later period deal on their own lines with Redistribution?" In other words, let each party carry out the reform to which it is specially pledged. The answer, of course, is that if the Government scheme of gerrymandering is carried out, it is quite conceivable that the Unionists might never again be able to come into power, or not, at any rate, for a great many years; and in this way a vast number of measures would be carried contrary to the will of the people and solely owing to the violation of the principle of one vote one value. The Unionists, then, are quite right, not merely from the point of view of party tactics, but on much higher grounds, to refuse to allow a partial treatment of the question, and to insist on its being treated as a whole. In truth the only instrument that they possess for obtaining a recognition of the democratic principle of one vote one value is the existence of the other anomalies. If those anomalies are got rid of without the recognition of the principle of one vote one value, the Liberals will be entrenched behind a system of unjust privilege from which it may be impossible to dislodge them. The Unionists would be absolutely unworthy of their trust if they were to assent to this monstrous proposal, which is in fact the Parliamentary version of the confidence trick. If they show their confidence in the fair dealing of the Liberals by agreeing to the abolition of plural voting they may feel perfectly certain that they will never get "one vote one value," but that the over-representation of Ireland and the under-representation of England will be used to defeat the real will of the people.

In our opinion, then, the Unionist leaders, while expressing their complete willingness to carry out a general scheme of electoral reform which shall recognize both the principle of one man one vote and one vote one

value, should declare that without this act of justice they will have nothing whatever to do with the Government's proposals. By doing this they will not in any way forfeit the good opinion of moderate non-party people in the country, but on the contrary will give an assurance, which is needed, that the prime duty of a Unionist Government when it is returned to power will be to deal with the whole question of electoral reform on a sound and equitable basis. At present and owing to a variety of circumstances there are a great many people who do not realize that the Unionists are determined, whether it helps them from a purely party point of view or not, to get rid of the scandals which we have dealt with at the beginning of this article. And here we may note that the proof of the unwillingness of the Liberals to adopt the principle of one vote one value is to be found in the scheme advocated by the Spectator of endowing the whole of the electorate through the instrument of a Poll of the People with a veto over the log-rolling tactics of our legislators. Under a Referendum, as Lord Lansdowne has pointed out, there is no question of electoral anomalies. Every voter has exactly the same power in vetoing or assenting to legislation. vote of the man at Newry has the same value as the vote of the man at Romford, and not as in a Parliamentary election twenty-six times more value.

The

Before we leave the subject with which we are dealing we should like to put in a plea in regard to two points. We are quite prepared to accept manhood suffrage, and indeed should welcome the change, for in our opinion every adult male should have his full and fair share in the government of the country. We think, however, that there is a great deal to be said in favor of making twenty-five rather than twenty-one the age at

which a man may attain a vote. That is about the age when a man settles down and becomes a householder. Next we desire very strongly that no electoral reform should be passed which does not include provision for the holding of all elections on one day. There is a very great danger, in our opinion, both internal and external, in allowing the kind of interregnum which takes place during the three weeks now spent in an election. Imagine a great foreign crisis or a great strike complicated by a prolonged election. In old days when the King died the King's

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peace died with him, and until his successor was crowned there was an interregnum of several weeks, during which there was no law in the land. The position was, of course, intolerable, and the very proper legal fiction was invented that the King never died, but that his successor at once filled his place. We would have the Parliamentary interregnum reduced to one day. The new Parliament should at once succeed the old by the reasonable and convenient plan adopted throughout the rest of the civilized world of holding elections on one and the same day.

Who is to blame for this terrible and growing superfluity of books-author, publisher, or public? Or are all alike helpless in the clutches of a business system speeding up by some dire law of evolution towards an ever-increasing over-production? The present pace is killing. In 1901 the output of new books was five thousand, enough, one might suppose, to satisfy the legitimate needs of our not wholly intellectual nation. Ten years later, however, the number had swollen to eight thousand five hundred, an increase of 70 per cent. Nor does this percentage measure the full dimensions of the enhanced supply of books. For it has been coincident with a prodigious output of cheap reprints, and a general cheapening of large quantities of the new fiction and educational books. It would be safe to say that the number of printed books put out last year was more than double that of 1901. Nor can the increase be put down merely or mainly to a morbid craving for novelreading. For though we still continue to produce new novels at the rate of six or seven per working day, the last year or two has shown a decided slack

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ening in this line of production. ography, travel, belles-lettres, and science are advancing far more rapidly. To some this may appear a satisfactory testimony to the genuine spread of culture. Nor can it be denied that the large sale of cheap editions of great masterpieces of literature and science evinces an opening of the popular mind to ideas, which in itself is most commendable.

