The politicians of the two older parties have not understood the loyalty of the British workers to their unions; neither have they been able to appreciate the gradual change that is coming about in British politics as a result of woman suffrage. Even the liquor trade has been oblivious of the hatred that the average woman manifests toward the public house. Eight excellent women took their places in the House of Commons last January. The clear-sighted editor of the Spectator has steadily insisted that the Conservatives must abandon their championing of the liquor trade, and demand laws safeguarding the welfare of women and children, or run the risk of losing the support of the women. The reduction of the age qualification for voting by women from thirty to twenty-one will add to the register a great number of voters, who might have felt sympathetic to the party that conferred upon them the ballot if they had been allowed to vote.' The Labor party was not in power sufficiently long to gain the necessary seasoning and administrative experience, but they appeared better prepared than either of their opponents for the election. Their propaganda is always continuous, and their election expenses correspondingly small. The Liberals doubtless were greatly in need of money, as Lloyd George's war chest must have been nearly empty. Their middle position put them at the mercy of both Laborites and Conservatives. On their return to their constituencies during the summer recess, the Liberal leaders realized for the first time how much sapping and countermining had been done by the Labor party in their absence, and many of them returned to Westminster determined to support the Conservatives rather than the Laborites for the future. Consequently, upon the reassembling of Parliament in September, Mr. Asquith moved for an investigation of the reasons why the attorney-general had dropped the prosecution of a communist writer for disloyal attacks on the government. Mr. MacDonald accepted this as the equivalent of a vote of censure. Upon his defeat, he dissolved Parliament and called an election for October 29. In the election campaign it seems clear that in some con * The names of these new voters did not appear on the register in time for them to vote in the last election. stituencies the Liberals and Conservatives effected a working agreement against the Labor candidate, but this in no sense was responsible for the surprising result of the pollings, whereby the Conservatives secured a working majority of some two hundred in the Commons, while the Liberals elected only thirty-six members. For the moment, at least, the future of the Liberal party appears hopeless. Yet, at the beginning of the election period, it seemed that they would be able to retain the balance of power, although they might lose both to the Conservatives and Laborites. It seemed probable that no one of the three parties would receive a majority, although it appeared barely possible that the Conservatives, with some incidental aid from the Liberals and the hearty support of the press trust, might nose out a precariously small majority. Two noblemen control the popular press, boasting a circulation of more than twenty-five millions daily. In the election last year they left their readers utterly confused, for although these papers were nominally Conservative, they vied with each other in bitter assaults upon the Laborites and sly, covert attacks upon Mr. Baldwin, the Conservative standard-bearer. The position of the Daily Mail on reparations at the beginning of the recent election period suggested that the newspapers controlled by Lord Rothermere might be as ambiguous as ever. For the first time in a score of years, the Conservatives are firmly intrenched in power. If they are capable of learning by bitter experience, or willing to follow the enlightened leadership of such men as Robert Viscount Cecil, they may once more come into their own. This, however, appears highly improbable, as the old Tory element refuses to see that the world-war helped bring about a new order of things, and that the only way to regain their lost prestige is by adopting Disraeli's slogan of moderate social reform. Instead, they are already talking about taking away from the labor unions their right to political action, and urging firmness toward Ireland and the struggles of the various parts of the empire for self-government. INDIANA UNIVERSITY WILLIAM THOMAS MORGAN and disposition of certain revenues could be assigned to Germany's creditors. These revenues were to serve as a collateral rather than as a primary security, that is, the creditors were not to take directly the yield of the controlled taxes, but since their representatives did control them, there was assurance that revenues were being collected which would enable the budget to provide for the reparation payments charged to it. In the first standard year (1928-29), this was to be 1,2 50 million gold marks. The experts suggested, as the field of the controlled revenues, the taxes on alcohol, tobacco, beer, sugar, and the customs. All receipts from these taxes, in excess of the amounts required for reparation payments, were to be released to the general uses of the government. A third outstanding principle of the experts' plan was its suggestion for adjustment, already mentioned, according to variations in German prosperity and in the purchasing power of gold. The