in its equipment. But it seemed strange that a city should own such an enterprise, that it should do the thousands of jobs that are usually done by contractors. From this factory there were no dividends to be made. No scamping of work for the sake of big profits. No labor strikes or industrial wars. For the city looks after its workmen in a sincere way. The only motive is efficient work, at as low a cost as possible. For the manager always has before his eyes the Committee of the Council to whom he must account. There is no loafing in these shops, no needless employees, no gangs about the outer offices looking for a job. And the men seemed to value their positions. Possibly the feeling that they were working for the public may have added a new dignity to their labor and given a new and unknown stimulus to their interest. Whatever the cause, the Works Department has justified itself. Its cost sheets are as low as the private contractors', and the work done is very much better. It is no longer an experiment, although the reactionary influences constantly challenge it as socialism.

The Council has also adopted standing rules to be observed by all contractors dealing with the city. They are compelled to pay the trade-union wage; to work their men according to schedule hours, and otherwise observe a decent standard of living for their employees. As John Burns, who more than anyone else is responsible for this policy, tersely said: "It is unworthy of a city to pay starvation wages. If it is not a model employer, who then can be expected to be? If it buys sweat-shop-made goods, the city becomes a partner, not a protector, of the millions of poor of to-day, who are being driven to vice, crime, and the workhouse by starvation wages."

The Council believes that some impression can be made upon the poverty of London; that it can lift the tens of thousands of men who are directly or indirectly serving the city, to a standard of decent existence. These are some of the achievements of radicalism. The Council has further sought to promote better conditions of living through the ownership of the means of transit. Not much has been done as yet, for London is still content with its 'buses, while the "tuppenny tube," or underground subway system, is chartered by Parliament, and

is in the hands of a private company. But a beginning has been made by the County Council. It secured powers from Parliament to own and operate the street-railways which were then in private hands. It has since developed a comprehensive system. To the south of the Thames forty-six miles of track have been laid which converge on the river about the heart of the city. Fortyeight miles are also owned to the north of the Thames. These two systems are to be united through a subway which has been built under the new King's Way, which runs from Southampton Row to the Strand. When the Council took over the tramways it immediately reduced fares. The average fare now paid per passenger is but 1.86 cents. It is claimed that a saving of half a million dollars per annum has been made to the riders through this reduction. To-day, 37 per cent. of the passengers are carried at one-cent fare, while 48 per cent. more pay but two cents. The system is splendidly constructed, and earns a considerable sum of money for the relief of the rate-payers. But the main purpose is convenience, better service, clean and more attractive cars, and such relief as can be offered the poor through cheap transit.

The Council also found the railway employees underpaid. It added nearly $200,ooo a year to their income. Wages were increased; the hours of labor were reduced, and free uniforms were supplied the motormen. I tramped over the system with John Burns. He was conversant with every detail of the enterprise. And he saw the deeper significance of municipal ownership, a significance which Glasgow seems to teach and which is the paramount motive for taking the franchise corporation out of private hands. "Municipal ownership," he said, "is mainly responsible for the civic renaissance that is so marked a feature of English local government in the the last ten or fifteen years. There is one way to kill graft, and that is to absorb within the sphere of municipal ownership these public franchises that are a fruitful source of jobbery and robbery. Just so long as public franchises are granted to private monopolists, the temptation to graft will always exist. There is no incentive to making money out of a franchise when the public itself owns the public utility. Municipalize monopoly and grafting ceases, because grafting comes in

when monopolist 'A' says to politician 'B,' 'You fool the city to sell what it can better operate itself and you will have a share of the swag. 999

The Council has also inaugurated a municipal steamboat line on the Thames. It put on a splendid service, and runs the boats in connection with the tramways. It forced Parliament to municipalize the water-supply, and within recent years fourteen of the newly created borough councils have taken over the electricity supply. The Council is agitating for a municipal milk supply, for public bakeries, for municipal employment agencies, and the serving of free lunches to school-children. It is working to reduce the price of gas in the metropolis. It protects its poor from short weights in the purchase of coal and other commodities. The extent to which inspection is carried on by the officials of the boroughs and County Council is amazing. They remove refuse and garbage, abate nuisances, watch over the public health in a multitude of ways; prevent food adulteration, inspect and register dairies, inspect factories and workshops, prevent the employment of minors under eighteen years of age for more than seventy-four hours a week. The County Council has power to prevent overcrowding and unsanitary dwelling conditions, to license slaughter-houses and offensive businesses. Its powers for the protection of health are very ample.

