The Indian Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition the de facto or hold-over Government was rumored.

One never knows when an after-election war in a Central American state may through some excess boil over and become an international question. Honduras has an elegant republican Constitution, beautiful to peruse but neatly arranged so that it shelves itself in case of any real trouble.

An Empire Exhibition

W

HEN the Prince of Wales as head of the British Empire Exhibition formally asked his royal father to declare the great show at Wembley open, and when King George replied in an excellent speech, hundreds of thousands of people for the first time heard royalty talk through radio; that in itself was not one of the least wonders of the exhibition and a reminder as well of the advance of human attainment since the day, over seventy years ago, when Victoria opened the Crystal Palace Exhibition. Another modern touch was the telegraphing of the King's speech entirely around the

world on British cables and wires, the first word returning to Wembley before the last word was on the wire.

By all accounts, the display at this Exhibition is notably fine, and naturally it is varied. Canada, Australia, and India take a large part of the 220 acres of space, but every one of the British dominions, colonies, protectorates, and mandated territories is represented. is represented. Some $200,000,000 has been expended on the Exhibition, and it is believed that it will be seen by at least 25,000,000 people.

King George summed up the serious purpose of this homecoming of the colonies, as apart from the elements of beauty, art, and the curious, when he said:

Politics and the Public Schools

B

ECAUSE interference with the public schools on the part of politicians is anything but a local performance, the recent dismissal of Dr. William L. Ettinger, Superintendent of Schools in New York City, may well be a matter of general interest. The public schools present a very tempting field to politicians of the spoils-hunting variety. American municipalities have found it necessary to guard very carefully this greatest American asset against the corruption and inefficiency that goes with political control:

The schools of New York lie peculiarly at the mercy of the Mayor of that city. He selects the members of the Board of Education without restriction. There is no requirement of knowledge of education, or even of business. The Board of Education has exclusive power to select the Superintendent of Schools and eight associate superintendents, who comprise the Board of Superintendents, and, upon nomination of the Board of Superintendents, appoints the 26 district superin. tendents and the heads of high schools. The Board of Education also has power to select from an eligible list, supplied by the Civil Service Commission, the Board of Examiners, which, in turn, passes on the eligibility of the teachers in general and the heads of elementary schools. It is only too obvious how an unscrupulous or ignorant Mayor not only could dominate but could easily destroy the efficiency and morale of the whole Educational Department.

Superintendent Ettinger, after six successful years as Superintendent and many years of service in the public schools, was dismissed, without warning and within but a few days of the end of his term, long after he should have been notified of a reappointment or dismissal. President G. J. Ryan, of the Board of Education, gave several reasons for the dismissal of Dr. Ettinger. Mr. Ryan charged that the Superintendent had failed to co-operate with the Board and with the city administration, that he had neglected budget-making, and refused to make annual reports. It was also charged that he had refused to allow himself to be "investigated" by New York's picturesque Commissioner of Accounts Hirshfield.

'cently been taken away by the State Legislature. The remaining charges, if true, might indeed justify the dismissal of Dr. Ettinger. As to the neglect of the budget, newspaper men were well aware that Dr. Ettinger had spent long, hot summer hours over it. But it is very possible that he did not fully co-operate with the Board and with the city admin'istration. About seventy associations, interested in education and in civic betterment, seemed to think this to be to Dr. Ettinger's credit.

Co-operation or Subservience?

fused re-election solely because he was not a dutiful servant of political bosses." The dismissal has aroused an indignant public opinion, and there is an increasingly powerful demand that the schools be removed from the possibility of such easy political influence. If this demand results in a reorganization that will make the schools reasonably independent of political interference and control, it is most likely that Dr. Ettinger will feel his dismissal brought about a great and lasting benefit to the schools to which he had given so many years of faithful service.

