found needful to superintend the affairs of commerce." The Sultan claims (and it is difficult to prove the contrary) that there is no commerce at the place in questionthe same objection made to the establishment of a consulate at Erzrum. Further more, he claims that his final permission in the case of Erzrum was obtained under an implied understanding that the United States Government would abandon its claim to a consulate at the other place. While it is admitted at Washingon that there may have been foundation for this understanding, it is said that the British Government has since established a consulate where one is now refused to us, and, under the favored-nation clause of the Turco-American treaty, our Government claims the same privileges as those accorded to Great Britain. The visit of the battleship Kentucky to Smyrna may relate to this question as well as to the larger one of missionary indemnity.

The Hawaiian Election

The results of the recent election in Hawaii, if correctly reported, afford a new illustration, if one were needed, that it is a political mistake to attempt to base the initiation of a new State on universal suffrage, regardless of the character and development of the people who constitute the community. In the Republic of Hawaii a limited property qualification was attached to the suffrage. The Congres sional Committee recommended that this qualification be retained. The recommendation was overruled by Congress, which extended the suffrage to all residents who could read and write either Hawaiian or English. The result has been the election of a Legislature reported to be in favor of annulling the annexation to the United States and restoring the native monarchy, and a delegate to the United States who is said to have won his election by pledging himself to favor this policy of a restoration of Hawaiian monarchical rule. Such a restoration is, of course, so highly improbable that the policy need not be regarded seriously; but what is serious is the introduction into Hawaii of a race conflict analogous to that in the Southern States, with an imminent peril that, unless the constitutional qualifications of suffrage

are changed, the Hawaiian vote will be on one side, the white vote on the other, and the men of thrift and property will be compelled to choose between the rule of unscrupulous demagogues leading an irresponsible people on the one hand, and, on the other, measures indefensible except on the ground that self-preservation is the first law of nature, to protect themselves from such a result.

The Parting of the Ways

It may, indeed, be said that if the native Hawaiians did not desire annexation, the United States should not have conceded it to the Republic of Hawaii. If this be true, then the vote of the native Hawaiians should have been taken on the question of annexation before Hawaii was annexed. But we can conceive no argument for a policy which allowed a minority composed of the property-owners and the income-earners-for both classes were included under the old property qualifications to determine that Hawaii should be a Republic under American sovereignty, and then allowed a majority, composed largely of the idle, the incompetent, and the thriftless, to elect in that Republic a Legislature in favor of a return to the old-time native monarchy. The truth is that the Republican party is trying to ride two horses which are going in divergent if not opposite directions, and that is always an impossible circus feat. The Republican party of the reconstruction period committed itself to the policy of universal suffrage-one man one vote, regardless of the character of the man; the Republican party of the expansion period stands in Porto Rico and the Philippines on the principle that in the formation of a government the smaller number of wisest and best men must frame the government and administer it until the less capable have acquired capacity to take their place in the administration of the government. The first policy holds that the declaration that all men are created equal means equal in political authority as well as in natural rights; the second qualifies this clause by the one which follows it in the Declaration of Independence, and interprets it to mean equal in their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Republican party must

country, the "Bulletin " shows that the general level of prices has changed as follows:

Average Price Price Price Sept. Sept. 1879-89. 1896. 1900. .100

66 staple articles.. 71 88 These results for the United States correspond closely with those obtained by both Sauerbeck and the London " Economist" for England, and those obtained by Conrad for Germany. In all these countries during the past four years there has been a general advance in prices amounting to over twenty per cent.; $1,200 will not today buy as much food, clothing, furniture, and building materials as would $1,000 in 1896. Certain charges strongly influenced by custom, such as car-fares, fees, and even rents, have changed relatively little, but in general the purchasing power of money has fallen about fifteen per cent. Whether or not wages have risen that amount cannot yet be determined. Commissioner Wright's figures, published in these columns last month, would indicate that wages have not risen half as much as prices, but, as his figures indicated also that wages did not fall half as much as prices during the four years of hard times, they can hardly be accepted as reliable. Nobody who has observed industrial conditions believes that wageearners are worse off than in 1896, or that they were then better off than in 1892, before the world-wide fall in prices set in.