But it is precisely because of these wider signs of a desire for culture that we regret so deeply this flooding of the book market. For culture is a matter of discrimination and of quality, and this flood imposes quantity and inhibits discrimination. To catch the public eye, to tickle the superficial curiosity, to tempt the buyer, not to satisfy, improve, от stimulate the mind, is the avowed object of those responsible for the supply of books. In no branch of consumption is the buyer so much at the mercy of the seller. In other branches he has valid personal experience to help him. He has bought the same article many times before, or something very like it. With a book it is different. He only buys it

of our expanding reading public have no defence against the artful pressure of the trader interested to induce them to buy the largest quantity of books, irrespective of all considerations of inherent worth. Popular education is not real enough to furnish any adequate safeguards; it has lifted the minds of great numbers of people to a level which leaves them a helpless prey to vapid sentimentalism in literature, art, and politics, and to charlatanism in science. So the book-trade sinks to the condition of the drug-trade, mainly engaged in palming-off large quantities of well-labelled goods upon a credulous sheep-public by specious advertisement. This could not well be done when reading and the intellectual life were for the wealthy few. A publisher then regarded it as his mission to search out writers of merit whose books he felt himself entitled to recommend personally to his educated patrons, who would detect and curse him if he deceived them into paying a guinea for a bad book. A very few such publishers still remain, enjoying in some qualified way this distinctively professional character of literary guarantor. the general tendency has been to convert the publisher into a tradesman, whose business is to sell the largest quantity of books he can induce the public to think they want to buy. Thus larger and larger numbers of books pour from the press, with less and less effective checks upon their quality, while the life even of a fairly good book grows shorter and shorter.

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Nor is the guidance which the pub

lisher has dropped taken up by the bookseller. On the contrary, the bookseller has become more and more a merely automatic channel for the retail marketing of inferior books. The history of the retail trade is one of prolonged degradation. There is a striking passage in the "Life of Alexander Macmillan," showing how far that process had gone nearly half a century ago. In a letter written to Mr. Gladstone, in 1868, he says, "Whereas in former years there used to be many booksellers who kept good stocks of solid standard books-one or more in every important town in England and these booksellers lived by selling books, the case is now that in country towns few live by selling books; the trade has become so profitless that it is generally the appendage to a toy-shop or a Berlin-wool warehouse, and a few trashy novels, selling for a shilling, with flaring colors, suiting the flashy contents; and the bookseller who studies what books are good and worth recommending to his customers has ceased to exist." Though a recent turn in the tide has brought back a large number of small retailers, concerned wholly or chiefly with selling books, the point of the final criticism remains unimpaired.

In the drug trade, it is proposed to restrain noxious superfluity by imposing a legal obligation to give a true description of the materials upon each packet or bottle. Quite recently, a practice has grown up of printing on the cover of many books a tempting contents-bill. We fear, however, that no legal compulsion could convert this into a true description of the contents. Indeed, it appears quite hopeless to check or regulate the output of superfluous books by intervening at the distributing stage. Nor is it easy to suppose that anything can be achieved by appealing to the self-restraint of authors. For an author is the victim of

a perpetual illusion to the effect that his book is wanted, and as long as he can get a publisher to back him up in this belief, he will go on writing books. There is, moreover, no reliable economic check upon his creative output. The producer of ordinary wares demands some tolerable certainty of remuneration for his effort; he is not in business "for his health," nor to be fobbed off by payment in the shape of some possibility of fame. Whereas every publisher is aware that nothing is easier than to tempt an innocent author into putting out prolonged and arduous mental effort into a work which has not the remotest chance of earning him a living wage. This generalization, perhaps, requires one qualification, which goes to the root of the matter. To the publisher, even as to the author, there always shines out in the darkness of the night in which he lives some brilliant star of fortune. One of his books (how can he possibly tell which?) is going to turn out an immense success, and some share of the vast profits which accrue will reach the author. An interesting correspondence in the "Daily News" seems to designate this sudden unforeseen event as the chief cause of the superfluity of books. Every publisher must continually keep baiting his hook in hopes of catching the great fish. He must go on accepting, evoking, and publishing as many books as he can get hold of, on the blind chance that among them may be the prize-book which will bring him in the £10,000 which an anonymous novel is said recently to have secured for its dazzled publisher. As the number of new books swells, the proportion which the prize-book bears to the aggregate naturally diminishes.

