quality of the articles which we produce and export, our credit, and consequently our commerce as a whole, both at home and abroad, will be most injuriously affected. The conclusions as to the mercantile principles of a high proportion of aliens from Eastern Europe are borne out by the lists that appear in the Weekly Gazette, issued by the London Association for the Protection of Trade. I am informed that last year, out of 7,801 county court judgments obtained in the county of Middlesex, 537, or 6.9 per cent., were against foreigners, whose names afforded the strongest presumption that they were aliens of this class. Some may have been included in the calculation who were not, and there were some recurrent orders upon the same person. On the other hand, these cases would be counterbalanced by the fact that many aliens, especially of the fraudulent and criminal classes, assume British names for purposes of their own, and others are sued under the names of companies. Abundant evidence of these changes of patronymic was given before the Royal Commission. The percentage of Russians and Poles to the population of the County and City of London, according to the census of 1901, was 1.2.

In many districts retail traders have been ruined because the alien has entered into complete possession, and the clientèle of the English shopkeepers has been dispersed. Besides the ordinary and obvious inducements which prompt a stranger to deal with those of his own race and tongue, there are special reasons, as I have often pointed out, why the Hebrew newcomers from Eastern Europe prefer, and are practically compelled, to deal with people of their own creed. The comment of the Royal Commission on this subject has already been quoted.

Taking all these facts into consideration to the best of my ability, I have formed the opinion that the movement of aliens from Eastern Europe into Great Britain is, economically, detrimental rather than advantageous to the country.

Nothing has been said here about the progress of 'direct' competition, but this is a very serious matter. The President of the Scottish Miners' Federation estimated that in 1902 some 1,320 alien miners-chiefly Lithuanians and Catholic Poles-were employed in the Lanarkshire mines (22917). The statement is not likely to be below the mark. The number, according to a return supplied during the last Session of Parliament, had risen to 1600. It is an admitted fact that aliens have been introduced into the fire-clay industry with the purpose of destroying trade union combination. Foreigners are competing with native workers directly in South Wales and in certain gasworks near London, and the movement is undoubtedly on the increase. In connection with the recent Mile End election I cited a case in which British shoemaking hands had been discharged to make way for aliens, and similar instances in the same industry are

now under investigation. Concurrently many of our strongest, most capable, and most valuable workers are emigrating-under stress of circumstances. I do not know what may be the inner counsels of the leaders of trade unionism with regard to this subject. But I do know what those whom they claim to represent think about it all. They object to see the outflow of native emigrants balanced by the inflow of those who bring a debased standard of living with them.

W. EVANS GORDON.

FROM THE TOLL-BAR OF THE GALATA

BRIDGE

WHO, that has ever visited Constantinople, can fail to remember the picturesque bridge which, by uniting the Port of Galata with the opposite coast, makes a convenient, though somewhat uneven, roadway by which the foreign tourist can proceed from his hotel at Péra to the wonderful mosques and bazaars of Stamboul?

To the fascinating Eastern city, built, like Rome, upon its seven hills, this bridge is, in one respect, what the Ponte Vecchio is to Florence, though with a difference. The two bridges are no more really alike than are the Arno and the Golden Horn, though both are prominent features in the landscape as the eye travels up or down the sunny expanse of rippling water. The resemblance, if it can be so called, is purely sentimental, arising probably from the fear that both bridges may be doomed to destruction at no very distant date.

If the capital of the Turkish Empire in Europe were ever to pass into the hands of the Giaour, the Galata Bridge would, probably, be one of the first relics of the past to be swept away in order to give place to something more after the pattern of Putney or Hammersmith, while the Ponte Vecchio, as most of us are aware, has only been saved from destruction at the hands of its own townsfolk by the intercession of the stranger.

In spite of its venerable and weather-beaten appearance, the Galata Bridge is not, in reality, what can be called 'old' (for a bridge, at any rate)—particularly at Constantinople, where, compared with almost every other building of importance, it is decidedly modern. It was constructed as lately as in 1845, by the grandmother of the present Sultan-who derived a large income from the tolls-in the place of a bridge of boats, which connected the Kapan with Azab Kapu, in former days, so that it must have grown prematurely old, simply by reason of the immense amount of traffic that is perpetually passing over it, just as the heart of a man may become aged and worn when it is continually a prey to recurring and varied emotions. It is fashioned, for the most part, of grey-lichened wood, loosely jointed together, through the holes and crevices in which one can look down

at the twinkling waters of the Golden Horn, that are said, just here, to be of enormous depth. Towards the centre it hunches up its back like the dorsal bone of a mammoth, and the great iron ribs and girders that intersect it at regular distances seem as if they would almost shake soul and body asunder every time that one jolts or clatters over them upon wheels. In the evening, when, beyond the heights above Stamboul, the mosques, and minarets, and pointed cypress-groves rise sharply defined against the brilliant hues of the sky, the scene is impressive in the extreme :

