certain directions. But a short time ago he presented himself before an audience at Cooper Union and underwent a severe process of "heckling" in regard to his discharge of his stewardship. He emerged from the ordeal with undiminished credit, and, in the opinion of The Outlook, better evidence must be produced than has yet been brought forward before Mr. Jerome can be convicted of dereliction in office. The accusations, in almost every case, related to the acts of "high financiers" connected with insurance, traction, and Ice Trust matters. Few charges, if any, have been made that Mr. Jerome's general conduct of his office was inadequate. But in the cases in which he has been criticized it should be remembered that in the complicated realm of modern business it is one thing to have a moral conviction that a man has done wrong, and quite another to have the evidence which, under the impartial and critical eye of a court, will secure a legal conviction of the delinquent. Among the flying rumors of pre-campaign days it is frequently surmised that Mr. Jerome's candidacy will be indorsed by Tammany, that it will not be indorsed by Tammany, that he will and that he will not be nominated by the Republicans, that he will or will not receive the approval of the Committee of One Hundred. In any case, his presence in the campaign will help to save it from any possibility of dullness.

THE SEATTLE PRISON CONGRESS

The American Prison Association, which has recently held its annual meeting in Seattle, justified its name, with more than two hundred and sixty members from thirty-three States, and with a Canadian for President and official delegates from Cuba. The subjects were also those that all America needs to discuss if there is to be widespread reform, such as the abolition of sheriffs' fees, a vicious system, which was properly rebuked by men as far apart as Florida and Oregon; the indeterminate sentence, which had its strongest supporter in a man who has undergone the rigors of imprisonment in San Quentin Prison; the juvenile court, whose most brilliant exponent, Judge Lindsey, was kept talking morning, noon, and night on

this method of cutting off the supply of adult criminals; outdoor employment as that best fitted for the health, the discipline, and the morals of prisoners-the experience of Massachusetts, the South, and of the Pacific Coast showing the truth of these ideas. On the law side there were also earnest discussions as to the propagation of "the Indiana Idea," already adopted by Connecticut and California, which allows the State to so treat habitual and degraded criminals that they can never reproduce their kind, and as to the possibility of taking juvenile cases out of criminal courts and transferring them to the chancery courts. Still another suggestion demanding action, but which is now in practice in Maryland, was the advisability of a law compelling the examination of all prisoners by a physician before trial. As school-children must undergo a physical examination, which often reveals unsuspected disease, so, it is argued, a careful study of the man or woman under arrest may show that they are proper subjects for probation, or, which is equally important, that they should be placed, not only where they may be guarded from doing further harm in the community, but where they may receive proper medical and surgical treatment. Such a law should apply The broad scope

especially to the young. of the Congress was further seen in the three allied societies which make up the Association. The President of the Wardens' Association was from Virginia, of the Physicians' from Canada, and of the Chaplains' from the great Roman Catholic Church, the Rev. Aloys M. Fish, the devoted chaplain of the New Jersey State Prison. The President elected for the next year was Mr. Amos W. Butler, of Indiana, a man who deals in principles and with ideals, but who is not a warden. It is of great value to this Congress to have this close association of theorists and practical prison administrators. was once a time when the man who looked only at the scientific side was deemed a crank by the turnkey. It is easy to recall the day when even the advocate of temperance would not have met a too cordial reception for his ideas, but the Prison Congress has an open mind; no one theme called forth such prolonged and vehement applause as the suggestion

There

that prohibition should be invoked for the sake of preventing crime. The next session of this Congress will be contemporaneous with the International Prison Congress, which meets in Washington in October, 1910, with Dr. Charles Richmond Henderson as President, in place of

S. J. Barrows. There will be a good representation coming from Europe and South America, and from Australia and Tasmania also, it is hoped. Each adhering country has one official representative, but it may send as many more delegates as it pleases. The American Prison Association has a strong committee to act in harmony with this wider organization, and further knowledge and greater usefulness are looked for from this next double convention of penologists and criminologists from many States and many lands.

