Evening Star Newspaper, September 23, 1928, Page 29

" Edito rial Page EDITORIAL SECTION he Sunday Star Part 2—8 Pages WASHINGTON, D. C, SUNDAY MORNING, EPTEMBER 23, 1928 PUBLIC CHOICE MAY LOSE IN ELECTORAL COLLEGE Yotes of Nearly Haif of Citizens Are| Thrown Into Discard by Application of Unjust “Unit Rule.” BY WILL P. KE HILE the general run of peo- ple throughout the country feel that they are casting their vote for Hoover or Smith in the coming elec- $ion, the fact is they are doing nothing of the sort, and only a little more than 60 per cent of their votes in each State will be accepted, while the rest are thrown in the discard under the “unit sule.” They are voting for “electors,” who in each State equal the total number of Scnators and Representatives to which that State is entitled in Congress, and in the present election, due to the fail- to_reapportion, some | Tichigan, Ohio, Connecticut, New Jersey, North Car dina, Texas and Washington—are not getting their fair share of electors as the Constitution intended, while 11 | States—Missouri, Indiana, Towa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi Nebraska, Rhode Island and Vermont &re getting more than their fair relative ghare of votes in the electoral college. The threat has been made—but wiil Pprobably not be carried out—to protest he vote of the electoral college in the ! Hoover vs. Smith campaign on the «ground that it is unconstitutional on this account This matter was brought to the at- tention of Congress by Representati Clarence J. McLoud of Michigan and an interesting hearing was held by the lHu:m elections committee on May 19 as The electoral college was established by article 2, section 1, clause 2 of the Constitution, and approved by the twelfth amendment after the Jefferson- Burr deadlock. William Tyler Page, clerk of the House and an authority on the work of the “founding fathers,” plains that when the Constitution makers came to the question of how the President should be elected they had in mind, and had, in fact, created, a repub- lic as distinguished from a pure democ- Tacy, or direct election by the people. A majority of. the framers wanted a republican” form of government, and they deliberately adopted such a form to get away from the alternatives of monarchy or pure democracy as illus- trated in history. They arranged for election through a_representative tem. just as the lawmaking is done through a representative system rather than by initiative and referendum. Protection of Small Units. ‘They had in mind the protection of the units that make up the Republic, to protect the small against the great. If the people elected, a great State like New York or Pennsylvania might domi- nate and impose its will on the small States. The idea was to distribute the elective power among the States so that the small communities might express their will in voting strength against the greater communities. This method of electing the Chief Exccutive was intended to place abso- lute control of the choice of a President in a small body of citizens carefully se- lected by the several States—to avoid, on the one hand, the popular tumult &nd passion that a direct clection by the eople might involve, and, on the other hand, the legislative domination of the Executive by the Congress. It was thought that each State group would be unaware of the decision of the athers. Time proved this to be more theoretical than practical. There were then no politicai parties as now. Electors voted as they pleased—they were inde- pendent, unpledged and voted in secret. But by and by they became dominated, first by caucuses and then by conven- ticns, until they became automatons to rogister the party will. The party spirit first manifested itself in John Adams’ time, and today a presi- dential elector who should fail to cast his vote for his party’s nominee would become infamous. Thousands have kept 1aith and not one has failed to vote for his party’s candidate. It is recorded that three clectors voted for John Adams sgainst their party and that one Fed- in Pennsylvania voted for this was befere the party L'\H-m as we understand it came into hoing. The Electoral College. The title “electoral college” was first used about the year 1800, and in 1845 8p; ed in legislation, and is therefore an official term. The only limitation dmposed by the Constitution on the €lectors was that they should not be in the service of the United States. John Adams became Vice President in 1789, though he did not receive half the votes. He presided at the electoral count in 1797, and it has been incor- rectly stated frequently that he counted the votes that made him President. The custom had been established and was ;then followed of counting the votes by tellers representing the Senate and Hcuse. Adams opened the certificates {as filed by the States and handed them 110 the tellers, who reported the result. Adams declared the result showing him- Hgelf elected President. The only time the president of the Senate ever counted votes was in the First Congress, 1 George Washington was elected hn Langdon of Virginia, president of ithe Senate, was empowered by a reso- {lution of the Continental Congress to count the electoral votes. ¥ In 1300 Thomas Jefferson, a Repub- Jican, 2nd Aaron Burr, a Federalist, re- ceived the same number of votes—73— and each a majority. It