Dr. G. Stanley Hall

BY

y the death of Dr. G. Stanley Hall, on April 24, America lost one of her foremost pioneers in the development of modern psychology. Not many years ago psychology was merely an adjunct to courses in philosophy. Dr. Hall was

Journal of Experimental Psychology,"
the first publication of its kind in Eng-
lish. His
lish. His success at Johns Hopkins
brought about his appointment to the
presidency of Clark University in 1888,
where he also acted as Professor of Psy-
chology.

He was, as we said, a pioneer. Some are inclined in these days to smile a little condescendingly on some of his greatest works, such as the two monumental volumes on adolescence. And yet these very volumes are veritable mines of information, the result of an immense amount of inquiry and observation. His writings have been voluminous and often very useful, but it is particularly notable that it was he who brought modern psychology to America. Such advances as we have made and these are considerable are very largely built on the foundations laid by G. Stanley Hall.

one of those aggressive and independent Murphy, Chieftain

students who helped give this important branch of learning its present independent position.

A graduate of Williams College, he attended the Universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, and Berlin, and came under the influence of German professors who, led by Wundt, had begun to develop psychology as a system of ascertainable facts. Through the influence of Wundt, Dr. Hall established an experimental laboratory at Johns Hopkins, at which time he also founded the "American

(C) Keystone

Dr. G. Stanley Hall, University president, psychologist, author

N Monday of last week, in the morning, Fifth Avenue for nearly two miles was almost solidly lined with crowds of people, and at Fiftieth Street the steps and sidewalk outside of St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Cathedral were black with people. It was the tribute New York City paid to the man who for nearly twenty-two years had been its real ruler.

Once this man was a horse-car driver. Then he became a saloon-keeper. Now his body lay in state in the crowded Cathedral while a bishop and priests chanted the requiem mass. On the day of his death, the preceding Friday, the United States Senate paused to hear a tribute paid to him. The flags on the city's municipal buildings were at halfstaff. Private citizens and public officeholders in various parts of the country publicly expressed admiration for him as a leader and as a man. And yet Charles Francis Murphy held no public office, and had held but one of any importance during his whole public career. It is said that he was very proud of the fact that he had once been Dock Commissioner; and yet he had for a score of years been wielding a power before which commissioners and mayors had trembled. He ruled the city of New York by virtue of being leader of Tammany Hall.

Murphy was a sort of king or thane. He was the embodiment of the spirit of the tribe. He was as truly a tribal chieftain as any who ruled among our

ancestors in the forests of Europe. The word "king" is supposed to be related to the word "kin." The king is the kin-ing

-that is, the son of the tribe or clan. In him originally was concentrated the I will of the clan. He proved himself to be the clan chieftain by virtue of his fitness. He had to be master in bodily strength, in will power, in craft, and in that sort of personality that inspires a loyal following. Among the Irish in New York, as elsewhere, the spirit of the tribe has been strong. Murphy succeeded to the leadership in the orthodox way. He was strong physically. As a boy he be

been elevated on the shields of the warrior tribesmen.

It is the Tammany tribe that rules New York, and the chieftain rules the tribe. The chieftain's power, however, is not mere despotism. On the contrary, it is a sort of concentrated democratic power which he wields because he does not substitute his will for the will of the tribe, but is skillful in ascertaining the will of the tribe and is forceful in putting that will into effect. Judged by any standards, Charles Francis Murphy was the best chieftain that the tribe of Tamheld its power many has ever had. H longer than any other. He increased its influence. He elevated its standards. He did these things not because he had any great ideal toward which he was working; but because he had the tribal virtues, and he exercised them with unusual sagacity.

came leader because of his skill and endurance in baseball and as an oarsman. He kept a saloon near Avenue A, away over on the East Side; and a man had to be a strong man to handle the crowd in a place like that. He had certain standards which he maintained in his "place." No woman was allowed to en- Fundamental among these tribal virNo filthy language was permitted tues is that of loyalty. Murphy was in his presence. When Richard Croker to the tribe and loyal to all its abdicated, Murphy became his successor, by a process of natural selection. He became chieftain as truly as if he had

ter.

