back to the early part of the seventeenth century, when the East India Company established factories in Surat and Madras. Clive's famous victory at Plassey (1757) gave England the nucleus of the Indian Empire. Commercial advantages and military necessity led to the annexation of other parts of Asia and of islands in Asiatic waters. In the Asiatic archipelago Hongkong was acquired in 1841; Sarawak in 1888; North Borneo in 1877.

.

A convict station was established at Sydney, Australia, in 1788; a colony was founded in New South Wales, 1815; in West Australia, 1829-32; and South Australia, 1836. In the Pacific Ocean Tasmania was settled in 1803; New Zealand was ceded to England in 1840; New Guinea was added in 1884; the Fiji Islands were annexed in 1874. Australia, · with an area of 2,973,076 square miles, had a population of 3.777,221 in 1901; New Zealand, with an area of 104,471 square miles, had a population of 773,000; Fiji, with an area of 7.740 square miles, had a population of 122,670; and New Guinea, with an area of 90,540 square miles, had a population of 350,000. No enumeration is attempted of Great Britain's myriad isles in the Pacific.

Year by year competition for markets became sharper, and the increase of population soon made it apparent to merchants and manufacturers that the training of apprentices was an indispensable necessity in the search for markets. Now, everywhere in Germany the conviction is manifest that the manufacturers of the empire would play a losing game unless the supporting factor of commercial education be maintained at the highest pitch of skill.

At the present time there are eighteen primary commercial schools distributed among as many cities of the Rhine Province, with a total attendance of 2,114 pupils. The school in Gummersbach was founded by the Prussian State. The schools in Trier, Mühlheim, Düsseldorf, Crefeld, Bonn, and Barmen were founded by the chambers of commerce in those cities. Those in Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, Elberfeld, Saarbrücken, Wetzlar, and Remscheid were founded by the merchant unions. In Coblenz, Rheydt, Geldern, and Duisburg the schools were founded by the merchant unions and private individuals. The school at Rheydt is exclusively for girls, while those at Bonn, Coblenz, and Cologne are coeducational.

COMMERCIAL EDUCATION IN GERMANY. The Germans are nothing if not systematic and methodical. Whatever they do, from a job of cobbling to the most profound scholastic investigation, is characterized by precision and thoroughness. These traits show very prominently in the scientific manner in which the German merchants and chambers of commerce are fulfilling the urgent need for commercial education. Just as particular care and skill are devoted to this branch of school training in the Empire as to any other. Youths are trained to become efficient merchants just as they are trained to become efficient lawyers, physicians, or engineers.

The primary commercial school movement, now in full force throughout the Empire, originated in the Rhine Province of Prussia. There the need of elementary commercial education became imperative just after the creation of the German Empire in 1871. That province received an irresistible impulse to commerce and industry from the Franco-Prussian War.

In the matter of financial aid the Kingdom of Prussia makes annual contributions of the amounts indicated to schools in the following cities: Aix-la-Chapelle ($200), Crefeld ($452.20), Cologne ($428.40), and Trier ($100). The following schools receive support to the amounts designated from the cities in which they are located: Barmen ($250), Bonn ($240), Coblenz ($75), Crefeld ($75), Gummersbach ($300), and Saarbrucken ($75). All these amounts are given merely to make good the yearly deficits.

The practical nature of the curriculum offered in these German commercial schools presents an inspiring object for American emulation. In most of the eighteen primary commercial schools of the Rhine Province the main subjects. taught are French, English, Spanish, Italian, bookkeeping, arithmetic, correspondence, stenography, and drawing.

There is a general law in the Rhine Province which compels all apprentices under eighteen years of age to attend either the primary commercial schools or other schools of similar character. The conditions of admission are for the most

part different in each school. The majority admit only the sons of tradesmen, but many admit on equal footing the sons of the municipal authorities, lawyers, etc. Usually the board of directors of these schools consists of a committee chosen from the municipal authorities of the city in which the school is located. This board selects the curriculum, attends examinations, solicits funds, chooses teachers, and makes all necessary recommendations to the minister of education. As a rule the mayor of the city is chairman of the board. In most German primary commercial schools the vacations come at the same time as those in other public schools in the Empire.

