407 with an easterly branch to Bronx Park; it is several miles longer than the route formerly mapped out, yet the estimated cost is only thirty-five million dollars. A second Supreme Court commission has reported not only that the rapid transit railway is absolutely necessary and legally possible, but also that it can be constructed within the estimated cost, and will more than pay the interest on the investment; and the court itself has approved this report, but has made its consent conditional upon the requirement of a bond considered prohibitive by the intending bidders for the contract. The contractor, if one able to meet the conditions can be found, will be expected not only to build the railway, but also to equip and operate it for at least thirty-five but not more than fifty years, subject to the regulation of the board and the statutory limitation of the fare to five cents. The expense of construction is to be met by an issue of municipal bonds bearing no more than three and onehalf per cent. interest, and the contractor will be required to pay yearly by way of rental at least one per cent. of the cost of construction in addition to the interest on the bonds; but in case of small profits during the first few years the Rapid Transit Commission has power to waive the payment of this additional one per cent. The contract may provide for renewals of the lease, and may also provide for the purchase of the equipment by the city in case the lease should not be renewed.

Not the least of the advantages which will result from this underground railway system will be the arrangement of sewers, water and gas pipes, and other conduits in galleries running along the sides of the main tunnel, and easily accessible from it; so that some of the streets of Manhattan will not need to be torn up every time a pipe is to be laid or repaired. These galleries are to remain under the care and supervision of the Rapid Transit Commissioners.

That a city which manages its own wharves, has always leased its ferries for short terms, and has helped to demonstrate that even a municipal railway may be a success, should have given away its most valuable street franchises in perpetuity for little or nothing, is well-nigh inexplicable, even in the

absence of any comprehensive plan for dealing with such matters. At first thought the restrictions of the new charter seem much like locking the stable door after the horse is stolen; yet, even though so much has been disposed of already, there is really much remaining to excite the ambitions of promoters in the future. As electricity replaces the more primitive sources of heat, light, and power, there will be need for more electrical conduits, and those already laid will yield such profits that the city will begin to get its share; or if compressed air should turn out to be the marvel of the twentieth century, the demand for air-tubes under the pavements would be vastly increased. Already there have been eager applicants for the privilege of supplying fuel-gas to the housekeepers of Greater New York-for the older and lesser New York, thanks to dollar-and-a-quarter gas, has been so behind the times as scarcely to know any better fuel than coal. That, however, is a condition which it requires no tearing up of streets to remedy; for illuminating gas does very well for cooking and heating, and may be made quite cheaply enough except where the gas companies choose to restrict its sale to a few hours in the evening. Again, the modernization of the surface railways is in progress in Manhattan; and as Mr. Low pointed out in accepting the nomination for Mayor, every consent to a change of power should be treated as a new franchise. There is danger that the people of this old-fashioned borough, whose only choice in the past has been between the plodding horse cars, the inconvenient and overcrowded "L," and the jerky cable, will welcome the smoothly running underground trolley with such delight that they will overlook its advantages from the company's standpoint. It is indeed the most nearly perfect system of surface traction in use, but it is also an economical system-very economical as compared with horses-and its introduction might well be taken advantage of to undo in some measure the mistakes of the past. Thus might the march of invention be made to aid the growth of population in increasing the rentals of the surface as well as of the subways of the city

streets.

The franchises of the new New York are a noble birthright; let the city beware lest it sell them for a mess of pottage!

MAX WEST.

Washington, D. C.

AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION IN ENGLAND.

A FAIRLY comprehensive survey of English agriculture in

the nineteenth century is presented in the reports of successive parliamentary inquiries in 1813-14, 1820-25, 1833, 1836-37, 1879-82. The series of blue-books representing the results of these inquiries indicate that scarcely a decade of the century has failed to hear the lament of the English agriculturist. The immediate cause of complaint has been changing, and the remedies proposed are various; but the refrain has been much the same and sounded in an ascending key.

