nize the Lenine-Trotzky government? Who appointed George D. Herron head of the commission to meet bolshevist representatives at Prinkipo? Who sent William C. Bullitt on a secret mission of negotiation to Lenine? asks the Kennebec Journal. American bolshevists are no worse and no better than the Russian kind.

According to the report of the Osaka Chamber of Commerce the wages paid in the textile trade in Japan are 62 cents a day in textiles and 75 cents in knitted goods, and the average hours per day are not 8 but 13. No Sunday is observed, and employes have one holiday or rest day per month. And that is the country from which the keenest competition will come in the not far distant future. Can the domestic market be saved from an inundation of Japanese products by the rates of the Underwood-Simmons law?

Senator Harry S. New of Indiana has a homely way of putting things, but somehow they get there when more high-sounding illustrations miss the mark. He was discussing the League of Nations in the Senate one day. "There is no more prolific more prolific source of litigation and feud than the location of a line fence," said the Hoosier statesman. "Every country lawyer knows that, every farmer knows it, yet here we are locating line fences for former friends and enemies alike, with disregard of consequences that is inconceivably reck

less to those who pause to institute comparisons."

Baron Okura, one of Japan's most conspicuous business men, says that "the new banking consortium, in which Japanese are to participate, must not invade Japan's special position in China, that Manchuria and Mongolia must be placed outside the pale of the new syndicate and that Japan's 'vested rights' in Shantung must be excluded from the pool." If Japan has 'vested rights' in the peninsula, when, do you think, Japan will on her own motion, renounce her sovereignty over it and hand back without conditions to impotent China the valuable territory which was first wrenched from her by the Germans, and now acquired by Japan?

President Wilson told the striking shopmen that "increases in wages will certainly result in still further increasing the costs of production and therefore the cost of living, and we should have to go through the same process again." It is to be regretted that he did not sense the situation when he approved the riot of huge advances allowed ship workers, which drew men from other occupations, especially mining, and later compelled equally large advances in wages to keep workers in the mines. What he opposes now his administration is largely responsible for, an orgy of reckless expenditure of public funds and an incredibly heavy increase in the cost of living. Well may he regard the situation as serious.

In normal times in the past the domestic market consumed about 90 per cent of our products and the foreign markets about 10 per cent. When all readjustments shall have been made after the recent world upheaval, those figures are likely to stand in the same relative position. It seems ridiculous in the light of the facts to have Secretary Redfield declare that "clearly our domestic trade will depend in a large measure upon our foreign trade." All our experience All our experience has taught us differently, and we can scarcely believe that Mr. Redfield meant to say that our foreign trade in peace times shorn of "war exports" will equal and surpass the consumption of our highly prized and desperately sought domestic markets. If he does, few will credit his judgment.

The advocates of a free port system would add to the appeal of their cause should they abandon the abstract for awhile and talk in the concrete. For example, it would add force to their arguments if they should point out just what goods might be profitably brought to our shores and processed or re-exported, instead of urging an immediate endorsement of the scheme on general principles, which do not always strike the practical business. man with the moving weight of facts. We learn that beans would form a large item in the trade of the Pacific coast, but we are not given many more enlightening illustrations in the published propaganda of the free port boomers. It is fairly evident to anyone who has given the subject attention that the Pacific States are at present more enthusiastic for the free

port system than those on the A:lantic slope. Senator Jones of Washington has in a bill for a free port in Washington, Senator Walsh has one for Boston-as has Congressman Fitzgerald-and, in fact, the free por: idea no sooner was broached by the Tariff Commission than many statesmen from maritime communities began to hustle in bills favoring their own home ports. Whatever may be the outcome of the agitation—and this may be expected to increase as peacetime considerations resume their sway-Congress is unlikely ever to favor more than general permissive legislation, leaving it to the States and cities to decide whether they desire to risk their millions upon a free port experiment.

