proper. He was picked out by his father as heir from a numerous male progeny, the sons of many mothers, not because of his age, but because of his likeness to his father. He succeeded King John of Abyssinia in 1889. He had no little aptness for mechanics, and was able to put in order, or even put together, a modern firearm or a watch. He was first brought emphatically to the attention of modern Europe by his crushing defeat of the Italians at Adowa, a defeat which Italy has not yet forgotten. Since 1910 his Empire has been under actual control of a Council of Regency, from which Menelik II was excluded.

King Menelik was a man of intelligence and of definite aspirations towards civilization, despite occasional relapses into cruelty and barbarism.

THE DATO 'CABINET

The most wide-awake among European monarchs at present seem to be the Kings of Italy and Spain. Both are noted for their constant personal attention to the doings of their Cabinets. The King of Spain, for instance, presides every Thursday at the Cabinet meeting. In the illustration on another page he is seen sitting at the end of the Cabinet table, with the new Prime Minister, Señor Dato, at his right hand. As may be seen in that picture, Eduardo Dato has a head which would have delighted Goya or any other Spanish painter of character.

The new Spanish Premier came into power in this wise: The murder of Premier Canalejas a year ago brought about the promotion of one of his Ministers, Count Romanones, to the Premiership. As in the case of the Barthou Cabinet in France the other day, so the Romanones Cabinet in Spain recently desired to record its success or failure in a vote of confidence, which was lost in the Senate of the Spanish Parliament by a vote of 106 to 103. A "rough-and-ready" Prime Minister would hardly have considered so slight an adverse vote a reason for resigning. Not so Count Romanones. He did resign, and was succeeded by Señor Dato. Count Romanoncs is a radical, Señor Dato a conservative. One might think that an immense abyss existed between the two men. But this is not the case, and, in consequence, no such great gulf as might be supposed yawns between the former and the present Spanish Cabinets. As a matter of fact, Count Romanones is a radical of a very reasonable sort, ready to

walk with any man who will walk with him, and Señor Dato is a conservative of a similarly reasonable sort.

The Spaniards have a good name for the Dato type of conservative, and that is Moderate." The new Premier is fifty-seven He is best known not so much years old. as ex-President of the Chamber of Deputies and as an authority on politics as he is as an authority on social questions. He is the author of the Workmen's Compensation Law and of the laws concerning the regulation of women's and children's work. He is also the founder of the Institute of Social Reforms. The real political and social designation of the new Premier is " progressive."

CONSTANTIN MEUNIER

The Albright Gallery at Buffalo has already justified its existence. It is one of the most progressive of our galleries, not only in its own collections, but also in obtaining important loan collections. The latest exhibition there is that which has just been held of the works of Constantin Meunier, the Belgian sculptor. We understand that New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, and St. Louis are to have a similar privilege. It is thus worth while to call attention to Meunier's work. It has never been shown here before publicly, although there are some pieces of it in private collections.

His

Meunier is a fit product of this industrial age. He comes from the most industrial country in Europe-Belgium. The sculptor's models were found in the Belgian factories and mines. He went into the pits and came out surcharged with the sensation of toil. This he has put into his sculpture. figures remind one strongly of Millet's in painting. But Millet's toilers were in the broad fields. They were under the open sky. Meunier's are usually confined in narrow pits or within grimy factory walls. Two examples of his work appear in our picture section.

Meunier died in 1905. His had been a poor family. His father was a collector of taxes. After the death of the older Meunier the mother had to open a millinery shop and rent rooms. So the young Constantin knew what poverty meant. One feels the sculptor's subjective experience as well as his powers of observation in looking at works depicting all the Belgian industrial life of " Melting Steel," or "Smithery," or "Factory Work," or "Returning from the Pit," or, finally, his never finished "Monument to Labor."

In

our opinion, Meunier's achievement ranks only second to Rodin's in significance. Rodin began his breaking away from classic standards over a generation ago. Meunier followed him some dozen years later. Though this fact of divergence from hitherto accepted standards unites the two sculptors, their individual work shows the differentiation of one who believed in great variety and of one who believes in less variety. Thus Rodin is a safer model for many young sculptors than Meunier. A too slavish imitation of the latter might lead to more or less monotony. Rodin's work is entirely in the field of passion; that of Meunier entirely within the field of toil. Any comparison at once brings out these sharp contrasts.