Is there no limit to the process in this dwindling chance? Α well-informed writer in the "Daily News" says "No." Each publisher, he thinks, must continue at an accelerating pace

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this quest for the golden book, so long as other publishers keep racing. effective agreement among rival publishers to regulate the output appears as impracticable as the agreement of nations on a reduction of armaments. On this point, however, the correspondent does not quite convince us. If, as he contends, with every increase of his output beyond a reasonable limit, the actual net returns show a considerable falling off, it ought to be possible for some new publisher to build up a profitable trade by limiting his output to the production of good books alone, supposing him to have the intelligence to know what are the books which the more discriminate public will agree to recognize as good. word, it might be good business to take up publishing once more as a skilled craftsman instead of a gambler or a grocer. Until and unless this is feasible, it seems that author and reader alike are crushed in the cylinders of the printing press. For what chance has a work of genius, or even of high talent, by a new writer in the present tidal rush? The literary tasters, the critics and reviewers, are utterly unable to cope with the flood of new books which flow in rapid succession before their eyes. They cannot pretend to apply satisfactory tests. An inept title, a dull preface, an unattractive table of contents, sends to immediate and eternal oblivion every week scores of really meritorious books. For sheer mental weariness the critic is led to avail himself of every specious opportunity, not for discovering, but for ignoring a new book. Thus the weight of the burden breaks down the only testing apparatus between publisher and public.

In default of authentic guardians, the large reading public is fain to place itself more and more at the disposal of the library clerk, who exerts a tyranny, alike humorous and dangerous, over

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the ever-growing number of those who like to handle books. It is his interest to keep books circulating, to repress eccentric demands, and to persuade readers to take away the books it is most profitable to the trade that they should think they want to read. the last resort, then, the flood of books must be attributed to the indiscriminate voracity of the half-literate public, and is only to be checked by an advance of selective intelligence in readers. The first stage in popular literary education naturally evokes a superstitious desire to amass quantities of low-grade intellectual and emotional experience, using books for this purpose, as the nouveau riche uses material forms of property for self-display and The Nation.

self-realization. Taste, discrimination, nice selection and rejection of books, may come later. Whether they will come, is one of the most urgent open questions of our time. For the comparative insusceptibility to culture of the classes who have enjoyed large intellectual opportunities for several generations must be taken as presumptive, though not final, evidence of some inherent difficulty in the escape of the British mind from the economy of quantity, which we call materialism, into that of quality, which is another name for culture. Until this open question is answered by the course of events, we cannot say whether there is any remedy for the flood of books.

Two subjects, the exhaustion of our natural supplies of solar force and radioactivity, bulk large in the mental processes of Frederick Soddy and energize his book on "Matter and Energy," in the Home University Library. The author is a man not only full of his subject but full of the very latest knowledge about it. He sets himself the task of teaching the fundamentals about matter and force in the limit of 253 pages, at the same time holding out a warning of the dangers of unwise exHe ploitation of our natural resources. does just this and adds a hopeful prophecy. Henry Holt and Company.

from the point of view of different actors, but a series of happenings about the core of a perfectly sound psychological situation. The story told by each narrator is consistent and absorbing. The tale is unusual enough to please lovers of even the yellowest literature, and clever enough and careful enough to interest the most scholarly. The workmanship shows the influence of French craftsmen. Houghton Mifflin Co.

"Scum o' the Earth," the poem on the immigrant question that attracted so much attention upon its magazine publication, gives its title to a slender collection of verse by Robert Haven Schauffler. The first poem is a remarkably true ringing expression of deep feeling and intuitive sympathy with the hopes and purposes of our new citizens. It has, moreover, lines of lyric beauty and felicity of phrasing