MR. BALDWIN LOOKS FORWARD

MR. BALDWIN aroused and pleased a
large section of the British public last
March by taking the initiative in defin-
ing the broader domestic policies of his
Party, which he has hitherto left largely
to his coadjutors. In two speeches, the
first delivered at Birmingham on March
5 and the second in the House of Com-
mons the following day, he clarified his
own position, and perforce that of his
followers, in respect to several impor-
tant questions. The burden of his ad-
dresses was a plea to establish through-
out British industry 'conciliation, mu-
tual tolerance, and helpfulness,' and
to face the country's economic prob-
lems in a frank spirit of fellowship
among the classes. After sketching the
profound changes that had occurred in
industrial relations within his personal
memory, the vanishing of the patriar-
chal relations that formerly existed in
his own business, and the appearance of
a new economic organization demand-
ing new forms of social adjustment, he
intimated, amid the cheers of the Labor
Members, far-reaching changes to come,
by declaring that the next stage of our

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industrial civilization is beyond the
power of the present generation to
settle. Nothing can check the evolution
which is now in process. The task of
statesmanship is limited to steering
safely through the transition period.
This demands good-will, but more than
good-will alone — a searching, unpreju-
diced examination of the facts of our
present industrial society. He appealed
to employers and workers to come
together, 'not with a view on the one
side to get an increase of wages, nor
with a view on the other side to get a
reduction of wages, but to get at the
reasons and see where the fault lies.'
Here the Premier addressed himself
especially to employers, asking them to
lay their cards on the table and to have
done with 'secretiveness in business,'
which breeds so much suspicion. Asso-
ciated with this, of course, is the drop-
ping of the proposed bill to limit the
discretion of trade-unions in handling
their funds for political purposes.

Almost simultaneously Sir Eric Ged-
des has come forward with an advanced
proposal that the leaders of the great
competing industries of the world meet
together or take the first steps to-

ward eventually meeting together — to agree, not secretly and in private compacts, but openly and before the public eye, upon means of mitigating the rivalry for markets and for raw materials that now threatens the material welfare of large classes of society and sows the seed of new wars.

Such competition is just now a particularly sore point with British industry, on account of the sensation created by the contract given by an English shipping-company to a German firm to build five motor-vessels of ten thousand tons each. Had the firm been obliged to pay the British price, the ships would not have been built at all. The company could not be accused of want of patriotism, for it was willing, out of public spirit and a desire to ease unemployment, to pay a quarter of a million dollars more than the German price to any British firm that would undertake the contract. But no British shipbuilder would take on the job even with that margin over his German competitors. In fact, the saving from building in Germany will amount to nearly three hundred thousand dollars on each vessel.

Discussion of this incident brought out the fact that the German yards are better organized and better equipped than those of Great Britain. A writer in the Spectator observes: 'High wages do not by any means involve a high cost of production in the finished article, as we have learned from America' — that is, particularly from our motor industry. Another factor in favor of the Germans is the linking of their iron, steel, coal, power-supplying, and shipbuilding industries into one coördinated system.

Great Britain faces another phase of an analogous question in connection with housing. A law adopted when the Labor Government was in power provides for subsidizing out of the public funds the construction of tenements for working people. Several private pro

moters - Lord Weir is the most prominent among them have come forward with a system of standardized steel-construction by which houses can be produced en masse and assembled by ordinary labor, much as Ford automobiles are put together, at a much lower cost than ordinary cottages. Sample houses of this kind are a popular sightseeing spectacle just now in several English cities. But bricklayers, plasterers, and members of the other organized building trades are up in arms against the innovation, and their votes carry weight in the municipal councils, which control Government buildingprogrammes. On the other hand, advocates of the new system argue that the kind of construction they propose will give work to unemployed members of shipbuilding and other trades, who are in greatest distress. In Great Britain, as in America, building-mechanics have suffered comparatively little during the present period of enforced idleness in many industries.

gorno-Karabakh, and South-Ossetia. Pravda adds complacently that 'a score or so of small nationalities not yet autonomously organized must be added to this list.' Representatives of the different Caucasian nationalities spoke, each in his own language. This polyglot eloquence, plus the fact that some of the official reports took four hours to read, must have tested even Oriental patience.

