as it presents itself to-day, for it is simply the old question over again of what society is to do with the incapable and unwilling who cannot, or will not, earn an honest living.

We recently had occasion to refer to several interest- 5 ing reports from American municipalities and charity organizations, which help to a cool understanding of who the chronic unemployed are and how they came to be So, and now we find strong corroboration of American experience in an article published in the June "Charities 10 Review" on "The English Municipalities and the Unemployed." The writer, Mr. Edward Porritt, gives a runing account of the reports which seventy-three municipalities made to the Local Government Board in regard to providing work for the unemployed within their 15 bounds. The experiment is no novelty in England. Ever since the labor agitators "threw a scare into the politicians of both parties in 1885, the demands and threats of the unemployed have been steadily intensifying, and the Local Government Board has issued a cir- 20 cular ever since 1886, urging vestries to give work to idle men. This work was to be of a kind which would not "involve the stigma of pauperism," which "all can perform," which "does not compete with that of other laborers," and "which is not likely to interfere with the 25 resumption of regular employment in their own trades by those who seek it."

The results reported by the seventy-three municipal authorities cannot be claimed by the most enthusiastic advocate of state labor as furnishing any water for his 30 mill. In a great majority of the cases the work was unsatisfactorily done and at an increased cost. The

ΙΟ

Hanover Square vestry for some weeks kept forty men at work repairing roads. The surveyor in charge reports that "the result has been simply to benefit the men employed at an increased expenditure of £2,000 over the annual estimates for labor and material." The 5 Hampstead vestry hired snow-sweepers, and they were reported to be "idle, incapable of hard work, and not amenable to discipline." Carpentering work was offered by the Hackney Board of Works, but the "carpenters struck the first day for trades-union rate of wages." 10 Some of the suffering unemployed were offered work at Finchley at fivepence an hour, but declined it on the ground that "their ordinary wage was sixpence." Mr. Porritt sums up by showing how the class of men described in the Government Board circular, “who 15 honestly dread the pauper stigma," do not come within the scope of any of these schemes to provide work by municipalities. One report states that the men belonged to "the class of permanently unemployed "; which, says Mr. Porritt, "is the official and English 20 way of stating that they were corner men, loafers.” It is also clear from the English experiments that the popular use of the term "unskilled labor" is very inaccurate.

"According to the reports of the municipal engineers, sewering, road-making, the grading of parks and gardens, and even stonebreaking, gravel-digging, and street-sweeping, cannot any longer be classed as unskilled work. Strength and endurance are needed for all this class of work, and also some degree of skill. Yet in the past it has all been carelessly grouped under the one comprehensive term of unskilled labor, and popularly regarded as work upon which any man may be put if nothing better or more suitable is offering for him."

All these investigations show how idle it is to imagine that any amount of work offered by Government or individuals would solve the problem of the permanently unemployed. Mr. Charles Booth, who knows more 5 about the London unemployed than any man living, has justly said: "Lack of work is not really the

disease; and the

mere provision of it is, therefore, useless as a cure." In a recent address the Reverend Canon Barnett, warden of Toynbee Hall, that home Io of Christian socialism, made the following absolutely correct statement: "The unemployed, calmly considered, is not an army of willing workers; but is rather a body largely made up of those half employed, those unfit for employment, and those unwill15 ing to be employed." It is clear that the real problem, therefore, is not to provide work, but to make men competent and willing to work. But that is a problem as old as civilization, as old as life itself. Nature's remedy is well known. Work or starve is the sharp 20 dilemma she offers. Society's solution has hitherto been, Support yourself or go to the workhouse, or, if you are diseased or crippled, go to an asylum. The new system of coddling is no improvement. It makes men both more incompetent and more unwilling to 25 work. If the State is to interfere at all with the operation of natural law in this matter, it should be in the aim to raise incompetence into fitness, to brand unwillingness as a crime. How to do that is the real problem of the unemployed.

This summary of one of James Albery's plays," Apple Blos soms," is from a chapter on Albery in William Archer's "English Dramatists of To-Day," London, 1882. The extract

a discussion of some of Albery's other plays.

follows

One of the good points in this summary is the judicious use of quotation, by which the critic conveys an idea, not merely of the plot, but of what is of equal importance in a play, the style.

WITH all its faults, to use the unavoidable formula, it is a charming and a delicate idyl. Perhaps it would be wiser to avoid that much disputed and much-abused word, and call it a garden-comedy. Its scene, its atmosphere, and its aroma, disarm criticism. We do 5 not look for realism under the apple blossoms, in the garden of a village inn of Devonshire, or in the innparlor at Christmas-tide, with the holly, to use Tom Penryn's phrase, "speckling the dull corners with quaint lights." The English country inn has a pre-ic scriptive, half-legendary charm, of which not even its unfortunate relationship to the public-house can entirely deprive it. Indeed, the gin-palace is not really of the same family. It is an upstart by-blow of city commerce which has taken the name, and sometimes 15 even the arms, of the village aristocrats. The aristo

crats are dying out along with the modes of life of which they formed a part, but a few specimens still remain, their charm doubled by their rarity. Mr. Albery's inn is one of these: it is called the Apple5 Tree Inn: it is placed in Devonshire, "the chosen home of chivalry, the garden of romance." Under these circumstances, what churl so wooden-headed as to demand realism and truth? We want sentiment, we want humor, we want flowers and sunshine, and red 10 firelight and deep shadows. If we are to have any realism at all let it be of the real pump order, and take the form of real cider and real clotted cream. It is not every day we are at a village inn in Devonshire. Dulce est desipere in loco.

15

"Apple Blossoms" tells a simple story, so slight that it almost falls to pieces on analysis. Tom Penryn has fallen in love with Jennie Prout of the Apple-Tree Inn. Her uncle and aunt, with whom she lives, not believing that his intentions can be honorable, send to 20 his father, Captain Penryn, to ask him to get Tom out of the way. Captain Penryn, without even inquiring who the girl is whose happiness Tom is supposed to be endangering, commands him to leave the village. Tom refuses, and the choleric and obstinate old father 25 promptly disinherits him and casts him off. In the second act we find that Tom has entered the navy as a common sailor, and Captain Penryn has been seized with an illness, through which he has been nursed by Jennie Prout. He has become very much attached to 30 her, and has practically adopted her. It is Christmas Eve, and in the midst of the preparations for the festivities, Tom arrives in his sailor's dress. He steals