nationalist and anti-militarist element, under the leadership of Andrews and Ivan Jones, organized the International League, which immediately published a weekly paper, The International.

The Labor Unions in South Africa have 100.000 members, and are very strongly organized in the mining, engineering and building trades as well as on the railroads. There are labor unions in all the industries, though some of them are still very weak. Since the outbreak of the war, they are working hand in hand with the Labor Party, the same persons, frequently being members of both party and union executive committees.

The Secretary of the Labor Party is Reginald G. Barlow, Trades Hall, Johannesburg, P. O. Box 4509.

The Secretary of the "International League" is D. Ivan Jones, 6 Trades Hall, Johannesburg, P. O. Box 4179.

AUSTRALIA.

The Commonwealth of Australia consists of the six original Australian colonies: New South Wales, Victória, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania. Each of these is a self-governing State, except as to the powers reserved to the Confederation. The Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed at Sydney January 1, 1901. Legislative power is vested in a Federal Parliament, consisting of the King, represented by a Governor-General, a Senate and a House of Representatives. The Senate consists of 36 Senators, six for each State, chosen for six years. The House of Representatives consists of 75 members, distributed as follows: New South Wales 27; Victoria 22; Queensland 9; South Australia 7; Western Australia 5; and Tasmania 5.

The labor movement in Australia, like that of the mother country travelled, for a long time, in the rut of capitalist politics. But when the Seaman's strike, or correctly speaking, lockout of 1890, showed the necessity of political action on the part of the working-class, the political development of the proletariat of Australia progressed much more rapidly and uniformly than in England itself. The labor unions, which up to that time, had supported the doctrine of no politics in the unions, took in hand the formation of political party organizations in all the States, and soon gained recognition and political influence.

But the Australian Labor Party is by no means a Socialist Party. Though it is more radical than the British Labor Party and goes further in its present demands than the former, neither in its program nor in practice does it demand the socialization of the means of production. On the other hand, the Labor Party has enforced important political and economic reforms, as for instance, woman suffrage, old age pensions, minimum wage laws and the beginnings of a kind

of state Socialism expressed in government control of great monopolies and corporations, with a few attempts toward state ownership.

The growth of the Labor Party of Australia was phenomenally rapid. The following statistics show how, in state and nation, the number of representatives increased from year to year.

In 1914 the Labor Party polled 1,040,000 votes, the antiLabor candidates 933,000. In 1913 the vote had been as follows: Labor Party candidates, 1,004,000 and anti-Labor 887,000 votes. In 1914 the Labor Party had a majority in all states except Victoria. More recently a small majority in Western Australia has become a small minority. As the above tables show, the Labor Party has a majority in the National Parliament, a majority which is considerably larger in the Senate than in the House. After the election, the administration was again carried on by the Labor Party, with Andrew Fisher as Prime Minister for the third time. In 1915 he retired to become High Commissioner for the Commonwealth in London. He was succeeded by Hughes, who had been Attorney-General. The Australian Labor Party had become more radical in the two years before the war, and in consequence lost, at the last election in September, 1914, a large part of its middle class and farmer element. The closer it approached collectivist ideas, particularly when it demanded the nationalization of a number of industries, the greater became the opposition of the strong democratic liberal press, which had tentatively sided with the Labor Party during its more conservative stage. The labor press of Australia is as

yet hardly developed. The labor movement has several official organs, the principal being The Australian Worker, Sydney, N. S. W., and The Queensland Worker, Brisbane, Q., and also three dailies and several other weekly papers.

Besides the reforms already mentioned, the Labor Party was instrumental in passing a maternity law, providing for the payment of $25.00 to every mother on the birth of a child. It also deserves credit for the building of a transcontinental nationally owned and operated railway, a tax on land values for the purpose of breaking up large estates, for employers' liability law, for labor invalidity and old age pensions and a number of other social measures. The meagerness of this list, as even the Australian Socialists who are the keenest critics of the Labor Party admit, is to be attributed mainly to the constitutional limitations, which, here, too, serve the purpose of hindering all real progress, while it must be said that the fetish of "practical politics," puts an end to every broadly conceived plan of social improvement. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the Labor Party in its desire to win the support of the farmer element often strove to mask its working class character, and pretended to be a producers' party, which finally stamped it as a middle class movement. Nevertheless it must be said in favor of the Labor Party, that, in spite of all the shortcomings, the educational value of the political labor movement is extraordinary, and that the purely socialistic movement, as represented by the S. L. P. in New South Wales, the Socialist Party of Victoria and the West Australian Socialist Party, all small in number, is gaining greater influence in the Labor Party from year to year.