The progress of a recent detailed and judicial inquiry into the extent and cause of agricultural depression in Great Britain has made clear that in the present decade this process of economic deterioration has moved with accelerated speed, and that the present cry of rural England is more bitter and prolonged than ever before. The essential conclusions of this investigation have now been made public, and it is here proposed to pass them briefly in review.1

The Royal Commission on Agriculture was created in September, 1893, by the issue of Her Majesty's Commission. to a body of seventeen distinguished representatives of the various interests involved, to inquire into "the agricultural depression prevailing in . . . . Great Britain, and whether it can be alleviated by legislation or other measures." In the four years devoted to its labors, the Commission sat for one hundred and seventy-seven days-for the greater part of the time under the chairmanship of Rt. Hon. George J. ShawLefevre, thereafter under that of Viscount Cobham. One hundred and seventeen sittings were devoted to hearing the oral evidence of one hundred and ninety-one carefully selected witnesses, and the remaining time to the formulation of the reports. The witnesses examined included nineteen land

1 Final Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners appointed to inquire into the subject of Agricultural Depression. London, 1897.

owners, twenty-four agents, eighty tenant farmers, thirty-four representatives of agricultural societies, twelve surveyors and valuers, and a smaller number of persons both owning and occupying their land. Expert testimony was received upon variations in the monetary standard and upon agricultural conditions in the United States, Argentina, and in the Colonies. At the outset of the investigation, Assistant Commissioners were appointed to examine into the agricultural conditions prevailing in representative and specially selected areas in England and Scotland, and to revise the reports of the Agricul tural Commission of 1879-82. Kindred inquiries were instituted through the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office into agricultural conditions in the important countries competing with Great Britain. The body of evidence and information. thus collected comprises in print four bulky blue-books.

The First Report of the Commission, submitted on May 4, 1894, was a mere statement of the progress of the investigation up to that time. In February, 1896, with the entire body of evidence then before the Commission, a Second, or ad interim, Report was submitted. The existence of agricultural depression in Great Britain, varying in intensity in different districts but nowhere entirely absent, was therein recognized. In duration it was stated to have "existed and increased in intensity throughout the country for the last 12 or 15 years." In duration it was found in many districts to have reached “a stage so acute that the consequences have already become most disastrous," while in the aggregate it constituted "a great national calamity." The overwhelming weight of evidence indicated as the chief cause of the prevailing depression "the heavy and, generally speaking, the progressive fall which has occurred in the prices of agricultural produce."

Without attempting to grapple with the entire problem at this stage, the Report recommended certain measures requiring, for immediate execution, legislative action in conjunction with current financial arrangements. It was explicitly stated that such measures could not be regarded as in any degree adequate remedies for the prevailing depression, but as, at best, designed to "mitigate the results," and, "to some extent, arrest

the progress of the depression." The recommendations made were the following:

(a) Reduction of the terms of redemption, and of the maximum rate in the £. of the land tax,-together with the provision that no land tax should be payable exceeding a reasonable rate in the £. in the income tax assessment under Schedule A.

(b) Correction by Parliament of the inequalities in imperial taxation, now operating to the disadvantage of rateable properties generally as compared with non-rateable, and to the peculiar burden of agricultural lands as compared with other rateable properties.

(c) Assessment of agricultural land to all local rates in a reduced proportion to its rateable value. Attention was called to the proportion (one-fourth) employed in the Scotch burghs.

(d) Loans of public monies to a limited amount and on adequate security, for the purpose of agricultural improvement. A Minority Report, submitted by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, Lord Rendel, and Sir Robert Giffen, found the depression more serious in the eastern and southern counties of England than elsewhere, and associated "the very substantial rise in the money wages of labor" since 1873 with the fall in prices since that time as a cause of agricultural depression. General concurrence was had with the recommendations of the majority report relative to the land tax and to agricultural loans. Vigorous dissent was made from the proposed reduction in the local assessment of agricultural land, and the counter suggestion was made that "the visible incidence of rates should conform more to the actual and ultimate incidence," by imposing one-half of the rates upon the owner and one-half upon the occupier. The whole subject of Imperial taxation was recommended to further investigation and discussion, and a reduction in the tithe proposed in cases where it remained high in proportion to the reduced rent or value of land.

The Final Report of the Commission bears date of June 25, 1897, and was actually made public a month later. It is arranged in five parts, treating respectively of (1) Distribution