It is difficult to conceive of Senators Henry Cabot Lodge and David I. Walsh standing comfortably together on the same platform, but in point of intensity of opposition to some features of the covenant of the League of Nations the two Massachusetts senators are not far apart. If anything, the Democrat is more outspoken in his criticism of the League scheme, although his objections relate rather to its possible effect upon the prospects of an Irish republic than to more general and fundamental defects which have been expounded by Senator Lodge. It has been a matter of surprised remark in Washington that two men as diametrically opposite in training, association and habit of thought should come so closely together as opponen.s of the plan which President Wilson has asked the Senate to accept with

speech upon the League of Nations October 9 and astonished his colleagues with the vigor of his denunciations. His praise of President Wilson was of such brief and meager quality as to suggest virtually a clean break with the White House-a not altogether surprising denouement

when it is recalled with what scant courtesy the Massachusetts Democracy has been treated by Mr. Wilson and his satellites ever since 1913. Never has an intelligent attempt been made by the Administration to hold the Bay State Democracy in line, and as the country is certain this year to look to Massachusetts more than to any other one state for a barometric indication of the popularity of the Wilson administration, in view of the unexpected vote on the senatorship last fall, the local Democratic leaders pull sorry faces when they go out to corral votes for a candidate running on a platform endorsing the President in one line and cutting to the heart of him in the next. The triumphant reelection of Governor Coolidge by an increased plurality will inform the country that Massachusetts still stands for America First, for the enforcement of the law, and for the security of life and property.

Congress promises to have the courage to grasp the police-labor situation with the same firmness displayed by Governor Coolidge in one of the most trying moments of his official life. In the bill reported to

the House October 9, to increase the salaries of the police force of the District of Columbia, it is provided that "No member of the police force of the District of Columbia shall be or become a member of any organization or an organization affiliated with. another organization which holds, claims or exercises the right to demand of any of the members obedience to an order to strike or cease work for any cause. Upon sufficient proof to the Commissioners of the District of Columbia that any member of the metropolitan police of the District of Columbia has violated the provision of this section, it shall be the duty of the Commissioners of the District immediately to discharge such member from the service." The Washington police joined a union affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, as did their brothers in Boston, and affairs were approaching the strike stage-the police, as in Boston, had been shamefully neglected in the matter of pay-when the Boston policemen quit their jobs. The instantaneous public resentment of their desertion had an electric effect everywhere, backed by the firm stand of the governor and the police commissioner. and hardly had the Boston strike got well underway before the Washington officers began quitting their union and now the organization has been abandoned, by a vote of four to one. But Congress, although supporting the policy of the Massachusetts authorities, had the wisdom and fairness to get right to work increasing salaries and the pending bill aims to do the Washington police belated justice.

The program of constructive preliminary tariff legislation marked out by the Republican leadership in the House is rounded out this month by the introduction by Mr. Fordney, chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, of the anti-dumping bill upon which some of the best brains in the country have been busy for months. It is no personal fledgling that Mr. Fordney has thus thrown. into the hopper, but a bill carefully designed by experts to compel honest valuations, thereby ensuring the effectiveness of the protective system to whatever extent it may be established by any Congress and enabling the Government to collect all the money legitimately due it from customs du ties. In the opinion of the most com. petent lawyers that could be consulted, the bill is in every respect constitutional and enforcible; and if this promise holds good after the bill becomes law, the country will find itself in possession of a simple, flexible and effective instrument for the protection of American industry. The bill presents two outstanding features, clarity and teeth; it is capable of comprehension by the most thickwitted importer who imagines he can cheat the collector, and it promises him a definite sojourn in jail if he tries to evade its provisions. The statute books are cluttered with antidumping laws that do not function,

but Mr. Fordney's apparently is not destined to be one of them. Neither can the tariff-for-revenue-only man reasonably object to this legislation, for the whole theory of the bill is revenue and more of it; and if incidentally or otherwise the law would also guarantee to American industry whatever of protection the established rates afford, no honest statesman can find fault with that.

AIMED TO DEFEAT GERMAN INTRIGUE

The measure leaves much to the discretion of the Government in its administration; or, to put it differently, it enables the Government to act directly in protection of whatever industries are threatened with unfai: competition from abroad. One need not recite the long and gruesome history of German attacks on the American chemical industry-admirably brought up to date and amplified and expounded by the researches of the Alien Property Custodian-to understand that every important American dye plant would close in less than two years if exposed to German competition with no greater protection than is afforded by the Underwood-Simmons tariff act. A great many gentlemen, including most of the importers of German dyes, were aware of this fact when the Underwood bill was enacted; now the war has so impressed the truth that even a Democratic Congress would not