In curriculum and management these eighteen primary commercial schools of the Rhine Province of Prussia differ little from the two hundred other similar schools distributed among almost as many cities of the Empire. This is without counting the more important primary commercial schools of the free cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck, which are of special importance. The statements made above concerning the schools of the Rhine Province of Prussia apply equally well to most of the other primary schools of the Empire, with a few exceptional differences.

In Berlin there is a primary school for girls. In Schleswig-Holstein primary commercial schools have as yet been but little developed. This is perhaps due to the fact that the four schools in the province are for the most part private enterprises. No compulsory laws being in force, the attendance is poor.

each city. It costs each student on an average $5 to $7 annually for each subject taught.

In Silesia conditions are peculiar. Here are about twenty-five primary commercial schools, yet on the whole they do not play an important part in the educational system, notwithstanding that the curriculum is in most cases more extensive than in other provinces of Prussia, where such education is farther developed. The subjects taught are: German, French, English, bookkeeping, commercial law, political economy, transportation, geography, materials of commerce, history, arithmetic, correspondence, and stenography.

The free cities, Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck, are the gateways through which pass $2,400,000,000 worth of commerce every year. Naturally, these cities give a good deal of attention to commercial education. Since 1874 the commercial schools of Hamburg have prepared for actual business life 10,150 clerks and apprentices. During the past twenty-five years Bremen and Lübeck have sent out almost an equal number. The subjects that receive the greatest attention in these schools are: English, French, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Swedish, bookkeeping, stenography, correspondence, commercial arithmetic, and commercial geography. Fully 80 per cent. of the pupils study the English language.

In the little state of Altenburg there is only one primary commercial school. This was founded by the merchant organizations of the city of Altenburg in 1865. The yearly attendance averages seventyfive pupils. Yet in the discipline that governs the apprentices this institution offers an excellent object-lesson for the many laxly administered schools and small colleges in the United States. Some of the laws read thus:

As the Rhine province was the first, so Westphalia was the last of the Prussian provinces to introduce primary commercial schools. All its ten schools, except the one at Iserlohn, were established between the years 1888 and 1895. Six were founded by merchant unions, one by the city (Bielefeld), one by a chamber of commerce, and one by the city and chamber of commerce of Dortmund. About half of these schools receive financial assistance "Pupils are not expected to reach the yearly from state, city, and chamber of schoolroom earlier than a quarter of an commerce, and the other half from pri- hour before class exercises begin. They vate individuals. Only in Bielefeld and must be provided with books and writing Herford is compulsory attendance in force. material, and must take their seats quietly. Building, light, and heat are furnished Tardiness, unless usually by the municipal authorities of

"It is expected that every pupil will behave himself properly while in school. The wishes of the director and teachers amount to a command and must be promptly obeyed.

is

a good excuse given, will be punished by extra work.

ers' powers, waste the time of the other pupils, make class management a difficult task, and in many cases conduct themselves toward teachers in a manner that would not be tolerated outside of a public school building.

"We would, therefore, respectfully recommend that any pupil who, upon trial by the proper authorities, is adjudged unamenable to the prevailing method of discipline, shall be deemed subject to corporal punishment."

"Apprentices are absolutely forbidden to attend dances or to take dancing lessons." The punishments usually consist of extra work, report of misconduct to principal, public reprimand, and finally expulsion. Under such wholesome paternalism, one naturally infers, there can be no mutinies like the disgraceful "strikes" that have occurred within a year in some of the public schools of Chicago, and in the Michigan Agricultural College.

