affect the question of national title, and if the British claim is particularly strong with regard to this special territory, all the more readily should. it consent to place those claims before a fair board of arbitrators. Thus the Venezuelan question is still apparently much where it was; but there are indications-notably Lord Salisbury's complimentary allusion to our own Commission-which lead to the belief that an agreement may soon be reached. At all events, it is clear that both parties desire such an agreement, and will zealously try to attain it. With regard to the general scheme of arbitration between the two countries, Lord Salisbury proposed a convention providing that each country should name. permanent judicial officers; that in case of a dispute each country should name one of these as an arbitrator, and the two named should select an umpire with final power of decision; that claims to be subject to final decision should be those for less than £100,000, and not involving sovereignty or territorial jurisdiction; that claims of this latter kind might be arbitrated, the decision to be subject to formal protest from either party, and appeal to a court composed of three of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Great Britain and three of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States; that a majority of not less than five to one in this court should be necessary to sustain a finding; that differences which in the judgment of either nation affected its national honor need not be submitted to arbitration except by special agreement. Mr. Olney's efforts were at once directed toward changing the provisions as to appeal from the original Court of Arbitration. He would allow the six members to add three to their number, and would make a bare majority vote of the Court decisive. He also strenuously argues that no question shall be excluded from consideration by the proposed Court unless Congress or Parliament shall, by act or resolution, decide that the honor of the nation or the integrity of its territory or sovereignty is involved. Certainly, Mr. Olney's proposals give a more practical and workable scheme for arbitration, and (as we believe is right) tend to commit the nations beyond recall to an arbitration once agreed upon, while Lord Salisbury's views make arbitration easy in comparatively unimportant matters, but hedge it about with cautions as regards important matters. There is nothing whatever in the correspondence to indicate the presence of insuperable difficulties. On the contrary, there is everything to make us hope for a final. reasonable, fair, and practical agreement. The object in giving the letters to the public has been to elicit the general feeling of the peoples of the two countries—a course as commendable as it is unusual in diplomacy. The public, through the press and by individual expressions, has warmly approved the progress made, and urges that the negotiations be carried on to a successful issue. The intensity of the political struggle in Belgium, reported from time to time in these columns, has been followed by something like a calm, and the recent elections for the Chamber of Deputies did not appear to arouse very great interest. The members of the Chamber are elected for four years, and half their number retire every two years. The body is made up of 152 members, and in the former Chamber these delegates were divided into 104 Clericals, 33 Socialists, and 15 Liberals, the Liberal party in Belgium having been almost destroyed at the previous election. The term Liberal, as it has been used in Belgium, represented the old-time individualism rather than the new-time Socialistic tendency. At the recent election the interest centered mainly in Antwerp and Brussels, where the size of the constituencies and the number of representatives who were voted for on a general list gave the election a general significance. The Liberals made their chief fight in Brussels, where they have practically taken the same ground as the Progressionists, who may be described as Radical Liberals with Socialistic leanings. The Liberals do not seem, however, to have succeeded in rehabilitating themselves, the latest reports indicating that the Ultra-Clerical group of the Catholic party will have a representation of 70 as against the representation of 58 in the former Chamber. The polling figures have not been telegraphed. At the last election 915,000 votes were cast for the various Catholic candidates, and 871,000 votes divided between the various groups of Liberals and Socialists. Apparently there has not been any marked change of opinion. As we go to press, the People's Party and Silver Conventions are assembled in St. Louis. The Silver Convention is certain to indorse the nominations made at Chicago, Senator Teller and his associates urging this policy in an open letter. The action of the People's Party Convention is still in doubt-the Southern wing being unwilling to fuse with the Democrats whom they have fought so long, and by whom they have been so obviously defrauded in many elections. If this Southern element stood alone in its opposition to fusion, the result would not be doubtful; but it is supported by Chairman Taubeneck, of the National Committee, and several other party managers, who insist that the party organization must be maintained at all hazards. Whatever the result at St. Louis, however, the bulk of the Populist party will doubtless fuse with the other silver forces. The anti-silver forces are likely to show an equally united front in the approaching campaign. The movement initiated by the anti-silver Democrats of Illinois in favor of a third ticket does not seem to have grown. In New York State, where such a movement would naturally