770,000 crimes were committed in 1891. According to Mr. Justice Hawkins' opinion, 600,000 of these were due to drink; and in this verdict most of his brother judges would concur. Then there were, in the same year, about 800,000 paupers, of whom it is safe to say, 600,000 were in receipt of poor relief, directly or indirectly, as the result of drink; and it is generally admitted that there are 600,000 habitual drunkards in our midst, of whom 60,000 (some say 120,000) die annually. And who can estimate the misery and pain of mind and body, destruction of property, disease, accidents, etc., which fall on the families of these 600,000 criminals, 600,000 paupers, and 600,000 drunkards, all of which are due to drink. Such are only some of the disasters following in the wake of intemperance; and it will hardly be denied that the chief facilities for procuring intoxicating liquors are offered by the licensed liquor-shops generally known as public-houses. The conclusion I would draw is, that, as public-houses are thus shown to be the most fruitful source of crime, immorality, pauperism, disease, and death, and defeat the efforts of the ministers of God, it is the duty of those to whom drink is no temptation to make up their minds that, to stay so great à plague, they will be ready to sacrifice their own pleasure in the matter, and to go without the liquor, rather than see such horrors recurring annually. It is not sufficient to say with the Times (in a leading article), that "drinking baffles us, confounds us, shames us, and mocks us at every point. It outwits alike the teacher, the man of business, the patriot, and the legislator," and then drop one's hands to one's side, and say there is no cure for all this "devilish and destructive traffic." The facts in this paper have, I trust, shown that restriction in the past has always had a marked beneficial result, and there seems to be no reason why it should fail in the future.

G. HERBERT BOLLAND.

LEGISLATION, PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRIES,
AND OFFICIAL RETURNS.

SPEAKING two or three months ago, Mr. Bryce complained that as soon as a valuable report is published as an official or parliamentary paper, no one will look at it. The explanation is simple enough. In the first place, the State's reputation as the publisher of entertaining or generally useful books is somewhat low. It publishes many things which can be of interest only to a very small body of specialists, and other readers hastily assume that all its publications are of the same nature. Secondly, it has no choice of authors. It cannot refuse to publish the report of an official because his style is heavy and confused, or because long residence abroad has caused him to write broken English. Editing is of course out of the question; it would be "garbling." Thirdly, the State publications, like other cheap things, are nasty. They are ugly, generally inconvenient in shape, and printed from worn type on poor paper. Fourthly, as if all this was not enough, they are very frequently provided with a title which, if adopted by an ordinary publisher, would lead his creditors to press for immediate payment. The titles of many of the hundred and fourteen parlia mentary papers which have been mentioned in this Review from January, 1891, to July, 1893, are absurd enough as they are quoted in these pages, and they are not always quoted in all their naked deformity. The last two of these causes of the unpopularity of bluebooks, Parliament and the departments could remove without much difficulty if they chose. The second could only be removed partially and gradually by giving more weight to literary power in civil-service examinations. The first cause is the only one which it seems altogether impossible to remove, and it is by no means the most serious. Prize essays have a worse name for dulness than blue-books, and yet the Holy Roman Empire has run through many editions. We may well question whether it would have done so if it had been always

printed in poor type, folio, with a thin blue-paper cover, or even if it had been printed in octavo with a title-page like this ::

FOREIGN OFFICE.

1863.

MISCELLANEOUS SERIES.

No. 110.

REPORTS ON SUBJECTS OF GENERAL AND

COMMERCIAL INTEREST.

GERMANY.

REPORT ON THE

ROMAN (GERMAN) EMPIRE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

In bringing out the first number of the Labour Gazette (May, 1893, fol., 24 pp., 1d.), the Labour Department of the Board of Trade has made a successful effort to avoid the characteristic defects of the ordinary blue-book. The colour of the cover is less repellent than the standard blue; the title is concise, and is printed in large letters at the top of the cover; in the middle are the contents, and below a representation of the royal arms, which aspires to be ornamental. Inside we see typography like that of the more staid weekly or monthly journals, instead of the blue-book's long lines and inconvenient waste of space. The style in which the paper is written is greatly superior to that of the average blue-book; such a sentence as the following is the exception, not the rule: "Sir Francis Denys, Secretary of Legation at Copenhagen, reports under date of April 28th, there are no labour disputes of sufficient importance to deserve special attention, agriculture being the chief industry in Denmark." We may safely say that if the Labour Gazette does not succeed, it will not be possible to attribute its failure to the form in which its matter is presented.