was well known the electors desired Jefferson for Presi- dent and Burr for Vice President. This demonstrated the unwisdom of voting Jor both President and Vice President upon the same ballot, the one receiving the largest vote to be President and the second largest Vice President. It also proved the possibility of electing a Pre: ident from one party and the Vice Pre: ident trom another party. The Jeffer- n-Burr controversy threatened a dis- ution of the Government. This was > first time a presidential election wa: . and it nearly wrecked the young 3epublic. ‘This led to the adoption of the twelfth amendment to the Constitution in 1804, under which we now elect a President, and while it is vastly better than the old provision, time has proved its in- mdeguacy The second and last time an election | was thrown into the House of Repre- sentatives was in 1824. In the electoral college were 182 votes, of which Andrew Jacksoin, who had defeated John Quincy Adams_by more than 50,000 popular votes, had 99, Adams @i hrown into the House. Fenry Clav was then Speaker of the e. Before the day of counting the a great scandal arose. Charges of ( corruption were made against Clay, {fhe situation invited intrigue, excite- « fment ran high. A coalition between the § Jollowers of Clay and those of Adams esulted irr the election of Adams on the first ballot, repudiating the wishes of the People, making Adams President by a i # poll of 13 to 7. ¢ 7 When these elections in 1800 and 1824 thrown into the House, that body @dopled rules to regulate the ballot, ing warm and is likely to get still hotter, nothing as serious will happen as in these cases just cited. close as in 1916, when the shifting of would have made Charles E. Hughes President—any one with-a pencil and a 84, William H. | wford 41 and Henry Clay 37. Jack- | obviously the choice of the people, | not have the majority required by ! #he Constitution and’ the election was | {= ueh were investigated without resuit.! The counting of the electoral vote has| always been a source of grave trouble. The twelfth amendment, after directing the Vice President to open the ballots in the presence of the Senate and House, says “and the votes shall then be counted.” The meaning of these four| words always has been in doubt, because | it is not made clear as to who shall do the counting, and therefore who shall determine what votes shall be counted in case there is a question as to their regularity or correctness. This doubt came very near leading to erious consequences in 1877 in the ves-Tilden controversy. Congress. by concurrent orders, joint rules or by law, asserted the right to count the vote in its own way until 1873 at 21 successive presidential elec- tions. The President of the Senate performed the constitutional duty of opening the electoral votes, but never in a single instance since Washington's first election, as has been previously stated, attempted to go a step further. From 1801 until the Hayes-Tilden elec- tion 11 cases of disputes over the elec- toral votes and 21 objections had been made to the votes of various States, | culminating in the great contest for the | presidency in 1876. Tilden Polled Majority. | Tilden polled 250.000 more popular votes than Hayes. The earliest returns | indicated Tilden had 184 electoral votes out of a total of 369. Uncertainty grew out of the elections in Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida. Hayes claimed he had secured these votes, making his total 185. The vote of Ore- gon was also in dispute on the ground that one of the electors was a Federal officeholder. The people were in strife. ‘There was turmoil at the Capitol. Civil strife_seemed inevitable. The Senate was Republican and the House Demo- cratic. The right of the Republican President of the Senate to count the vote was challenged. The two houses were in deadlock. A joint committee was authorized to bring in a bill creating a tribunal whose authority none could question and whose decision all would accept as final. This resulted in the creation of the famous electoral commission, con- sisting of five members of each house and five Supreme Court justices. This commission reported on each case in dispute, resulting in Hayes being de- clared elected by one majority. To effect this Congress had to deliberately tie their own hands by resorting to a commission of extra-constitutional origin. Here we have seen that our electoral system is far from perfect and has in certain cases led closely to civil strife and has, in fact, repudiated twice the expressed will of the voters. Though the present presidential contest is wax- it is the general hope and belief that What Might Happen. Yet, if the election is close—say as 12 of California’s 13 electoral votes disposition to forecast can study the probable unit vote of the 19 States men- tioned above and see that the change in representation under reapportionment might easily decide the issue as to who is to be the next President. With the House held to its present size of 435, under reapportionment the States that would gain votes in the electoral college would be California, 3; Michigan, 2; Ohio, 2; Connecticut, 1; New Jersey, 1; North Carolina, 1; Texas, 1, and Washington, 1. The States that would lose would be Mis- souri. 