QUICK-LUNCH CARS

One reason that traveling by railway in America is more expensive than it is abroad is that the bulk of the train-service in this country is conducted on the assumption that the traveling public is of one class so far as financial means are concerned. We have Pullman cars on which the wayfarer can get extra comforts for extra money. but there is no such gradation of fares as in the first, second, and third class carriages of European railways. When it comes to eating, the American in his own country must carry his lunch with him at considerable inconvenience or must depend upon the ordinary dining car, on which the scale of prices is higher than many can afford.

The Southern Pacific Railway Company has in operation a quick-lunch car designed to meet the needs of such of its patrons as like to eat quickly and cheaply. The inside view of the car is like that of an ordinary city quick-lunch, with a long mahogany counter running the length of the car, faced by swivel chairs to accommodate a score of diners. The important point is that the price scale is about the same as in the class of restaurants of the Childs or Exchange Buffet type-that is, reasonable enough to be within the range of most people who can afford to buy railway tickets. This car runs from San Francisco to Bakersfield, California, a local route with frequent stops, where it is particularly in demand owing to the fact that a large proportion of the passengers are traveling salesmen or other persons in a hurry who consider a dining car a place to eat in and not a place in which to kill time. The popularity that this innovation has received is reflected

work of the College of Agriculture for community welfare.

The initial idea of the meeting came from the Rev. F. I. Drexler, who had been brooding over the typical little white church of the country neighborhood, "standing on its hilltop in magnificent isolation from the every-day interests of its community," and who wrote to President Benjamin Ide Wheeler to ask if the University could not do more to help the social life of the rural districts and at the same time to help the church to realize itself as a social center. Dean Thomas Forsythe Hunt, of the University's College of Agriculture, was planning new departures in extension work, and President Wheeler asked him to consult with Mr. Drexler.

A CLASS OF

MINISTER-STUDENTS

As finally worked out, Ministers' Week was much such a conference as those recently held at Amherst and Cornell, an account of which appeared in The Outlook of August 30, though it was probably unique in the number of lectures devoted to technical agricultural problems. It amounted, in fact, to a brief continuation school, not in theology but in agriculture. All branches of rural sociology are taught in the modern agricultural college, and of course the clergymen gathered at the University of California Farm School in Davis were deeply interested in lectures on rural hygiene and sanitation, community work in country schools, and ornamentation of home and school grounds; but one of the surprises of the meeting was the zest with which these ministers attended demonstrations or lectures on judging beef, cattle, plant breeding, soil formation, poultry raising, irrigation, citriculture, plant diseases, the handling and storing of fruit, and other technical farm problems. Every one seemed to have taken to himself Mr. Drexler's brusque statement that when a minister can talk to a man about that man's business without making a fool of himself, he gains that man's respect.' Every talk was interrupted by keen questions from the crowd which gathered around the speakers at the close of each lecture. The evening meetings were devoted entirely to the country life movement in its socia! aspects. Three round-table discussions were devoted to the social activities of the rural church.

The University Farm at Davis is only one

of the various units which make up the College of Agriculture; the Farm School itself is comparatively new and still a small institution. To make room for the ministers the boys in this school gave up their beds and slept in cots set up in the basements of the dormitories and in tents. Boys volunteered

as extra waiters in the dining-room; boys lent baseball suits to the ministers when a preachers' nine was organized to play against the students. Good fellowship and gayety were everywhere, mingled with eagerness to get the most out of an unusual and unexpected opportunity.

Many of the ministers went home hoping to have the talks which had interested them most repeated in their own communities. The majority seemed to have gained a more or less definite plan for broadening and vivifying the social organization around them. One man said that he had walked fifteen miles over a mountain to reach the railway, and might have to walk twenty miles back, as his wife would not know when to meet him with a horse; but the twenty miles would be lightly walked, for he was going home to start a farmers' club and some sort of civic league. Nearly every man took down a list of books and bulletins which would be useful reading in his community, and the spirit of the meeting was expressed by one minister who said, "Religion is relationship." Another said, "In the year 1913 science has discovered the church."

