knew nothing about the principle of the thing, but that if the Socialists could get them a job they would believe that Socialism was the thing, and that Socialists were the men. The discussion was carried on by S. Webb, Dr. Pankhurst, G. Wallas, Charlotte M. Wilson, W. R. Chambers, and G. B. Shaw.

The next meeting will be held at 19, Avenue Road, on November 5th, and will be a meeting of members only. The organisation of metropolitan branches will be discussed, and when that question has been disposed of, the following resolution will be submitted to the meeting: "That the members of the Fabian Society who are in favor of Parliamentary action form an association under the title of the Fabian Parliamentary League. That the League elect its own Council and Officers, and that all publications issued by it bear the name of the Fabian Parliamentary League only, and be paid for out of a fund raised for the purpose. That members of the Fabian Society be alone eligible to the Parliamentary League." The words "Fabian Society" include, of course, all Branches of the Society. As this resolution raises a most important question, all members are earnestly requested to attend the meeting, and to give to the subject beforehand their earnest attention. The resolution has been drafted in order to carry out the views expressed by a large majority of Socialists present at the meeting at Anderton's Hotel on September 17th. It will be moved by Annie Besant, on behalf of the Executive, if the Executive endorse it (their meeting is held after this has gone to press), or failing such endorsement, in her private capacity as a member. It will be seconded by Hubert Bland, and supported by G. B. Shaw. It is hoped that the Parliamentary League, when formed, will carry on a vigorous propaganda among working-class organisations. Another of its functions will be to exercise continual vigilance with respect to all measures bearing on social matters which may be submitted to Parliament; and to publish at the commencement of each session a criticism of any proposed legislation, marking for Socialist assistance measures which are in the line of progress towards Socialism, and for steady resistance any which, while possibly promising momentary alleviation of poverty, are really of a reactionary character.

A Socialist movement of a promising character has been started at Newcastle-on-Tyne by Edward Pease, the secretary of the Fabian Society. A society has been formed for the discussion of Socialist questions, and at its first meeting E. Pease delivered an address on "Socialism".

GREAT BRITAIN.

The efforts made to obtain John Williams' release before the expiry of the cruel sentence passed on him did not meet with success. He was only released on October 16th, when he had served the whole of his sentence. The Socialist League speakers are being much persecuted by the police, Wardle, Henderson, and others having been summoned. The question of resisting the attempt of the police to prevent meetings in Harrow Road is under discussion; delegates from the Metropolitan Radical Federation have inspected the place of meeting, and there is some idea of holding a protest demonstration on the disputed spot.

The Free Education agitation is making itself felt, and the London School Board has suspended the order which was to have come into force on October 18th, excluding from school all the children who were unable to bring their fees, unless formal remission of fees had been granted to the parents. The School Board is helping on the cause of Free Education in a most vigorous manner.

The public feeling roused in Scotland by Charles Bradlaugh, M.P., against the Truck System, and the pressure applied by him to the Home Office, have resulted in closing almost every truck shop in the mining districts. Miserably low as are the wages earned by the miners, they will enjoy a little more comfort now that they will not be plundered of part of

their wages after they have nominally got them. A number of men are proceeding against their employers to recover wages due to them, and several proceedings by employers to recover debts due for goods wrongfully supplied have been dismissed by the courts.

The Staffordshire chainmakers' strike has entered its tenth week, despair making the people wellnigh indifferent to the increased suffering which is falling on them. All over Staffordshire the workers are in the most miserable condition. In the north of the county the Jammage and Bignell collieries at Audley are closed, in consequence of the men refusing to accept a 10 per cent. reduction in wage. The iron workers in the works of Mr. Onions at Bilston and West Bromwich are thrown out of employment by his failure. The crate-making industry is upset by the strike of 400 crate-makers, and the whole county has a gloomy outlook for the coming winter.

All overtime has been stopped at Woolwich Arsenal and the other Government factories, and the eight-hours' day is to be adhered to for the future. The men now work in shifts, day and night, for eight hours only at a stretch, and many more men have thus an opportunity of earning a living, while none are overworked.

There is good hope that the iron- and coal-workers will unite in a strong federation for common action. If only the various trades would federate, they would have the power of regulating industry for their own benefit. But an essential preliminary of federation must be the formation of trades' unions for each trade, for only delegates from such bodies could bring to the federation the authorised strength necessary for successful action.