2; Indiana, 1; Iowa, 1; Kansas, 1; Kentucky, 1; Louisiana, 1; Maine, 1; Mississippi, 1; Nebraska, 1; Rhode | Island, 1; Vermont, 1. It is interesting to speculate as to what the Supreme Court would say if Michigan, for instance, demands that it be given two additional votes in the electoral college and that Missouri lose two, or if North Carolina or Texas de- mands its additional vote and Maine or Vermont would be called upon to give up correspondingly. Leaders of both parties give encour- agement that when the party fear is over after election that something will be done to give the people of the States the equal representation to which they are entitled, but of which they have been deprived by failure of Congress to reapportion, and that the electoral sys- tem, known for years to be faulty, may be corrected. Prison Vocational Training Is Praised Despite the steady increase in popu- lation, the total number of prisoners in Japan has remained stationary at about 36,000 for a number of years. This has been pointed out by Keisuke Tsuji of the criminal affairs adminis- tration bureau in his appeal for im- proved conditions in the prisons. Numerous reforms have been recom- mended as the result of a recent prison inquiry, with increased vocational train- ing as the main plank. Although 85 trades are taught in the prison, the facilities have not kept up with the times, it is claimed. “Make men diligent and they will be honest.” Tsuji says “Japan’s indus- trialization has tended to stress the unfortunate condition of the thou- sands without trades and it is by keep- ing the untrained at a minimum that we keep our prison population low. A prisoner who is taught a trade, when he is released is the least likely to re- turn to his bad habits. There is no need.” Prisoners receive from 25 cents to $5 a month for their work. They are taught reading and writing with education by motion pictures utilized. London’s Underground Mail Line Is Wonder London's new underground railway for carrying the mail between the Paddington and Whitechapel districts, recently inaugurated by the British{ post office, has an extraordinary fea- ture, in that the trains have no pilots. The trains are guided and stopped by a few operators sitting before switch- boards in remote underground offices. It is a true Robot railway, and throughout, with its highly ingenious devices for getting the mailbags up to the surface and down, ¥ regarded as the biggest achievement so far in the elimination of the human element. The tube, which cost over $7,000,000 was greatly delayed by the war. When the war came the construction had |been started, and the excavation served a very useful purpose. The tunnel was used as a perfectly safe bombproof depository for all manner of precious things taken from the na- tional collections. The best and most fragile of the British Museum (reasures were stored there. Great Problems Facing U. S. Our Affairs Are Held to Be Inextricably Woven Into Affairs of Other Nations, BY SENATOR REED SMOOT. N THE West, at the time this is written, chief discussion centers about the problem of improving the economic condition of the farmers. In the East the “wet-and-dry issue” has been most discussed. Yet East and West, North and South have a still more vital interest; the problem of so conducting our foreign Telations during the four years begin- ning March 4, 1929, that we shall be able to maintain peace, reduce expendi- tures for armament and retain or ex- pand the foreign market for American products. A comparison of mere words of the two platforms and candidates may pro- duce no sharply defined issue involving our foreign relations. Nevertheless, to those who are familiar with the de- tails of oyr relations with the remain- der of the world it is clearly evident that nothing is more important than the type of leadership we shall have at the White House to guide us in our relations with other nations. Whether we so will it or not, the affairs of the United States are and will continue to be inextricably woven into the affairs of other nations. This is so, regardless of whether Congress and the President be Republican or Democrat. Our jsolation from the af- fairs of Europe and the Old World generally might have been maintained many years ago by building up walls similar to that constructed by China centuries ago and by the interdiction of all foreign trade. Those barriers were not raised; they cannot be con- structed now. We can avoid foreign alliances and entanglements by wise conduct of our dealings with other na- tions, but we cannot isolate the United States from intimate contact with and interest in the practical affairs of all other nations. No nation can wholly sever itself from the remainder of the world. The problem of first importance in the conduct of our foreign relations is to avoid war. The nations of the world have made, progress on the path to last- ing, universal peace—but the menace of the possibility of war is not ended. The most hopeful feature of the pres- ent international situation is that prac- tically all nations are still striving, after 10 years of peace, to find means to guarantee absolutely the lasting con- tinuance of peace. But the problems of our foreign rela- tions involve something of almost as much importance to the great body of our people as the avoidance of armed conflict and the carnage of war. The bread and butter, the comfort, the con- venience, the