While I am on the subject of discipline, it is worth remarking that the teachers and principals of the schools of New York City and the neighboring boroughs are practically unanimous in desiring a revival of corporal punishment for unruly pupils. The recent report of the Metropolitan Principals' Association contains some striking statements bearing on the present defective American system of discipline: "We are in accord with the general spirit of the laws governing punishment of refractory pupils, but we must confess that there are pupils on whom the prevailing method of discipline has not the corrective effect that is intended.

"We feel justified in recommending for these pupils sterner measures. Every child has the right to demand of us that we train him to a wholesome respect for law. Training implies power to enforce obedience. The child's right is our duty, from which we are not absolved by the mere plea of sentiment.

"The unruly children of a class, taking advantage of the limitations of the teach

of the changes in each case from day to day; another made daily inspections of their general condition, temperature, pulse, appetite, etc., so that the collective record in each individual case is the work of several different expert physicians. The patients were taken from the poorest class of sufferers, many of whom live at Berlin in damp, unsanitary dwellings, and throng the public hospitals at all seasons of the year. So prevalent and fatal is tubercular disease among this class that notwithstanding all that science has hitherto done to restrain its ravages, the death rate in Berlin alone from that disease averages ten per day. Each patient, before being admitted to the new treatment, was required to present a certificate from the Royal Hospital showing that he or she had been treated there and was suffering from progressive tuberculosis; many when admitted had reached a stage at which hope of relief by ordinary means had been practically abandoned. Thus far 120 patients have been treated, of whom it is stated more than 50 per cent. have been discharged as cured.

These are substantial results, but many physicians do not accept what may be only arrest of the disease for a few months as proof of permanent cure, while others doubt whether inhalation can reach the ultimate seat of the disease.

coming in Berlin, Germany, that this Scourge of civilization is under control. Mr. Robert Schneider, a German merchant with a practical knowledge of chemistry, while traveling in Australia, noticed that the natives of the northwest used a decoction of the leaves and roots of the eucalyptus tree as a remedy for consumption, and that natives living where the tree was abundant were generally immune from the disease. Eucalyptus has, indeed, long been known in materia medica as an efficient germicide and antiseptic. With the aid of a physiological chemist, Herr Schneider prepared a combination of flowers of sulphur, powdered charcoal, and the pulverized eucalyptus leaves, impregnated with essential oil of eucalyptus. This mixture has been named "sanosin," and is the material which has been used in the recent experiments. Since the time of Galen the fumes of sulphur have been known to exert a curative effect upon sufferers from phthisis, and it appears that the combination of sulphurous acid with eucalyptus and carbon has a peculiarly effective potency in attacking the bacillus of tuberculosis. On account of its extreme volatility, sanosin is put up in sealed glass tubes, each containing a dose of about 2 grams (31 grains), in which condition it is to be sold, like other medicines, through authorized druggists. When used, the tube is broken and its contents poured on an earthenware plate heated by a spirit lamp; DU BOIS, WILLIAM E. B.-Professor the volatile eucalyptus quickly evaporates, Du Bois of Atlanta University has recently and, in combination with the small quantity come into national prominence by his adof sulphurous-acid fumes generated, medi- vocacy of a career for the colored people cates with an aromatic, penetrating odor of the United States diametrically opposed the air of a closed room, in which the to that of Booker T. Washington, Presituberculous patient lives and inhales the dent of Tuskegee Normal Institute. The curative influence in an easy, natural way. latter named has found universal approval The new remedy was brought to Berlin for the advice given his people that for in September of last year, where, after due the present they should forego three inconsideration, it was taken in hand for valuable things: political power, civil elaborate scientific test and practical exper- rights, and higher education, while they iment. Prof. Theodor Sommerfeld, of bend all energies toward industrial the University of Berlin-a leading efficiency and financial independence, as authority in pulmonary disease-and Dr. the basis in time of nobler acquisitions. Danelius, also a lung specialist, took charge This view Prof. Du Bois has recently imof the experiments and a special clinic or pugned in his book of essays, entitled hospital ward was opened for that purpose "Souls of Black Folk," a work not only in the Moabit quarter. Other physicians replete with wide and precise information, were assigned to the various details of the but written in a chaste yet almost lyric examinations of the sputa of the patients shows that in the years since Tuskegee work. One made regular and frequent style of choice English. Professor Du Bois under treatment, keeping careful record methods have prevailed there have come

