ment-house" so that it shall include only buildings containing more than four fami lies, instead of buildings containing more than two families. There are now a vast number of four-family tenement-houses and the possibility of vast numbers more, and all of these buildings the proposed law would relieve from the requirements of the tenement-house act as to fireproofing and sanitary requirements of every sort. Even the new law making it perilous to conduct houses of prostitution in tenements would no longer be applicable to buildings of less than five stories. Besides Besides the wholesale changes made by this new definition, the proposed act allows 75 per cent. instead of 70 per cent. of the lot to be built upon, allows water-closets to be erected in the "free" space, permits rooms with no windows into courts or light rooms, simply stipulates that men must be able to "see" in the inside rooms, instead of being able to "read" there, allows the public halls in the tenements to be entirely unlighted after ten o'clock, permits the renting of cellars for homes. without the authorization of the Tenement Department, and in general permits in tenement-houses the lowest standard of living which sordidness on the part of either landlords or tenants would suggest. In the name of the civilization of the State as well as the health and morality of the immigrant poor, who must accept the conditions offered them, these proposed amendments should be voted down. Tenement house construction was not blocked by the present law. On the contrary, as Commissioner De Forest reported the other day, hundreds of old tenementhouses were remodeled to conform with it, and five hundred new tenement-houses built with not a single dark room in any of them. The tenement-house owners who have obeyed the law should be protected against the competition of those who would evade its provisions. Only the worst classes of landlords or tenants demand the proposed amendments.

Organizations in New York City. That the churches of the city are not indifferent to the attack on tenement-house reform, mentioned in the preceding paragraph, was shown by the interest in Commissioner De Forest's address from which we have quoted. Plans for relief from congestion in these districts by means of removal to suburban regions, the establishment of substitutes for the saloon, effort for improvement in treatment of criminals in city courts, and the regulation of immigration, were some of the projects which were presented as offering opportunities of co-operative action by the churches. These meetings, interesting as they were for the very human and real character of the addresses made, have their chief significance in their indication of the direction from which church unity is coming. No creed, no ritual, no polity, was common to all the churches represented, but simply a desire to make the Christian ideal a reality in individual and social life. Effort to emphasize agreements in forms of belief, in forms of worship, and in forms of organization, rather than disagreements, is certainly discernible among churches of to-day; but effort to unite in practical measures of making the life of humanity Christian is even more pronounced, is certainly more inclusive, and is most likely to promote that real unity without which there is little advantage in a unity that is formal.

The absolute dependence Railway Disasters of the safety and lives of railway passengers upon sureness of eye and brain in railway employees was strikingly illustrated by two terrible disasters last week-one on the Central Railroad of New Jersey, just beyond Westfield, the other on the Southern Pacific, not far from Tucson, Arizona. In each collision a score of lives were lost, and in each case the direct cause was the criminal carelessness of a railway employee; in Arizona a station agent neglected to deliver orders to an engineer, with the result that two trains met going at speed in opposite directions; in New Jersey the engineer of a fast express passed several cautionary signals and one peremptory signal, and paid the penalty of his mistake with his life when his engine crashed

into the rear of another train which had been stopped by a hot box. It is not enough, however, when we read the pitiful and heartrending accounts of the suffering that followed the collision, to say that human error is inevitable; we may properly ask whether this very element of fallibility has been guarded against up to the possible limit. In the Westfield collision, for instance, the railroad has an excellent block system, the signals were properly set, an extra precaution had been taken by telegraphing a special stop order, which either was not signaled or was not noticed by the engineer-probably the latter; in short, the engineer, Davis, was plainly and flagrantly to blame. Yet the circumstances show that, with all the rules observed, the margin of safety for fast expresses on that road is a very slender

one.

The engineer was alone in the cab, the fireman ten feet away from the cab, and not where he could communicate with the engineer; the latter suddenly found the injector out of order, turned to fix it, and in two minutes the engine, rushing on at a speed of perhaps seventy miles an hour, had covered more than two miles, passed several signals, and was close upon the preceding train. Ought not there to be a law to require more than one man to be in the cab of an express train? An attack of illness, an accident, any one of a dozen causes, may at any moment incapacitate an engineer; and in the new type of locomotive in use on the Central of New Jersey the fireman is most of the time where he can be of no assist ance. Again, it is asserted that Davis declared before his death that it was the general custom of engineers to run past the green cautionary signal and up to the red stop signal without slacking speed, in the belief that the stop signal would change by the time it was reached; that he relied on the track being kept clear for the express, as was usually done; and that no fast express could make time if the engineer obeyed the rules strictly. All these things may be false, but the public has a right to know how closely railway companies are enforcing their own rules; to know if it is true that an engineer is impelled to risk his own life and those of his passengers in order to make time, and that he can take such a risk without being

punished (to pass a red block-signal light knowingly is a penal offense), whereas a failure to make time injures him. If these things are so, then any block system that can be devised is worthless, and the wonder is, not that calamities take place, but that so few are recorded. There should be a constant inspection of the actual working of railroads by State officials acting for the public safety and with power to prosecute individual offenders.

