gered. Again, from the political and strategic point of view, the position of Hawaii ought to be regarded by us as closely related to other policies overwhelmingly favored by the people of the United States. We refer to the American control of the Nicaragua Canal, and to the acquisition of one or more satisfactory naval stations in the West Indies. (4) The Economic Aspects of Annexation. All of these strategic considerations are so plainly important that there would have been no serious oppo. sition to the ratification of the treaty but for the sudden development of a powerful American opposition on economic grounds. This opposition seems to us unpatriotic in its spirit and methods. The Dingley tariff bill, which increases the duty on sugar, has stimulated experiments all over the country in the cultivation of the sugar beet. Certain organizations, agricultural and otherwise, that have strongly committed themselves to the advocacy of the culture of the sugar beet in the United States have now placed themselves in the forefront of the opposition to the annexation of Hawaii. This is done upon the ground that they wish to exclude cane sugar from the United States in order the more rapidly to develop the new beet industry. It need not be remarked that this magazine has always given most cordial support to all reasonable plans for the promotion of the American culture of sugar. But there would seem to be a limit to the methods that are reasonable and proper for the promotion of that desired end. So furiously zealous have the excellent gentlemen who are at the head of the American sugar-growers' propaganda become, that we are expecting almost any day to discover that they have decided to attempt to drive the State of Louisiana out of the Union in order to change the geographical course of the tariff wall and thus to protect the infant industry of beet sugar from the dangerous competition of the cane sugar of our Gulf districts. versus The Cause of The plans of these beet-sugar propaBeet Sugar gandists extend not only to the deEverything. feat of Hawaiian annexation, but also, of course, to the abrogation of the existing reciprocity treaty under which, for many years past, Hawaiian sugar has been admitted free of duty. Under the existing measure of protection, which brings the two cane-sugar districts of Louisiana and Hawaii inside of our tariff lines, there would appear to be sufficient opportunity for the beet-sugar men to nurture their infant industry. After it has attained a certain development, it will be able to compete on fair and equal terms with these two cane-sugar districts. The annexation of Hawaii, instead of introducing a new factor of competition, simply preserves the existing status. There is more than one county in Texas that has a considerably larger area than all of the islands of the Hawaiian group put together; and there are a number of such counties in California. It seems to us altogether petty and shortsighted to exclude Hawaii from the American Union, and to turn that strategic possession over to some great naval and military power, in order to gain a merely incidental point in the programme of the enthusiastic friends of American beet sugar. The natural laws of industry will, in the course of a few years in any case, determine whether diminutive Hawaii shall keep on producing sugar or use her soil for other crops. It is not a dignified thing for the United States to allow the question of annexation to hinge upon the sugar tariff, yet it seems altogether too likely that this is precisely what will happen. It may be added, furthermore, that it seems to us a long way below the highest mark of American dignity and patriotism that this same sugar question should also be made to do service on the side of the Spaniards in the Cuban trouble. Our zealous beet-sugar propagandists have become afraid that an active policy on the part of the United States to save Cuba from utter devastation might lead in the end to the annexation of that island, or else to a commercial union which would bring down a full-grown avalanche of Cuban sugar upon our beet-fed infant industry. If we are to intervene at all in Cuban affairs, it should be for the sake of humanity, and for those large considerations that are summed up in the Monroe Doctrine as interpreted from time to time by our Government. The sugar question should be kept in its proper place. America's The balance in favor of the United Approaching States in the trade of the past year Supremacy World's in the with Europe has been of stupendous Markets. dimensions. This is due chiefly to the foreign demand for our breadstuffs and other food supplies. In view of the strengthened tariff barrier which makes it more difficult than ever for Europe to send her manufactures to us in payment for bread and meat, cotton and petroleum, there is much uneasiness in trade circles abroad, and not a little open and blustering talk of a combination of the whole continent of Europe for the economic suppression of the United States. Among responsible statesmen, Count Goluchowski, the Foreign Minister of Austria, has been the most conspicuously identified with such threats. The puzzling thing is to invent a mode of retaliation that will not hurt the European peoples themselves very much. worse than they can possibly hurt the United States. England, of course, has for a long time been reconciled to the idea of importing the larger part of her food supply. But since the United States has begun to compete so formidably in manufactures there has arisen no little consternation in the British mind. Many signs point to the passing of the scepter of industrial supremacy from Great Britain to the United States. The year 1897 has witnessed the easy triumph of the American makers of steel rails over English and all other competitors in every part of the world.. American contractors are fitting out electric street railways in England, and various American manufactures of iron and steel are underselling British products, not only in neutral markets, but also in the United Kingdom. Recent reports of the rapid exhaustion of England's coal supply have added