AN ACTORS' TRADE UNION

"The only classes of workers that haven't organized for self-protection long ago are actors and washerwomen, and now even we are beginning to get together," recently declared Mr. Francis Wilson, President of the Actors' Equity Association, in commenting upon the turn of a long downtrodden wormthe actor. In America, with the centralization of capital and the crystallization of class feeling have come strikes with increasing frequency in widely divergent trades and industries. We have had miners' strikes, textile workers' strikes, and strikes of railway men, of course, and more recently we have seen waiters and even barbers at war with their employers. But does any one remember a widespread strike of actors? Have the boards ever been empty while Roscius and his fellows fought for shorter hours and higher wages? Never, that we remember,

and never will they be, we hope, for the play's the thing, and many would rather be obliged to eat from sideboards and do their own barbering than to miss their evening at the theater. Yet with the formation of the Actors' Equity Association for the protection of the members of the profession against theatrical managers an actors' strike becomes not an improbability.

The abuses which the Actors' Equity Association is fighting are many and long-standing, but their existence is due wholly to the passiveness and faint-heartedness of the actors themselves. An incapacity for co-operation seems to be one of the traits of the artistic temperament. At any rate, all past attempts of players on the legitimate stage to organize have failed. In view of this fact, the success of the present movement is all the more notable.

The Actors' Equity Association, founded for the protection of the rank and file of the profession by a number of actors whose reputation made them virtually independent of theatrical managers, has set out to combat, first of all, certain faults in the contract system. It has made the following concrete demands:

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First, that transportation expenses to and from all points on the road", and the city in which a company is organized be provided to all members of a company.

Second, that no actor shall be forced to give more than three weeks' rehearsals without compensation.

Third, that there shall be a two weeks' notice of dismissal.

Fourth, that there shall be extra pay for extra performances, and full salary for all weeks played.

Fifth, that actresses shall not be forced to bear the expenses of an unlimited stage wardrobe.

These provisions have already been the rule with some managers, including, it is said, Belasco, Ames, Frohman, Brooks, and Fiske, and several others have already agreed to grant the demands of the actors.

For the payment of slight dues legal protection and advice is assured to members of the Association, who already number more than a thousand. Unlimited funds are assured by the fact that at any time a production could be arranged with a cast of an all-around brilliancy never before equaled in the United States.

The Outlook believes in the right of all

ful chaperonage, are given once a week. There is also an employment bureau for the benefit of pupils who are leaving and who wish to obtain situations. Well-lighted rooms in which the work of pupils in the various departments is shown as a permanent exhibition are provided.

The opportunities offered for the advancement of art through wisely planned exhibitions in such a school may be realized when it is learned that this great educational building houses nearly seven thousand pupils and has a teaching staff of almost three hundred.

PRACTICAL CONSERVATION

We have heard the objection from many practical business men that the policy of the "conservation of National resources has been advocated too much by theorists and visionaries. Too little account, they say, has been taken by the Government of the pressing daily material needs of the farmer, the miner, and the manufacturer, whose business, life, and welfare depend almost wholly upon the use of our natural resources. There is undoubtedly considerable ground for this objection. It must be remembered, however, that no practical application of any principle can be effectively made until the theory of that principle has been carefully and scientifically worked out. We could not have had the electric light in our homes and offices if the theorists had not first worked out the laws of electricity in their laboratories.

So the first task of the conservationist was to create and foster public opinion to believe in the theoretical principle that it is the business of the people, through the agency of Government, to protect their own welfare by stopping the waste and destruction of those natural resources which form the essential material basis of our social and National life.

The second task is the practical application of the principle, and the time has now come for taking hold of that task in earnest.

The Government officer upon whom devolves the greatest responsibility both for the theoretical statement and the practical application of the doctrine of the conservation of National resources is the Secretary of the Interior. It is fortunate for the country that the present Secretary, Franklin K. Lane, is pre-eminently a man who by education and experience understands both phases