As the official returns for The Popular Vote the recent election continue to come in, it becomes more and more evident that a relatively smaller vote was polled this year than four years ago. In most of the Southern States, and in some of the uncontested Northern States, such as Maine and Oregon, there was a positive decline in the total vote, while in still others that were warmly contested, such as Ohio and Illinois, the increase over the vote of four years ago was less than three per cent. This increase, of course, was less than the increase in the population. Take the country over, the aggregate increase in the vote was hardly one hundred thousand. Mr. McKinley's vote is almost exactly what it was in 1896. Mr. Bryan's vote is a trifle less than the aggregate he received in 1896, though a trifle

more than he then received on the Democratic and Fusion tickets. About onehalf of the anti-Fusion Populists, who in 1896 voted for Bryan and Watson, cast their votes this year for Barker and Donnelly. We are informed by one of the leaders of this wing of the Populist party that many of its supporters voted this year for Mr. McKinley, "not to indorse his policies, but to kill Fusion." The Prohibition vote, though nearly double that polled in 1896, does not seem to be quite as large as it was in 1892. only party which made decided gains was the Socialist. The aggregate vote of the Socialists this year was approximately one hundred and forty thousand, or just four times their vote in 1896. The entire increase, however, has come through the newly organized Social Democratic wing, which polled over one hundred thousand votes for Mr. Debs, as against barely thirty thousand polled by the Socialist Labor wing for Mr. Malloney. The results for all parties put in tabular form stand approximately as follows:

Republican ticket, but the reports received from Colorado indicate that most of the active woman suffragists were anti-imperialists, and that the Fusion party received practically as large a share of the women's vote as of the men's. The fact that two of the four woman suffrage States, Wyoming and Utah, gave Republican majorities, and that the other two. Colorado and Idaho, gave Fusion majorities, indicates that this year, as in the past, the chief effect of woman suffrage was to increase the voting power of men with families, since nearly all married women voted with their husbands and nearly all unmarried women voted with their fathers. As to the question how generally the women voted, the reports from all States show that they voted almost as uniformly as the men. A despatch from Wyoming stating that the women cast at least 7,000 votes of 23,000 polled indicates no exception to this rule, for the census of 1890 showed that in Wyoming women constituted less than one-third of the adult population. As to the general effect of woman suffrage upon the character of the campaign, we have seen no report half so interesting as that of Secretary Long, who during the campaign was visiting his daughters, both of whom are voters in Colorado. Secretary Long, it should be remarked, was an advocate of woman suffrage before his visit, and what he saw merely confirmed his prepossessions. As reported in the Boston "Journal," his observations were as follows:

Prior to the election there was no undue

excitement; the great mass of women, like the great mass of men, were about their ordinary business. There were some women, as there were a great many men, who were talking politics and acting on committees for securing the registration of voters. On elec

tion day I was at the polls at one of the wards where there were more than a thousand votes registered, and where 899 actually voted. Nothing could be more orderly or better conducted. Men and women lined up in the usual fashion, taking their turn at the ballotbox, and after depositing their votes went about their business. A few women and a few men-perhaps more than women-were active in bringing voters to the polls. But there was nothing to jar the most sensitive spectator. On the contrary, it was the exercise in a becoming way and in a fine spirit of the interest which every citizen, man or woman, ought to feel in such an important event as a Presidential election. The tendency is to elevate and broaden and not to degrade or impair.