THE SMOKE ERROR

This is the happy designation by the by the St. Louis Times of the all-prevailing smoke nuisance. The Times points out to the new Mayor that the smoke nuisance of that city costs the business men a round million of dollars a year, unconsciously, of course. The principal sufferers are the large stores of various kinds, including

those that deal in fabrics which lose value by being soiled through the intangible drift of a sooted atmosphere. Clothiers and department stores and haberdashers, who deal in easily soiled goods, are the principal losers from the cause. These figures, however, large as they would seem to be, are underestimated if those of John Krause, Cleveland's Smoke Inspector, are well founded. Here they are:

Let us say that there are about 3,000,000 tons of coal used in Cleveland in a year, and that the use of 10 per cent of this amount is unnecessary. That means an annual loss of $600,000 through an unnecessary use of coal. Houses must be painted more frequently

when there is much smoke in a city. There

are about 75,000 homes in Cleveland, and, estimating the average cost at $50, the total cost of painting all the houses would be $3,750,000. I should say that a fair estimate of the painting waste would be about 25 per cent of this amount, or about $900,000, as homes must be painted a great deal oftener on account of smoke. Then there are laundry bills. If 100,000 men in Cleveland wear laundered collars and shirts, it would be fair to say that the waste each year amounts to $500,000, as every one of these men spends at

The evil is one of the great dangers of modern times, insidiously taking the health of the individual, lowering his vitality, increasing the death rate, and causing untold injury to property. In our cities live more than 30,000,000 people, and these suffer all the loss which is shown in the total of $600,000,000. The statement is based upon estimates made by Chicago, with $50,000,000 loss a year; Cleveland, with perhaps $4,000,000, and a number of other cities. It means a per capita loss of $20 a year to every man, woman, and child in these cities. The smoke nuisance means uncleanliness, poverty, wretchedness, disease, and death. The medical men of the country are unanimous in the declaration that the breathing of coal smoke predisposes the lungs to tuberculosis, and even more violent lung trouble, such as pneumonia.

The brighter side of this depressing picture is that Inspector Krause and Engineer Wilson believe that conditions are improving. The former is authority for the

statement that conditions in Cleveland are better now than they were. Mr. Wilson has declared, not only that smoke prevention is feasible, but that he stands ready to prove it by actual demonstration at the experiment station in Pittsburgh. "Altogether," he adds, " the investigations show that the smokeless American city is entirely possible, and that it will come when the public conscience is thoroughly awakened to the enormous waste of natural and human resources through this evil. The smoky city is to be a sign and relic of barbarism."

ive Sunday evenings this winter, for the continuance of Boston's Cooper Union is a gratifying testimony to the broadening social impulses of the Baptist denomination. These meetings are supported from funds left to the Baptist Social Union by the late Daniel Sharp Ford, of the Youth's Companion, and they were organized to meet the desire, expressed in Mr. Ford's will, for gatherings which should tend to dispel the increasing antagonism between employers and employed. For the first season there were six Sunday meetings only. The speakers were; five of them, preachers of National reputation (one being Rabbi Schulmann, of New York). But they did not preach at Ford Hall and no titles were assigned to them in the announcements. They won their heterogeneous audience by virtue of what they said rather than because of who they were. Last season there were twenty of the meetings; Keir Hardie, Rabbi Wise, Professor Joshi, of India, Professor Zueblin, Charles Sprague Smith, of Cooper Union, and Professor Walter Rauschenbusch, author of "Christianity and the Social Crisis," were among the speakers. About midway in the season prayer was introduced, and towards the end, the vast audience, made up from people of every faith and no faith, recited together "Our Father who art in heaven." A half-hour concert of excellent music preceded each evening's address, and questions from the floor were allowed for half an hour after the speaker had finished his talk. Never was there any kind of disorder and seldom was a question discourteous to the speaker or irrelevant to the topic of the evening. Yet everything from Socialism to the religion of India was discussed-everything, that is to say, which had in it the elements of moral and spiritual truth. The meetings were a success, and, when the season closed, the audience voted enthusiastically to urge the work's continuance this winter. To this end the people were glad to fill out the questionnaire which served to give the committee in charge desired data as to the residential distribution of Ford Hall habitués, their church preferences (if any), and their occupational activities. A little more than ten per cent were thus found to come in