have the most strength, it is kept back by the unwillingness of Senator Hill and Tammany Hall to lose control of the "regular" Democratic organization. Neither the Senator nor the New York City machine seems to be able to decide what course to pursue. The State Committee has been called to meet after the Populist Convention, in the hope that definite action can then be taken. Meanwhile, more and more Democrats are daily deciding to vote for either Mr. McKinley or Mr. Bryan. In Massachusetts there seems no doubt that Mr. George Fred Williams will be able to carry his party with him to the support of the Chicago ticket and platform. Two members of President Cleveland's Cabinet-Secretaries Herbert and Olney-have announced their determination not to support their party ticket, and it is reported that nearly every member of the Cabinet will vote for Mr. McKinley in November, unless an anti-silver Democrat is nominated. The confusion of old party lines could hardly be carried further. The Republican Executive Committee has decided to maintain two campaign headquarters-one at New York, the customary place, and the other at Chicago, this year the center of the battle-field. The Democratic Executive Committee has practically decided to establish its headquarters at Washington, instead of New York, partly because it hopes for few campaign contributions from the latter city, but chiefly because campaign literature in the form of Congressional speeches can be mailed from Washington free of charge. The amount of work to be done by the campaign committees is enormous. The New York "Times" recently published a description of what it has amounted to in previous years. One committee of which the "Times's" contributor had some personal knowledge "printed and tried to put out 100,000,000 of documents." The man who had the contract to get out this work had only ten weeks in which to do it, and was "driven crazy" by the complications that arose. He was unable to secure presses enough of his own to turn out the work, and before the close of the campaign had to hire one man for the exclusive purpose of visiting the twenty or thirty other establishments to which he had been forced to turn for help. "The printers' bills aggregated dangerously near the two-hundred-thousand-dollar mark." The Committee on Printing has perhaps the principal work to perform, as it must select and edit the documents sent out-especially the campaign text-book for which the party is held so directly responsible. Another important committee is the "Bureau of Oratory," which arranges for the speeches of the campaign. Nearly all the speakers expect pay for their services as well as their traveling expenses, and their bills reach a high aggregate. Not a little work devolves upon the National Committee in the matter of looking after the press-especially the newspapers published in foreign languages, "nearly every one of whose editors is ready to espouse either side of the question for a consideration." As a rule, their support is secured by giving them standing orders for from 3,000 to 10,000 copies of each issue. These are the main avenues for the open expenditure of money. Besides these there are narrower but not straighter ways by which money is made effective. Nearly every Committee establishes several secret bureaus which are located away from the headquarters themselves. There are bureaus for the workingmen, bureaus for the Swedes and voters of other nationalities, and even bureaus for the liquordealers, whose favor is generally courted by both parties. Curiously enough, more than one Committee has maintained a temperance bureau contemporaneously with a liquordealers' bureau." "One Committee a few years ago is said to have used up $1,900,000 in its existence of less than three months, but $1,500,000 is probably nearer the average." The Bimetallic League of Great Britain held its annual meeting last week. The report presented declared that the cause of international bimetallism had made substantial progress during the past year, and mentioned the resolutions adopted in the French, Belgian, and Prussian legislatures. "In the United States," it continued, "all parties and classes would welcome international bimetallism." The report concluded as follows: "The responsibility for the present and growing dangers to the industrial life of the nation rests upon those who oppose that monetary system under which our prosperity advanced by leaps and bounds." A letter was read from Lord Aldenham (Mr. Henry Huck Gibbs), ex-Governor of the Bank of England and President of the League, congratulating the members upon the great progress which had been made in the United States. "Whatever may be the result of the Presidential election," he said, "we may be sure that our cause generally is prospering." General Francis Walker, however, who differs with Lord Aldenham regarding the ability of any one nation to maintain a bimetallic system, took a more sober view of the situation here. "It is deeply to be regretted," he said, "that millions of our best citizens, as represented at the Chicago Convention last week, declared for the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the action of other countries. This was done passionately, but the effect will be to maintain the gold standard unimpaired." Mr. McKinley, he assured the conference, was never a gold monometallist, and could not be if he tried. General Walker read the St. Louis currency resolution, which received hearty applause. Another important strike in this city has been settled by arbitration, President Low, of Columbia, being this time the arbitrator. The strike was in the single establishment of J. J. Little & Co., but the parties to the dispute were the Typotheta-the organization