The State Police Bill The Republican party in New York State will make a great mistake if it passes Senator Platt's State Police Bill. We say this without waiting to see what the terms of the bill are; that is not necessary; for Mr. T. C. Platt's son, in a temperate letter to the New York Evening Post.” has made perfectly clear what its object is to be. That object is to take the police of New York City out of the control of Tammany by putting them under the control of a State Board; and the argument for the bill is that only in this way will it be possible to take from Tammany the political power exercised through the police both by overawing and by favoritism, and that unless this power is taken from Tammany it will be difficult if not impossible to defeat it in the municipal election next fall. The answer to this argument is very simple and very conclusive. In order to defeat Tammany it is absolutely necessary to unite all the anti-Tammany forces in one movement. If a Republican Legislature passes a bill the object and effect of which are to take the police of the city out of the control of municipal authorities and put them under the control of State authorities, it will alienate a large Democratic and Independent vote and make political union impossible. There are a great many men in New York who will never vote to ratify a transference of the police from a Democratic to a Repub lican organization. They will prefer to endure the ills they know than fly to ills they know not of. They will have more hope of reforming Tammany from within than of reforming the city by transferring its control from Croker to Platt, or from a Democratic city to a Republican State organization. No doubt many up-country members regard the prejudices in New York City against Mr. Platt as irrational and baseless. Nevertheless they exist; and the wise politician recognizes in popular prejudices a political force and reckons with them. If the Republican Legislature wishes to fasten the control of Tammany on the city for another term, it can do nothing more likely to secure that result than passing a bill, no matter how framed, the object and effect of which are to transfer the police of the city from the control of a municipal to the control of a State Board. To do this would be to sacrifice

the principle of home rule without gaining impartial enforcement of the election laws.

The New York

The Appellate DiAnti-Trust Law Ineffective vision of the Supreme Court of the State of New York has handed down a decision which restrains the AttorneyGeneral from compelling the officers of the Ice Trust to appear before the referee appointed to take testimony. The Court, with the support of all but two of its judges, holds that the New York statute authorizes action "to restrain and prevent" the consummation of trust agreements, but authorizes no action "to vacate, annul, or set aside" such agreements. Therefore, says the Court, al though the papers in the case go to show that, through the power granted the American Ice Company "to own the stock of other corporations," the company has created a practical monopoly and increased prices to whatever figures it thought profitable, nevertheless the statute does not provide the remedy sought. The Court concludes by saying that, inasmuch as the statute is "in the highest degree inquisitorial," its enforcement must be "confined strictly within the limits of objects its wording points out." One judge, in a separate opinion, declares that a State law cannot adequately protect the officers of a trust when it compels them to testify in a suit against themselves, for their testimony may be made the basis of a sub sequent suit in the Federal Courts. Although the rest of the Court did not specifically sustain this objection, the drift of the decision seemed to sustain the view that even a more effective State law would need further support from Federal legislation. Nevertheless, State legislation requiring manufacturing corporations to throw their books open to public examination in the same way that banking and insurance corporations are now required to do is clearly within the rights of the State, and so is legislation denying to corporations the right to purchase the stock of competitors with the object or effect of creating a monopoly, The courts have for generations firmly declared against private monopolies, and they will continue to outlaw the old foe in its new form.

optimistic. The admirable review of the progress of charitable action during the past half-century by Mr. Frederic Almy, of Buffalo, set the tune, and though at times there were minor strains, as a whole a jubilant tone characterized the two days' meetings of the first State Conference of Charities and Correction. It was really surprising to see how much has been accomplished in the way of care for all sorts of distressed humanity, and how extremely modern many of the best methods are. One of the most modern is the settlement work in its various phases, with its opportunity to study social problems at first hand and with sympathy. Mr. James B. Reynolds made the life and work most attractive as he delineated the methods of the New York University Settlement with which he is connected as head worker. It was enough to make the prevalent spirit a hopeful one to come in close contact with young men like Mr. Almy, Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Folks, and Mr. Devine, of New York, Mr. Glenn, of Baltimore, Mr. Hebberd, of Albany, and many others, who have hardly yet reached middle life, devoting their strength and abilities to the cause of humanity. It gave renewed courage to those who have long borne the burden of the day-men like Mr. W. R. Stewart and Mr. Letchworth. It is not strange, then, that the first New York Conference opened with a cheerful atmosphere. There is another side to the shield, and it was fearlessly held up that all might see. Though New York has made such excellent provision for epileptics at Craig Colony, there are nearly nine hundred more applicants for admission than can be received. Though the imbecile and feeble-minded have excellent care in several State institutions, yet it is not considered wise to advertise this fact, lest the thousands who might apply for places for the unhappy children who are hidden from sight in private houses should overwhelm the superintendents with the task of writing, "We have no room.” Yet every day that the State turns a deaf ear to such appeals she is hastening the day when the need for succor and protection will be multiplied, who can say how many fold? In penal matters the unsat