candidate. The United States District Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was recently nominated for the Governorship in convention by the Republicans. Judge Lewis, as he is known from his former position on the State Bench, is a man of high position in the State. He is Republican by tradition, for his fathers were strong Federalists. By his nomination the Republican party of Virginia has moved further than ever before from its Reconstruction connections. It is not unlikely, therefore, that the race question, which for so long has furnished political shibboleths, will be less conspicuous than ever in the campaign this fall. State issues of practical import promise to have more than usual weight, and it is not unlikely that voters in Virginia will feel freer than before to divide according to real party preference. There are thousands of thoughtful Virginians who would welcome such a state of affairs if it should come to pass.

Progress of the Equitable Suit

The Equitable Society has filed its answer to the suit brought against it, as codefendant with the members of its old Board of Directors, by Attorney-General Mayer. The Society, as at present constituted, unexpectedly joins the State in its prayer for relief, admitting many of the allegations brought forward in the complaint. The claim is made, however, that the responsibility for the various transactions rests, not on the entire Board of Directors, but only on certain individual members, especially those who were formerly officers of the Society and who composed the important committees of the Board. The answer is verified by Mr. Paul Morton as President. In a significant final paragraph it recites that, while the Society is imperfectly informed as to many of the matters set forth, it believes that the Society has been materially damaged by the "negligent conduct and improper and unlawful acts of some of the defendants in the exercise of their official duties. The answer takes exception to the statement in the complaint that the surplus in the treasury of the Society belongs to the policy holders and should be distributed to

them after deducting enough to cover all outstanding risks and other obligations. It is stated that the vexed question of the surplus is being investigated by the proper officials of the Society with the aid of counsel, and is now pending for adjudication in an action before the Supreme Court. The action of the Society in distinctly separating itself from those who formerly controlled it, and asking for relief from the effects of their acts, is a very encouraging sign. As time goes on it becomes increasingly clear that there is a new Equitable, anxious to undo the wrong-doing of the past, and acting on the principle that the money of its policy-holders is a trust to be administered primarily for their benefit.

Arbitration as Viewed by the Lawyer

Last week at Narra

gansett Pier, Rhode Island, the American Bar Association held its twentieth annual meeting. The Committee on International Law, of which Everett P. Wheeler, Esq., was chairman, made a report which covered two important subjects-the constitutionality of a general arbitration treaty, and the position of neutrals as affected by the Russo-Japanese war. On the latter subject the report indicates clearly the danger that lies in the policy which France has pursued, and makes clear the advance which the United States has made by its action. It is because of its treatment of arbitration that the report deserves attention beyond the confines of the Bar Association. Although all the members of the Committee did not agree to all the arguments contained in the report, it is significant that the majority of the Committee record their agreement as to the conclusion—namely, that a general arbitration treaty is constitutional. It is pointed out that the Constitution does not explicitly or implicitly limit the nature of treaties which may be made by the President with the consent of the Senate; that a general arbitration treaty, if adopted, would be a part of "the supreme law of the land," and for its enforcement as such the President would be performing an executive function in making special agreements; and that so

far from its being beyond the President's powers to negotiate such agreements in pursuance of a general arbitration treaty, the courts have decided that regulations made by even the President's subordinates, if they are made in pursuance of a general act of Congress, have the force of law. The chief value of this report lies in the conciseness with which it presents lawyers' arguments in support of a general arbitration treaty.