standard of living of the American people—business men, farm- ers, industrial workers, and all other elements of our population alike—are vitally dependent upon the maintenance of our foreign trade on a sound basis. In the single year of 1927 our farms and factories produced nearly five billion dollars’ worth of food and merchandise for the people of the Old World. In the same year we bought from other nations products for which we paid more than four billion dollars. Our total foreign trade, therefore, was in one year more than nine billion dollars. ‘The enormity of this sum is beyond human comprehension, but somc idea of the vastness of our foreign trade can be gleaned from the fact that the total value of the products of all American manufacturing establishments (eliminat- ing_duplications of materials) is_esti- " (Continued on Fifth Page) America Takes the Air General Public Is Demanding Greater Facilities in Aerial Transport and Is Gelting It. BY CHARLES A. LINDBERGH. EN years ago a group of men got into an airplane at Curtiss Field on Long Island to fly to Wash- ington, in the hope of estab- lishing an airline. It was not a long flight, nor a difficult one, and it is made frequently now even in bad weather. But air transport was new then and cross-country flying was largely a matter of guesswork. One of the best pilots in the country was at the controls. Airplane compusses were rare in those days, and other in- struments now in common use had not been invented. The plane ran into a fog and after flying for some time the pilot found a hole and came cut over a city that looked like Washington. “There’s the Capitol,” he said. “And there are a lot of other buildings that look like some in Washington. But where's the Potomac?” ‘There was some doubt about it being ‘Washington, but the p lane was runaing out of gas and the pilot decided to iand. ‘There was not any landing field, but he finally managed to come down safely on an empty, smooth place in a_ceme- | tery. The city turned out to be Harris- burg, Pa. That was the history of much of the early cross-country flying in embryo transport lines. Most of them died in infancy. The records of many early routes are followed by the word “dis- continued.” s Reasons for Failures. ‘There were several reasons for these early failures. Airplanes were not safe enough. People did not want to fly. The art of cross-country flying had not been learned at all, and still only pilots who have made a careful study of it are able to fly through all kinds of weather—except low fog—to their destination. | ‘When people did take to the air it| was for a joy ride, not because they believed in using the airplane as a quick, safe means of conveyance. Some of the first lines were over the water. One was started from New York to Atlantic City, and very often passengers would get into the plane on the Hudson for the daring adventure of a flight down the coast and taxi up and down the river in a vain attempt to get off, their trip ending up as a yachting party. A line between Seattle and Vancouver was one of the first organized and is still in operation. Air transport did not get very far in those days and the business use of airplanes began to develop in other di- rections. One of the first commercial uses of the airplane was by newspapers to get pictures and transport them quickly. The newspapers have always supported aviation generously and the industry owes much to the efforts by the newspapers (despite their obvious and amusing mistakes at times) to bring to the Industry the support afl public opinion. This has been one of the great val- MODERN MAIL PL POUNDS ues of the spectacular long-distance flights; for they have given the papers an opportunity to educate the public in the rapid strides aviation has made in recent years. It is remarkable the amount of space and intelligent interest which have been devoted in the last year to the news of flying, and it is hardly going too far to say that it has ad- vanced the industry several years. But the real commercial operation of airplanes did not begin in this coun- try until the Government began the operation of the first branch of the transcontinental air mail service in 1919. The first step was the service be- - SHOWING COMPARTMENT HOLDING 500 OF MAIL. tween Cleveland and Chicago on May 15, and on July 1 the route from Cleve- land to New York was put in operation. ‘The Chicago-Omaha route was added on May 15, 1920, and on September 8 of the same year the line was extended to_San Francisco. Europe had begun the operation of air transport lines at about the same time, but under very different condi- tions. Germany started a passenger line in 1919, and the following year began to carry mail and freight. Britain and France followed, and air lines began to_extend alk over the continent. But their operation was conducted |on a very different basis than in the United States, as the European govern- ments granted liberal subsidies to en- courage operators. The budget for this year in France grants 115,000,000 francs for premiums and subsidies; the Ger- man national government has appro- priated 43,803,500 marks for civil avia- tion, while the local governments spend nearly as much more; while Great Britain subsidizes Imperial Airways liberally on a sliding scale which de- creases until it ends in 1934. Our Government refused