The International

The Outlook wishes to Institute for Girls call attention to the no

in Spain table work which has been accomplished for Spanish girls and women by Mr. and Mrs. Gulick, whose thirty years' residence in Spain has gained for them the confidence of all classes. The American corporation controlling the work, having as President Dr. S. B. Capen, of Boston, and as Treasurer Mr. E. H. Baker, of Greenwich, Conn., has now bought an acre and a half of land in the finest part of Madrid, upon which buildings are to be erected. An appeal is being made for funds, and the cause should receive a support in this country rivaling that given by England in supporting Lord Kitchener's project for Gordon College in the Sudan. The late Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer, who had intimat: knowledge of the American Institute, declared that it should be moved to Madrid as soon as possible, for only there could its influence be most widely felt throughout Spain. It has been located at San Sebastian. The Institute first prepared students to be teachers in primary and secondary schools; and more than forty of its graduates have been employed as teachers in the principal cities of Spain. While Spanish law allows both girls and boys to enter all national institutions, few girls had made use of this privilege up to 1890. In that year Mr. and Mrs. Gulick decided to present students for the examinations of the State Institute, thus bringing them into line with the State system of education. Fourteen girls presented themselves and successfully passed the examinations, some even receiving the mark of "Sobre Saliente," the highest mark given. The next year forty-one girls were examined, and thirty-three came up to the same high standard. In 1893, at the Chicago Fair,

the exhibit of the International Institute gained a diploma and medal. In 1894, for the first time in the history of Spain, girls taught by women received the degree of Bachelor of Arts-a class of four from the International Institute. The B.A. degree entitles a student in Spain to enter a university without further examination; and in 1895 two of the students matriculated in the University of Madrid, and in 1897 were graduated with the highest rank. Only the most favorable reports come from the graduates scattered over Spain. Three thousand children are now under their instruction, and the Institute is recognized everywhere as filling a need in the educational world; indeed, each year more teachers are asked for than can be supplied and more pupils apply for entrance than can be accommodated. It would seem that the time has come to establish a Protestant college along American lines in Spain. This ideal should appeal to those of our countrymen-and there are many—who believe that America's duty to Spain did not end with the Spanish-American war.

The Fight for Honesty

The "Fight for a City," of which Mr. Hodder tells our readers, and "Holding Upa State," of which George Kennan tells them, are both parts of that great battle between righteousness and wrong, truth and falsehood, purity and corruption, justice and tyranny, which constitute the true history of the world from the earliest ages, and will continue to constitute history until what Dr. Mulford has well called "The Republic of God" is established on the earth.

Mr. Jerome, in his first public speech before a mixed audience, as reported by Mr. Hodder in The Outlook for January 24, 1903 (page 204), well said: "Issues mean that there is something upon which honest men may honestly differ. I have never known any one to take issue on the Commandment, Thou shalt not steal." That is true; and yet it is also true that there was no other issue in Minneapolis when the Grand Jury of Minneapolis presented to the people of that city the question whether their Mayor should be allowed to remain in the Mayor's chair; no other issue in St. Louis when Mr. Folk began

his proceedings against the St. Louis boodlers; no other in New York when Mr. Jerome began the indictment proceedings before the public of the Tammany blackmailers; and there is no other issue now pending in the State of Delaware. The question, Shall we have common honesty in public officials? takes prece dence of all other questions. It is to-day the most important question before the American people, and will continue to be until it is so decided by the people that no corruptionist will venture again to raise it.

Mr. Hobson's Position

To the Editors of The Outlook:

In two recent issues of The Outlook reference has been made to a singularly erroneous report of a lecture given by me under the title "The Charity of Millionaires," which procured too wide a publication for me to be able to correct it.

In that report an offensive paragraph relating to Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Rockefeller was given, not one word of which I uttered in my Lecture. Nor did I argue anywhere that trustees ought to trace money offered to its sources, and refuse it if those sources were found to be tainted. I am disposed to regard such action as impracticable. The real point of my argument, entirely missed by commentators, lay in my insistence that the growing reliance upon private charity tends to sap the energy of public self-help, "pauperizing cities and States, and preventing them from putting forth the wholesome effort of providing and supporting essentially public services out of the public funds. JOHN A. HOBSON.

January 31, 1903.

We give as prominent a place to this correction as we gave to the original report. It apparently leaves Professor Bascom alone in his contention that trustees of benevolent institutions are to sit in judgment on the moral character of the transactions by which the money has been made which is offered to them for public uses. Mr. Hobson's contention is of a very different character, and deserves certainly careful and candid consideration. Our own response to the question which he raises follows. It may, we think, be said generally that democracy is slow to initiate great enterprises of any description, educational, philanthropic, or commercial; but it is often able to carry them on energetically after they have been initiated. Congress would not appropriate fifty millions of dollars to get an entrance into New York City for an inter