one class. There are, in fact, among the six-hundred-odd annuitants classified no less than 89 teachers. That is, teachers alone are practically 15 per cent of the total number of purchasers. They are more numerous than all the skilled artisans and laborers taken together. They are also more numerous than the total of the class described as financiers and merchants, or than any of the other classes except that called professional. It is then of vital importance to our inference how the teacher is to be classified. Next to the teacher in numerical importance, but still a long way below him, comes the clerk, so described by himself. The clerks numbers 39. Next to them come farmers, 38; students, 30; and clergy, 28. The other individual occupations have again considerably smaller representations. Married women, spinsters and minors, otherwise undescribed, account for 41. In order to test Senator Ferguson's criticism, the author has attempted to draw a line which roughly divides the employing from the employee classes. In the employing class is included agriculture, the professions, merchants and financiers, and the miscellaneous group of married women, spinsters and minors; in the employee class, the rest of the groups except government employees, who might be regarded as a class by themselves in regard to a government system of annuities. Taking this classification, if teachers are to be classed with employers, that group accounts for 61 per cent of the total contracts; and the employee classes for only 35 per cent, while government employees are 4 per cent. But if teachers are to be counted as employees -which would seem to be the more accurate classification economically-then the employees aggregate 50 per cent of the total; the employers 46 per cent; and the government employees 4 per cent, as before. So it seems a fair statement of the case to say that about half of the annuity contracts are taken out by persons who earn their own living by wage or salary, and whose wage or salary, in the greater number of cases, is small. Pursuing the test further, it is evident that the skilled artisans and laborers-those who are usually included under the term wage-earners constitute only a small proportion among the an nuitants. The skilled artisans number 9 per cent, and the laborers 4 per cent-the two classes together making up 13 per cent. If we add to these two classes the railway employees-most of whom in the sample belong to the skilled artisan class in the nature of their work-the result is only 15 per cent of the total. Clerks and stenographers-strictly so called-frequently earn less than skilled artisans, but usually come of parentage which is more given to investing than is the wage-earner. Their inclusion would add nearly 9 per cent to the proportion of the composite class; but it is necessary to keep in mind that the composite is based on equality of earnings rather than on similarity of economic habits. With these explanations, one may sum up the facts of the case thus: Canadian government annuities have not reached the poor; but they have been purchased in large proportions by persons of moderate income, by members of the employee classes, by persons whose incomes fall clearly below the standard of what is usually known as "the middle class." VII. CONCLUSION During the little more than six years and a half that the Canadian annuities branch has been in operation, there have been written 3700 annuity contracts. The course of the business is reflected in the number of contracts taken out in each fiscal year: Sept. 1, 1908 to March 31, 1909 80 April 1, 1914 to March 31, 1915 263 During the first three years, it is evident from this table, there was rapid and steady growth; but in the fourth year this growth was checked and a sharp decline followed. This decline was coincident with a change in the method of propaganda—from 'Seventy-five annuitants have died, or their policies have been canceled, which makes the total number of contracts now in force 3625. lecturers to advertising-the object of which was economy. The expenditure has been reduced by a quarter; but at the same time a business that was growing rapidly has been brought to a standstill and the annual expansion reduced to a third of its former figures. It seems a fair inference from these figures, and from the evidence of the preceding pages, that the experience of the Canadian government annuities system indicates that it is a hopeful contribution to the solution of the problem of poverty in old age. It has shown that such a scheme has strong powers of appeal even in a country where the annuity idea is not popular. It has not reached the day-laborer nor the artisan in any large numbers; but it has attracted persons of very moderate income, such as clerks and school teachers and others in the same economic class. It has had a success far beyond that of the insurance companies which sell annuities in the Dominion. Moreover, the history of the system suggests that, given a proper method of propaganda, a much wider response might be expected to its appeal than has been obtained in the last few years. OTTAWA, CANADA. FRANCIS A. CARMAN, TH THE NEW ANTI-TRUST ACTS HERE are five possible policies which a government may adopt toward industrial combinations. The first, that of laissez faire, or of allowing them to develop without governmental interference or regulation, though it has never lacked for advocates among American business men, has never been tried by this country. Even before the Sherman Act was passed the common law was held to condemn combinations in unreasonable restraint of trade and monopolies. As first interpreted by the courts, the Sherman Act committed us to the second policy, that of enforced competition. Every combination, whether reasonable or unreasonable, was held to be condemned and prohibited. By permitting reasonable combinations, recent decisions have prepared the way for the third policy, that of regulated competition. This may not prove as different from the fourth policy, that of regulated combination—the policy of Germany as the terms imply. The fifth policy is government ownership and operation, or state socialism. In the light of this analysis the trust legislation of last winter may be described as a legislative endorsement of the position already taken by the courts substituting the policy of "regulated competition" for the policy of "enforced competition." To say this, however, is to imply a unity and consistency in the new legislation which it in fact lacks. Like the other important measures passed by the last Congress, the Anti-Trust Acts were the result of compromise. To understand them fully it is necessary to recall the political background from which they emerged. In 1908 Mr. Taft was elected president on a platform which, while claiming credit to the Republican party for the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, declared that experience has shown that its effectiveness can be strengthened and its real objects better attained by such amendments as will give to the federal government greater supervision and control over, and secure greater publicity in the management of, that class of corporations engaged in interstate commerce having power and opportunity to effect monopolies. This declaration pointed clearly toward supervision by a federal commission and federal incorporation as Republican policies. Mr. Bryan, the Democratic candidate, stood on a platform which favored a policy that would prohibit the control by a "manufacturing or trading corporation engaged in interstate commerce ... of more than fifty per cent of the total amount of any product consumed in the United States." During the four years that followed, the Republican administration virtually abandoned its initial effort to enact further legislation, but continued vigorously the policy, inaugurated by Mr. Roosevelt, of bringing dissolution suits against the larger combinations. As the candidate supported by Mr. Bryan, Mr. Wilson might have been expected to favor legislation which would prevent any corporation from controlling more than half the business of the country in any particular department. In the campaign he was particularly severe in his criticism of the candidate of the Progressives for advocating regulated monopoly, declaring that any kind of monopoly was obnoxious to the spirit of American institutions. Mr. Roosevelt's retort that the Governor of New Jersey, before criticising any proposed national policy with reference to the trusts, should do some housecleaning at home, since it was notoriously under the protection of New Jersey's corporation law that the giant holding companies had developed, hastened the "Seven-Sister" legislation that was already in contemplation in that state. In securing the enactment of the " Seven-Sister" laws from a reluctant legislature, Governor Wilson clearly indicated the type of anti-trust legislation which President Wilson would urge upon Congress. Though in general sympathy with the declaration of their 1908 platform, Democratic leaders in Congress had come to feel some misgiving as to the proposed method of making their antimonopoly sentiments effective. The decrees ordering the dissolution of the Standard Oil and Tobacco combinations had been |