to grant subsidies, wisely, as it has now been shown. There was not sufficient reve- nues at first to permit private operation without subsidy, and so the Government began this experiment in air transport. It succeeded remarkably well. Last vear planes carried 1,485,280 pounds of mail. When the lines were turned over to private operators they formed one of the finest air organizations in the world, and the pilots were our best. Difficulties to Overcome. There were great difficulties to over- come. There were few aids to naviga- tion and much of the route was danger- ous, particularly over the Pennsylvania mountains, where the fog is a serious obstacle to scheduled flying. Many a pilot lost his way in the early days, and many of them were killed. But equip- ment has improved, better and faster planes are being used, and they carry through a high percentage of sched- uled flights. Some of these pilots are very well paid. Some who are particu- larly skilled in bad weather navigation and take the mail through in almost any kind of weather make more than $10,000 a year—and earn it. The governmental operation of the air mail did much to prove the value of air transportation. Then came the series of long-distance flights that showed the great possibilities of the air- plane and made people realize that they had a remarkably efficient new instru- ment with which to link commercial { centers. Private operation of the lines was helped also, and almost immediate- {1y revenue began to increase. There are 10 or more lines now which are making money flying the mail and passengers, seemingly impossible a few years ago. But the most interesting result of this new enthusiasm for aviation was the demand of the public to fly. In Eu- rope air passenger lines were established ars ago and are popular, but this country lagged behind despite its un- usual opportunities for passenger serv- ice. ‘This is changing rapidly. This year, for the first time, large planes capable of holding 10 or 12 passengers are being put in service. Several of them are now in operation on the Paci: fic Coast, others will soon go into oper- ation along the transcontinental route. Air transport has arrived in this country. It is on a sound, healthy finan- cial basis, and I believe we shall soon surpass Europe in passenger carrying as well as in other forms of commerci: transportation. (Copyrizht, 1928.) v GREAT BRITAIN PONDERS ON COLONIAL EXPANSION {Development of Tropical Possessions ‘ Considered as Method to Alleviate i \ . Commercial BY FRANK H. SIMONDS. | | | g N recent weeks the London cables | | and news letters have been laying | particular emphasis upon the new direction of British imperialism and describing the cotemporary importance which is being attached to the future development of the so-called tropical colonies. All of the various phases of this discussion are of very | real importance, because they disclose anew the growing pegeeption in the | British Islands of the fact that politi- | cally and industrially it is not going to | be ‘possible to restore the situation | which existed before the World War. {1t is only financially that British | strength is, as yet, unimpaired. | Despite great losses during the war |and_enormous burdens incident fo the | conflict, Britain still retains a vast ! wealth, which is chiefly represented in | investments outside the British Isles in the white dominions, in India and the various tropical colonies and in the world at large. If London has not yet | fully recovered the primacy which it held in the financial world before 1914, it is at the least clear that in this dire tion much has been achieved in the re- covery of what might be called one of Britain's “lost provinces.” On the other hand, many signs com- i bine to indicate the decline in other di- rections. British coal mines, textile factories, iron and steel industries and railways are, in the main, being con- ducted at a loss. British unemploy- ment, after sinking slowly to the million mark, has this Summer risen by more than a quarter of a million and now | passes 1,300,000. Concomitantly, Brit- ish population is rapidly becoming sta- tionary and already an actual decline has set in across the Scotch border. The English birth rate has, too, fallen well below the French. Notwithstand- ing this fact, however, all British au- thorities agree that emigration is the single possible cure of unemployment and a recent official report stated the brutal fact that more than 200,000 miners could never again hope for em- ployment at their own trade. Business in Baw Way. On the business side Britain is mani- festly in a bad way. Its situation may fairly be compared to that of some great industrial corporation, which, hav- ing over long periods made enormous profits and having invested these profits in other fields, now conducts its own operations at a loss but still pays divi- dends out of the returns which come in from its fortunate investments. In the British case the figure goes farther, for the British government is today paying a million and a quarter of available workers a dole, which enables them to live in idleness. The basic fact in the British situation is that, accelerated by the war, a real revolution has taken place in the eco- nomic world. Coal, on which British prosperity was founded, has yielded to ofl. While the world