We are inclined to look upon these achievements of the English city as easily obtained. But, in fact, the struggle for selfgovernment in England has been harder than our own. The London County Council has had to make its way against the obstruction of privilege at every turn. For years it has sought permission from Parliament to link up its tramway systems through the use of the Thames bridges and Embankment. But the House of Lords always interposed a veto. Distrustful of democracy, the House of Lords is even more fearful of its own privileges and its outlook from the Terraces of the Houses of Parliament.

The same reactionary interests prevented the municipalization of the water-supply up to 1905. Prior to that time it was in the hands of eight private water companies. Despite the fact that portions of the city were inadequately supplied, Parliament, jealous of its own interests, prevented every

effort at municipalization. And when the system was finally taken over, Parliament declined to trust the County Council, but created in its stead a Water Board of sixtysix members, nominated by various local authorities and only indirectly responsible to the people. And when the Water Board came to purchase the companies, they were not permitted to acquire them at their physical value, but were forced to pay an immense award covering the capitalized value of the earnings of the plants. While the eight companies were estimated to be worth in the neighborhood of $120,000,000, Parliament imposed upon the community a method of valuation which involved a payment of $205,791,000, which sum was still $40,000,000 less than the companies claimed.

The English cities enjoy less home rule than do the cities of America. They have to go to Parliament for every little thing. And Parliament is very cautious in the things it permits the city to do. This is particularly true of London. For the things the County Council wants to do hurt the big interests in control of Parliament. Almost all of the 121 square miles upon which the city is built is owned by the Dukes of Westminster, of Bedford, of Portland, and a few other parliamentary landlords. They will not sell their lands but let them out on lease. And the tenant has to make the repairs, maintain the property, and pay all the taxes, too. Worst of all, when the lease expires, the landlord takes all of the improvements without paying for them. And the many activities of the County Council are likely to injure these landed gentlemen in some way or other. For they own the slums and the death-breeding tenements. The Council wanted to clear them out to make them more sanitary, to open up streets, and otherwise disturb the ducal landlords who were in control of Parliament. The same was true of the franchises of the big corporations. In consequence, when the Council came to Parliament for relief, the House of Lords interposed its veto; or when the powers were granted, the community was compelled to pay handsomely for the privilege of making the city a decent place in which to live.

The Council has now entered on the biggest struggle of all. It is aiming to break the land monopoly which afflicts London as it does all English cities. It has joined an

agitation for the "taxation of land values," which is the English equivalent for the single-tax philosophy of Henry George. More than one hundred cities have united in demanding of their representatives in Parliament the right to retake for local purposes a portion of the unearned increment which results from the city's growth, and the present Liberal ministry is pledged to such a

measure.

Through this means the County Council hopes to force the ducal dogs in the manger to improve their lands if they will not sell them. By taxation the Council hopes to force the owners to tear down the shacks and disease-breeding tenements, to let go their immense suburban holdings, and open them up to residence for the people of London. To-day the land is free from taxation.* By increasing the cost of holding it the Council believes it can force the land into use. Through this means, too, the burden of local taxes, now paid by the tenant, will be shifted in part to the landlord, and through the taxing away of its speculative value, unused land, both within and without the city, will be brought into occupancy. Most of the great art of the world has been produced under the stimulus of democracy or the Christian religion. These were the great forces that beautified the Italian cities during their age of freedom and dotted Europe with cathedrals. And the new London that is coming into existence under the inspiration of the County Council is expressing its aspirations in a big artistic way. For the first time in the city's history, a comprehensive plan for the beautification of the city has been worked out. The County Council has dared to entertain the idea of a beautiful London. It has widened old streets, opened up parks, and erected artistic public buildings. Its new bridges across the Thames have, for the most part, justified the standard set by Waterloo Bridge, probably the finest arch bridge in the world. But its greatest achievement has been the Kings Way improvement. A broad thoroughfare has been cut through the meanest part of the city from Southampton Row to the Strand. The Council has saved the bits of ancient architecture, and so controlled the new as to make them all conform to an architectural whole. *All the taxes are paid by the tenant. Land as such is not assessed at all. And if the property is not improved or is vacant it pays no taxes at all.