At the first glance, the contents of the May number seem bewildering in their variety, but after a little examination it becomes plain that the more important of them may be thus classified :—

1. The regular reports of each of the local Labour Correspondents as to his own district.

2. Special reports on such matters as the Lancashire cotton dispute, the Hull dock strike, the Jewish tailoring shops of Leeds and Manchester.

3. A list of the more important labour cases which came before the magistrates or judges in April.

4. Reports from the Emigrants' Information Office.

5. Summaries of consular reports and extracts from foreign newspapers.

6. Tables showing for April

(a) Changes in wages and hours.

(b) Strikes and lock-outs, with their cause, extent, and result. (c) The number of paupers in each of the great towns.

(d) The retail prices of certain articles of common consumption. The summaries of the consular reports contain a good deal of information which cannot possibly be of any use to the British workman, and the table of pauperism looks rather more elaborate than is necessary for the object in view, which appears to be to show whether the poorest of the labouring class in each of the towns is better or worse off than in April, 1892. As to the utility of the rest of the matter there can be no question. It is exactly the kind of information which is required in order to promote "industrial peace," by preventing at one time the employers, and at another the employed, from entering on a struggle in which they are certain to be defeated.

That the Labour Department needed reorganization and additional strength is very plainly shown in the Report on the Strikes and Lockouts of 1891 by the Labour Correspondent to the Board of Trade (Command Paper 6890, fol., 546 pp., 4s. 4d., postage 6d.), which appears later, and is more overgrown than ever. The report for 1889 contained 145 pages, and appeared in time for the Economic Review of January, 1891; the report for 1890 contained 361 pages, and appeared in time for the Review of April, 1892; but the report for 1891 contains 546 pages, and is only in time for the Review of July, 1893. The lateness of its appearance is in part the cause of its increased bulk, as Mr. Burnett, writing in January, 1893, attempts to make up for lost time by including in the report on the strikes and lock-outs of 1891 a quantity of matter relating to the general labour movement in 1892. Thus, in addition to twenty-two pages narrating the proceedings of the Newcastle Trade Union Congress in 1891, we have thirty-two pages narrating the proceedings of the Glasgow Trade Union Congress, and the International Miners' Conference in 1892. Apart from this defiance of logical and chronological arrangement, Mr. Burnett's plan of inserting in the report "a general account of the

leading events in connection with the labour movement is to be deprecated. He defends it on the ground that the history of strikes is often "imperfect without a knowledge of the larger movement." This argument implies that the labour movement in general is to be studied because it throws light upon strikes, whereas the fact is that strikes are to be studied merely because they are parts of the general

movement.

There were recorded 893 strikes in 1891, as against 1028 in 1890, and 1145 in 1889. The following table will enable the reader to compare the results for the three years :

The number of persons engaged in a strike is not always obtainable, and it should be understood that these figures apply to only 781 of the strikes of 1889, 738 of those of 1890, and 676 of those of 1891. For the purpose of comparing the proportion of success in the different years, however, this is of no importance, and even in comparing the total number of persons striking it introduces only a trifling error.

The effect of the declining condition of trade in 1891 as compared with 1890 is shown in the fall in the proportion of strikes for an increase of wages, and in the rise in the proportion of strikes against a reduction of wages. In 1890 42.4 per cent. of the whole number of strikes were for an increase, and 8 per cent. against a reduction, while in 1891 the percentages were 30·2 and 11·6.

Mr. Burnett's other annual, the Statistical Tables and Report on Trade Unions for 1891 (Command Paper 6990, fol., 292 pp., 2s. 4d., postage 4 d.), is not open to the objections which have been urged against his report on strikes. Though it contains more information, it is very little larger than its predecessor. It does not anticipate its successor, and the lateness of its appearance, however unsatisfactory in itself, is apologized for, and shown to be in no way the fault of the compiler or his department. The number of unions dealt with is 431, with a membership of 1,109,014 at the end of the year, and an income of a little more than £1,400,763. In the report for 1890 the number of unions included was only 259, with a membership of 871,232, and