consumption is stationary or tends to decrease, there is a constant overproduction and British costs make it increasingly impossible for British coal producers to meet Ger- man and Polish competition. And the same fact influences the iron and steel trades, which in turn are steadily de- pressed by competition. In the textile feld not only are there springing up in all the lands formerly customers of Britain, notably China and India, great factories, which employ native laborers and thus produce at far lower costs, but in both these fields anti- British agitations have led to boycotts and further reduction in the consump- tion of British goods. Inevitably Brit- ish shipping lines and railways both re- fiect this shrinkage in their operating revenues and the effects extend to the shipbuilding trade. Put briefly, in the face of mounting evidence, it is not longer to be doubted that the old British game is up. For a century the British profited by the fact that the industrial revolution came first to them, while their easily avail- able coal mines and great merchant ma- rine enabled them to seize and hold the { position of the world’s factory. Not until the beginning of the present cen- i tury did the situation begin to change, and not until the war was the change unmistakable. . Population Too Large. But today the British can no longer support their relatively huge and fright- fully congested population in the Brit- ish Islands by trade, commerce and in- dustry alone. Moreover, Britain cannot even partially feed this great population from its own agricultural production, for in the last century agriculture has been sacrificed to industry and today the farm question is even more acute i in England than in our own Middle and Far West. If there were no other source of income than that flowing from the production of the home population, a certain number of people would be compelled to migrate without delay, or starve. But in practice it is out of the ques- tion to permit starvation. Politically, labor has become very powerful and de- spite all the traditions of order and restraint in the United Kingdom, actual starvation would there, as elsewhere, inevitably produce violent revolution. To keep the British “show™ going it is Jjust as necessary‘now to provide a dole as it was necessary in the days of the old Roman Empire to provide corn and oil for the large unemployed popula- tion of the imperial city. But feeding and maintaining in idle- ness a comparatively large fraction of the home population, which is also steadily increasing, is patently only a temporary palliative. Moreover, the dole actually serves only to prevent actual starvation and acute misery; it does not enable its beneficiaries to enjoy a decent standard of living. And the question is not of laborers who are unwilling to vork, but of the hundreds of thousands who are ready to work and for whom 1o _job can be found. For 10 years the British governments and peoples have been wrestling with this problem and on the positive side they have so far made little progress. Negatively there has been a certain gain due to the deliberate and drastic restriction of the birth rate. But, un- luckily, there has been a drop in the emigration figures. The immigration restrictions of the United States and the equally stringent restrictions of the dominions have served to limit the ex- | port of surplus hands and at the same time to encourage the migration of only the fittest and most desireble elements. Two Remedies £ -1 In the face of the exisiing facts the Tory party, now in power, has advocated two remedies—the imposition of a tariff which would protect the home market, and the rigorous reduction of wages, which would lower the cpsts of produc- tion. But the former device would cer- tainly not increase British foreign mar- kets, which are the vital factor in Brit- ish prosperity, and the latter is limited by the circumstance that even at their present level the British wages are in- adequate to permit a reasonably decent standard of living. Labor, on its side, resists a tariff, be- cause it would immediately raise the Stagnancy. cost of food, and seeks a solution in a capital levy, thus taking over a percente age of the accumulated wealth of the country to abolish the great tax bure den which arises from the colossal pro= portions of the national debt. The ob= vious fact that the condition of labor, as a whole, is steadily growing worse constitutes at once the danger in the situation and the strength of the labor position, since the failure of the pres- ent Tory government after four years of absolute power cannot longer be dis- cuised. Tory England is not yet prepared to surrender the great position the nation has held in the world and the govern- ing class in the nation itself. It is still seeking to recover the lost markets by a more severe exploitation of Brit- ish labor. British industry has so far shown 1tself incapable of adapting it- self to modern conditions and adopting the methods of organization and the varieties of machinery which have con- tributed to both American and German prosperity. The labor elements, while in no sense dominated by the extreme social- istic or bolshevist doctrines of the Marxian class war, nevertheless are just as determined that the solution that must be found shall not be of such & character as to perpetuate