state who do not exercise any portion of the public power." This arrangement, which points fairly in the direction of assimilating the relations between the state and its employees to those existing between private persons who stand in the relation of employer and employee, is weighed down with important consequences.

A question which arises at the first consideration of this law concerns the extent of its application. What classes of public servants exercise no portion of the public power, and where exactly should the line be drawn between those who wield public power and those who do not? Without attempting to resolve the quite apparent ambiguity which this formula contains, we may conclude without much hesitation that the class of public servants who impose no act of authority upon other citizens, but simply perform a designated task on behalf of the state, is very far from being a negligible quantity. The employees of the departments of public works of instruction, of agriculture, of posts, of public relief, and of manufactures are all of this sort.

The fundamental question which remains, then, is whether it is proper to permit the greater part of public servants, simply on the ground that they do not wield the public power, to form organizations exactly as if they were private employees. In spite of the unanimous decision of the commission upon this point, we believe there are essential differences in the two cases which must not be lost sight of.

The employer and his workmen, in the first place, are equal before the law, and their possibly conflicting interests are only the interests of particular individuals, which are to be adjusted by mutual agreement, that is, by contract. The case of public servants is quite different; here we find sovereignty and the imperative rights and interests of the entire nation on the one side, and individuals upon the other; moreover, the conditions, rights, and obligations attending labor performed for the state are fixed, not by contract, but by statute. Shall we then confer by law upon the employees of the state the right to form organizations to oppose the law?

Labor organizations are weapons of struggle; and it follows naturally from the right to organize that the demands of public employees in regard to wages, advancement, discipline, political liberty, etc., may be opposed to those of the government, and may be defended by recourse to political influence, the courts of justice, and strikes.

The fundamental difficulty lies in the fact that the line which this law attempts to draw between the function of the state as the guardian of public security, and the work of the state as the promoter of social well-being, is an entirely illusory one. With the increasing extension of functions which characterizes the modern state, the present moment seems to be poorly chosen in which to maintain that public employees not charged with the more personal authority of the state have no other duties than those which they would have in the employ of a private person pursuing an individual interest.

In short, the common law governing private employment is not fitted for the government of public servants, of whatever sort they may be. A most important duty devolves upon the legislator, therefore, to define clearly by law the relations which the servant of the public is to sustain to his superiors. The employee of the state does not serve his chief, but together with his chief he serves the wider interests of the state.

Now the actual organization of the personnel in our public service does not answer to the ideal here indicated. There is an absolute lack of unity, and more serious still the opportunity is constantly afforded for arbitrariness and favoritism. This calls for an effectual remedy. But, instead of instituting between the state and its servants a sort of antagonism, such as develops in ordinary labor disputes, it is from the state itself, out of an intelligent perception of the relations existing between them, that we would wish to obtain these guarantees. Being the most exacting master, the state ought to show itself the most just and reliable.G. DEMARTIAL, "Les Employés de l'État et les syndicats professionnels," Revue politique et parlémentaire, March 10, 1905. E. B. W.

Observations on the Cameroon District. Great care must be taken in seeking information from the natives to avoid all suggestion of an answer, for the

African is apt to convey exactly the piece of information which he suspects the questioner would like to receive. In putting questions one must also have regard to the inability of these people to work with abstract ideas. The items which follow I have not attempted to organize or combine, or correlate with other similar facts; but simply to present as observations made during a long residence in the Cameroon district.

There are many sorts of secret societies in the Dualla region. Each organization has its peculiar sign which consists of a characteristic object which has great significance in the rites and activities of the society. The Kongolo, for example, wear bells about their necks, in their dances, while the Tambinde are distinguished by caps made from the tailfeathers of parrots.

An interesting group is the Ubomako or Walkers Upon Stilts." Their sign is a stilt, which serves as a concrete expression of "bigness." By no means all the members of this society understand the art of using stilts, but the implement serves as the official token of the group. Entrance into this society is open to both slaves and freemen.

A purely slave league is that of the Bajongs, whose symbol is a conventionalized antelope's head. Both classes may belong to the Mungi, whose members bear one or two tattooed crosses upon the breast and the stomach. They are reputed to be able to cause sickness and even death by putting a mungi bush before the house door of their debtors. The debtor in such cases loses no time in settling accounts, after doing which he removes the bush with dancing and song. They also plant poisonous peppers in the field of an enemy, who, if he picks them, will suffer a poor harvest or will himself become sick.