to the meetings each week from places at a considerable distance-ten to twentyfive miles from Boston; twenty-five per cent came from Boston suburbs, while of the rest, about equal proportions were found to live in the immediate vicinity of the hall (Boston's Ghetto is on Beacon Hill's down slope) and in other parts of the city proper. Nearly sixty per cent of those who filled out the question-blanks declared themselves without interest in any form of organized religion. About twelve per cent were Jews and six per cent Roman Catholics; five per cent leaned to admiration for the Baptists, four per cent were Episcopalians, and about the same number Congregationalists and Methodists. Ten per cent of the regular comers are Unitarians. New Thought, Christian Science, Spiritualism, Quakerism. every phase of religious belief, indeed, appears to be represented in the audience. That the Ford Hall meetings are reaching just the people Mr. Ford wished to reach

the unchurched working folk—is further made clear by the returns on occupation. About forty per cent are trade-workers (and of these the greater number are members, too, of trade-unions); thirty per cent are clerks and salespeople. Yet that professional folk and students are also enormously interested in social questions is shown by the fact that nearly fifteen per cent of the Ford Hall audience come under the former head, and about the same number under the latter.

THREE

ENGLISH NOVELS

Among the fiction of the summer we find three readable books by English writers and about English life at home or in the colonies. Mr. Arnold Bennett's "The Old Wives' Tale" (Hodder & Stoughton) is notable in that the author deliberately paints in minute detail the commonplace events of a rather dull middle-class provincial English family, and yet manages to keep the reader's interest aroused and intent from the beginning. The novel is of unusual length, and only in the central part of the narrative does the sluggish movement change into exciting action, to return again toward the end to the simple annals of the lives and deaths of the "old wives " and their neigh

bors. To make such a book thoroughly enjoyable, as it certainly is, forms a literary tour de force on which Mr. Bennett is to be congratulated. For subtle delineation of character and motive, natural conversation, and interest of plot, “The Long Gallery," by Eva Lathbury (Holt), holds a distinct place among recent fiction. The life-story of the husband and wife, the principal factors, is clearly sketched against the background of the subsidiary characters, who move in rather a whimsically elusive atmosphere of wood fairies and spirits of ancestors; and the seal is put on their respective characters in the spirited marital duel of words in the last chapter. There is material enough for several plots in the book, and the story is at times involved; but it is well told, it shows creative power, imagination, sincerity, and its ideas are essentially of human interest. A contrast to these peaceful studies of English life is Mr. S. P. Hyatt's "The End of the Road" (Appleton). Here we have the hard, brutal facts of the miners' and "transport riders'" life in South Africa. The book is obviously a direct description of actuality, and the story is really a first-hand "human document," having positive value as information and some dramatic quality also.

THE SOUTH AMERICANS IN GENERAL

The conflict between Bolivia and Argentina calls attention to the latest books on South America; first of all to some general survey of all the thirteen countries, such as may be found in Mr. Chase S. Osborn's "The Andean Land" (McClurg). Mr. Osborn has visited every Latin-American country. He has written a work intended for the general reader, for the tourist, and for the business man who wishes to understand the South American markets. He has apparently a sympathetic understanding of the Latin temperament, and hence when he attempts to describe the South American, his manners, customs, and character, the description will be the more apt to be accepted by us. In one respect, however, Mr. Osborn's experience hardly tallies with that of some other travelers in South America. He declares that the lower stratum of seciety has no manners at all, and that the upper stratum, to the

time of our war with Spain, was always "pleased to refer to us as 'Yankee pigs,' and similar expressions. But let us see. The Spaniard rarely uncovers his head to a woman, no matter how quickly he may do so to a masculine superior. Likewise he very rarely takes a bath, and it may almost be said of him that he never does unless he gets caught out in the rain or falls off the dock. His table manners may be good form in Spain, and no doubt are, but they are very different from ours. He champs his maxillaries like a Berkshire, is never afraid of cutting his mouth, and eschews any object he may chance not to swallow with the force of a blowgun without reference to precise direction." This excerpt is an exception to Mr. Osborn's general consideration of South American susceptibilities. His statements concerning Bolivia will be read with special interest at this time of dispute concerning her boundaries. They have always been more or less in dispute. In 1842 there was a clash on this account between Chile and Bolivia, and in the seventies between Peru and Bolivia. The clash between the latter Governments was settled by an alliance, which then turned against Chile and resulted in war. Peru and Bolivia are only now recovering from the terrible state into which the war plunged them. The mineral resources of both countries have been found to be richer and more varied than was supposed, and are developing rapidly. Up to the present crisis there was even talk of a union between the countries—a proposition, so Mr. Osborn informs us, favored by the solid interests of both nations. While Chile might oppose such a union, for Bolivia's sake the union would seem to be especially desirable, since Bolivia is the only South American country without a seaport. Again, there may be some possibility of the absorption of Bolivia by some one of its three powerful neighbors, Argentina, Brazil, or Chile. A fortunate escape might be in a union with Peru similar to the union existing between Austria and Hungary.

