keynote is found in the references to the "high enterprise of the new day" which is "to lift everything that concerns our life as a nation to the light that shines from the hearth fire of every man's conscience and vision of the right." This is a noble sentiment. It rises as high above the actual performances of the Democratic House of Representatives that has gone out of being with the Taft administration as the furthermost star above the surface of the earth. intentioned man is the new President.

A well

Philadelphia North American: President Wilson's statement, each word and phrase of which shows careful selection, contains every element that it needed to make it historic, and it contains nothing to save it from oblivion. Time alone will solve this paradox.

New York Commercial: The address is conceived in the spirit of a great consecration to a great work. It manifests that kind of egotism which must exist in a strong man impelled by intense conviction, if he would have the people believe in him, that kind of belief constituting the vis a tergo which makes a leader successful in his high purposes; for, if man is great, men are infinitely greater. The whole inaugural has the ring of a trumpet blast, but its key is pitched to what is finest in human ideals of political and social uplift. Such. is the promise. We now await perform

ance.

Philadelphia Bulletin: No other President in many years has taken the oath of office in the midst of so much uncertainty as to how he will interpret into policies the principles which he and his party professed in their campaign. Little or no additional light is shed on this uncertainty by Mr. Wilson. For the most part his discourse concerns general statements of principles and duties with which it will be quite easy to obtain at once the philosophical concurrence of all of us.

Hartford Times: The address may be called a prose-poem, but it is also a collection of aphorisms. It is the rhetorical culmination of all the addresses which the new President has delivered since he first presented himself to the American people as a candidate for the highest office in their gift. It is a bril

liant and impressive condensation of the philosophy of "progressiveism." It begins and ends with a declaration that the new Administration is not to be merely a party Administration.

Baltimore American: One may be in doubt as to some of the specific things that the new President proposes to do, and he does not hesitate to avow his own lack of precise policies in some regards. But it is different with principles. As to these he is firm and assured.

Chicago Tribune: To many citizens the message must come as a disappointment, since it presents no definite recommendations for action. No better statement, in general outline, of the forward movement throughout the nation has been given, but it is an outline on a very large scale, and what we are all anxious to know now is how this new sprung leader and Chief Executive proposes to fill it in.

New York Sun: We quote five words from President Wilson's inaugural: "We shall restore, not destroy." This is the promise, the pledge, the platform. The rest is eloquent surplusage. If the promise is kept, the pledge redeemed, the platform obeyed, the administration now beginning with the good will and good wishes and best hopes and reserved judgment of all Woodrow Wilson's fellow citizens will be in the truest sense progressive and in the truest sense conservative; and what more could any patriotic American desire?

Philadelphia Public Ledger: There is an evident effort to make it plain that this is to be no shallow-pated, revolu tionary, haphazard Administration, but the "high course of action" shall be guided by deliberation, sanity, regard for precedent, law and Constitution. At the same time there is the grim determination, decisiveness and boldness of the man thoroughly in earnest.

Providence Journal: At the rate of speed at which even a friendly Congress moves, Mr. Wilson may count himself fortunate to achieve any considerable part of the reforms which he considers desirable within the space of his presidential term. How far is his party prepared to follow him in a crusade against "the things that ought to be altered?" We shall see.

New York Times: Mr. Wilson speaks

as a just man, as a man moved with the desire and with the intention to see that justice is done among men, that the country's laws shall be based upon truth, upon the principle of equality, and that the impulses of humanity as well as of justice shall prevail in their making. Mr. Wilson speaks as an able man, as a man competent to initiate with courage and direct with wisdom the reforms he proposes-proposes in principle, not yet, of course, in practical detail. The words of the President are deeply significant because they come from a man who now has the power of embodying in national policies and, to the extent of his great influence, in statutes, those principles of just and equal treatment of all men which he proclaims.

Certainly,

Springfield Republican: conservative people, the established interests, all the pillars of society have no cause for alarm if this inaugural reveals the high mission of President Wilson, as he himself interprets it. He stands firmly for the fundamental principles of the older Democracy, which recognized the rights of property and the safeguarding of the individual's freedom. But he does and will make valiant war upon the abuses of the time; the while seeking in every possible way to put the Government at the larger service of humanity.

London Express: It is the address of an academic professor, called upon to deal with practical politics, full of noble sound, but difficult to tell what it may signify.

London Morning Post: It remains to be seen whether President Wilson is a great statesman. But at least it may be said that his address has statesmanlike qualities. Its thesis is no less remarkable because not pugnacious. It strikes a new note in American politics of what over here we call social reform.

London Chronicle: The United States must be heartily congratulated upon having such a true Democrat and such a fearless statesman at its head, and when some of the greatest nations seem to be making a mockery of humanity as well as democracy his clarion call should echo far beyond the American shores and bear fruit.

London Mail: The President's address conveys a somewhat too black

impression of modern American life and conditions. One fact, at least, clearly appears. The era of free competition is over in the States, and the day of Government control of industry is at hand.

London News: President Wilson has set up a fine ideal and, like a brave and upright man, has delivered himself into the hands of his judges by giving them a measure by which to test his loyalty to his cause and his fitness to undertake it.