the present miserable condition” of the bulk of the workingmen of the British Isles. And. in reality, what the labor policy is ac- tually leading toward is a little Eng- land, a comparatively small and pros- perous self-contained state, which would be possible, if at all, only if the popu- lation of the state were reduced by some ten millions. In the present deadlock, the question of tropical colonies, to which I referred at the outset of this article, takes on a real importance, In these. colonies, Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Uganda, Tan- ganyika, the vast areas of undeveloped and productive territory with docile populations which are as yet untroubled by any political aspirations such as have shaken British rule in India and well-nigh wrecked British trade In China. In the development of these col- onies lies the promise of a fleld for British capital and an expansion of British earnings. Turne to Colonies. In a word, Tory England now con- ceives of a gradual withdrawal from the losing business of industrial production, the gradual limitation of British pro- duction, to the home market and the concentration of activity upon the de- velopment of tropical colonies, and. in fact, of Africa. But such a process does not provide for the mass of British workingmen. They exist and in such a scheme they would increasingly have to be fed and clothed by the state and in- evitably their standard of living would increasingly fall. In this conception Britain would be- come the holder of a monopoly of trop- ical products and the exploitation of these reglons would give employment to the so-called upper classes in both po- litical and business jobs. And, at this same time, British capital would con- tinue to increase, both as a direct con- sequence of the colonial operations and in all the other areas of the world where it would continue to be invested. But this program patently envisages the deliberate exploitation of the laboring population at home and of the native popuiations of the tropical colonies. At the close of the World War there was the great question as to whether the inevitable readjustment should ad- vantage finance or industry. Finance demanded the immediate restoration of the pound sterling to par. This in turn involved an actual expansion of the national debt, since it entailed taking the pound from $4.00 to $4.87. In the fight finance won, but industry has ever since been crippled and the cost of production has limited exports. Little by little, especially in the coal trade, the fact is becoming clear that British industry cannot regain its prewar place. Situation Contradictory. What makes the British situation very difficult for foreign observers to ap- praise is the obvious contradiction. Britain remains a very great money power with a vast accumulation of cap- ital, represented by investments all over the world. The earnings of these invest- ments have permitted the restoration of the pound sterling to par and the pay- ment of the taxes incident to the great debt. On balance Britain thus continues to make money, its income exceeds its cost and each year there is more capital to_invest. But, on the other hand, British in- dustry, which was once a source of in- come and the place of origin of present accumulated capital, continues to go from bad to worse. And this decline has its inevitable consequences for the mass of British laborers. British in- dustry is, in fact, to be compared with an unprofitable branch of a prosperous railway. Moreover, what constitutes the serious aspect of the problem is that while a few Englishmen grow richer, the conditions of thousands and even of millions continues to grow worse and these millions, in the end, can use the political power which they possess. But their single proposal to date is the forci- ble seizure of part of the accumulated wealth in the form of a capital levy. which would amount to taking capital from a field in which it was earning in- terest and employing it in a direction which might not prove profitable. (Copyright. 1928.) Chilean-Argentine Air Mail Planned South America’s first transcontinental air-mail service will be inaugurated be- tween Santiago and Buenos Aires in November, according to Luis Testart, air mail concessionaire of the Chilean government. The service will form a link in the fast mail service between Santiago and Paris and will reduce the 10-day schedule to nine days. Testart has received the sanction of the Chilean and Argentine gm‘emmr;ntt for the trans-Andine airway and is nov negotiating with the French Latecoere company for eight planes. At present air mail from Santiago to Paris is car- ried to Buenos Aires by rail, thence to Fernando Noronha Island off Brazil by plane; from there to Cape Verde Island: by _destroyer and then to Paris by air. Testart hopes to reduce the present 36-hour mall time to Buenos ty eight, taking off an entire day from the schedule. Service will be twice a week. Air mail service in Chile, originally established between Valparaisa snc Santiago, is being reorganized under a, new concession granted to Testart which will embrace every importan: city in Chile fro:. Arica to Qrorno, e distance of some 2,000 miles. ) Eight separate airways will be in- cluded under the new plan, one cf ;"hl‘ch :5’1"0;1]!11! a link in the United ates to e air mal it is effected. ¥ s