Among various bodMunicipal Ownership ies organized in this

country to promote

civic progress, the League of American Municipalities is distinctive in that it is composed of municipal officers. In its sessions last week at Toledo, Ohio, the subject which overshadowed all others was that of municipal ownership of public utilities. This was due to two causes : first, to the general interest in the subject, which is manifest throughout the country, and naturally found expression in this meeting; secondly, to the fact that one of the speakers was Mayor Dunne, of Chicago, who was elected to his office on the issue of municipal ownership of street railways. Mayor Dunne's address may be divided into two parts. In the first part he considered the general subject of municipal ownership. He called attention to the fact that for the past fifty years it has been applied mainly to water supply, sewage systems, parks, and, in some cases, bathing-houses. More recently, however, it has been applied to such public utilities as lighting plants, telephone systems, and streetcar lines. "Municipal ownership" he clearly showed was no new and untested device, although it has been characterized as such when its application to enterprises in the control of powerful corporations has been proposed. is nothing horrible in the thought of a city supplying water to its inhabitants; there seems to be something dreadful, however, in the idea that a city should supply its citizens with transportation. It is in the municipal ownership and operation of street railways that Mayor Dunne naturally is chiefly interested. He referred at some length to the

There

experience of European cities, and found it favorable, to municipal ownership. The second part of his speech he devoted to a detailed explanation of the method by which he proposed to hasten municipal ownership of street railways in Chicago. Under the Illinois law enabling cities to own their street-car systems, the process of issuing certificates to pay for car lines, and the process of calling for bids and issuing specifications, both involve delay, especially when invoked by the powerful corporate interests opposed to municipal ownership. nicipal ownership. To secure to the city, therefore, an option on the lines which would be practically equivalent to ownership, Mayor Dunne proposed a plan of organizing a private company which, by the terms of its charter, would be under the control of the City Council. The dividends on the capital stock, the salaries of the employees, and the expenditures, contracts, and specifications for building entered into by the company would all be subject to determination by the Council, and the methods by which the property could at any time pass into the hands of the city would be explicitly stated in the act of incorporation. little more than half of the mileage of car tracks in the city is, or in the next two years will be, at the disposal of the city. Mayor Dunne believes that the lines included in this could be made, if operated by the city, immediately remunerative. It has been objected that if the trackage of the city should thus be divided between private companies and the municipality, the citizens of the city would be deprived of transfers which they now have and would be required to pay double fare. This is a practical objection that will carry weight with a great many people. Americans are slow to submit to inconvenience even for a great good. We seem to prefer to pay big taxes indirectly rather than little taxes directly. Nevertheless, the sentiment for the municipal ownership and operation of such public utilities as street railways is undoubtedly growing. The fierce and unreasoning vituperation with which it is frequently opposed is an indication of the extent to which it has already spread.

A

The Yellow Fever

Situation

Strong hopes that the worst is over as regards the yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans were expressed at the end of last week by Dr. J. H. White, who is in charge of the work of the Marine Hospital Service in the afflicted districts. The figures for the week do not tell the whole story. So far as actual deaths are concerned, there has been, statistically speaking, a slight change apparently for the worse; this, however, was expected, and was really inevitable when one considers the headway previously obtained by the disease. The decrease in new cases at the end of the week is the really significant thing. The total number of cases in New Orleans up to Saturday last was 1,743, and that of the total deaths, 275. Outside of the city the number of cases reported increases, but, except in two or three localities where sanitary conditions are very bad, it is believed that the epidemic can be held in check. In the exceptional cases it will probably continue to be dangerous until frost comes, and the physicians now think that in New Orleans itself it cannot be hoped that yellow fever will be entirely eradicated before that time. Serious charges have been made informally against the city health officer, Dr. Kohnke, for allowing the epidemic to get a positive lodgment without taking measures to stamp it out. Later on an investigation will doubtless be held as to the circumstances attending the early stages of the epidemic; at present the one thing to do is to fight its spread. A correspondent of the New York "Tribune who has just visited the infected district in New Orleans gives the following description of the conditions against which the authorities and doctors are struggling :

A few blocks below Canal Street brings

one into the infected district. As there are no sewers, the sanitation, even of the streets, is miserable. Water lies in the open gutters, and mud oozes from cracks between the wide, stone paving-blocks. Some of the streets are not paved at all, and are as full of chuck holes as a lumbering town in the Puget Sound rain belt. The buildings in the district are old, some of them over one hundred years. The architecture is a curious mixture of Spanish and French, modernized where repairs have been absolutely necessary.

