the German municipalities have undertaken the management of employment agencies. Hamburg has had such an agency since 1898, connected with its charity bureau. Breslau has had an employment bureau since 1896. The unemployed fill out cards, giving date, name, age; married, unmarried, or widower; employment sought; apprenticed as ; former trade; last place of employment; references; how long in last position. The last three points are required without exception. In 1902 there were, for 6,061 men seeking work, 2,678 places offered, of which 2,333 were filled through this bureau. In the same year 4,669 women sought employment; and of the 5,138 places offered, 3,958 were filled. Dortmund founded a municipal employment agency in 1897, which is operated at the expense of the city. Its services are free, and the management is directed to co-operate with the other employment agencies in the city. Unless the other bureaus answer to a need of the city, they will probably be crowded out by the competition of the free services offered by the municipality. In any case Dortmund is assured of an excellent, centralized, complete, disinterested, free employment agency. Leipzig has a society for the furtherance of employment, the "Paritätische Arbeitsnachweis," which has many good points. Judging merely from a pamphlet given out by the society at the exposition, however, its plan is not so concrete and practical as the one just cited. For the sake of maintaining disinterestedness, equal numbers of employers and employees have seats in the managing council. The management consists, then, of four employers, four employees, eight members of the society, and a member of the city council. The services of the association are for men and for women, for employers and for employees, and are gratis. The work is centralized. Thus the society attains the three points it deems necessary for its work: impartiality, free service, and centralization. The members of the association pay a life-membership fee, or yearly dues. The association is recognized, and aided financially, by the municipality. Those who seek positions must present some means of identification such as birth certificate, certificate of citizenship, insurance card, etc.—and then fill out a card giving name, age, address, trade learned, sort of employment sought, date when last employed. The employer must fill out a card stating number of persons wanted, kind of employment, wages, other requirements, or remarks. The workmen wait in the office of the agency until an opportunity for employment is offered. Usually more than the required number of applicants are sent, in order that the employer may have some chance of selection. A small special exhibit of the Association of German Employment Agencies ("Verband deutscher Arbeitsnachweis") showed, among other things, the following table, which represents its Positions filled... Seeking positions.... 567,895 629,563 651,580 779,590 1,086,874 588,574 435,361 592,070 434,185 E. PUBLIC HEALTH AND SAFETY. Hospitals. Preparation for the fight with those conditions which menace public health characterizes the German municipalities. The improved conditions in modern hospitals are so advantageous as to be desirable, notwithstanding the increased cost. The pavilion system is considered by far the best. The model form would be a rectangle with the pavilions or cottages along one side for men, and along the other side for women. The pavilions across the front would be devoted to offices, laboratories, study rooms, consultation rooms, and operating rooms. Along the main axis would be the chapel, the kitchens and wash houses, the boiler and engine house, and at the back the morgue. On either side of the morgue, at the back of the rectangle, would be found pavilions for contagious diseases, for uncontrollable persons, and for disinfection. The main axis should lie in a north-and-south direction, that the windows may face east and west, and so have light and sunshine all day without the direct sunshine from the south. The separated pavilions are connected with each other, as well as with the operating rooms, by tunnels or by cloistered passages. All electric cables, gas pipes, hot-water heating pipes, etc., are thus provided for; and where cloistered passages exist they serve as shelters for convalescent patients. Many of the large, new hospitals are built upon these plans, e. g., in Dresden, in Berlin, in Bremen, in Schöneberg (being built), in Kiel, in Leipzig, and in Hamburg among others. Chemnitz is planning for such an institution with one thousand beds, to cost six million marks; Leipzig expended over four million marks for a new hospital built in 1899-1901. Berlin's new Rudolf Virchow Hospital will be, when completed, the largest hospital on the continent. It is to accommodate two thousand persons, including attendants, and will cost 13,100,000 marks. Bremen's new hospital is composed of twenty separate buildings, and cost 3,000,000 marks. Hamburg exhibited drawings of her Eppendorf Hospital, consisting of eighty-one buildings, of which fifty-nine are pavilions with the newest hygienic appliances, capable of accommodating sixteen hundred patients. Her Harbor Hospital consists of a building for offices and operating rooms, a pavilion for one hundred patients, a pavilion for troublesome patients, a morgue, a building for medical examination, a building for the disinfection both of persons and of property, and the connected boiler and engine house. This hospital was built 1898-1900, at a cost of 747,000 marks, and receives persons brought in by the police, and bodies of persons who have committed suicide or who have met with accident; and serves for examination of persons thought to have contagious diseases, and also for disinfection. Besides building and maintaining these excellent institutions, the German municipalities undertake other means of preserving and promoting the public well-being. In modern times attention has been turned from clinical to hygienic activity. There has been a change from individual shortsightedness to social farsightedness. Parks and boulevards. When cities were constricted by walls, there was not the opportunity, even though there had been the desire, for reserving park space within the city. With the razing of the fortifications, which began in 1870, it became possible to |