Federation to arbitrate. The impatient reply of M. Stenman, the president, made it evident that his organization merely represented the international shipping interests, and that the fight was not against the old wage scale, but against Socialism. English and German shipowners sent money and strike-breakers in plenty to support their brethren in distress. The struggle became bitter. Most readers of the Review will remember the great fires which terrorized Antwerp on Sept. 4th. and 5th. Public sentiment was with the strikers and they were valiantly supported by some of their comrades. But all they were finally able to secure was a compromise: their pay was cut down a half franc instead of a whole one. Tom Mann, an Australian union leader, published in October a scathing denunciation of English workers, "railway servants," sailors and others, who transported strike-breakers from England to Belgium. European journals have taken up the matter, and on all sides the conviction deepens that strikes cannot succeed so long as capitalists of all lands unite and workingmen are content to help one another out now and then with a few dollars. Incidentally the "patriotism" of the employing class has been brought instructively into the lime-light.

Russia. The Russian government is feverishly taking advantage of the general despondency which has followed the unsuccessful outbursts of the past few years. Members of the first Douma who have thus far escaped persecution are now being brought to trial. All railway employees who took part in the strike of three years ago have been peremptorily discharged. It is reported on good authority that Finland is to be broken up and subjugated to a regime more despotic than the old one. Meantime the third Douma displays a great fondness for vacations; and when it is in session it is only with great difficulty that it can get a quorum. The members of the left take no part in its discussions.

Portugal. The disturbance which resulted on Feb. 1st. in the assassination of King Carlos hardly indicate a genuine revolutionary movement. To be sure there is a republican agitation on foot, but the real struggle is between different sorts of grafters who cannot agree as to the division of the spoils. The two parties in the Portuguese Parliament, the Progressists and the Regenerators, have for a long time carried on a system of rotation in office which admitted first one set of rogues and then the other to the public crib. The poor King, who had been left out of the reckoning, tried to assert himself by making Premier Franco dictator and refusing to call a session of Parliament. The latter measure, because of its unconstitutionality, gave the party leaders a chance to arouse popular revolt. The murder of the King was carefully planned by those same politicians. In all probability it will do more harm than good to the cause of republicanism in Portugal.

Chile. In December there occurred in Chile a barbarous massacre of striking nitrate-workers. In protest against the intolerable conditions under which they were forced to work in the deserts of the interior, these men, to the number of more than 15,000, had quit work and assembled in the seaport town of Iquique. The authorities ordered them to disperse; they refused, and the masacre followed. About 210 were killed and 50 wounded. The survivors were pursued to the mountains and hunted down like wild beasts. The Associated Press sent out reports of these events, but our newspapers saw fit to suppress them.

LITERATURE AND ART

BY JOHN SPARGO

Hinds' "American Communities".-It is a fair test of the worth of a book that it should live thirty years, finding more readers at the end of the thirtieth year than ever before. And that is true of "American Communities", by William Alfred Hinds. Before me as I write there is a slim octavo volume of 175 pages, in a blue gray wrapper. It bears the title "American Communities", and the imprint of the almost wholly forgotten American Socialist, published at Oneida, N .Y. And the date is 1878.

In 1902, the first edition of the book having become a rarity, a second edition appeared, with the imprint of Charles H. Kerr & Company. It was essentially a new work, so complete had the author's revision been. Instead of one hundred and seventy pages, there were four hundred and thirty odd. The appearance of this revised version was most opportune in its coincidence with a revival of interest in the history of the Socialist movement in this country and the utopian communities and experiments, both, religious and secular, which make the background for a study of that history. The works of John Humphrey Noyes and Charles Nordhoff had long gone out of print, and there was a real need for some adequate and sympathetic treatment of the subject. For such a task Mr. Hinds was peculiarly fitted, alike by experience and temperament, and his book at once took its place as a standard work, as the most comprehensive and authoritative book in its own peculiar field. The cardinal defects of the volume seemed to be, first: the inclusion of a number of trivial and unimportant experiments of no historical significance, and second: the failure to provide the student with adequate bibliographies of the really important experiments.