of the employing printersand Typographical Union No. 6, the principal organization of printing employees. These two organizations had through conference committees reached an agreement upon four of the seven demands made by the strikers. The remaining three, submitted to President Low, were as follows: (1) that the text of all publications be done entirely on piece or entirely on time; (2) that certain cuts be paid for at space rates; (3) that book and job rooms shall be recognized as card" offices. President Low decided the first point in favor of the Typographical Union. He decided the second point in favor of a compromise suggested by the Typothetæ. The third point was the most important one, and upon this President Low's decision was substantially as follows: To declare the office of J. J. Little & Co. to be a card office," he said, was to declare that no one could be employed in it except members of the tradeunion. As an arbitrator, he could not thus limit the right of an employer to select his employees. "No one," he said, can compel union men, without their own consent, to work with non-union men. But it is a different thing to demand that an employer shall not be free to employ any but union men. It is no more reasonable for the union to demand that J. J. Little & Co. shall not be free to employ non-union men than it would be for J. J. Little & Co. to demand that the union should be deprived of the freedom to take in new members at its discretion." 66 66 President Low concluded by recommending that the Typographical Union be recognized as the accredited representative of the union employees, and that permanent arrangements be made for the arbitration of all future differences between the firm and the union. Defeat has already been turned into possible victory by the advocates of municipal rapid transit in this city who refused to be discouraged by the decision of the Supreme Court against the plan first agreed upon by the Rapid Transit Commission. That decision, it will be recalled, forbade the Commission to proceed with the making of contracts on the ground that the proposed road would cost more than $50,000,000, and make the debt of the city exceed the constitutional limit. At first the Commission seemed disposed to accept this decision as final, and to meet the public demand for rapid transit through further concessions to the elevated railway system. Fortunately, however, the elevated railroad company was unreasonable in its demands, and the Commission, supported by the press and the trades-unions, proceeded to consider whether new plans might not be adopted to which the objections of the Supreme Court would not apply. On Thursday last such a plan was submitted by the chief engineer of the Commission, and it is in some respects more satisfactory to believers in municipal ownership than the plan originally agreed upon. The underground road now planned begins at City Hall Square and proceeds up Elm Street, instead of Broadway, as far as Forty-second Street. From Forty-second Street north there will be two branches-one along Broadway and the Boulevard, and the other traversing the East Side. It was only along lower Broadway that the abutting property owners objected to the underground road at first proposed, and only in that section was there danger of serious damage suits because of dreaded injury to the foundations of buildings, etc., etc. The estimated cost of the new route is but $26,500,000, and this estimate is at prices shown to be excessive by the recent experiences of the Boston Transit Commission. The engineers estimate that the eight miles between the City Hall and the Harlem River can be traversed in twenty minutes. The elevated railroad has submitted another plan for its own extension, but it is believed that the Commission will proceed, as the vote of the people directed, to build a system which shall free the city from the discomforts, delays, and extortions inseparable from the control of its rapid-transit facilities by a private monopoly. A most important step has been taken by the Board of Health in New York. It has ordered the destruction of two hundred rear tenement-houses in various parts of the city, the greater number being located in what is known as the Italian region-Sullivan, Thompson, Mulberry, Greenwich, Baxter, and Mott Streets. The number of people who will be driven from these death and disease reeking tenements can hardly be estimated. One house contained four hundred and seventy-two human beings. The death-rate in some of these tenements is appalling. In three in Thompson Street it equals fifty-two and eighttenths per thousand. The population of each of these tenements ranges from twenty to well into the hundreds. One building to be destroyed in Sullivan Street is a twoand-a-half story brick and frame dwelling which contains five families. The conditions under which these people have been living are barbaric. The roof leaks, and has for years, so that the tenants have been obliged to move their miserable belongings about the room, and to use pails to catch the rain. This house is alive with vermin, and is filthy beyond expression. To realize what the rear tenement-house in New York is it must be remembered that a city lot is one hundred feet deep, and that the rear house is built on the rear end of this one hundred feet. Usually the rear house is two rooms deep. There are thousands of rear houses in the city of New York where the stones in the yard between the rear and the front houses are never dry. One woman gave as the reason for not wishing to move from an East Side tenement that the yard was dry because the baker's oven ran back under it; and it is true that babies were brought from the surrounding tenements and allowed to crawl on