In 1902 the party polled 55,000 votes and elected seven men to the National Council. Its vote rose to 70,000 in 1905 and to 120,000 in 1911, when it won fifteen seats. In the fall of 1914 its vote was still further increased, and eighteen of its candidates were successful. (The National Council has about 200 members.) The party has also one representative in the Council of the States. In 1912 there were 212 Socialists among the 2,907 members of cantonal councils; since then, and even during the war, many more seats have been gained in Zürich, Bern, and elsewhere. In Bern the vote rose from 5,450 in 1913 to nearly 7,000 in 1916.

In 1912 the party had about 23,000 members, and in the summer of 1914 it had 33,238. By the fall of 1915 the number had fallen to 29,585, chiefly as a result of unemployment. Two party papers have had to suspend since the war began, but about fifteen remain. There is a Socialist Women's Federation and a Socialist Young People's Society, the latter with over 2,000 members.

The party congress at Aarau in November, 1915, approved the Zimmerwald resolutions and called on the proletariat of all belligerent countries to take revolutionary action to stop the war. In domestic affairs it demanded graduated taxation of large incomes and properties to cover mobilization expenses; legislation to protect female home-workers; abolition of military courts and requirement that army officers have the same rations and sleeping quarters as the men. It decided also on a reorganization of the party by merging the Grütli Union with the general organization.

In the canton of Zürich, in the spring of 1916, the party decided to initiate a campaign for woman suffrage.

The Federation of Trade Unions, founded in 1882, had 5,300 members in 1888, 27,000 in 1903, 70,000 in 1912, and over 89,000 when the war broke out. It lost 30,000 within a few months, but has since regained many of them. It works in close harmony with the party. Its Secretary is Oscar Schneeberger, Kapellenstrasse 6, Bern. There were also in 1914 some 35,000 workers in non-affiliated unions, including 12,000 in the Catholic unions, which have little militant character, and 7,000 in the Anarchist-Syndicalist organizations of French Switzerland, where hand industry still largely prevails and where also there are many voteless workingmen.

The Co-operative Movement.

The Federation of Co-operative Consumers' Societies, had 230 local branches and 150,000 members in 1911-one to every five households in the republic. Its central wholesale agency had a turnover of $6,400,000 in that year, while the business of the local stores aggregated about five times as

much. One-fifth of the co-operators were in the canton of Basel. Since then there has been a material growth; cooperative activity has been extended into several branches of production, and during the war the societies have virtually absorbed the business of meat importation.

Both the party and the trade unions have been intensely active since the war began-organizing monster demonstrations to keep alive the spirit of internationalism; struggling for maintenance of wage-rates; bringing pressure on the government in favor of legislation to relieve the unemployed and to keep down food-prices; combating the evils of the military system; and also striving to restore intercourse among the Socialist parties of the belligerent countries and encourage them to active efforts for the restoration of peace. The Secretary of the party is M. Fähndrich, Birmensdorferstrasse 15, Zürich.

CHINA.

The Government is composed of a President, a Vice-President, a Senate of 274 members who serve for six years (one-third of the members retiring every two years) elected, by the various Provincial Assemblies and Electoral Colleges and a House of Representatives of 596 members who serve for three years, the number for each province-Thibet, Kokonor and Mongolia-being proportional to the estimated population, one representative being elected for each 800,000 of the population. Male citizens are eligible to vote if they are 21 years of age or older and if they possess any of the following qualifications: 1-payment of direct tax of $2.00 per annum or over; 2-possession of immovable property of the value of $500 or over; 3-graduate of an elementary or higher school or possession of an equivalent amount of education. Opium smokers are disqualified.

The collectivist idea in China is as old as the Chinese civilization itself-about 4.000 years. So it was natural that the Socialist philosophy should find easy acceptance in this country. "All humanity," said the wise Confucius, "has the same body and the same mind. Consequently all humanity must feel alike and act alike."

The real Socialist movement of China is very young, hardly more than five years of age. It finds its expression in the Socialist Party of China, which has lived and grown in spite of persecution. There is also a semi-Socialist Party, an organization about ten years older than the revolutionary Socialist movement, which under the leadership of Sun Yat Sen, has the character of a National Labor Party with strictly Chinese ideals, in marked contrast to the revolutionary, proletarian character of the Socialist Party.

In 1911 the first Socialist organization was founded, and the first Socialist newspaper, The Socialist Star, was established. In three months this movement, supported and fos

tered by the first Chinese Revolution, spread throughout the Chinese nation. A number of Socialists were elected to the Parliament of the newly established Chinese Republic. Chang Chi, the president of the first Senate, was a Socialist, who had received his education in Paris and had there become an intimate friend of Jaurès. Ma Su, Sun Yat Sen's secretary, the editor of the most revolutionary newspaper, The China Republican, which appeared in the English language, is a Socialist. In an incredibly short time 50 Socialist newspapers had come into existence; Socialist free schools had sprung up; Socialist labor unions and women's auxiliaries grew and prospered, large quantities of Socialist literature were distributed, and Socialist theatrical propaganda companies toured the country. It is not surprising that the ruling class, and especially Yuan Shi Kai, the betrayer of the Revolution, who had used the bitter sacrifices of the Chinese people for his own personal aggrandizement and power, should tremble before the remarkable development of the Socialist movement. In August, 1913, he published the following edict, which shows how seriously disturbed he was:

Peking, August 8, 1913.

