divergences of national interest and national character will become so marked that even an alliance between the various nations will become impracticable, and, what is more, purposeless. Already the centrifugal influences-e.g., the differentiation of national types owing to the effects of different environmentare so strong that all centripetal tendencies require to be encouraged in every way. Of these centripetal tendencies Imperial Preference (which aims eventually at freedom of trade between all the countries of the Empire, just as trade is free between Massachusetts and California, Montana and Florida) is by far the most important. But so long as Great Britain. refuses to reciprocate the preferences granted by the dominions. nothing much can be done towards the realisation of this great ideal.

As things are, the Dominions are already linked together by bonds of preferential trade. Canada, the first of the younger nations to make an application of this constructive policy, has gone so far as to grant a preference to the West Indies in the hope of checking the Americanisation of the commercial interests of those fair but unfortunate islands, jewel-lands which were the very spolia opima of our greatest successes in amphibious warfare. This step has certainly arrested the growth of centrifugal feeling in Jamaica, for example, which favours a commercial, or even a political, rapprochement with the United States. To-day Jamaica's American trade exceeds her trade with the British Empire, and is growing more rapidly. Nevertheless a reciprocity treaty between Canada and Jamaica could be concluded to-morrow if (there may be no virtue in that “if” at the end of this month!) the people of Jamaica knew that their produce would have the slightest advantage over foreigngrown commodities in the British market. The foregoing instance illustrates the power of the constructive principle of Imperial Preference in the solution of a minor problem of Imperial politics. But the full force of that principle and the world-wide scope of its applications will not be revealed until the four clauses of Mr. Balfour's policy become axioms of British statecraft. In a year or two, I have not the slightest doubt, that revelation will be made urbi et orbi, and Cobdenites will become extinct or, if a few of them are unconvinced by the logic of circumstances, as

little regarded by intelligent persons as the earth-flatteners or any other handful of scientific cranks.

66

Canada is still "a unit for Preference," to quote the famous phrase of Mr. W. S. Fielding, the Canadian Minister of Finance. She has given the British manufacturer a preference in her rapidly expanding market (seven million persons with a purchasing power, thanks to the country's progressive prosperity, exceeding that of all the inhabitants of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland) which enables him to compete in many lines with his American rival across the way-instead of across the Atlantic. Moreover, by refusing to enter into reciprocal trade relations with the United States and preserving the west-to-east trend of her traffic for the Empire's sake, she actually sells us her wheat at a preferential price. In December of last year Winnipeg wheat cost us from 6d. to 1s. less per quarter than Duluth wheat, though on every score the former is more valuable to millers making a blend than the latter. Unless, however, we open the door so rudely banged, barred, and bolted by Mr. Winston Churchill in the faces of the statesmen of the Dominions, and enter into the profitable bonds of preference with "Our Lady of the Sunshine" (it is a more truthful description than Kipling's phrase), we can hardly expect Canada to go on for ever selling us the best and cheapest food-stuff grown outside these islands. The following excerpt from a letter by Mr. James B. Campbell, a gentleman with a thorough knowledge of the Transatlantic grain trade, which appeared in the Outlook three years ago, shows what must eventually happen if the Canadian offer is still declined:

Canadian statesmen are bound to consider the necessities of their West. In past days they have sought to obtain the United States market for their agricultural produce, timber, &c.; the United States have sought to obtain the Canadian market for their manufactures. Reciprocity on these lines, based on a Canadian intermediate tariff, would mean that the United Kingdom would have to pay higher prices for what wheat she might require from Canada; in fact, she would have to bid up against the domestic market of the United States, a thing which she is not required to do at present, much to her benefit. On the other hand, she would lose whatever hold she might have on the Canadian market for her manufactures. It would take a very small reduction in what is known as the intermediate tariff to displace her. The very fact of the proposed intermediate tariff proves that Canadian statesmen are not going to be stubborn

with foreign nations. They have very little choice in the matter; their hand is forced by the peculiar position of the enormous agricultural area in their West. But they hope to make an arrangement with the United States first.

The Franco-Canadian Convention, concluded since that letter appeared, adds to the force of the passage cited. Other signs of the times are the great and growing interest shown by leading American journals in Canadian development, the agitation for reciprocity in the border-States, Germany's "lobby" at Ottawa and desire for a Germano-Canadian trade convention, Italy's desire for a similar agreement, and so on. Canada will not, cannot, wait for ever. It would be worth while discriminating in favour of Canadian wheat if only to be sure of keeping the twofold preference we now possess. It will cost us nothing to keep this boon. I have threshed the matter out with farmers and graindealers both in Western Canada and the Western States, and they all admit that the producer of the wheat, not the consumer, will pay the duty. If freight rates are raised by the trunk railways or the steamship lines it is always the farmer who pays. So if a 2s. duty be levied on American wheat entering Great Britain the addition will in the end come out of the pockets of the farmer in the American West, and, since his business is now run on a very narrow margin of profit, this extra burden may cause him to transfer himself and his capital across the international boundary-line. That is to say, the migration of the industry of growing wheat for export from the debilitated areas of the Western States to the freely fertile lands of Western Canada will be greatly accelerated-with the result that wheatproduction will increase and the price gradually fall once more. Preference is transference for the builders of the Canadian worldState, and so they are willing to give in exchange for it further advantages to the British manufacturer in their great and growing market. We have every thing to gain, nothing whatever to lose, by granting Canada a preference, which merely involves shifting the duties on the nation's food.