about the disfranchisement of the negro,
the legal creation of a distinct status of
civil inferiority for him, and the with-
drawal of aid from institutions for the
higher training of the negro. But Mr.
Du Bois would have him insist upon his
right to the ballot as a necessity for his
social salvation and as his just desert.
"We, the darker ones, come even now not
altogether empty-handed; there are to-day
no truer exponents of the pure human
spirit of the Declaration of Independence
than the American negroes; there is no
true American music but the wild, sweet
melodies of the negro-slave; the American
fairy tales and folklore are Indian and
African; and, all in all, we black men
seem the sole oasis of simple faith and
reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and
smartness."

tube flattened out at the end into a kind of
long slit. This is rubbed over the carpet
or up and down the cloth covering of set-
tees or chairs, from which it quickly sucks
all the dust, extracting it not only from the
surface, but also from the body of the sub-
stance and from underneath it-the under-
felt being thus cleaned. Not a particle of
dust can be detected if the carpet is then
beaten. Indeed, in an experiment made
in Nottingham with a carpet returned as
clean from a power beater, a considerable
amount of dust was extracted by the vac-
uum process. The severe test of sprinkling
a carpet with flour and thoroughly rubbing
it in has been made, the vacuum cleaner
removing every particle of the flour. No
dust is raised in a room. All is sucked
through the hose into the filter, whence it
is removed and hygienically disposed of-
analysis showing that it is composed of
many deleterious substances. The pile and
color of a carpet are restored by this proc-
ess, and it is claimed that there is no injuri-
ous effect whatever.

Such considerations may well give pause to those who are inclined to follow Mr. Washington's method without let or hindrance from other sources.

DUSTING DEVICE.-The sidewalk in front of a large furnishing house in Nottingham, England, is daily blocked by crowds of people watching through the windows the working of a new dusting device. The first inquiry of the surprised and admiring spectator usually is, Is that an American idea? So far as we know, there is nothing like this cleaner outside of England-not even in America. The system was invented by Mr. H. C. Booth of London, and last year was taken over by a company which experimented with it in various metropolitan hotels, theaters, and other public places. Lately it has been tested in railway carriages, and now, its practicability being assured, agencies are being established throughout the British provinces.

In a similar way walls may be cleaned of dust, the cleaner being a brush of horseshoe shape with an exhaust tube in the center. În hotels, theaters, large business houses, and the like, it is proposed to install permanent stationary plants, so that cleaning can take place daily, thus practically abolishing sweeping. Such a plant would be in the basement, with an iron pipe of small diameter leading to fixed points on each floor. At these points flexible hose would be attached, and the plant would be operated, collecting the dust in the basement. No skilled operators are required. Railroad and street cars, vehicles, and ships' cabins and saloons could all be cleaned daily by stationary plants.

The apparatus consists, in the first place, of a machine composed of a two to fourhorsepower motor-oil or electric-and an air pump, serving to maintain an "exhaust" of several pounds to the square inch. The machine may be portable, on wheels, or stationary. To it is attached a filter-the dust receptacle-a tightly closed metallic vessel, with a capacity of a peck or more. From the filter extends a 12-inch rubber hose, which may be of any desired length up to about 700 feet. The hose terminates in a "cleaner" or "renovator." which is a

To clean residences, the portable machine can be placed in the yard or street and the hose extended into the different rooms. It is stated that the carpets, tapestry, upholstered furniture, mattresses, and bed clothing can all be cleansed of dust in a day, one man cleaning six or eight rooms. There are half a dozen different renovators attachable to the hose, adapted for carpets, chairs, walls, or bedding, as the case may be.

Nothing is said about cleaning clothing, but there is no perceptible reason why the process would not serve that purpose. From houses it removes and destroys dust.