to the prevailing alarm. The advantage which American manufacturers have gained is due not merely to the superiority of our natural resources as respects the deposits of iron ore and coal, but also to the vast scale upon which our industries are organized, and the superiority of their appliances. The The Disastrous It is in the very face of such conditions Strike of the as this new and powerful American English Machinists. rivalry, and the ever-increasing intensity of German competition, that the proprietors of iron and steel-working establishments in England have had to meet one of the most stubborn strikes ever known in any trade. struggle of the engineers, or machinists, as we should say, began about six months ago. It was undertaken nominally for the purpose of securing the eight-hour day. A great strike in 1870 won the ninehour day for the machinists and the allied trades, who had formerly worked ten hours. The real struggle of the past year, however, has had to do not so much with the eighthour day as with questions involving the principle. whether the details of shop management are to be controlled by the proprietors or by the trades unions. The English manufacturers believe that with the greater extension of the piecework plan, and greater freedom to manage the working of their own machinery, they could obtain far better results than the present system yields. It is notably true that the output per man is very much larger in American than in English shops. The great strike has paralyzed leading departments of English industry at the very time when good will between masters and men and united effort against foreign competition were most to be desired. Late in November, through the mediation of the Rt. Hon. T. C. Ritchie, President of the Board of Trade and one of the most prominent members of Lord Salisbury's cabinet, a conference was brought about, with fourteen members on each side. Colonel Dyer, of Newcastle, acted as chairman for the employers, while Mr. Alfred Sellicks and Mr. Barnes, secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, were the leaders on the side of the men. After about ten days of discussion the conference adjourned without having come to an agreement. The representatives of the workingmen, however, consented to submit to the members of their unions certain proposals made by the employers. On December 13 the returns came in, and it was found that out of 40,000 votes only 150 were in favor of accepting the proposals. The prospect, therefore, for an immediate settlement of the trouble is not encouraging. The conference was subsequently resumed, but not hopefully. Meanwhile, in Germany the factories are running on long hours, and masters and men are straining every nerve to force German wares into markets where England once held the monopoly. LABOR AND CAPITAL IN EUROPE. ENGLISH CAPITALIST: "I cannot contend with cheap labor abroad." GERMAN EMPLOYER: "Don't mind working long hours so long as we can undersell English manufacturers." From Judy (London). Mr. Biggart. THE GREAT ENGLISH New Factors in the Colonel Dyer. Mr. Andrew Henderson. Mr. Barnes. Mr. Sellicks. It is not alone in iron and steel manufacturing that England's preCotton Industry. eminence is seriously threatened. The managers of the great cotton mills of Manchester and vicinity have informed their operatives that it will be absolutely necessary to reduce wages all along the line or else stop the engines. and lock the doors. They have offered to submit the question of reducing wages to arbitration; but a difficulty has been encountered in arranging the preliminaries, and the operatives have refused to arbitrate on the basis of average prices since September. As a consequence, the mill owners have proceeded to post notices of wage reduction, and it is greatly to be feared that there may follow a strike of even more serious character than that of the engineers. The business of spinning and weaving cotton has been greatly affected by new elements of competition. Great mills, equipped with the best modern machinery, have been established in Japan and China, and especially in India. In those countries labor is employed at a few cents a day, and the hours of work are long. It is true that the average efficiency of Oriental labor is not so high as that of the Manchester district. Nevertheless, the Oriental operatives are constantly improving in skill and in ability to run their machines rapidly; so that they now produce a much larger output for a given amount of wages than the English workmen are able to turn out. The Oriental mills have the further advantage of being near the fields which produce the raw cotton, and also on the very threshold of great markets which have been accustomed to draw large supplies from Manchester. Furthermore, the English cotton trade, as respects many special lines, has begun to feel more heavily than ever the competition of the great mills of the United States, where the highest skill and the best methods ever attained are to be found. The total American output is increasing at a great rate by reason of the development of cotton mills in the South, where all the conditions of cheap manufacture exist to an exceptional degree. Thus the closing years of the present century and the opening years of the twentieth are to witness a most interesting series of developments in the production and distribution of the world's great staples of industry; and no other country occupies a position nearly so favorable as that of the United States. To add to the list of industrial disIndustrial Arbitration turbances in England, there is serious Again. danger of a great railroad strike. Under all these circumstances it is not strange that there has been a good deal of discussion touching the feasibility of compulsory arbitration in industrial disputes. Much interest has been awakened by the experience of New Zealand, where a compulsory arbitration law has been in operation for more than three years, with results that are said to have abundantly fulfilled all that its friends had expected. It is not likely, of course, that England will go so far; but on the other