When completed, the improvement will be one of the finest roadways in the world. It has cost upward of $25,000,000. It involved the destruction of many of the most unsanitary tenements in London. To the east are the law courts, and to the south, flanking upon the Strand, are the fine old parish churches of Christopher Wren, to which has been added the new Gaiety Theatre, to whose beauty the Council contributed thousands of pounds. Along the entire length of 7,000 feet plane-trees have been planted. And this stupendous improvement has been so financed that in sixty years' time the resale of the land and the rents of the property will return its entire cost to the tax-payers. The roadway has been constructed as will all great roadways in the future when our cities own all of their utilities. Underneath the carriageway are subways for the street-cars. Beneath the broad pavements on either side of the roadway are twelve-foot conduits for gas, water, and electric mains and wires. Still farther down are immense district sewers. In many respects this is the greatest achievement of democracy in London. It was bold, courageous, and intelligent. But best of all, it was an exhibition of belief in the city as an entity, in municipal work as a thing which should be planned in a big, beautiful, artistic way.

London really stands for a new idea in the world. It is a community with a conscious purpose. Its purpose is far more than the building of streets and sewers, the maintaining of an efficient police and fire department, the care of the health and lives of the people. London is bent upon lifting its people from ignorance, squalor, disease, and poverty. It has reared 500 new schoolhouses under the new Public School Act, which it fostered. It has opened seventy libraries. It has founded 2,000 educational scholarships. It has opened fifty public baths and twelve polytechnics. There are now 300 beautiful squares, 106 Council parks and breathing-places, twelve royal parks, and 120 borough gardens. London is said to be the greenest large city in the world. The Council has also razed many slum areas, and is erecting model homes for 100,000 of its people. About the city broad areas of land have been purchased on which Cottages are to be built for the better-to-do classes. London is going to be its own land

lord. Not much has been done as yet, it is true, but a big start on the housing question has been made.

But the new democracy is not satisfied with the achievements it has made. It is not content with two rooms and a washbowl. For what has been done is but the apprentice work. The County Council has only laid its foundations. It has spent twenty years in justifying industrial de

mocracy. Its work has just begun. It has laid out a programme of city building in which human life and happiness rather than business profits and dividends will be the ideal. Democracy has vindicated itself in the English city. It has found its fullest expression in the London County Council. The London of tomorrow is as full of hope as the London of to-day is full of misery.

D

URING the summer of a memorable year Mr. Bulstrode inhabited a palace. Some millionaires achieve them after much architectural tribulation; his was forced upon him. On this occasion no noble or generous impulse led him to occupy his friend's, the Duc de Montensier's, hôtel, for when De Montensier's project was placed before the American his love of beauty (he so put it to himself) wouldn't let him refuse. The charming rooms where no object was younger than Bulstrode's great grandfather; the tapestries, the colors of brocade and stuffs; the Vernets, Fragonards, and Chardins of the gallery, and the Nattiersthe enchanting women--almost made him for a moment lose sight of a living lady.

On the very first day he went through the house, coming out from the salon to a terrace and a vast garden in the heart of Paris, Mr. Bulstrode accepted Montensier's offer to put in his traps for a few months and turn Parisian.

James Thatcher Bulstrode, born in Providence, educated at Harvard, cosmopolitan thereafter, could no more turn Parisian than could his clothes. But generous hearts and sentiments like his lay claim to no country, but are cosmopolitan composite traits of "the first rate," the "good sort," the world over.

Directly opposite the white façade of Bulstrode's little palace was a French tenement, a hôtel meublé, the hostelry for beg

gars; for domestics without places; for poor professors; for actors with no stages but the last; for laborers with no labor; in short, for the riff-raff of the population, for those who no longer hold the dignity of profession or pay rent for a term. Sometimes Mr. Bulstrode would look out at the tenement, whose windows in this season were wide open; and the general aspect indicated that dislocated fortunes flourished. In one window, pirouetting or dancing in it, calling out of it, leaning perilously over the sill of it, was a child-as far as Bulstrode could decide, a creature of about six years of age. She was too small to see much of, but all he saw was activity, gesticulation, and perpetual motion. When the day was hot she fanned herself with a bit of paper. She called far out to the wine-merchant's wife, who sat with her family before the shop while her pretty children played in the gutter.

In Paris when the weather climbs to eighty, Parisians count themselves in the tropics and the people, who lived apparently out of doors altogether, wore a melted, disheartened air. But the De Montensier garden, full of roses and heliotrope, watered and refreshed by the fountains' delightful falling, was a retreat not to be surpassed by many suburbs. Mr. Bulstrode gave little dinners on the terrace; little suppers after the theatre, when rooms and garden were lighted with fairy lanterns, and his chef outdid his traditions to please his American master.

One day as Mr. Bulstrode sat smoking on