members, and he required loyalty of others. He could fight hard and then forgive, but he could never forgive an

opponent whom he believed to be in the least disloyal. One of his chief opponents was Devery, notorious as a..corrupt Police Commissioner.. Murphy "broke" him; not because Devery was corrupt, but because, in Murphy's opinion, Devery was disloyal and cowardly. In his judgments of men, Murphy, the chieftain, was often magnanimous. He frequently gave to his henchmen the benefit of the doubt. If a man turned against him and joined his enemies, fighting secretly, Murphy usually knew very well what was happening, but he was willing often to forgive the unfaithful on the ground that they had been misled. And those whom he forgave became bound to him by new ties of t tribal affection and sense of obligation. Many of Murphy's ethical views were low, to say the least; but they were not degenerate; they were, rather, primitive. Charles Francis Murphy could read and write; but it is not likely that he profited very much by his knowledge either of writing or even of reading. All his work he did by personal contact. His information he got by word of mouth. His taciturnity was a matter of policy. For the exercise of his power he had no need of many words. He let others do the talking. He chose rather to act.

He had the personal morals that gowith the tribal sense. He kept himself in hand that he might do the work that he had to do. Undoubtedly he profited greatly by his position. Some of his money he undoubtedly made in the saloon business, but the rest of it must have come to him by virtue of his position as ruler. Under Murphy it was that the system of graft became, to use Plunkett's famous phrase, "honest graft." A contract given to a friend or relative, a profit on real estate speculation made certain by advance knowledge concerning a new street to be put through or a new building to be erected—that, in the tribal ethics, is all right enough provided some of the profits are handed about among the henchmen.

During Murphy's rule city govern ment has improved and Tammany Hall has become less disreputable. This is largely because Murphy's conception of the tribe grew with the years-it had come to include Jews and even Protestants. It had expanded to include the State; and at the time of his death Murphy was hoping and planning to make his tribe of Tammany and New York the

leading tribe in the tribal confederation of the Nation. His ambition was expanding beyond the limits of a petty chieftainship. He was no longer content to be the ruler of six million people; he wanted his tribe to furnish the official head of a hundred and ten million. He was beginning to realize that this ambition could not be fulfilled unless his tribe conformed to the standards that prevailed elsewhere. He had outgrown that stage of tribal culture which made it possible for Tweed to treat matters of public morals with cynicism and for Croker naïvely to acknowledge that he was working for his own pocket all the time.

So the chieftain has passed. In American democracy this tribal view is one of the elements. It is responsible for much corruption, but it is also responsible for some essential contributions to the government of a mixed people. It is developing and gradually improving. Those who fight against it have rid it of much of its evils and have made it conform to

in the beginning of this century as we have anywhere seen.

If it is true, as Mr. Clive Bell says, that cubism has taught artists that a formal harmony is the indispensable basis of every work of art and that design is the first requisite of pictorial creation, then the suffering which people have undergone in the contemplation of the most modern of the moderns has been indeed worth while. This emphasis upon design and form (although there have been many who have not been able to recognize the form and the design which some moderns have discovered in their own work) is helpful in the co-ordination of painting with its sister arts. It leads the mind away from the easel picture placed in a room without any relation to its decorative value or its surroundings and towards a conception of the use of paintings as part of a unified scheme of decoration which conceives a room or a building as an artistic whole. To us the most interesting sentence in Mr. Bell's article

is his statement that modern artists "hope to learn the secret . . . of so perfectly fusing a human emotion with an æsthetic that the form shall remain as pure as if it were abstract." That is indeed a daring hope, a hope which requires not only the will to perform but also minds which are capable of achieving it. Rembrandt, Raphael, and the Athenian sculptors-these men were among the outstanding intellects of their time. The ambitions which Mr. Bell ascribes to our modern artists are not to be achieved along the road of dilettante theory, but require consecration and concentration of purpose for their fulfill

To put aside, for the moment, abstract theory for practical application, it cannot be denied that modern art has greatly stimulated the development of dramatic technique. We are thinking, for instance, of such a play as "Man and the Masses," staged by Simonson for the Theater Guild in New York City. There is one scene in this play which almost exactly illustrates Mr. Bell's definition of the aim of modern art. It is a perfect fusion of human and æsthetic emotion.