these stones in the cold weather because the stones gave out a perceptible warmth. The closets are located between the front and the rear houses in the small paved court, and must be used by the families of both houses. Very often the rear house has no water in it; the tenants in the rear house have to carry the water from the yard. Usually also the rear house adjoins the rear house in the parallel street. Often there is an air-space of but a few inches between these two houses, and the bedrooms in the rear house are absolutely dark and unventilated. A report from the Board of Health states that the average annual death-rate in the city of New York is a fraction over twenty-two per thousand, while the worst portions of the rear tenement district show one hundred and thirty-five per thousand. The average death-rate per thousand in rear tenement districts is about forty-five, or more than twice the average of the city. The space for light and air, that is, the so-called yard of these tenements the yard for both rear and front tenements in many parts of the tenement districts of New York-is 6x25 feet, and in this space there will be found from six to ten closets. Commissioner Roosevelt, who has been very active in working for the destruction of the rear tenements, says that he is convinced that their existence is one of the greatest blots on the city, and their abolition is to the advantage not only of the health but the morals of the tenementhouse dweller. Commissioner Parker has stated that he believes that the existence of the rear tenements in the city accentuates and engenders the criminal tendencies of the individual, and that their presence contributes to the crimes and vices of the city. It has been the unanimous conviction of those who have worked among the poor that nothing will so contribute to the well-being of the poor of New York City as the destruction of the rear tenement. The sentimentalists have asked, What will become of these people? It must be realized that to a large percentage of the poor in New York rent is an extravagance, and these rear tenements with their few dollars less per year rental are a tremendous temptation to those families with whom thrift has become a vice. There is no doubt that there will be a certain amount of suffering until these people find new habitations and adapt themselves to a new environment that will compel them to live in the light of day and to learn and appreciate the value of light and air. In looking over the list of tenements to be destroyed, it is a relief to find that but a small proportion of them are held by estates. It is also a lesson for the student of sociology to find that a very large percentage of the owners themselves live under tenement-house conditions. We have become so accustomed to attributing the evils of the poor to the grasping tendencies of the rich that to find that the poor are very often responsible for the unhygienic conditions under which their fellow-laborers. live gives a new view to philanthropic effort. The task of beginning the education of the chil dren to appreciate the decencies of life is fast becoming the aim of philanthropic effort; what we need is an effort that will educate the whole family. This in the lowest social strata must be done through compulsion; through the strict enforcement of laws the end and aim of which is the prevention of crime and the conditions that lead to it. The rear tenement is the largest factor to-day in the degradation of the individual. It is often remarked that disasters affect our personal sympathy inversely as the distance increases or decreases. A child injured next door awakens one's sympathies more acutely than the report of a thousand deaths in China. It is probably due to this law of human nature that so little attention has been given by American papers to the recent terrible destruction of life in Japan. The Johnstown disaster, the St. Louis cyclone ruin, the Russian peasant slaughter-all together resulted in vastly less loss of life than was occasioned in the middle of last June by the single tidal wave which swept over the Pacific coast of the northeastern part of the main island of Japan. The number of lives lost is now officially announced by the Japanese Government as 26,889, but the investigation is not fully complete. Half an hour sufficed to sweep out of existence these many thousands, and the accompanying loss of property and non-fatal personal injury was proportionately great. The cause is supposed to be some kind of submarine shifting of levels. A similar though less fatal tidal wave was experienced in Japan some forty years ago, and one of the most curious incidents on that occasion was the carrying of a Russian man-of-war from its anchorage far up into the fields, where it was left stranded. Educational Unity The absence of Federal control of education, while productive of certain beneficial results, has had the obvious disadvantage of leaving the relations between secondary and higher education in an extremely unsettled condition. Each college has planned its own courses of study, and has established its own entrance requirements with more or less disregard of the practice of other colleges. The want of uniformity in courses of study resulting from the absence of Federal control has been further increased by the conflict between the upholders of the classics and the advocates of science as the basis of a liberal education. Disunity in educational aim has precluded the possibility of a proper correlation of studies from the primary school up to the university, with a consequent loss of time to the student, and has encouraged superficial methods of instruction. Secondary schools, under the necessity of fitting pupils for colleges differing