A correspondent writes me with reference to the closing of Mr. Williams' tin-plate works at Swansea, that his action is levelled against a Liverpool ring. "The price of tinplates is controlled by a ring of Liverpool middlemen who, to increase their own profits, have forced prices down to such a point that a manufacturer who is not exceptionally well-placed cannot live unless he reduces the wages of his workmen. Hitherto the tin-plate hands have earned what, as things go, are good wages, viz.: from £10 to £12 per month. Mr. Williams has said to his men, 'If we go on you must submit to a large reduction of wages, or I must lose my capital, and in either case only the middlemen will profit; I am of opinion that it would be better to stop working until by reducing the supply we have broken this ring, and can secure such prices as will enable me to pay the present rate of wages without becoming bankrupt'. You will see that Mr. Williams is endeavoring to do what you usually regard as good work: he is trying to prevent a class of non-workers from forcing wages down to starvation point in order that they may make enormous profits."

AUSTRIA.

An "Anarchist plot to burn Vienna" has been bruited over the world, but is most probably of police manufacture. The whole arrangements were 80 extremely neat and finished, everything was so thoroughly arranged before it was "discovered", that it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that the police invented that which they so aptly found out. The shameful laws passed for the suppression of Socialism in Austria have aroused much indignation, and it was necessary for the authorities to justify themselves, and to prove that the powers they had asked for were really needed for the protection of peaceable citizens. Hence this "plot".

In Buda-Pesth Karl Ondra and Josef Fuchs, who had been expelled from Vienna, have been thrown into prison for Anarchistic "intrigues", a sufficiently vague charge.

BELGIUM.

Great excitement prevails in the Charleroi basin over the sentences passed on the workmen concerned in the strike riots of last spring. A petition for their release has already received 33,000 signatures, and on

October 10th no less than fourteen meetings were held asking that they should be set free. The Ghent strike of spinners continues.

The Charleroi burgomaster has authorised the holding of a Socialist demonstration on October 31st, and has given permission to the demonstrators to carry the red flag. Some 30,000 persons are expected to take part in the demonstration.

FRANCE.

The strike at Vierzon continues, and the fund for the support of the strikers amounted by the 15th of October to 18,325 francs. A number of men and women have been arrested under various pretexts, but no disorders have occurred. The workers keep a steady and calm front under all provocations. At La Rochelle a strike is proceeding, and here also orderly workmen have been arrested on the charge of " interfering with liberty of labor". A strike of miners has begun at Drocourt, Pas de Calais, the strikers demanding a nine hours' working day, a minimum wage for the miners of 4fr. 50c. (3s. 9d.) and for the assistants of 3fr. 75c. (3s. 1), and the dismissal of an obnoxious manager.

GERMANY.

The workmen's association in Meinen, Saxony, has been broken up, and its funds, amounting only to 40 marks (£2) have been seized by the police. Police visits have been paid to a considerable number of citizens, but no compromising documents have been found in any of the houses ransacked. It is in this way that German workmen are taught that peaceful organisation for their own benefit is regarded as a crime by the authorities.

Five hundred and forty printers have struck at Leipsig, and their employers have appealed to the law to force them into submission. At Aix-la-Chapelle all the printers are on strike, except those employed in one office, and in Berlin a similar strike has occurred.

In Silesia a workman has been prosecuted for becoming a subscriber to the Social Democrat; and the editor of the Tagespost, a Socialist journal, has been sent to prison for three weeks.

RUSSIA.

Another plot against the Tzar. Four men and one woman were arrested at Luga, the alarm being given by one of the sentries put to watch the line on the Tzar's journey to Poland. A mine was discovered under the line over which the imperial trains were to pass.

All friends of Russia have been gladdened by the news of the escape of Degaieff after his capture at Vienna. Many political "offenders" have lately been escaping from Siberia, and the authorities are straining every nerve to prevent such escapes in future. Among the prisoners who were detained there under circumstances of great cruelty was Alexander Krapotkin, brother of Pierre Krapotkin. He was originally exiled merely for communicating with his brother; he never shared in any conspiracy, being essentially a student and devoted to scientific pursuits. But he was guilty the crime of being attached to his brother, who was, and is, an ardent and active supporter of Nihilism. Exile to the wastes of Siberia was, for such a man, a slow martyrdom, but the hope of release sustained him. When his original sentence expired, the late Tzar imposed a new one by a stroke of his pen. Still he kept up his courage, and the weary years dragged on. The second sentence expired, and he was to come to England, to make his home with his brother; his wife, who had been near him in Siberia through all these prison years, left him to complete the preparations for the long-deferred welcome home. But the Tzar, vile as his late father, when the exile's name came before him as one whose sentence had expired, added a third sentence. When the news reached Alexander Krapotkin, the longstrained strength of the gentle student gave way, and he committed suicide in despair. Another blood-stain is on the hands of the Russian Tzar; but

they are already crusted so thickly over that one blood-clot more or less seems to make but little difference. The day will yet dawn when the world will breathe more freely on reading the news, "The Tzar is dead".