cion that the summer would bring an epidemic, the Women's League of New Orleans started a campaign of education on the subject of mosquitoes-the first work chosen by Mrs. W. H. Behan as chairman of its department of Home and Education. Several of the members resolved to set the example of screening cisterns, and did so this as a preliminary to a movement to secure the completion of the city's water system, and thus abolish for all time the thousands of cisterns which year after year have menaced the town as breeding-places. At a meeting last week the women determined to press the fight for the water system with all the force which the death-rolls of July and August have added to the argument, and in that way to bring a permanent good from this season's travail. But the Women's League is pledged to an even more searching reform. The revelations that people have been forced to accept as to the housing conditions in "Little Palermo" ought to help mightily toward hastening the coming of a better day for all the poorer dwellers of the city. The President of the Women's League is Miss Eleanor McMain, a young Southern woman who, in Kingsley House, on Annunciation Street, is doing for a great river neighborhood what Jane Addams has done for the Halsted Street district of Chicago. This summer the Settlement has been used as a home for the nurses who are fighting the fever. neighborhood women of its mothers' clubs were among the first to attack cisterns and gutters. The President of the Kingsley House Board is the Rev. Beverly Warner, superintendent at Central

The

Headquarters of the Citizens' Ward Organizations which have held up the hands of the sanitary authorities. These two, Dr. Warner and Miss McMain, were responsible two years ago for the beginnings of a housing reform movement. Members of the faculty of Tulane University were interested, and a student was detailed to make an investigation of abuses which had repeatedly come to the notice of Kingsley House workers. This investigation has now been completed, and the events of the summer ought to prick its lessons deep into the conscience of the community. "It is significant," writes one who is well informed as to the facts, "that those who naturally have been turned to as leaders when the whole community has throbbed to the meeting of its emergency have been those who in the past have urged, with but too few listeners, the need of reaching such things as the 'general cleaning-up day' forced into light-the old Creole houses, long run to decay and running over with Italians, their slaves' quarters used as dormitories, their water-tanks pitifully inadequate, their closets painfully so; the thick squalor of some of the negro quarters; the battered shop buildings of the ancient market districts turned into ill-suited dwellings for factory workers; foul gutters, cluttered alleys, rank drains, overcrowded roomsinheritances from old New Orleans and by-products of its new commercial life, which the masterful spirit roused by the present crisis should rout out and away, along with the stegomyia."

Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge, over thirty years editor-inchief of "St. Nicholas," who died in the Catskills last week, was in a very true and intimate sense a friend of many thousands of American children. More than the grown person, the child is instinctively aware of real sympathy and friendliness; and it was because these were at the heart of everything that Mrs. Dodge wrote, and of all her work as an editor, that she was so beloved by her young readers. In all she did thoroughness was a notable element, and it was for this reason that, from her very first

attempt, Mrs. Dodge had complete success. Thus, her most famous tale, "Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates," was not only a charming story of child life, but a perfect and exact picture of Holland and its people. It is said that in writing "Hans Brinker" Mrs. Dodge had every chapter read critically by two Dutch friends, and that before beginning the work she made an exhaustive study in libraries and literature of everything that could help her to make the picture correct. This book has been translated into many languages, and has been especially popular in Holland itself. It maintains its place with the child readers of to-day, despite the lapse of years. "Donald and Dorothy" is almost equally popular, and a long list of tales, rhymes, and articles which have pleased countless young people might be added. For some years Mrs. Dodge had laid aside the active labors of editorship, but "St. Nicholas" in many ways continues to show the value of her guidance and taste in years past.