The Socialist Party of China is using the cloak of a political party in order to conceal its evil designs. These demagogues would coerce the government and flatter the people for their own evil ends. They are a danger to peace and law and order. They advocate violence and assassination. Therefore they have incurred the displeasure of not only the government but of the whole people as well. Many letters have been received from officers at Tien Tsin, Peking, and elsewhere, warning us against Socialist plots and conspiracies. Many foreign anarchists have joined them in order to disturb the international peace. The Socialist Party of China is not like the Socialists of other countries who merely study Socialism. If we do not put an end to their activities, a great outburst will follow. Therefore we have issued this decree calling upon the Provincial governments and generals to dissolve the Socialist Party of China wherever found, and arrest the leaders. Thus law and order can be preserved.

YUAN SHI KAI,

Provisional President of the Republic.

The Socialist organizations were dissolved; their property confiscated; their leaders thrown into prison and executed. Only the English headquarters in Shanghai escaped destruction.

The leader of the Socialist movement was Kiang Kang Hu, a professor of the Peking University, and one of those who published a number of radical newspapers. According to his own statement, he was influenced particularly by Bebel's Woman and Socialism. As a result he advocated schools for women,-an innovation unheard of in the annals of China. His first Socialist speech, "Woman and the Socialist movement," delivered in June, 1911, in the Che Kiang was distributed widely as a leaflet and caused the first Socialist persecutions in China. It also led to the founding of the

first Socialist club in Shanghai, which was organized as a study club, where fifty men and women met to study the basic principles of the Socialist philosophy. Meanwhile the first Revolution in the South of China, in Hankow, had begun. On November 3, 1911 Shanghai fell into the hands of the Revolutionists. The club now changed its name to the Socialist Party of China and immediately sent organizers into the Southern Provinces. The Socialist Star became a daily and gained a huge circulation. The membership of the Shi Hui Tong (Socialist Party), the first political party of China, increased rapidly.

On November 5, the first convention of the Party was held in Shanghai, where a platform was adopted which was a peculiar mixture of immediate demands and ultimate aims. As is to be expected, but few of the Chinese Socialists have a clear understanding of the Marxian philosophy, but they were firmly united in their one aim, the establishment of a Socialist Republic. In the preamble they demanded the common ownership of the land and the means of production while the "working platform" contained the following eight planks:

1. The establishment of a Republican form of govern

ment.

2. The wiping out of all racial differences.

3. The abolition of all the remaining forms of feudal slavery and the establishment of the principle of equality before the law.

4. The abolition of all hereditary estates.

5. A free and universal school system, on co-educational lines, with free textbooks and the feeding of the children.

6. The abolition of all titles and castes.

7. The levying of taxes principally on land and the abolition of all personal taxes.

8. The abolition of the army and navy.

The thirty Socialists who were elected to the first republican parliament introduced bills demanding equal, direct and secret suffrage, public schools, the abolition of personal taxes, inheritance tax, abolition of capital punishment, reduction of the standing army, abolition of girl-slavery. Not one of these bills was voted on because the forcible dissolution of Parliament by Yuan Shi Kai put an end to all proceedings. "The Party had by this time," says Kiang Kang Hu, "over four hundred branches in China, each with its official teachers and readers-for a great part of the membership could not read. Agitators and organizers, most of them working without pay, were sent out broadcast. The Party owned its own printing plant, and published three official

papers, the Daily Socialist Star, the Weekly Socialist Bulletin, and the Monthly Official Bulletin. Among the pamphlets and leaflets which were printed at this plant and sent out in great quantities, one of the most popular was 'The Communist Manifesto.' In addition, many branches printed their own local papers, and at one time there were over 50 of these in existence. Then, too, there were between 10 and 15 privately owned papers which supported the Socialist Party. The most important of the free public schools established by the Party was situated at Nanking. This school had an attendance of over eight hundred. Free public kindergartens were also established by the Party. A very curious part of the party organization was the Socialist Opera and Orchestra Company. In China actors and musicians are a very low caste. After the first Revolution many of these joined the Party, and the Party organized them into several theatrical companies, which toured the country, playing symbolical Socialist plays, and proving themselves an invaluable adjunct to the Party propaganda. The woman's organization had for its main work the furthering of the agitation for woman's suffrage. This organization had at one time close on one thousand members, and in addition many women belonged directly to the party itself. Schools for women were started by the Party, and had a large attendance."

Side by side with the Socialist movement, there had also grown up an anarchist movement, which became most troublesome to the party organization, since a large number of the anarchists had joined the Socialist ranks and endeavored to propagate their ideas among its numbers. At the second annual convention of the Party the conflict of ideas led to the founding of a "Pure Socialist Party" by the anarchistic element. The inevitable confusion of the Socialists with the Anarchists in the minds of the ignorant masses became a tremendous hindrance to the movement. Opposition against the Socialist Party had grown among the bourgeois democrats, who feared its influence even more than the increasing absolutism of Yuan Shi Kai. The Republicans realized too late that they were playing into the hands of a betrayer, who gradually crowded them out of every important position and who played his last card in the murder of the Young China Association. The second Revolution in July, 1913, came too late. It was drowned in blood. Parliament was dissolved and a new election ordered. The aforementioned edict against the Socialist Party had its effect. Hundreds of Socialists and Republicans were executed, and the Party as such completely destroyed. But in spite of all persecution, hundreds of intelligent Socialists carried on their secret agitation. They were a most important factor in the