The Odessa journals report the arrest of "a considerable number" of Nihilists in Southern Russia, but no details have reached this country.

SWITZERLAND.

Is Switzerland beginning to tread in the steps of the tyrannies around her, and soil her good name by joining in the crushing of the workers? On October 7th nine persons, eight of whom were workmen, were sent to prison in consequence of their resisting the police in connexion with a trade dispute.

AMERICA.

The Supreme Court has rejected the motion in favor of the Chicago Anarchists, and the sentence, as originally passed, is to be carried out on December 3rd. I have been reading the evidence as reported in the German American newspapers, and do not think it is sufficiently clear to justify the hanging of the condemned men. There was evidence that they used inflammatory language; there was not definite and untainted evidence that they used bombs. Punishments inflicted in panic are only too likely to breed revenge.

Five hundred shoemakers have been locked out in New York for asking for a rise in wages. There is also a strike of masons. The labor outlook for the winter is gloomy, and it is feared that the suffering in the large towns will be severe. 8,000 packers are on strike in Chicago.

The Knit-goods Manufacturers Association of New York has decided to close fifty-nine factories at the end of October. 25,000 workmen will thus be thrown out of employment.

The Knights of Labor organisation is spreading over Canada, and in Ottawa they are making their way rapidly, The Labor Reformer says: "All branches of tradesmen, mechanics, and laborers are, for the first time in the history of Ottawa, being organised, and party politics with the working men, notwithstanding the efforts of political leaders and wire-pullers, are thrown aside for the better cause-labor legislation."

AUSTRALIA.

Mr. Norton, the delegate of the Trades and Labor Council, New South Wales, has issued a statement on the condition of the labor market in Australia, from which the following passages are selected. "The position and prospects of the mechanics have always appeared to me in the highest degree unsatisfactory; large bodies of them continually idle, and unable, however willing, to find regular and continuous employment; everything having the semblance of a local industry either struggling for bare existence, or finding itself suddenly drowned or extinguished by a flood of foreign importations; all workers in wood, iron, leather, cloth, and many other materials, thrust aside and condemned to enforced idleness, while the corresponding workmen in other countries are kept busy and comfortable with our money. . . . Since my arrival here I have received from New South Wales fresh reports from nearly all the trades, including carpenters, joiners, cabinet-makers, coachmakers, pattern makers, boot and shoe makers, harness and saddle makers, wheelwrights, blacksmiths, farriers, brickmakers, coal miners, coal trimmers, wharf laborers, etc. All these reports give most saddening accounts of the existing depression, and state that all those trades are overstocked with labor; that hundreds of skilled artisans are walking the streets unable to find work, while most of those who are in employment are only working half-time."

London: Printed by ANNIE BESANT and CHARLES BRADLAUGH, 63, Fleet Street, E.C.

Our Corner.

DECEMBER 1, 1886.

What a Labor Statistics Bureau
should be.

SOME months ago I wrote for these pages a paper on "Labor Statistics, their Utility to Employers and Employed", and on the 2nd March last I fortunately succeeded in obtaining the unanimous, and indeed cordial, assent of the House of Commons to a resolution directing that "immediate steps should be taken to ensure in this country the full and accurate collection and publication of labor statistics". This resolution, the first of the kind ever passed or even proposed in this country, was at once acted on by Mr. Mundella, who was then President of the Board of Trade; and in the brief tenure of office which remained to him he, in concert with Dr. R. Giffen, who has shown great interest in the question, took the initial steps to organise a department of the Board of Trade specially charged with the duty of collecting and publishing statistics relating to labor. One of Mr. Mundella's latest official acts was to appoint Mr. John Burnett, then the well-known secretary to the Society of Amalgamated Engineers, as labor correspondent, or collector of statistics, to the new department. On Lord Stanley of Preston's accession to office he at once took up the matter in willing spirit, and with

1 See Our Corner, March, 1886.

Y