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The league known as the Gingu possess great power; they can bring misery and sickness upon a whole village. They are reputed to have so-called brothers dwelling as spirits in the waters, to whom fruits are offered after the harvest. These spirits aid their mortal brothers in the pursuit of the sea cows. Two other spirits Edumo, an evil earth-spirit, and Ekelle-Kette, a mischievous sprite who misplaces household utensils are recognized.

Witchcraft plays a large part in the imagination of the blacks of the African west coast. When the smallpox breaks out in a neighborhood, the spirit of sickness is driven out of the village in the person of a Bushman of the Bassa tribe who have a reputation for especial magical powers, to the accompaniment of longcontinued drumming and dancing. The village is then surrounded by a rope, in order that the sickness may not enter again.

In cases of witchcraft the wish, the abstract curse, does not suffice; some concrete material poison must be introduced in an invisible way into the victim. This is apparent in bewitching from a distance. Sometimes the medicine-man is able to get the enemy into his power in the form of a turtle which he makes sick and possibly causes to die. The enemy also sickens or dies at the same time. (As Herr Standinger remarked in commenting upon this report when read before the Berlin Society, we have here a very interesting case of the power of suggestion working upon the fears and the vital processes of the victim, who falls into the greatest despondency and apathy, due to the settled conviction that he cannot survive the death of the turtle which is in the power of his enemy.) Of course, upon the payment of a sufficiently great sum, both turtle and man are often allowed to recover.

There is also a charm which makes one invisible, which is much sought after by elephant-hunters. The medicine-man is usually promised one tusk, and when the overconfident hunter, relying too fully on the power of the charm, is trampled to death by the infuriated beast, it is plausibly assumed that a stronger charm has intervened to the man's undoing.— DR. A. PLEHN, Beobachtungen in Kamerun," Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Vol. XXXVI, No. 6. E. B. W.

World-Organization Secures World-Peace.-It is now over fifty years since the first world's peace congresses met. Although devastating wars swept both the continents of Europe and America before the present series of universal peace congresses began in 1889, the momentum of that earlier agitation seems to have been brought over into the present movement, which is rendered auspicious

by the organization of the Hague Tribunal and by the increasing closeness of relations among the nations of the earth.

That permanent conditions of peace can be established only by putting mankind into its true position as an organic whole is being more clearly perceived than hitherto. World-organization must grow out of a perception of the essential unity of mankind, a fundamental reality which was not created by men and cannot be destroyed by them. World-unity in the manifold interests and pursuits of men is a fact today, although unity of the world under a single governmental system is not a fact.

But even this it is not too much to believe the future holds in store. Signs pointing to such a universal polity are already visible in such international co-operation as the Postal Union and the Hague Court of Arbitration. World-wide legislation and adjudication will precede the constitution of a universal executive function. Just as the wisdom of the elimination of sovereignty as an attribute of principalities and commonwealth, and the sole possession of such sovereignty by the nation which emerges out of a previously existing federation, has been abundantly proved, notably in the history of the American Union, so in the evolution of universal political organization petty national sovereignties must give place to the larger and less artificial sovereignty of a world-state. Thus not only the disarmament of nations and an era of stable peace will be inaugurated, but religious freedom and unfettered commercial activity will be insured.-R. L. BRIDGMAN, in Atlantic Monthly, September, 1904. E. B. W.

The Hyperbolical Teachings of Jesus.- Can any of the practical questions of society be settled mechanically and infallibly, without the labor of observing facts or the responsibility of forming a judgment, by simply opening the Bible? The matter of divorce is a case in point, and Bishop Doane, in a recent number of Harper's Weekly, voices a widespread conviction in urging the danger of going beyond the letter of Scripture in the treatment of the divorce question. The bishop's appeal seems to imply an affirmative answer to the opening question, and to place the words of Jesus in this regard in the category of legislation.

