ters so long as the labor in one pair in the good old days.

Well, let this world go on its way! Somewhere I shall find a bit of honest tweed, a side of sound leather, and some competent workman who will build my things in the logical way.

4. Bargain-hunters exercise everywhere a powerful influence in lowering the quality of purchasable things. To attract them, the merchant and manufacturer employ every possible device to achieve the last word in style, and yet cheapen to the last degree in quality the product of human labor. Our newspapers are mainly given to the task of agitating these frenzied folk, who are forever seeking bargains and never finding them. While good quality is, in reality, nearly always cheap, and poor quality, nearly always expensive, price nearly always determines the sale.

Obviously, it is not so much a question of the high price of labor as of the poor quality of material, which makes the cost of modern production so great a burden upon the consumers. Even if labor in certain fields were made to go only twice or thrice as far by the use of better materials, the annual saving to the public would be immense. The cost of the labor in some oak chairs, supposed to be three hun. dred years old, was probably only a few shillings, and yet had it been $300, the age and sturdy endurance of these chairs would have made it cheap labor.

Advertisements have their modest place in English newspapers, but the more reliable merchants rarely use this method of attracting trade. Quality rather than style or price has ever been the object of the most active demand. Consequently, men of business seek above all things to establish a lasting reputation for themselves by the high quality of their output. Everyone in England seems to know the men who build the best boots, guns, golf clubs, and so on.

5. During the war the Housewives' League definitely showed that consumers, when organized, can exercise a powerful influence upon the trend of prices and the methods of trade. Other things also promise better days. There yet remains a considerable portion of the public which is protesting more and more audibly against fraudulent practices, misrepresentation, and inferior

quality. Moreover, there is hardly a trade which does not now employ efficiency experts for the purpose of eliminating waste. Mr. Hoover reminds us that "Labor once lost is lost forever," a thought that might profitably be placarded all over the country.

The producer must create what the public wants. When the public refuses to accept anything of inferior quality, business will hasten to mend its ways. Education and organization would seem to be the most practical and effective way of accomplishing this end. The taste, intelligence, and judgment of the public must be improved before the standards of trade can be raised. If the press would undertake such a task, much could be accomplished in a very short time; but we can hardly hope for this.

Perhaps the housewives of America, who are, after all, the buyers, could be organized into a National Consumers' League, and employ experts to make inquiries into the best materials obtainable and executives to direct the buying of its members. Upon the payment of nominal dues, millions of women could be kept informed as to the best method of employing their funds to effect an improvement in the standards of trade and the quality of production. The first gain would surely be the elimination of adulteration, substitution, and other fraudulent practices. Even more important would be the support of those conscientious producers who desire to serve their patrons honestly and well.

The Atlantic, Jan. '23.

1. The "backward" child's chance for future greatness.

2. Infant prodigies do not always achieve distinction.

3. When dull children remain dull.

4. When precocious children become geniuses.

5. A study of geniuses.

R

ECENT studies of psychologists

and sociologists reveal the fact that the backward child stands about the same chance for future greatness as does the infant prodigy. The studies of the childhood of great men explain this astonishing state. ment. They show that, as children, geniuses fall naturally into two classes those who were exceptionally stupid, and those who were infant prodigies, acclaimed as geniuses from early years. It is rare for geniuses to be just the average commonplace type of child. They are either remarkably dull or remarkably bright.

An example of the backward type is Sir Walter Scott, who was considered a dunce. The only profession his despairing father could see he had any aptitude for was that of a strolling fiddler. Hume was described by his mother as "uncommon weak-minded." The mother of the poet Chatterton summed him up at the age of six as "little better than an absolute fool." A long list of geniuses who were considered dullards as children includes Davy, Darwin, Linnaeus, Humboldt, Pasteur, Watt, Fulton, Schiller, Heine, Goldsmith, Beecher, Rousseau, Froebel, Whistler, Patrick Henry, and Poe.

were

2. Examples of geniuses who were of the child-prodigy type are Mozart, who composed music at the age of six, and Mendelssohn, who at eight corrected an oratorio of Bach and at fourteen performed the fourteenth opera he had composed. Othwho er geniuses precocious children are Dante, Browning, Pope, Macaulay, Handel, Verdi, Brahms, Bach, Corot, Murillo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Turner. So many geniuses have shown their remarkable powers as children that it has been said, "He who never created in youth will never create at all." On the other hand, there are many infant prodigies who never became anything greater.

So, where the mother most needs help from the psychologist is to learn how to distinguish between the dullard-genius and the dullarddunce forever; between the precocious child who is a budding genius and the precocious child who is only "a small, fatigued grown-up," and has been compared to the earlyriser, "conceited all the forenoon of life, stupid and uninteresting all the afternoon."

3. Havelock Ellis explains why one type of genius is dull in childhood. This, he says, is the bornclumsy type of marked clumsiness of bodily control. Ellis feels that to be born unsuited to many of the ordinary activities of daily life gives a favorable condition for the development of extraordinary abilities in some one line, provided these are present in a latent state. In other words, the child who can do many things easily needs to make no special effort along any one line, while the child who is born inapt along many lines will center all his atten.