In this drama of revolution the composition of the stage scene is almost beyond criticism. In the scene shown on the opposite page the balance of the members of the mob constitutes an amazingly clear illustration of the value of composition and form. Hardly moving from their seats in the amphitheater, they are nevertheless so rhythmically, so successfully "conducted" that pure form becomes for the watcher an emotional experience. Mr. Simonson has taken the theory of modern art and applied it with a skill of which few modern artists are intellectually capable.

child labor abuses; and twice the Supreme Court has made the effort of Congress null and void. Advocates of National control of child labor conditions are to be congratulated on their success, so far as it has now been attained, after an earnest struggle of many years and against opposition which, if not numerically large, has been bitter.

Desirable as is the actual object sought, there can be no question that in this case Congress is attempting to exercise its legislative function through Constitutional amendment. That this is not the best way of dealing with individual demands from the people is held by most students of government. As we have more than once pointed out, the more desirable procedure would be to provide for the approval of the States an amendment to the Constitution that should be a statement of principle rather than a specific law; one that should give Congress power to act by legislation so as to prevent the evils of unfair competition which, under present conditions of unrestricted inter-State commerce, now arise when the laws of the different States conflict in such a way as to give the citizens of some States an unfair industrial advantage over those of other States. There is real danger that, if the process of legislating by amending the Constitution goes on, we shall have a long list of laws cast in amendment form which attempt to deal with separate cases as they come up. There is a difference of opinion as to what the police power of the Federal Government does properly include, and the situation calls for broad definition through an amendment.

There can be no doubt that under such a broad amending of the Constitution as has just been suggested it would be possible for courts to pass laws which would deal adequately with the child labor situation. That situation is not only one to engage the interest of all humanitarians, but presents a real problem and involves important industrial difficulties.

One apt illustration of the industrial trouble caused either by conflicting child labor laws or by the absence in certain States of any genuine effort to regulate child labor appears in statements published regarding the cotton-textile industry of New England. It is stated that there is immediate danger of a general strike of 150,000 workers in this industry--and this despite the fact that about 100,000 mill hands have been idle for

months in New England. The mill com-. panies declare that if they are to reopen mills, or even continue those now at work, they must reduce wages by twenty per cent; the unions are preparing to fight this reduction. The situation of the industry in that section is evidently one of depression.

Now, when we come to ask what is the basis of the trouble with the New England cotton industry, the answer is not merely that raw material has been high. Little stress seems to be laid upon this point. The situation described by a correspondent of the New York "Herald Tribune" is simple:

Mill owners and manufacturers blame the competition of Southern mills and the failure of the export trade for the crisis in the New England industry. Cheaper labor costs enable the Southern manufacturers to market goods more readily, and with the limited demand for cotton goods, due to the high cost of raw materials, they say the New England mills have been almost shut out of the market.

All this results from the fact that the New England States have child labor laws and try to enforce them, while Southern States either have difficulties in enforcement of the laws or lack satisfactory laws. The textile manufacturers of New England, consequently, declare themselves convinced that they are suffering from unfair competition. The Supreme Court will not allow Congress to pass laws regulating child labor the country over and asserts that the Federal Government's power to legislate as regards inter-State commerce cannot legally be brought to bear on the situation. Evidently the appeal must be to the Constitution, and, until such a blanket amendment is adopted as we have advocated, such inequalities as those of the child labor question and those growing out of differing State legislation as to minimum wages and working hours and conditions for women can be dealt with only through an amendment to meet each case-awkward and illogical as such a series of amendments may be.

The very large majority by which the resolution for a Child Labor Constitutional Amendment was adopted has caused varied comment. Of the 69 Representatives who voted against it 56 are Democrats, and it is argued that they voted against the measure because it was a Republican proposal rather than on its merits. It is said that "it is hardly con