Now, at the beginning of 1908, thirty years after the first issue, Charles H. Kerr & Company issue the book in a still more expanded form, a bulky volume of six hundred pages. In one important respect the work has been greatly improved: there are bibliographical references to practically all the sketches of community experiments. There is also an index which adds to its value as a work of reference. The chief defect of the book in its present form arises from the author's lack of the historian's sense of perspective. He seems almost wholly devoid of a sense of values. One is astounded by the inclusion of accounts of such "communities" as Upton Sinclair's illfated, interesting Helicon Hall experiment in cooperative housekeeping and Elbert Hubbard's Roycroft establishment. If Roycroft, why not N. O. Nelson's Leclaire experiment and other examples of benevolent capitalistic paternalism? If one were to attempt to gather together all the examples of cooperation in this country similar to those described by Mr. Hinds, many volumes would be necessary.

For example, it is becoming quite the fashion in New York city now for wealthy people to cooperate for the purpose of erecting costly apartment buildings as residences for themselves-experiments quite as significant as some of those recorded by Mr. Hinds. Still, when all this is admitted, it yet remains to be added that the book as it stands is one of the indispensable standard works to the student.

American Socialists will not need to be warned that there can be no "establishment of Socialism" piecemeal. We have outgrown that form of utopianism. The aspiration toward Socialism now expresses itself through economic and political organization of the proletariat. It may well be that Mr. Hinds is right in believing that those engaged in these movements will more and more seek the advantages of community life. The book is well printed and there are numerous excellent illustrations.

I hope, good reader, that you are not weary of utopian romance as yet, for there are a couple of books yet to be considered. They are not records of vain but glorious efforts to establish the perfect social state, but prophecies rather of how the perfect social state is to be ushered in. And I whisper this to you gently!-they are not to be taken too seriously.

In When Things Were Doing, Comrade C. A. Steere has been gratifying a lurid and sometimes sardonic fancy. Indulging one of my bad habits, I turned to the last page of the book before starting to read it. There I caught sight of a confession by the hero of the story that it--whatever the "it" might be-was all due to a nightmare. So I began the story forewarned, and duly advised not to treat it too seriously. With a good deal of literary skill, Comrade Steere describes the coup d'état of the Social Revolution-as it occurred in a nightmare. And such a revolution! Imagine, if you can, a Socialist Board of Strategy, with a millionaire or two among its membership, sitting week after week preparing for the capture of the army and navy; dealing with inventions of such a nature as an explosive called sizmos, a five-gallon jar of which would split Manbattan Island in two; and submarine boats of miraculous powers. Then May Day is celebrated by the Socialist soldiers putting all others in jail and the declaration of the Socialist Republic!

There is a good deal of the Gilbert-and-Sullivan comic opera about this nightmare, and one feels all the time that the author is around the corner looking at one with a sardonic grin. He enjoys his joke the more in proportion as the reader insists upon taking him seriously. But one could wish that the author had taken himself a little more seriously, as a literary craftsman if not as a prophet. That he can write a good story is certain and his gift of humor is indisputable. But why, even in fooling us with a nightmare, should he mar his best passages with forced and unnatural slang when he didn't need that cheap subterfuge at all? I enjoyed his fooling, but not the manner of it!

Our second forecast is by a man who takes himself seriously and demands to be taken seriously. And his imposing, important-looking volume of some three hundred and twenty admirably printed pages, illustrated by diagrams and maps, demands our most serious consideration. Comrade Charles W. Wooldridge, whose little book, The Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand, has started many a pious brother on the road to Socialism, has been indulging his utopian fancy in a

book which he calls Perfecting the Earth. He starts with the Crisis of 1913. The date, if I am not mistaken, is the date fixed by Comrade Wilshire for the Social Revolution, but the crisis described bears a striking resemblance to the one we have been passing through lately. Like Comrade Steere, he begins the revolution with the U. S. Army, but in a very different spirit. For it is a peaceful revolution which is here described.

