under fair conditions and under the wise care of a fostering Government are boundless.

Under the shelter of Protection the rural industries of Great Britain may be revived, especially if the British peasantry be re-created. A hundred years ago the great agricultural authority, Arthur Young, wrote: "The magic of property turns sand into gold. Give a man a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden. Give him a nine years' lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert." Since the time when these words were written most European countries have created a freehold peasantry by buying out the landed proprietors and settling the rural labourers on the land, and Great Britain will be wise in following their example.

The tripartite question of Fiscal Protection for the home market, of an Imperial Customs Union, and of Imperial Federation is not a party question. It is a question of life or death for Great Britain. It may soon become a question of prosperity or starvation for the masses. Great Britain stands at the parting of the ways. She must either protect and re-create her industries, federate with her colonies, and make the British Empire a reality, or sink into insignificance, and history knows no instance of a great nation becoming a small one without the most intense suffering to the masses of the people. Great Britain must either adopt that constructive and protective national policy which the greatest statesmen and Empire builders of modern times-Richelieu, Cromwell, Colbert, Lord Chatham, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Stein, and Bismarck-have pursued, or she will share the fate of the great commercial world empires of the past, from Phoenicia to the Netherlands. She must either follow the policy of Mr. Chamberlain, build up the Empire and make it strong and prosperous, or that of revolutionary demagogues, who will wreck the Empire

and drag Great Britain through plunder and ruin to destruction and anarchy.

The experience of other industrial nations allows us to conclude that a wisely framed protective tariff will save the British industries and improve employment and wages. But better wages alone will not improve the position of the workers. A large part of the British working class must alter their personal habits, and especially their drinking habits. At present every rise in wages leads immediately to a great increase in the Drink Bill, and therefore benefits rather the brewer than the worker. "The strongest answer to the theory that poverty causes drink is the statistical fact that as wages rise general drunkenness follows, insanity increases, and criminal disorders due to drink keep pace with all three. Wherever one seeks for information dispassionately, one sees that drink does cause poverty to a greater extent, overwhelmingly so, than that poverty causes drink. Poverty is due to intemperance in varying degrees from twenty-five to fifty-one per cent. of cases and areas investigated."1 "The Committee on Physical Deterioration in 1904 declared that if the drink question were removed threefourths of the difficulty with regard to poverty and deterioration would disappear with it." The drinking 15s. 4d. per

section of the working class spends 187. family on drink,3 a sum much larger than that spent on rent. "There are two great causes of physical deterioration-these are dirt and drink. The former is responsible for nearly every form of disease. The latter is the direct cause of the vast number of defects." 4 "The most

urgently needed public health reform of the present day

'Burns, Labour and Drink, pp, 15, 18.

2 Newman, The Health of the State, p. 189.

3 Whittaker, Drink Problem, p. 10.

4 McMillan, The Child and the State, p. 4.

is not so much one of environment as one of personal life." 1

Many British workmen are incredibly wasteful. When one visits public-houses and working-men's clubs, when one goes to racecourses, football or other matches, and music-halls, the British workers seem to be the richest in the world. When one looks at their homes, their clothes, and especially their savings, they seem to be the poorest in the world. British working men drink, waste, and gamble to a much greater extent than foreign working men. Therefore not only the higher paid American workers, but also the lower paid French, German, and Swiss workers, are better housed, better clothed, and better fed-and are therefore better off and healthier-than British workers. Besides, as their savings are much larger they are better able to stand a short spell of ill-luck or of bad times. Whether a working man is prosperous or poor, happy or unhappy, depends-under fair conditions of employment, which Protection should create-perhaps more on his personal habits and on those of his wife than on the actual amount he receives in wages. Social reform, to be effective, must be assisted in the home. The worker must aid the social reformer. Outside assistance alone will little benefit wasteful and improvident men who refuse to help themselves.

1 Newman, Health of the State, p. 194.

2 See Reports of the Mosely Industrial Commission to the United States; The Brassworkers of Berlin and of Birmingham; The Gainsborough Commission, Life and Labour in Germany; Horsfall, The Im provement of the Dwellings-The Example of Germany; Marr, Housing Conditions in Manchester; City of Birmingham, Report of the Housing Committee; Steele, The Working Classes in France; Rowntree and Sherwell, The Temperance Problem; Rowntree, Poverty; the publication of Charles Booth, &c.

APPENDIX

OFFICIAL PROGRAMMES OF THE SOCIALISTIC ORGANISATIONS

SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION

Programme and Rules as revised previous to the Annual Conference held at the Labour Institute, Bradford, Easter 1906

Object.-The Social-Democratic Federation is a part of the International Social-Democracy. It believes :

1. That the emancipation of the working class can only be achieved through the socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and their subsequent control by the organised community in the interests of the whole people.

2. That, as the proletariat is the last class to achieve freedom, its emancipation will mean the emancipation of the whole of mankind, without distinction of race, nationality, creed, or sex.

3. That this emancipation can only be the work of the working class itself,' organised nationally and internationally into a distinct political party, consciously striving after the realisation of its ideals: and, finally,

4. That, in order to ensure greater material and moral facilities for the working class to organise itself and to carry on the class war, the following reforms must immediately be carried through :

'This paragraph is not to be understood as debarring individual members of the possessing classes from participating in the work of the movement.

IMMEDIATE REFORMS

Political.-Abolition of the Monarchy.

Democratisation of the Governmental machinery, viz. Abolition of the House of Lords, Payment of Members of Legislative and Administrative bodies, Payment of Official Expenses of Elections out of the Public Funds, Adult Suffrage, Proportional Representation, Triennial Parliaments, Second Ballot, Initiative, and Referendum. Foreigners to be granted rights of citizenship after two years' residence in the country, without any fees. Canvassing to be made illegal. All elections to take place on one day, such day to be made a legal holiday and all premises licensed for the sale of intoxicating liquors to be closed.

Legislation by the people in such wise that no legislative proposal shall become law until ratified by the majority of the people.

Legislative and Administrative independence for all parts of the Empire.

Financial and Fiscal.-Repudiation of the National Debt.

Abolition of all indirect taxation and the institution of a cumulative tax on all incomes and inheritances exceeding 3007. Administrative.-Extension of the principle of Local Self

Government.

Systematisation and co-ordination of the local administrative

bodies.

Election of all administrators and administrative bodies by Equal Direct Adult Suffrage.

Educational.-Elementary education to be free, secular, industrial, and compulsory for all classes. The age of obligatory school attendance to be raised to 16.

Unification and systematisation of intermediate and higher education, both general and technical, and all such education to be free.

State Maintenance for all attending State schools.

Abolition of school rates; the cost of education in all State schools to be borne by the National Exchequer.

Public Monopolies and Services.-Nationalisation of the land and the organisation of labour in agriculture and