1. Sixty workingmen in Parliament.

2. Road to learning not easy for British workers.

3. Labor Members of Parliament

went to work at early age. 4. Administrative training received in labor organizations. 5. Parliament not as brilliant now, but it may be stimulated.

TH

HE success of British labor in politics has been the occasion of much comment. In 1874 two workingmen were returned to Parliament; in 1918, sixty. How are these workingmen conducting the affairs of the British Empire? How have labor members been prepared for these responsibilities? Who are these men who seem on the point of becoming His Majesty's government?

Criticisms of the Labor Party do not turn upon its capacity to obtain ruling power. That capacity has been shown. What critics harp on is labor's alleged lack of intellectual preparation, having secured power to rule, to use that power wisely. In other words, Labor has not been educated for political responsibility. Fault

finders also say that Labor Members are a nullity in debate; that they appear to be helpless in the "rapid cut and thrust of argument"; that they think of the appropriate repartee four or five sentences too late. Ignorance of Parliamentary rules, according to some critics, is the Labor Party's greatest handicap. In a word, "The clank of their chains can be heard as they talk."

2. It would be futile, of course, to try to make a case for the Labor Party on the point of education and experience. However, it is interesting to note that for many years the matter of education has been bound up with the admission of the working class to political participation in England. The working class has voted in Great Britain for only a little over fifty years. Public education, established by law at almost the same time, has been a fact for a much shorter time. Before the Great War, of all British children, five per cent entered the secondary schools, and one per cent the universities. This painful condition was not the result of indifference to education among members of the working class themselves, but to apprehension on the part of others. The privileges of voting and of education seemed to Nineteenth Century England to constitute a menace few were willing to face. For many years English workmen asked for them in vain. Statesmen and publicists united in an attempt to undermine the confidence of the working class; to convince the nation that the poor were incapable of absorbing learning even when it was offered. The roads to learning and political participation were not easy ones for British workingmen.

3. Labor Members of Parliament are not educated men in the sense that education is the result of schooling. Since 1874 there have been ten Parliaments and about 130 representatives of the Labor Party, most of whom have been returned more than once. At least 25 manual occupations have been represented in Parliament. With the exception of the

colliers, no occupation has had more than eight representatives. The coal miners have had at least 40. These men worked young and worked long. While Parliamentary colleagues of other parties were attending Eton, Harrow and the Universities, Labor Members were undergoing a different training of which work was one form. Not a few workingmen now in Parliament have worked at their trades all their lives. Among the colliers, Mr. Hall hewed coal for 34 years, Mr. Fenwick and Mr. J. Johnson for 30, and others for lesser intervals of 20 and 14 years. schooling of these men was meagre. Although one or two have never been in school rooms, a great many received elementary instruction for two or three years. Almost 40 per cent went to work before they were fourteen, of whom a third were earning their keep by the time they were ten.

The

For better or for worse, the training of the Labor Members has been practical, not classical or theoretical. They have learned on the job. Over one-half of the Labor Members in Parliament have been re-elected more than once. In their own trade unions, a large majority of them have been officials of long standing. Some have passed from the lowest of local offices to the responsibilities of policymaking on a national scale. Mr. Burt, whose career is typical, after being an officer in a local union in a small coal-miners' village became a leading member of its executive committee and then was sent to Parliament for almost 50 years. Early experience in the difficult work of labor organization and administration seems to have taken the place of the school-room.

4. Nearly all the trade-union organizations in England, 100 years ago, took the form of primitive democracies, whose purpose was to redress economic grievances by political action; their method was that of one man, one vote. Trades-union officials

elected to Parliament after years of service to such organizations are thus well trained in principles of administration. Moreover, Labor is developing methods by which to compensate for educational privation in youth. The coal miners started a century ago with their schools in the colliery districts. During the last 12 years three or four agencies have spread a net-work of classes over the English industrial counties and have induced adult workers to go to school. The Iron and Steel Trades Federation, through the Workers' Educational Confederation, offers classes in History, Economics, Politics, etc. The National Union of Railway Men, the South Wales Miners' Federation, and the Union of Post Office Workers support and control the Central Labor College. The most ambitious effort of the Labor Movement to meet the problem of educating its membership made recently by the Trade Union Congress in the appointment of a committee to draw up a scheme for central trade-union control of all workers' education.

was

The representative of Labor in the British Parliament is not an educated man in the formal sense, but he has not come to his legislative responsibility wholly unprepared. On the contrary, his training in administrative and social control through tradeunion office-holding approximates that gained by young men during the four years of a college course, and to that he adds an unequaled familiarity with the technique of reaching the rank and file of trade unionists. The obvious remedy for lack of Parliamentary experience, is more Parliamentary experience. The remedy for neglected education is more education, a goal which Labor has set itself and will undoubtedly make. In the meantime, while Parliament may not be as brilliant a place, it is possible that the business of government may still proceed refreshed and stimulated by new and vigorous purpose. The Forum, Jan. '23.