General Goodwill, finding himself in command of more than half a million men in a period of peace, proposes to Congress that he shall be permitted to use them in constructive work for the good of the nation. Not to divulge his secrets too soon, he asks to be permitted to keep his plans secret until they have been considered by a commission of world-famous scientists and Congress-for the purpose of the story-forgets its class instincts and assents.

So we have the army of hate and murder transformed into an army of peace and industry. Reading the account of how this great army reclaimed waste places and made the desert blossom into sweetness, I have been reminded of the vision of my genial utopian friend, Capt. French, U. S. A., who believes in such a future for our military forces. Personally, I cannot pretend to a very keen interest in utopian forecasts of any kind, but I can readily see that such a book as Perfecting the Earth might solve some of the difficulties certain minds encounter in the study of Socialism. And it does show in a very rational manner, how an intelligent organization of labor would make plenty and comfort possible for all.

For the present, I have finished with the builders of Utopias and the history of past experiments in that same sphere of social enterprise.

* * *

Some years ago, when I was editing the now defunct Comrade, I made arrangements for the publication of an American edition of a remarkable little booklet, a mere pamphlet in size-my friend George Plechanoff's little monograph, Anarchism and Socialism, which Eleanor Marx translated into English some thirteen years ago. It was our intention to reprint this translation with an introduction written especially for the edition by Plechanoff himself. The book was announced-but alas, it never got further than that! Now it has been issued by Charles H. Kerr & Company, as one of the excellent "Standard Socialist Series", in a form greatly superior to the English edition.

I confess that I doubt the wisdom of inserting "An American Introduction" from the pen of Comrade LaMonte between the quite sufficient preface by Eleanor Marx and the book itself. Comrade LaMonte has acquitted himself very well of a thankless and, to my mind, rather unnecessary task. Yet, an introduction which gave an account of Plechanoff's position in the International Movement, and of his work, in short, such a biographical sketch as Dr. Ingermann, for instance, could write, would have been a decided gain to the reader. For it is unfortunately true that George Plechanoff is an unknown quantity to most of our American comrades. Few know that he is perhaps the greatest living Marxist scholar-not even excluding Kautsky. I have always regarded it as unfortunate that, owing to the close associations existing between German and American Socialism, so little attention should have been given to the work of some of our Russian writers. Just at this moment, I do not recall a single book or pamphlet issued by our party press from the pen of any Russian Socialist writer, with the exception of this little work by Plechanoff-and that was translated from the German!

Suffice it to say that this little book is one of the most important in the literature of Socialism. It is probably not too much to claim for it that with the classic exception of the Communist Manifesto, no other book of its size is so important and worthy of careful study. The little book will do a great deal to make clear in the minds of our comrades the distinction between utopian and scientific methods, being even clearer than Engels' well known work upon that point. It will also do a great deal to destroy the very common notion that "Anarchism is a more advanced form of Socialism" to which many of our camrades cling.

Socialist Artists.-At a recent exhibition of Contemporary American Art, held in connection with the National Arts Club, New York, Socialist artists were well represented. In landscape there was the work of Leon Dabo, who has been campared to Whistler; he is a Socialist of long standing. Of the figure painters George B. Luke was beyond question the strongest man represented. Luke delights in the common types of our cities and he paints them-laborers, street waifs and starvelings-with terrible power. While Luke is not an avowed Socialist, his work is saturated with the spirit and feeling of Socialism and he is known to be most friendly toward the movement. George de Forest Brush, whose tender pictures of motherhood and childhood have endeared him to thousands of American households where prints of them are to be found, was not represented at the exhibition, but it is worthy of note that he, too, is an avowed Socialist. Quite the most notable things in the exhibition at the National Arts Club, however, were the fine pieces of sculpture by our comrade, Charles Haag. Two of his pieces, "The Universal Mother" and "The Immigrants" attracted more attention than anything else in the exhibition. Haag, who is a party member,' is an old time Socialist, full of revolutionary enthusiasm. He has been connected with the movement for many years in Sweden, his native land; in Germany, Switzerland and France. His work unites something of the feeling of Millet, the peasant-painter and Meunier, the Belgian sculptor, with the revolutionary spirit of modern Socialism.