At the outbreak of the war, the Labor Party at once placed the Fleet of the Commonwealth at England's disposal, and raised an army through voluntary enlistment. Up to July 1916, 325,000 men had volunteered. The Socialists in the Labor Party protested vigorously against supporting British Imperialism. In this they won such a measure of support within the Labor Party that the government found it advisable to curtail the anti-war agitation by a so-called "War Precautions Act," which gave it practically full power to suppress the rights of citizens. This law intended at first to apply only to military questions, soon assumed the character of a wide spread censorship. The Socialist newspapers, the Melbourne Socialist and others, suffered bitterly under this curtailment of the right of free press. Free speech was prohibited everywhere. Clashes with the police, who attempted to disturb and disperse peace demonstrations, were frequent. The official Labor Party men, particularly the

ministers and the union heads, are, with notable exceptions, "patriotic."

The Australian labor movement has been in existence many years, although it became strong and influential only in the last decade. Patterned after the British trade unions, it was, in the first 20 years of its existence, on the whole conservative. Only when the capitalists undertook to persecute labor unionists, and a political movement was organized, a more vigorous and more influential labor union movement set in, which soon succeeded in securing important reforms. The membership of the trade unions has increased as follows:

The headquarters of the different political and economic organizations of Australia are:

New South Wales: E. J. Kavanagh, Labor Party of N. S. W., Trades and Industrial Hall, Goulburn St., Sydney. Political Labor League: P. Evans, MacDonell House, Sydney.

Queensland: Labor Party: Trades Hall, Brisbane.

South Australia: T. B. Merry, United Trades and Labor Council, Grote St., Adelaide.

Western Australia: A. McCallum, Trades Hall, Beaufort St., Perth.

Victoria: Trades Hall, Carlton, Melbourne.

Socialist Labor Party: Secretary J. O. Moroney, 16 George St., West Sydney.

Socialist Party of Victoria: Office Socialist Hall, 283 Elizabeth St., Melbourne.

West Australian Socialist Party: 50 Nelson Crescent East Perth.

NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand is a self-governing Dominion under British Crown. The Government is vested in a Governor, representing the King, acting by and with the advice of ministers responsible to Parliament, of which they must be members. Parliament consists of two Houses: a Legislative Council, nominated by the Governor, and a House of Representatives elected on a thoroughly democratic one-adult-one-vote franchise.

New Zealand is reputed to be the most advanced country in the world, as "A Social Laboratory," as the land of Socialisme Sans Phrase, but there was not till about 1912

any Socialist movement strictly speaking. The labor legislation of which New Zealand has been the pioneer has not been the result of an organised Labor movement. The late Richard Seddon, who became Premier in 1893, had begun life as a miner and till his death thirteen years later was kept in power by the workers, who voted as Liberals and Radicals. The chief results of the Seddon régime were the establishment of compulsory conciliation and arbitration for the settlement of labor disputes, the taxation of land values, the break-up of big estates and the consequent growth of the class of small farmers, the grant of women's suffrage, old age pensions, and the extension of the State's economic functions, particularly in the direction of public ownership.

Many strikes and attempts by the workers to defy the awards of the Arbitration courts and the beginnings of Labor, Socialist, and even Syndicalist groups were the first signs that the workers were becoming class-conscious and preparing for the class-struggle. Pastoral and agricultural industries, however, are the chief forms of wealth production; manufactures occupy a secondary position.

In 1912, under the guidance of W. T. Mills, a member of the Socialist Party of America, the United Labor Party was formed, consisting of affiliated trades-councils and Labor Party branches and unions. Its organization and policy. were greatly similar to those of British Labor Party. But outside the new party were the Federation of Labor, with syndicalist tendencies, and the Social Democratic Party. In July, 1913, a congress of all three bodies was held to reorganize the movement on more advanced lines. The result was the formation of the United Federation of Labor for industrial purposes and of the Social Democratic Party for political purposes. The objective of the Federation of Labor is "to bring about a co-operative commonwealth based upon industrial democracy." At the general election in December, 1914 the votes obtained by the three parties were: Tories

Liberals

226,795

204,294

Labor-Socialist

51,088

The Labor-Socialist vote was made up of the following: Social Democratic Party

21,457