Adolphe Guillaume Bouguereau

The recent death of Jean Jacques Henner, the eminent genre artist, has now been followed by that of another noted painter of the nude, Adolphe Guillaume Bouguereau. The differences between the independent and the academic in art are accentuated by the work of these men. The canvases of the first have a mystical atmosphere; those of the second have far less flexibility of inspiration; they are remarkable almost wholly because of their striking manual excellence. Bouguereau's pictures are always "sweetly pretty"-as the English say-they are often charming; they are never great. A quarter-century ago, however, they were in high favor with a horde of eager buyers, whose philistinism was properly held up to scorn by Matthew Arnold and other contemptuous critics. This criticism, albeit somewhat too sweeping, and the coincident rise of the impressionist school, gradually educated the popular mind in the limitations of Bouguereau's work. Its high technical qualities, nevertheless, kept the distinguished draughtsman's name

well to the fore, to the day of his death. In addition, Bouguereau owed some of his wide personal influence to the dignity and urbanity with which he filled his office as President of the Society of French Artists. He was, indeed, an appropriate head for this official wing of French art; of course that wing which long since emanated from the "Salon des Réfusés," and owes nothing to Government protection, would none of him. Bouguereau was always especially popular with Americans. In addition to winning their favor, he also won an American wife. As his mother objected to his marrying a foreigner, the painter, though a widower and no longer young, patiently waited twenty years. In no country does parental authority seem to command more respect than among the French; according to their custom, the objection of a parent is a far more serious barrier to marriage than it would be in America. Bouguereau's mother ruled her family with a rod of iron; she relinquished none of her authority though she lived to the age of ninety-one. Her death, nearly nine years ago, finally freed the filial artist to marry his American fiancée, which he promptly did. Madame Bouguereau, who had been a pupil in her husband's atelier, also enjoys much popular esteem. She was the first American woman to receive the gold medal of the Paris Salon.

Should the Source of Gifts

be Scrutinized ?

At the forthcoming meeting of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions at Seattle, Washington, the question as to what gifts should be regarded as acceptable by missionary organizations will be brought up for discussion. It is probable that at that meeting the future policy of the Board regarding the accept ance and solicitation of gifts will be settled. In view of this fact, the PruIdential Committee of the Board has submitted "the principles which, in its judgment, should govern the action of the officers and Prudential Committee." They are as follows:

(1) Organized as a corporation to carry on foreign missionary work and to receive gifts for that purpose, the American Board has not been given the authority to discriminate be

tween those who offer such gifts, and thereby to judge the character or reputation of the donors. It is not a beneficiary from the gift, but only an agent or a trustee for others.

(2) While the Board cannot properly accept money from one to whom any of its officers knows it does not belong, it cannot, on the other hand, properly decline to receive money from its legal owner, provided it is given for the purposes for which the Board was established and in accordance with its rules. In the absence of legal proof to the contrary, it is necessary to assume that money belongs to the person making the gift. Investigation by the executive officers to determine the sources from which gifts come is neither justifiable nor practicable.

which require the receiving of gifts without (3) By acting under the above principles, compelling its officers to trace the manner in which the donor may have acquired them, the Board pronounces no judgment on the character of donors. Nor by the acceptance of gifts are its officers or members stopped from criticising business methods, or from persistently raising their voices in behalf of the application of the principles of righteousness in all departments and walks of life.

(4) The officers of this Board, as of all other similar boards organized to promote religion, philanthropy, and education, are morally bound to use every legitimate means to secure and convert money from other uses into the direct service of advancing the kingdom of God in the world. It is for the good of all that the way should be made easier, and not more difficult, for all to give of their present possessions and increasing wealth for the noblest purposes.

Dr. Washington Gladden, who more than any other man raised the issue, has declared that in his opinion this statement of principles is "radically defective." It fails to recognize, he believes, the fact that the Board is an agent of the churches and is responsible to them. It disregards what he considers to be the historical policy of the Church from the earliest days, and it ignores, he says, what he regards as the real question at issue-the solicitation of gifts. He therefore submits "for the consideration of the corporate members, and of all Congregationalists," the following resolution, upon which he hopes "the sense of the Board will be taken at the meeting at Seattle:"

Resolved, That the officers of this society should neither solicit nor invite donations to its funds from persons whose gains are generally believed to have been made by methods morally reprehensible and socially injurious. We hope that the issue just presented will be kept clear, as it is now; that it