Chairman Rykov's policy speech gives several suggestive clues to the Soviet Government's projects both at home and abroad. He said that Moscow had lately lived through ‘a period of recognitions' because other Governments found it impossible longer to ignore the Soviet Union, but that these recognitions had 'brought complications,' especially in the matter of the old debts. Russia's weight in the world was proved by the fact that the question of her recognition had influenced, and possibly determined, the results of the last general election in Great Britain. Under Mr. Baldwin's Conservative Cabinet, hostility to Moscow had stiffened - probably the bourgeois States were conspiring to bring new pressure against her. But while the Soviet authorities encountered this revival of reaction in the West, they were making steady progress in the East. A new spirit of nationalism and independence was astir in Asia, and its leaders heralded Soviet policies as favorable to their aspirations. They 'find in us a friend and an ally.'

Rykov recognized that the revolutionary tide in Western Europe is ebbing and that the labor movement there is 'slowing down.' But the situation is not stable. Rather cleverly, he turned against France's contention that Moscow must recognize the Tsar's debts precisely the argument that many Frenchmen use against

the payment of their own Government's debts to the United States: "The French, to be sure, lent large sums to the Tsar's Government, but they considered the Tsar's army part of their own military system.' He asserted that Russia had spent three million lives of soldiers killed in action alone, not counting those dead from wounds and disease to purchase France's victory in the war, and that this should be counted as a set-off against these debts. At the same time, he did not exclude the possibility of a compromise. Rykov also cautioned his hearers against hoping for any considerable financial help from foreign sources to rehabilitate Russia. That would not come until Russia proved herself able to begin that recovery independently.

Chicherin, the Soviet Foreign Minister, declared that the British Dominions were the world's most violent propagandist of white supremacy, and therefore the most determined opponents of the Bolshevist idea that all races and nationalities are equal and entitled to complete self-government. The United States, while holding much the same views as the British Dominions, is not equally consistent. Its authorities, for instance, are champions of the yellow race in China. 'We know that Ambassador Sherman has publicly stated that Comrade Karakhan, our representative in the Orient, is right in his intentions, and only wrong in his methods, when he advocates annulling the international agreements that hamper China to-day because they deny the sovereignty and prevent the free development of her people.' Japan, Chicherin declared, was embarrassed by her own imperialism. As an imperialist Power she was perforce a power of second rank. Hence her courtship of the Soviets. Later in his address Chicherin described in some detail alleged feelers put out to Mos

cow for a resumption of relations between the United States and Russia.

Rykov and Chicherin naturally had the best press at the Conference. We know only in a most sketchy way what other delegates said — apparently they devoted themselves largely to eulogizing the Moscow dignitaries. Nevertheless, the debate upon the domestic situation brought out frank criticism from the peasant delegates that got into print. Camouflaged beneath involved and abstract verbiage are references to the persistent estrangement of the peasants from the Bolsheviki. Official reports assert that the agricultural situation is improving, that the area under cultivation is now about four-fifths what it was before the war, and that in the subsistence-farming—as distinguished from the grain-exporting-districts it is even larger than in 1914. In the Ukraine it is 97 per cent and in Siberia 96 per cent of what it was at the former date. But a marked decrease is reported in the regions that suffered from the recent famine. Since the beginning of the war there has been a net decline in live stock, ranging from seven per cent in case of cattle to thirty per cent in case of horses, but recovery is now under way.

The résumé of the financial situation, if true, is most significant. Moscow's last budget provided for expenditures in round numbers of over two billion rubles, or about one billion dollars. Actual income, which is exceeding the original estimate, will leave a surplus of 268,000,000 rubles, or about $134,000,000. It is now proposed to lighten taxes, especially on agriculture.

One significant straw that perhaps shows the direction in which the current is flowing was an official recognition by the commissar speakers that the kulak, or village capitalist, may

have been treated by them a bit too harshly. They admit that he has sometimes been unfairly persecuted. 'Often a thrifty person is called a kulak for no other reason than his thrift. . . Every homestead in our villages must become tenfold wealthier and more prosperous than it is now, for with a hungry, illiterate peasantry we shall never make socialism a success.'

