radical one. The generality of the progressives in all parties hail it as the message of hope, emancipation and reconstruction. It may take twenty years, they say, to carry it out, but it points to the goal and shows the way. It is necessary and inevitable, they continue, if government is to be made popular and representative again, if the Republic is to stand once more for equal opportunity and justice, and if the predatory corporate interests are to be driven out of politics and compelled to obey the law instead of dictating it. Whether or not Mr. Roosevelt intends to become, or may be forced by events to become, a candidate for the presidency in 1912, in spite of the anti-third term tradition, and in spite of his own pledge, continues to be a subject for animated speculation and even rancorous controversy. some quarters Mr. Roosevelt has been violently assailed on the assumption that he is already a candidate; in others he is regarded as a moral crusader and leader who is using his prestige and strength to promote reforms to which he is sincerely devoted. From any point of view his platform is a great fact to reckon with, as is his influence, his amazing popularity. His active leadership of the progressive forces against the control of the Republican party by the "old guard" in New York State furnished a spectacular reentrance into practical politics. FOR emocratic England. The Problem of Sweating* By Percy Alden, M. P. 'OR many years the question of Sweating, especially in home industries, has perplexed the minds of our leading statesmen, but it was not until 1909, that any real attempt was made (apart from factory legislation) to remove the worst evils resulting from employment and under-payment. The Trade Boards Act of that year, modelled to some extent upon the remedial legislation already in force in Victoria (Australia), is a first step in the direction of State interference with wages so far as the individual employer is concerned. The term "sweating" is so vague, that it may be as well to define what is intended by economists when they use that expression. At the time of Charles Kingsley it was applied to a system of sub-contract, in which the middleman was in the habit of cutting down the wages of the workers to the lowest point possible. The more hopeless they were and the more unorganized, the more pressure was put upon them to accept a small wage and to work under insanitary conditions. This somewhat narrow use of the term has now disappeared in England, or, at any rate, has been super *This is the third in the Democratic England series, the first, "Introduction," having appeared in the September CHAUTAUQUAN, and the second on "The Child and the State," in the October issue. seded since there are many sweated trades in which there is no sub-contractor and no middleman. A wider and more correct definition is that stated in the Fifth Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords, appointed in 1888 to investigate this subject. This Report, which appeared in 1890, came to the conclusion that without being able to assign an exact meaning to "sweating," the evils known by that name were shown to be: (1) An unduly low rate of wages. (2) Excessive hours of labor. (3) The insanitary state of the houses in which work was carried on. It is not improbable that many of the evils of sweating are survivals of the industrialism which preceded the factory system, but the beginnings of the industrial revolution were accompanied not only by long hours and low wages, but by the complete degradation and misery of women and children. Prof. J. S. Nicholson in the "Effect of Machinery upon Wages," commenting upon the conditions which prevailed in those days, says, "England's apparent prosperity was like the luxurious vegetation which rises from the poisonous swamps of the Tropics: at a distance, to the casual observer, her trade throve and prospered, but below it rested on the absolute misery of thousands of her inhabitants." The early steps that were taken from 1890 onwards to regulate the hours of work for women and children, the self-sacrificing efforts of men like Oastler, Hobhouse, Sadler, Charles Kingsley, and the Earl of Shaftesbury, did result in a considerable improvement of their conditions, but we have only to read the report of the Commission on Children's Employment (1862-1866), to discover how slow was the process of reform and how many were the abuses to which these children were subjected. It was during the years 1888-9, when the House of Lords Select Committee made enquiries into the evils of sweating, that attention was |