A blaze of lurid gold, and daylight sets

Behind the cypress-spires, where dead men lie
Beneath their turban'd tombstones, and the sky
Is dappled with the hue of violets;

Here gleams the Golden Horn, with fishers, nets,
And all the fleet of varied ships that fly

The flags of half the world, and there, on high,
The city with its mosques and minarets,

while, at this same hour, when 'daylight sets,' the great dome of the Yeni Valideh Mosque might almost seem to be a purple mountain, overshadowing that part of the bridge which is nearest to the Stamboul

side.

A stranger, taken to this bridge for the first time and set down upon a camp-stool close to one of its toll-gates, might well be excused for imagining that almost every sort and condition of man and beast were defiling past him for his own special delectation and amusement. No two figures, or groups of figures, are alike, as they go streaming and jangling over it all day long, from year's end to year's end, without seeming ever to pause for even a moment to take breath. Here are only a few of them: A small black brougham, or coupé, containing three pale, moon-faced, ox-eyed ladies of the Imperial harem, their dusky, long-legged guardian grinning and displaying his white teeth upon the box-seat. A fat Pasha, arrayed in full regimentals and wearing numerous decorations, caracoling along upon an Arab charger, with floating tail and dancing fly-flicker, followed by two aides de camp in shabby threadbare uniforms, mounted upon ungroomed steeds. A lumbering, creaking farmer's wagon, laden with cooped poultry and melons, drawn by a couple of black, white-eyed water buffaloes, their necks decorated with light blue china beads, as a protection against the evil eye, escorted by a handsome young countryman in a turban, rolling along, in ragged but picturesque garments, his feet and legs bound round with string, like parcels, and bearing in his hand a long green cane, with which he occasionally prods and tickles the patient creatures under his charge, although he must know quite well that no amount of prodding or tickling will ever induce them to quicken the snail's pace that is theirs by right of inheritance. The cake and sweetmeat man comes tramping along next, the little three

legged table upon which he displays his wares slung to his back, his head confronting the advancing foot passengers in a butting attitude, and two French Sisters of St. Jacob, with flapping white caps, step out into the roadway to let him pass. These kind Sisters bring up, and educate, little female waifs and strays of all denominations, and instruct them in needlework and in the mysteries of 'the one true Faith. Report says that, by purchasing the flesh of pig at a merely nominal price from the Mussulman peasants, by whom it is considered an abomination, these good ladies are enabled to carry on their benevolent projects upon very economical lines. These pigs, like the poor pariah dogs of the city, that lie curled up all day, often upon the very lines of the tramway, at their own imminent risk, and then go on the rampage' every night at twelve-thirty (for I have timed them to a minute), are looked upon by the Turks as scavengers, and, therefore, as unclean and abominable. But if the Mussulman will not eat the pig, the pig-lean, long-legged, and with a terribly serviceable snout !— is not nearly so fastidious. A friend of mine, riding out one evening among the hills, not far from a solitary village, came upon two of these creatures engaged in excavations in a graveyard, which, like most village burial-grounds in Turkey, was unenclosed by wall or paling, nor could he succeed, in spite of all his efforts, in driving them away. (I hope these pigs were not of those that were afterwards sold to the worthy Sisters of St. Jacob!)

A family of tourists, English or American, now make their appearance; youths and maidens, and elderly ladies, clad, for the most part, in unbecoming raiment, and an old gentleman in spectacles who walks first and carries a guide-book. What I want to see,' says a tall good-looking girl in blue serge, wearing a round hat, as she stops dead short in the middle of the bridge, thus obstructing the traffic, is that old Golden Horn of which I have heard so much!' and she throws up her chin in the direction of the Genoese Tower, as though expecting some manifestation from on high. A party of jolly jack-tars, from the British gunboat, in clean white suits, look round, smiling, as they catch the familiar tones of their native tongue, but turn serious immediately afterwards, doffing their straw hats, as they encounter the procession escorting a Greek funeral; the body, that of a young girl, exposed to view, according to Greek custom, tricked out in a garland of orange blossoms, a white ball-dress, with fan and lace pockethandkerchief in one of the wan listless hands, and two poor little feet. in high-heeled white satin shoes, which wobble from side to side as the bier passes over the clattering iron girders. This is, no doubt, some poor young lady-a bride, perhaps, to judge by her wreath of orange blossom--who must have died somewhere upon the Stamboul side of the water, at Yeni Kapou, or some other Greek settlement, and who is being conveyed, thus, to her family vault in the smart new cemetery at Chichli, where have arisen, of late, so many imposing

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