The peasant delegates, to judge from the reports, stuck closely to the matter-of-fact. Their speeches were the kind that would strike home in a rural New England town meeting. The speakers wanted the question of surveying pastures and wood lots freed from departmental red tape, a Government reserve of seed grain provided to use in case of crop failures, higher prices for produce and lower prices for manufactured goods. A peasant delegate from White Russia, while approving Moscow's desire to live in peace with Poland, thought the Government 'talked to that country in too mild a voice.'

After the business of the Conference was transacted, the delegates made a tour of Georgia, where, according to Soviet accounts, the populace received them with enthusiasm.

CHILD LABOR IN CHINA

OCCASIONAL notices in the Chinese press and an article in the New Statesman call attention to the aggravation of the child-labor evil in China since the introduction of the factory system. A commission was appointed in Shanghai nearly two years ago, on the initiative of an Englishwoman representing the Young Women's Christian Association in that city and consisting principally of foreigners, to investigate this evil. Its report has now been made public. Passing over the employment of very young children in domestic

service, shopkeeping, and small industries, which has always existed in China, the investigators come at once to the main subject of their inquiry. In match factories, for instance, the members found children 'certainly not more than five years of age' working at incredible speed for wages as low as nine cents a day. To this should be added that the poisonous white phosphorus is not prohibited in China, and that cases of phosphorus-poisoning were observed. In the silk mills children six years old work twelve hours a day or more in a hot, steamy atmosphere, preparing the cocoons for the reelers over basins of nearly boiling water. The Commission says of these tiny workers:

In the main they present a pitiable sight. Their physical condition is poor, and their faces are devoid of any expression of happiness or well-being. They appear to be miserable both physically and mentally. The adults are given a certain number of cocoons from which they have to produce a given quantity of silk. Should they fall short of this quantity they are fined. They then frequently revenge themselves by illtreating the children under them. The work could be done by adults.

One of the largest modern industries in China is cotton-spinning. CondiConditions in the Shanghai factories are thus described:

The Commission has visited a number of mills. . . both during the day and at night, and has seen very many children at work who could not have been more than six years of age. The hours of work are generally twelve, with not more than one hour off for a meal. The children frequently have to stand the whole time they are at work. . . . In many cases the atmospheric and dust conditions are bad. The sanitary arrangements in the majority of mills and factories leave very much to be desired. The average earnings of a young child are usually not more than twenty silver cents a day. The contract system of em

ployment is common. Under this system the native contractor supplies the requisite labor, and is paid on production. This system is obviously open to grave abuse. The Commission heard evidence to the effect that in some instances contractors obtain young children from the country districts, paying the parents two dollars a month for the services of each child. By employing such children in the mills and factories the contractor is able to make a profit of about four dollars a month in respect of each child. These children are frequently most miserably housed and fed. They receive no money, and their conditions of life are practically those of slavery.

Shanghai has just indulged in a cotton-mill strike. Of the 1,800,000 spindles in that city and vicinity, Japanese proprietors own 910,000, native proprietors 620,000, and Chinese proprietors 269,000. The dispute, which was attended by rioting, was apparently confined to the Japanese establishments. There was the usual charge of Bolshevist agitation, and the strike-leaders, among whom was a school-teacher, were arrested. A nationalist aspect was given to the controversy. The strikers' press printed such appeals as the following: 'China is constantly insulted by Japan. ... The opening of cotton mills in China by Japanese is an invàsion of our national rights. Our people employed in their mills suffer worse than the devils in Hell. Japanese foremen beat them with their fists and sticks, although they work twelve hours a day.'

A contributor to the China Weekly Review says, "There is no positive proof that the strike is really due to Bolshevism.' He attributes the rapid extenthat their mills exhibit a ‘high degree sion of Japanese ownership to the fact of efficiency and honest and able management.' This conflicts with the more patriarchal system in the Chinese mills, whose foremen and labor heads control the working force and enjoy various