widely as regards entrance requirements, have adopted a pernicious system of coaching based on examination papers and conflicting with every sound principle of pedagogy. Matriculates of American colleges are at least two years behind in their studies as compared with students of the same age in England and Germany. The cause of the evils developed by the unsettled relations between secondary and higher education is, however, generally perceived, and earnest efforts are being made to remove it. These efforts are for the present directed chiefly toward securing uniformity in college entrance requirements. As the result of a conference between representatives of the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland, the Commission of Colleges in New England, and the New England Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools, held at Philadelphia in May, 1894, uniform English requirements were established throughout the States controlled by those bodies. A year later the league was joined by the Conference of Teachers of English of the North Central States. The National Educational Association, in July, 1895, appointed a committee to investigate the existing condition of entrance requirements throughout the United States, and the comprehensive report of this committee, printed in the June number of the "School Review," was laid before the recent Buffalo Convention. The adoption of uniform English requirements throughout New England, the Middle States, Maryland, and the North Central States was no small accomplishment. It was a much more difficult feat to secure substantial uniformity in all branches of study throughout a considerable section of the country. However, this feat has also now been accomplished, and constitutes the most notable event of the past academic year. During the spring of 1896, under the auspices of Columbia University, a series of conferences between representatives of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, and the Schoolmasters' Association of New York and Vicinity has resulted in the adoption of a unanimous report recommending specific uniform requirements in Latin, Greek, German, French, mathematics, and history. This report, although it fails to recommend requirements for the natural sciences, and although it leaves some matters of detail unsettled, cannot fail to be accepted by the institutions represented in the conferences, and, with six among the principal colleges of the United States agreed on entrance requirements, the prospect for National uniformity is excellent. As Chairman A. F. Nightingale writes in his letter accompanying the report of his committee to the National Educational Association, "If six among the best colleges of the country, and that, too, in a section where tradition is synonymous with law, and changes mean revolution, can substantially agree upon uniformity of requirements to the satisfaction of the secondary schools tributary to them, why may not one hundred colleges agree? . . . The unanimity of their conclusions presages the possibility of National unity on this same matter, if the movement is fostered and aided by the National Educational Association." In the present posture of affairs there is, therefore, every reason to hope that we shall, in the near future, obtain National uniformity in college entrance requirements, which will in turn prepare the way for a proper correlation of studies on some such plan as that recommended in the report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies appointed at the meeting of the National Educational Association, July 9, 1892. The ultimate unification of the American system of education appears by no means improbable. Robert Burns Tuesday of this week was the centennial of the death of Robert Burns. "Don't be afraid," said the poet shortly before his death; "I'll be more respected a hundred years after I am dead than I am at present." His most daring ambition could hardly have dreamed of the marvelous fulfillment of that prophecy. Like many other men of genius, Burns had an instinctive consciousness of his gift, and therefore of his fame; but he could hardly have foreseen the peculiar place he would come to hold in the heart of the English-speaking world, or the world-wide fame which was to be his. For he is one of the small group of poets whom the world really loves; that is to say, his name means something and his poetry is something to masses of people who know that Shakespeare was the greatest of English dramatists but who never read him. Indeed, it has been the good fortune of Burns to secure both kinds of reputation-the reputation which rests upon the recognition of pure poetic genius by those who are competent to recognize the presence of that great gift, and that which rests upon the wide acceptance of the mass of uncritical readers. Among the poets Burns ranks as one of the greatest of modern singers; among the people at large he is perhaps the best-loved poet read by the English-speaking races. The expansion of this interior and in a sense esoteric reputation into a universal reputation could be achieved only by one whose manner had the magic of the highest art and whose material had the interest of universal experience. It was Burns's supreme good fortune to deal with things which affect the common life in the most perfect manner, to give to the metal which was passing from hand to hand without Sign or superscription the stamp of ultimate perfection. The very frailties of his character and the "Who made the heart, 'tis He alone He knows each chord-its various tone, We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, Another erroneous impression about Burns, which has been set right by time, was the once widely held belief that |