Baltimore News: What Mr. Wilson says in this first message is not startlingly definite. For the most part it breathes of reform. A note of uplift pervades it. It is much the sort of utterance we frequently get from the pulpits. In a definite way it specifies the tariff as chief of the iniquities and crimes of a benighted system. The President further criticises our money system and our wastefulness as a nation. The address does not make it clear how these iniquities are to be overcome. The message is not seriously disturbing.

THE MINIMUM WAGE FAD.

From the New York Sun.

If the wages of one class of workers are to be fixed in accordance with their needs rather than their earning capacities or the state of the labor market it seems only fair that the same principle should prevail with all wage earners. This extension of the application of the theory will lead the speculative observer to interesting conclusions.

Thus if a single woman deserves a certain wage to support herself in comfortable decency, obviously a widow with a child must have a higher wage, a widow with two children still more money, and so on up to the working woman having the largest number of children. These wages must be readjusted whenever the earner's obligations change, as, for example, when each child goes to work for itself.

But if women are to have wages measured by their needs, the same treatment must be given to men. The unmarried man without dependents does not need so much money as the unmarried man with a sister or a mother to support, or as the married man with wife and children to feed and clothe and educate. Again the man whose sons show an early instinct for trade and enter one of the numerous employments, mostly soliciting and peddling, to which the youth of the land is so earnestly entreated by publishers, manufacturers and merchants, does not need so high a wage as the father of children less enterprising. Nor does the father of a child whose ambition is to "get to work" need an income as large as that parent whose offspring aspires to practice one of the arts.

Were the attempt made to adjust all wages to meet the obligations of each employee, rather than to recompense him for services rendered, it is plain that the employer would have to deal not with the individual worker, but with his family. Not, What can you do? but, What must you have? would be the question put to the seeker for work. A man may doubt the practicability of such a system without thereby writing himself down as entirely ignorant of the inequalities and injustices of the present competitive order.

From the New York World.

Henry Siegel, the proprietor of department stores with 6,000 employes, expresses the opinion that if the minimum wage of $2 a day for women, which has been proposed by the Illinois investigators, were put into effect, women would be driven

from business places and men would take their places. In that event "more women will be upon the streets of our cities than ever before in the history of the country."

This is obviously true. A minimum wage of $2 a day for women would mean an annual minimum income of $626. This is above the average yearly earnings of men in this country. As men are stronger than women and can do more work, the natural tendency would be to substitute them for women, unless the Legislature also provided that no man should be employed at any work that a woman could do.

There is as much social danger in a minimum wage that is too high as in one that is too low, and when government tries to regulate wages the mischief is likely to outweigh the benefits. Publicity is often more profitable than legislation.

TAFT'S VETO OF THE WEBB BILL.

From the New York Journal of Commerce. In passing the Webb liquor bill prohibiting interstate shipments over President Taft's veto Congress has done an unwise thing which is certain to be rebuked by the courts. The fundamental point at issue is not the desirability of the measure-although that may well be questioned-but the disposition to refuse the responsibility of "turning down" bills demanded by a large body of enthusiasts, and to throw this responsibility upon the Supreme Court. This is an old method of evasion which has long since become familiar not only in Washington but elsewhere under our constitutional system of divided powers. It is regrettable because it subjects the courts to more of the unwarranted abuse and contumely from which they are now suffering, and because it suggests that demagogues and agitators are attaining a hold upon legislation that is too strong to be resisted. The Webb

bill itself will in no respect secure the observance of prohibition laws, but may bring them even more into contempt than at present.

Part

From the New York Tribune. Whether the courts will sustain the act or not, President Taft is entitled to great credit for fixing attention on the duty of the lawmaking powers to square their measures with the Constitution, instead of carelessly laying that burden on the Supreme Court. In earlier days Presidents and Congressmen were particularly scrupulous in this matter. Jefferson and Madison maintained that they were just as much the guardians of the Constitution as the judges. of the impatience with the courts is due to the recklessness with which Congress and legislatures have passed halfbaked bills in response to half thought out demands for reforms which the courts have had so frequently to invalidate as to gain the reputation of habitually blocking progress. If the lawmakers took their duties seriously enough they would save the courts from much of this criticism and more readily accomplish their purposes. Three-fourths of the schemes of social betterment which are overriden in the courts owe their failure not to any inherent impossibility under the Constitution of accomplishing the end sought, but to the failure of legislators to consider duly the bearing of the fundamental law on the details of their projects.

COAL PRODUCTION IN UNITED STATES AND

UNITED KINGDOM.

The increase-absolute and relative-in the United States' domestic consumption of coal continues to attract attention in Great Britain, where it is recognized that "the home consumption of coal affords the truest test of a nation's industrial prosperity." An article in “Engineering" (London, February 21)

739

"Engineering" observes, further, that "the coal produced in the United States is principally consumed at home, the home consumption amounting in 1911 to 425,422,ooo tons out of 443,000,000 tons produced. Of the 271,900,000 of coal raised in the United Kingdom in the same year, 184,859,000 tons were absorbed by home consumption." In other words, the United States consumes nearly two and a half times as much coal as Great Britain, a fact which affords a striking commentary upon American progress under a protective tariff.

HONORING A CRIMINAL.