Such a view of the teachings of Jesus is open to criticism. During his whole life, he fought against the tyranny of mere words, and for the lordship of the present living spiritual man. In his discourses he suggested great truths by parables, by questions, by paradoxes, by hyperboles, by every device that could elude the semblance of fixed judicial formulas. It is the irony of history that such language should be seized upon for statute law. Jesus did not intend to save us from the trouble or the responsibility of dealing with concrete situations, but he did intend to give us the heavenly point of view.

Throughout the gospels the rhetorical figure of hyperbole abounds in the discourses of Jesus. Most Christians treat large parts of these discourses as figurative, and it is clear that it is purely a matter of human judgment which, if any, shall be enforced as practical rules. Surely, those in which hatred of parents, mutilation of the body, entire bestowal of one's goods, abstinence from the use of an oath, neglect of hospitality to friends and relatives, the disuse of the word 66 father in addressing men, and many other injunctions occur, cannot generally be regarded as literal.

Jesus is the poorest possible authority for a literalist. He says the most unqualified things regarding the authority of the Mosaic law, and then never seems bound by them. The explanation is found in the fact that to him a law was never a formula of words, but the ideal aim of the law giver.

To what point, then, has our investigation brought us? To the conclusion that the teachings of Jesus have no value? Far from it. They have an infinite value. But they lie in a plane above that of legislation. Laws must be fitted to their times. Ideals are like the stars. It does not appear that Scripture contains ready-made rules for our use, but in laying down maxims for individual conduct, and laws for church and state, we are bound only to the application of a Christian judgment to the interests involved.-W. G. BALLANTINE, in North American Review, September, 1904. E. B. W.

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The Real Dangers of the Trusts. Against the trust as device for reducing to a minimum waste in production, and for securing the greatest

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economic efficiency, in short, as the consummate product of legitimate industrial evolution, no man can advance valid objections. But against the trust as a constant disregarder of the necessary principles of fair play in business and of true democracy in government, the people must be ever upon their guard.

It is a grave question how much reliance may be placed upon the regulative force of "potential competition in preventing monopolistic limitation of output and extortion in prices. Unaided, this factor seems hardly able to do what the situation requires. Artificial that it, governmental — regulation, however inevitable, is felt by some to present grave dangers. For it would tend to increase rather than diminish the regretable corrupting influence of the trusts upon politics; it would tend to cement rather than to loosen the bands which unite the boss and the magnate. Yet, however difficult of achievement such public regulation of the trusts may seem in the face of their present intrenched advantages, this heroic task must nevertheless be patiently and fearlessly faced by the American people, unless it is willing to expose itself to the unknown but manifold dangers of a socialistic experiment, which may be the price of failure or neglect in dealing with this problem.

Four things must be done in regulation of the trusts. First, we must stop discriminations by railroads. Then flooding a particular locality with goods offered at cut-throat prices for the sake of crushing competitors must be done away with. There is also the plan of selling one kind of goods at a cheap rate for the sake of driving out of business competitors who make only that class of goods. Finally, there is the "factor's agreement" the refusal by the trust to sell goods to a dealer at a living price unless he will promise not to buy any similar articles from a competitor. These steps will make a hard and up-hill road for democracy to travel; but there is no possible doubt that it must travel by that route or go farther and fare worse. There is coming a long, hard fight in which honest wealth and honest labor will be on one side, and monopolies on the other; and the powers of honesty are the greater. The peril will be great if this majority tries only to prohibit consolidation, or if, failing to prohibit and in despair of regulation, it shall revert to schemes of general nationalization of industries.- JOHN BATES CLARK, in Century, October, 1904. E. B. W.

The Sociology of a New York City Block.- Investigations as to the real character of the people swarming our tenements have hitherto been ineffective owing to a lack of unity of conception in regard to the matters to be learned. The writer of this monograph spent Saturday forenoons for three years in an attempt to study a New York city street according to a complete system of social principles. Throughout, the author follows the analysis and theory of Giddings's Inductive Sociology. For instance, the people in the block are classed, under the heading Type of Character," in Giddings's four types forceful," convivial,' austere," and the "rationally conscientious."