hand, it is probable that greater efforts will be made than ever before, both by governmental and unofficial means, to mitigate the disasters that accrue to the whole country from these protracted industrial deadlocks. Politics The British Parliament will not be in sesin sion until February. Meanwhile, politEngland. ical discussion has been raging for several weeks past. The House of Commons having nearly seven hundred members, vacancies are occurring from time to time. The by-elections to fill these vacancies caused by death or resignation have of late been running strongly in favor of the Liberals. Furthermore, in so far as national party lines were drawn in the general municipal elections held throughout England early in November, the Liberals made very decisive gains. They have been particularly bold and effective in their criticisms upon the present government for the unfortunate war still raging on the northwest frontier of India. It must be remembered that the Liberal cabinet under Lord Rosebery's 66 premiership had unanimously decided against the continued occupation of Chitral, and had made all preparation for evacuating that post, which lies far beyond the actual boundary line of British India. When the Tories came in, however, and Lord George Hamilton succeeded Sir Henry Fowler as Secretary for India, the Liberal policy was reversed, and it was decided to keep open the route to Chitral with a line of fortified stations. It is maintained by the Liberals that this was done in plain violation of pledges which had been given to the tribesmen of the hills, and that in the present war the tribesmen have justice on their side. The Tory government makes no pretense of intending to annex the regions where so much blood is now being shed, and it is hard to arouse the matter-of-fact English people to much enthusiasm over what is variously stigmatized as the policy of "butchery and bolt," or slaughter and scoot." Moreover, the British conscience is not quite reconciled to the manner in which Mr. Chamberlain and the Tory government have whitewashed the principal parties in the conspiracy against the Transvaal. Nor is Lord Salisbury any the more popular for his neg. lect of the Armenians and his sacrifice of the Greeks while his surrender of British commercial interests to the French in Tunis and Madagascar adds another count to the general indictment against his administration. Sir William Harcourt, Lord Rosebery, Mr. Bryce, Sir H. Fowler, and other leading Liberals have been waging a splendid campaign of oratory throughout the country against the existing government. Mr. Chamberlain, meanwhile, has been invested with the honorary office of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, and has abated nothing of his incessant administrative and political activity. Whether right or wrong in his utterances and policies, he is a man of marvelous force and energy, and always interesting. Nothing more melodramatic has been Activities on the Chinese witnessed in our times than the soCoast. lemnities at Kiel, in the middle of December, on the occasion of the departure of the Emperor William's only brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, for the scene of Germany's new activities on the Chinese coast. The performance between the emperor and his brother, in the presence of the great German officers of state and the chief men of the army and navy, had, of course, all been carefully rehearsed in advance. It is hard to believe that so highly educated a nation as the Germans could be impressed by ceremonies of adulation which amount virtually to the worship of the erratic Emperor William as a deity. Prince Henry's naval command was anything but formidable, and his trip promises to be nothing more, so far as he is personally concerned, than a pleasant voyage. One is there fore somewhat bewildered by the emperor's constant reiteration of the great sacrifice he had made in sending his only brother to China. Melodrama aside, however, the Germans have Our taken a very bold and enterprising step. accompanying map will show the central position the port of Kaio Chau occupies with reference to other important and strategic points. It will be remembered that Japan had taken possession of Port Arthur at the conclusion of the war with China, and had hoped to retain it permanently as a Japanese Gibraltar; but Russia, backed by France and Germany, compelled Japan to withdraw. It was rumored late in December that the Russians had suddenly taken possession of Port Arthur. It is certain that their fleet is now THE CHINESE PUZZLE. From the Inter-Ocean (Chicago). ductive and well-inhabited a region pay good revenues to its captors. Japan is much disconcerted, and has been endeavoring to secure the coöperation of other important powers in protesting against Germany's high-handed seizure of Chinese territory. With such a state of affairs so much nearer home, the Japanese will feel very slight inclination to antagonize the interests of the United States in Hawaii. Meanwhile the English from their Hong Kong rendezvous will be ready to take their share of the Chinese mainland. Politics. No It seems almost impossible to follow the Austrian parliamentary crisis in Austria through all its riotous record of disorder. such scenes as those that have disgraced the Reichsrath have ever been witnessed in any other parliamentary body. The root of all this discord is to be found in the confusion of tongues and races. The elaborate article which we publish elsewhere on the political situation in Austria and the future outlook is contributed by an Austrian of American experience who has been witnessing the exciting scenes in Vienna, and whose account will be found exceedingly instructive. A new premier, with a reorganized cabinet has come into power within the past month to succeed the much-buffeted Badeni. Baron Gautsch von Frankenthurm, the new prime minister, is a pious schoolmaster of very reactionary tendencies. His father was a police commissary in Vienna. Paul, the son, began active life as a tutor in a charity school for the sons of impoverished nobles, and in due MAP OF THE CHINESE COAST. |