The most important function recently handed over to the Council is education, transferred in 1904, which hitherto had been administered by a special board. America has little to learn from England in popular education. The schools have so long been under the guidance of the Church, and sectarian questions have so long hindered proper development, that America has taken long strides while England has marked time. However, the schools are quite as good as those of the provincial towns and do contain some very excellent features. There are schools-"centres"for cooking, laundering, housekeeping and manual training. Special schools have been provided for the mentally and physically defective and polytechnics for advanced students. Penny banks are maintained to encourage thrift, and loan libraries to stimulate reading. Meals are given to underfed children, and in a few instances vehicles convey crippled children to and from school. The newer buildings are equipped with gymnasiums, and public baths are being urged as a necessary part of the equipment. There is systematic medical inspection of school children to determine who are mentally and physically defective and to prevent the spread of contagious diseases. Out of school hours, the buildings are rented to various cultural associations at modest charges, the aim being to make the school a powerful factor in the development of good citizenship in every direction.

The attitude of the Council towards its employees is that of a model employer. They are paid the standard rate of wages and required to work only the standard number of hours. That the same treatment shall be given to employees of private contractors, "fair wages clauses," clauses requiring the contractor to pay trade union rates and to work under trade union conditions, are inserted in all contracts. The attempt throughout is to avoid on the one hand "sweating" and inadequate wages, and on the other the creation of a privileged class of employees by over-payment and under-work.

In order that the working man might be fairly treated

and that the taxpayer might get the worth of his money in public work, the Council established in 1892 the "works department." By this means the Council became its own contractor, employing workingmen, buying supplies and directing the work through its own staff of engineers. The procedure is as follows: When the engineers' estimate of the work to be done by any committee of the Council is referred to the Works Department, it reports whether it can do the work for the estimated amount or not. If it says it can, the job is assigned to the Department. If it says it cannot, the work is given to private contractors. From this point on the Department is treated as a contractor and its work supervised as if it were a contractor in reality. During the first years of its history, many difficulties were encountered and the question is still an open one whether the practice paid; but in view of the unsatisfactory work done by certain contractors, the difficulty of obtaining honest work where inspection was difficult, e. g., sewers and underground construction, the high prices that were charged, and the collusion said to exist among a ring of contractors, it is now generally believed to have justified its existence. Whether it saves any large sum for the Council may be a question, but it tends to keep the contractors within bounds by the competition it affords. During the year 1904-5, the average number of employees was 3,382 and the total cost of the work performed nearly $1,200,000.

Measured according to the standard of municipal expenditures in American cities, London gets off very easily. New York with about three-fourths the population spends much more than London. The budget of the County Council taken alone is about one-quarter of the total, approximately $27,000,000. Its indebtedness in the Spring of 1905 was about $375,000,000, but a good proportion of this was incurred to raise money to loan to other public bodies, for which the Council acts as banker. The Council also owns several revenue producing undertakings, such as tramways and tenements, so that still another portion does not impose

a burden upon the taxpayers. One of the most interesting cases of successful financial management is the new avenue cut through from the Strand to High Holborn. The principle adopted was to acquire every piece of property of which a portion was taken for the avenue, to then rearrange the odds and ends left and to rent good sized plots for 50 to 99 years. As a result, the interest on the money loaned to put through the scheme will be paid by rents from the remaining property if all the property is rented upon the terms fixed, as now seems to be likely.

One ought not to close this brief review of the functions of the County Council without reference to the men who direct the machinery. Nearly all are elected by the people and serve without salary; I almost said without pay, which would not be strictly true, for while there is no financial remuneration there are rewards which attract the most able men. Public service is regarded almost everywhere in England with the greatest reverence. Honor, dignity, and social prominence attach to public office, and the belief is general that the successful man owes the community a debt which can be discharged only through gratuitous service for the public welfare.

The members of the Council come from every class of society. There is the labor leader, the capitalist, the titled peer, the university professor, the barrister, the doctor and "the butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker." The successful business man who has retired from active work in the business world, is probably the most numerous. All give generously of their time and labor, for the work of the County Council is heavy and exacting. Indeed, there are instances where men have been elected from active life and have relinquished their business obligations in order to serve the public. Where there is such civic patriotism it is not surprising that government is wisely and efficiently conducted.

I

By James Edmund Holden

USED to meet a man in the Cotton Exchange, in Manchester, England, on Tuesdays and Fridays, the market days, who had a wide, red scar on his left cheek, across the cheek bone and extending partly over the bridge of his nose. Usually it was red, but when he got at all excited the scar would take on a purple tint. We got used to it, and seldom noticed it after the first few times we met, but strangers would ask us now and then about the man. Every young fellow of us had, in his school days, been instructed by parents and teachers to avoid the gentleman, ostracize him, hold him in abhorrence, as an enemy of the common good. It all grew out of a quarrel long years ago. He was rich and somewhat of an aristocrat, a large employer of labor. Any inquiry only called forth the answer, “Oh, that scar on his face? That is the Lincoln mark." And thereby hangs a tale, as the saying goes.

In the workhouse of Burnley, in the same county with Manchester, is an old, crippled pauper, who sits around the gates of the grounds, waiting presumably for the final human release. If you get into conversation with him, he will, after a little, whisper to you the startling intelligence that "the 'Merica war will now soon be over, and then raw cotton will not be grown at the price of blood." This leads to the same story as the other. It is an untold story of the American Civil War.

When southern cotton fields were turned to battle fields and master and slave neglected everything but the war, these weavers and spinners of the American cotton in Lancashire, and there were over two millions of them all told, were interested in the struggle to the extent of their daily bread. This was before the pitiful attempts of the English government to raise cotton in India and thus be independent of

*This highly original and interesting article was by mistake announced as a part of the January CHAUTAUQUAN.

the States. It was before the great development of the cotton manufacturing interests in New England. The world depended on these Lancashire weavers for cotton cloth then, and the weavers depended on New Orleans for raw material. Long before the war the Lancashire sky had been dark with other clouds than native coal smoke, and when the war broke out at last, they knew they were in for it.

The bales of cotton arriving at Liverpool became fewer every day. The great mills were put on short time. Then they began to close entirely, first for a month, then three months. But they stayed shut down for six months, then for a year, then another. And so the long drawn out sorrow came slowly but surely.

Savings banks and coöperative societies, the redeemers of latter-day poverty were in their infancy then. The wages of these factory workers averaged only $4.10 a week per adult for an eleven and one-half hour day. Working at these starvation wages what preparation could they make for the coming storm? Many firms crippled themselves trying to keep their hands at work as long as possible. Soon hundreds of half-famished men and women were walking the hard paved streets, wondering where tomorrow's dinner was coming from. The Manchester Examiner, the only daily paper, was scanned and passed around to find out any news of the 'Merica war.

Hopeless days were spent guessing the possibility of immediate settlement. Mills closed, stores closed, banks closed. The only interest that was aroused in town and county was when some member of Parliament would announce a speech on the present condition of things. It is an interesting study to follow the attitude of the leaders of the Lancashire people at that time. Mr. Gladstone without looking too closely at the American trouble had committed himself to a policy and course which he was man enough to condemn in himself in after life. He was a Lancashire man, from Liverpool. John Bright, the Quaker of Rochdale, was a cotton merchant himself, but his nature and re