operation of the prosperity index would doubtless have been in the direction of increasing materially the annual pay ments. A final principle to be mentioned was the introduction of a system of external control over revenues and payments. The operation of the whole plan was placed in charge of an agent general for reparation payments, who has reported regularly to the Reparations Commission. Under the direction of the agent general, various commissioners and trustees have been administering, or assisting in the management of, the railways, the Reichsbank, the controlled revenues, and the railway and industrial debentures. These officials and their staff employees are all of other nationalities than German. The Plan distinguished carefully between the amount of revenue which Germany could raise for reparation account, and the amount which could be transferred to foreign countries. The vital aspect of the reparation problem is that of making the transfer. Reparation contributions must be provided by levies on the people, through taxation or otherwise; but the funds can be transferred to other countries only by means of an export surplus. In order to prevent a breakdown of the currency and budget sys stay there. The amount necessary will be the difference between the cost for a man and wife living together and that for a single man living away from home, plus an allowance for saving. This would amount to approximately 30 per cent of the base wage, and if the latter were fixed at $800, the allowance for the wife would be about $240. Some will, however, hold that no allowance should be granted the childless wife, since the necessary work around such a home does not by any means demand her full time. These feminists. believe such a wife, unless she be physically disabled, should go out to earn her living and should not be dependent either upon her husband or upon society for support. There is undeniably a great deal of justice in this position, but the widely held belief that a wife's chief duty lies in "making a home" for her husband, added to the great difficulty of finding part-time positions, would seem to make it distinctly inadvisable to exclude the childless wife from the benefit of the allowances. Such a wife can, of course, always go to work for wages and increase the family income appreciably, for although she would thereby lose the allowance, she would gain much more from the wages she received. According to the illustration chosen, the family income would consist of $1,600 instead of $1,040. While the household expenses would be somewhat higher because of the absence of the wife from the home, the net gain in income would be appreciable and would enable the husband and wife to save for future contingencies. II. BIRTH ALLOWANCES It is not enough to provide allowances which will keep a family running from day to day. If a living wage is to be guaranteed, provision must also be made for some of the major emergencies of life. The expenses of childbearing fall heavily upon workingclass families and need to be met. Such an allowance should be sufficient to meet the ordinary costs of medical and hospital care and to provide the extra help needed in the household. Sixty dollars would probably be adequate in terms of the general standard of life which has been allowed. It probably would be unnecessary to provide such an allowance for the birth of the first child, since the mother might be expected to earn this amount during the period in which she had no other responsibilities to care for than her husband. III. WHAT SHOULD BE THE NATURE AND AMOUNT OF The allowances should be continued up to the age when the children are permitted to go to work, which is fourteen years in most of our states. A child might go to work at that age and forfeit all claim to the allowance, but if he continued in full-time attendance at some reputable school, then the allowance should be maintained integrally up to at least eighteen years. A similar provision should be made if the child were engaged in a trade in which a large part of the time was spent on instruction. The extension of the allowances to permit such further training would relieve the children of the poor from their present necessity of taking some blind-alley job to help their parents, and would release an enormous amount of latent ability which at present is denied an outlet. If the children's allowances were to be apportioned in strict accordance with the cost, they would steadily increase as the child grew older. The greater burden of expense imposed by older children is well known. King and Sydenstricker found that the total cost occasioned by fourteen-year-old children was slightly over three times that of infants of one year. To change each allowance every year would, however, enormously complicate the administration of the system, and would demand such a continuous readjustment in the records that the system might break down under it. To divide the children into only two or three age groups with different rates for each would materially lessen the complications, but it seems probable that even this would be a heavy incumbrance upon the system. It would be better, therefore, to pay a uniform allowance regardless of the age of the child. This should be fixed according to the cost of supporting a child of an age approximately midway to the upper age limit, say eight years. According to King and Sydenstricker's |