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The people under consideration live on the upper East Side. They occupy fourteen five-story, "dumb-bell" tenements. The population of these fourteen houses varies from 800 to 900 souls, divided among 200 families. The causes

of aggregation are found: for the Italians, in the new building being erected in the vicinity by their labor; for the Jews, in the invitation of a German garmentworker who wanted to get near his market. The Irish and Germans left in the general movement from this quarter are diminishing.

As the results of this interesting piece of sociological work, set forth in eleven chapters, are statistical and descriptive, concerning families and houses in detail, only scattering excerpts can here be made.

Studying "like behavior," it was found that a large majority of the individuals in 144 families do not usually respond to stimuli simultaneously with their neighbors; while a small majority of those in eleven families do. Most of the stimuli common to city life appeal to this whole community, but responses differ in various sections of the block. Tenement dwellers see many sights and hear many sounds, but each day, all year, the stimuli are the same. Hence like stimuli will produce

like results in time.

In appreciation" of the American people, and humanity in general outside of their own nationality, the statistics show that the more or less naturalized

families are the strongest. This naturalized class is more numerous than any other. This fact should be the cause of much encouragement to those who have been complaining that, instead of "digesting its immigrants, the nation is dying." The classification by types of mind in the block is as follows: ideo-motor, 38 families (mostly Italians and Irish); ideo-emotional, 170 families (the ones that make possible frenzied mobs and the ones being modified by the schools); dogmatic-emotional, 6 (mostly Jews). There are no families in the block that can be classed as critically-intellectual.

The power of the "consciousness of kind " has clearly been seen in the history of each house in the block. Racial affinity, often the limit of consciousness of kind, has several times been disregarded. Even color lines have failed to keep like dispositions apart. Strong economic forces have entered the community and scattered all purely social groups; but after the storm, quietly, but certainly, like has attracted like and the house has gradually filled with a homogeneous group. When Italians enter a house, the Jews gradually move out; and if a negro enters anywhere, it is into an Italian house.

The simplest examples of "concerted volition " are in certain housekeeping arrangements. Five of these tenement families illustrate the tendency to revert to the "compound" housekeeping of primitive life. The disposition of the Irish, and the business qualities of the Jews, make possible purely economic co-operation between these races.

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The ordinary conception of the "social composition of an urban population is that of a large aggregation of individuals independent of one another and not knowing their neighbors. The formal relations of middle-class families in apartment houses are responsible for this idea. But there is a perfect stratification and classification of peoples in cities as in the village group, brought about by the same social and economic forces. This classification reveals itself in two arrangements: (1) that in which the group is limited to well-defined localities; and (2) that in which the group is scattered in various parts of the city. It is in the latter groups that often a family does not even have an acquaintance in the block in which he lives. The block studied, of course, belongs to the arrangement according to locality.

The development of personality is the end of “social welfare." In this block, where residence is usually brief, it is difficult to determine individual changes. The testimony of those who have known the street for many years points to a distinct improvement in the last ten. In the reaction of personality on institutions the most noteworthy effect of a community of this kind upon American life is its infusion of foreign ideas. The hope of developing an American type lies almost entirely in American institutions. The most effective are those with the avowed purpose of bettering the neighborhood, the public schools, churches, and settlements. The influence of the churches in this community is exceedingly small. Settlement work fails to perform one function. It fails to study the prevailing traits and to establish activities for curbing the impulsiveness of the Italian, modifying the extreme individualism of the Jew, causing the Irish to give up shiftlessness and turn to frugality, and for showing all the value of the spiritual in life according to the Anglo-Saxon ideal.— THOMAS JESSE JONES, in Columbia Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, Vol. XXI (1904), No. 2. H. E. F.

Political Economy and the Tariff Problem.- A majority of the economists of Great Britain signed a manifesto a few months ago which sought to put an absolute veto on the tariff proposals of the late secretary of state for the colonies. A not inconsiderable minority declined to sign. The minority have pointed out that German economists favor protection.

A survey of the history of political economy will help to explain the divergence between the signers and the minority. Starting with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, a partisan book based on a philosophy no longer held, there grew up a neat self-contained little body of doctrine which constituted "political economy." The principles. at first, practically meant nothing but the desirability of free trade. An orthodox political economy developed, culminating in 1863. In the seventies there was a stirring of the waters, notably in Germany, (1) under the pressure of the labor problem; (2) because of the growth of the his