just published reprint of Charles Waterton's "Wanderings in South America in the years 1812, 1816, 1820, and 1824" (Sturgis & Walton). This is almost as fascinating a book as is White's "Natural History of Selborne." Such intense lovers of nature drew pictures of life not only entertaining for the moment but for all time. This is emphasized by the fact that Guiana, to which the greater part of the work is devoted, is practically the same now as it was then. Waterton penetrated the inmost recesses of the jungle, even beyond the habitations of the primitive Indians. Another book to be commended is "Chile," a handbook compiled by the International Bureau of American Republics. A peculiar interest attaches to the volume because of Chile's severance a few weeks ago of diplomatic relations with Bolivia, resulting from the publication in the latter country of copies of secret despatches alleged to have passed between the Bolivian representatives of Santiago, the Chilean capital, and President Montes, of Bolivia. The despatches purported to show that Chile had advised Bolivia to move troops to the Peruvian frontier, and had offered in aid money, arms, ammunition, and officers. Color is lent to this report from the well-known aggressiveness of the Chileans. But the Bolivian Government is probably shrewd enough to look askance at the Chilean Government when it comes bearing such gifts; the price for them would doubtless be the settlement, in Chile's favor, of long-standing boundary questions between her and Bolivia and Peru respectively. In these both Bolivia and Peru have apparently had not a little right to feel aggrieved. However this may be, the present volume will only emphasize Chile in the opinion of the informed as a country of great resources, and should open the eyes of the uninformed to the remarkable civilization existing on the South American west coast. No one can read the description of Santiago, and turn over page after page of the illustrations reproducing the superb architecture to be found in that city, with out feeling anew a sense of how little we know of our Southern neighbors. The book in question also contains valuable information concerning Chile's area, population, topography, government, educa

tional facilities, industry, trade, and transportation, and especially concerning the Chilean character, which makes Chileans "the New Englanders of the South."

THE REAL JAPANESE

ទ

The publication by the Japanese Government of "The Financial and Economic Annual " gives in condensed form a valuable summary of statistics concerning Japanese commercial, industrial, and transportation conditions. But they need interpretation, and among the helps in this direction may be mentioned Mr. H. B. Montgomery's recently published "The Empire of the East" (McClurg). Mr. Montgomery believes that Japan will astonish the world in commerce more than she has yet done, that she will capture most of the Chinese trade, that there will be an enormous development in her dealings with America, that Japan will be commercially influenced by the West, that what she needs she will take from the West, and that what she does not need she will leave alone, but that, no matter how much the Japanese may mingle with Americans and Europeans, they will be true to their past and remain always essentially Japanese; finally, that the time is not distant when Japan will be commercially independent of America and Europe, whose good customer she has been hitherto, and that, in any event, Japan will become securely and permanently one of the great world Powers. Unlike some observers, Mr. Montgomery does not anticipate any deleterious international influences as a result of Japan's expanded foreign commerce, because he is convinced, certainly more than they are, that Japan does not possess "the attributes of greed, covetousness, aggressiveness, and overbearing." Perhaps not as to the first two, possibly not as to the fourth, but surely as to the third! Most observers will, we believe, agree with Mr. Montgomery that the Japanese are a people of such character, purpose, will, adaptability, and cleverness as well to correspond to his forecast. Certainly they have given splendid accounts of themselves, not only in industry and trade and transportation, but in every field in which their activities have been engaged. The total result of these activities, whether employed in such direc