E. B. O.

CORRESPONDENCE

THE LANCASHIRE OPERATIVE

To the Editor of THE NATIONAL REVIEW

SIR,-Allow one who has spent considerable time among the "Lancashire operatives," and who has seen a very different state of things to that portrayed by Dr. Sloan Chesser, to protest against various statements in her article in the National Review for December 1909.

1. She suggests that marriage at sixteen or seventeen is of frequent occurrence. In my experience this is rare. Women who are in receipt of good wages do not tend to marry young. One of the few instances I can recall was during a prolonged period of "short time," when, in answer to a protest on my part, the girl's mother replied: "Well, Doctor, she might as well; she has only been doing two days a week for the last eight months."

2. With regard to housing. Comparatively few workmen's dwellings have cellars-they would be less damp if they had; and there are very few married operatives who live in furnished rooms-they practically all have their own homes, and who are more "house-proud"?

Cellar dwellings among the poor are to be found in towns where districts have degenerated and large houses that have known better days are let out to several families, as obtains in many parts of North and South London, not in factory towns, where the building has been undertaken to accommodate the working man from the start.

3. The cases quoted to prove the evil state of the homes where the mother worked in the factory seem to prove a great deal more conclusively the truism that the home of a woman who drinks would be better looked after by one who is sober.

Probably the condition of things in the family of the woman who drank, had lost four out of seven children, and who worked in the factory would have been a great deal worse if she had not gone out to work.

Workers in factories who are seen at all the worse for drink there do not as a rule get the chance of repeating the offence-not necessarily because of any teetotal ideals on the part of the overlocker, but because of his keen appreciation of the difficulty of proving slight intoxication in event of accidents which may mean considerable expense under the Workman's Compensation Act.

4. In saying that when a mother goes to the factory between 5 and 6 A.M., taking her child to the nurse-woman on the way, she may not awaken the people by knocking, and she has to leave the baby insufficiently protected from cold and snow" in his cot [the italics are mine] on the neighbour's doorstep," Dr. Chesser suggests this as a common occurrence-else why bring it in?

As a matter of fact if such a thing ever did happen the nurse-woman must have been very deaf indeed to sleep through the noise of the "knocker-up" who perambulates the streets in the first instance, and the tramp of clogged feet going to work in the second. Certainly the incident is unusual.

5. If unhealthy conditions of the poor districts of the industrial towns are so terrible one fails to see how the physique of the race is to be improved by keeping the mothers shut up in a state of semi-starvation in such fearful places instead of allowing them to work in the factories, where matters are certainly better, and where, even deducting 78. from 258. per week, there remains "an insignificant net profit in money" of 18s. per week. Nine people living on 258 per week—that is to say, deducting 48. 6d. for rent, on an average of 2s. 3d. per head for light, coal, clothing, food, and household necessaries-only brings home to the mind of one who has seen the effort of these brave women during "short time" the continuous struggle on starvation diet that "mother" life week in and week out.

wages for

"Her husband never allowed his wife to go to th factory." Noble man! One wonders how often he went there himself without breakfast to enable her to have a decent meal, which she certainly required more than he did if she produced and nursed eight children in such surroundings as the health authorities would seem to tolerate, for we read: "Many houses are not fit for habitation; the drains are primitive; indescribable filth prevails in the houses and alleys outside; sometimes the windows are not made to open." Presumably such places would be found "in the poorest parts of the town." He at least had fresh air.

6. With the remark that "the keen desire displayed by the women to acquire knowledge of hygiene, child management, and cookery indicates strongly that the money spent by the municipal authorities is well spent" I thoroughly agree, speaking as a lecturer in Evening Continuation schools; but as the women who attend these classes are the operatives who have previously been described as knowing "absolutely nothing" of these matters, and the "ordinary food" of whose infants is alleged to be "pieces of bread floating in water sweetened with sugar, and sometimes coloured with a little milk," one wonders how Dr. Chesser came by her facts or reconciles her statements. Has she practised for any length of time amongst these women she so cruelly misjudges?

My own record is not so long as that of many other doctors with whom I have discussed the question of married women's work, and who certainly looked on the matter in a very different way to Dr. Chesser. Still, I can speak from the experience of (1) five years' busy life in one practice where the bulk of the patients were factory workers; (2) five subsequent "locum tenencies" in other Lancashire towns.

In the first-mentioned locality I was medical officer to the local branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. This excellent