mysterious illness and death of Yuan Shi Kai in June, 1916, and the overthrow of his openly imperialistic government, in favor of the honestly constitutional republican form of government established by the former Vice-President, Li Yuan Hung.

There are but few labor unions in China, and such as there are, were founded by the Socialist Party. In China, handicraft is still at its zenith, and the workers are partially organized in lócal guilds. The members of these guilds, with handclasp and pass-word, find ready access to guilds in other towns. A three-year apprentice system is still universally the custom. The journeyman receives a wage which varies between $3.00 and $10.00 per month, including full board. As the purchasing power of money is from five to ten times as high in China as in the United States, one may assume that the monthly wage of the skilled Chinese laborer is equal to from $20.00 to $30.00, including full board. Strikes and political strikes also-are quite common in China. The Chinaman works seven days of the week. He knows no weekly day of rest. He does, however, celebrate three annual holidays, one in the summer, one in the autumn and at the New Year. The celebration of the latter holiday extends over from five to twenty days, according to the custom in the various trades. The number of real, industrial or factory, laborers is still very small, but it is growing rapidly from year to year. Ore and coal mines, steel and iron foundries, as well as tobacco, paper, textile and shoe factories offer the most striking examples of factory labor and are owned and controlled chiefly by foreign capitalists. The coal and ore miners work 12 hours daily for a monthly remuneration of $20.00. The miners must live in company huts and buy at company stores. They have a loosely organized union, which, after the first Revolution, joined the Socialist Party as a whole. It is noteworthy that the factory and machine workers were much more active in both Revolutions than the craftsmen, who, with comparatively few exceptions, remained neutral.

JAPAN.

Constitutional Empire; House of Peers: 324 representatives of Nobility, 45 representatives of highest taxpayers; House of Representatives: 379 members; restricted manhood suffrage.

Under Feudalism in Japan there were only four classes: Samurai (soldier), farmer, workman and merchant. Carpenters, plasterers, stone masons, blacksmiths, sawyers and miners all had strong guilds, the miners and sawyers retaining theirs till the present time. Just as under the feudal regime for more than three hundred years, the sawyers

regulate their wages and hours of labor. The miners' guild is a primitive type but very strong and quite communistic in its benefit and relief system. All the miners throughout the country belong to it. But the labor movement in the modern sense did not exist before the Chino-Japan war of 1894-95. The victory over China and the exaction of an indemnity gave a great impetus to the industries and a consequent increase of workers gave rise to labor troubles and strikes. Before this there had been Japanese who had studied the labor movements of Europe and America and who had tried to interest the workers of Japan in them, but they did not succeed, for it was a strange doctrine they preached, a doctrine of the Western world, and, besides, none of them was a worker himself. The real labor movement of Japan started in the summer of 1897. An organization was formed in Tokyo by various workingmen, principally printers and ironworkers. This was followed a few months later by the formation of an iron workers union in Tokyo, which soon had more than 1,000 members. The printers soon followed suit and formed their own union. In the winter of 1898 an engineers' and firemen's union, with more than 1,000 members, was organized on the Nippon R. R. Co. This was the first union formed as the result of a strike. Several thousand workers were involved in what was the first systematically conducted strike in Japan. The strikers obtained all their demands. This union has now a strike fund of over 10,000 yen, a membership of six thousand, 42 branches scattered all over Japan. It has paid out in the last four years more than 8,000 yen in death, sick and strike benefit. It published in Tokyo a bi-monthly organ, The Labor World. The Printers' Union also had its monthly paper. Thus from 1895 to 1899 Japan saw the beginnings of a very promising Labor movement. Sen Katayama, the well known Socialist, secretary of the Ironworkers' Union and editor of The Labor World travelled throughout Japan, speaking at all kinds of meetings. The government did not interfere with or attempt to suppress the Labor movement. But soon all this changed. In 1900 the Imperial Diet passed the so-called Police Law which at once became a powerful weapon to crush the movement. The police power of the state acted now under the authority of the Minister of the Interior and in a very short time killed one union after another until nothing was left of the promising labor movement. According to the law any agitation for higher wages and shorter hours is a crime, and the agitator is to be arrested forthwith. When trade-union propaganda became impossible, the leaders of the class-conscious workingmen changed their tactics; they started a political and socialistic agitation and created in that way

a broader and more general Labor movement. The Labor World, its mouthpiece, had become a real Socialist organ.

The history of the Socialist movement of Japan is one of oppression and persecution. Started in the latter part of 1899 by a few young men in Tokyo it was at first a purely academic affair, a debating society for some intellectuals who had discovered Socialism while studying in Europe or America. The monthly meeting was held at a Unitarian Church. This changed when the Railroad Workers' Union at its annual meeting passed a resolution joining the movement for general suffrage and indorsing Socialism in its platform as the final goal of the labor movement. The debating Circle which met at the Unitarian Church was so greatly encouraged that the Socialist Party of Japan was founded by them and that in 1901 a Manifesto with the Socialist Platform was published in the May Issue of The Labor World. But this party had a rather short life. The government immediately suppressed the Socialist Party, its organ and the four non-socialistic daily papers in Tokyo which had printed the Party Manifesto. The Socialists then formed a Socialist Association and started educational work. They held regular monthly public meetings, which were always attended by hundreds and by charging an admission fee of 10 Sen they soon collected a considerable propaganda fund. During the Russo-Japanese war the Socialists conducted an energetic anti-war propaganda and increased their membership to five thousand men and women. They now published a weekly paper, distributed leaflets, pamphlets and books and held meetings all over the country. Just after the war the Socialist Party was revived and a Socialist Daily published in Tokyo. But again the government used all the means in its power to suppress the Socialist movement; fifty comrades were sent to prison, one editor after the other was arrested and jailed until after seventy days the publication of the daily newspaper ceased. Red flag demonstrations were arranged, mass meetings on public streets held despite the police prohibition and the propaganda conducted so vigorously that the government became ever more brutal and violent in the suppression of the movement. It was only natural that the movement ceased its public activities and became once more a secret organization. The result was the world famous Anarchist trial of 1909-1910. Twentyfour Socialists and Anarchists were condemned to death; twelve of the men were hanged, all Socialist literature was confiscated, the books burned and the Party dissolved. Since then very little Socialist propaganda has been possible.

The government does now permit Socialist agitation and one or two little magazines have been published by T. Sakai

and others. But our Japanese comrades must be very careful, must treat Socialism as an academic question and must not report anything about Socialist activity in Japan and still less about Socialism in Europe or America. A Socialist School has been started in Tokyo where the pupils are taught German, English, sociology and national economy; Dr. T. Koto, a famous surgeon and physician, who learned his socialism in Germany, began a movement to treat and cure the poor for almost nothing and has had the satisfaction of seeing this movement grow to a big social movement with five branches in Tokyo, Yokohama. and Osaka. Last year the associated Socialist physicians treated 703,274 persons in spite of strong opposition from the-medical profession. It publishes a paper, edited by Socialists, which already has a circulation of several hundred thousand. This paper is not a Socialist publication in the strict sense of the word, but it interprets the events of the day in the light of the Socialist philosophy. It will soon be a focus of working class activities since the foundation of a co-operative movement is being planned in connection with it. There exists another "labor" movement in Japan-with the permission and encouragement of the government. It is the so-called Yu-ai-Kai, which is controlled by bourgeois reformers and managed by B. Zuzuki, the delegate to the American Federation of Labor convention of 1915. This organization claims a membership of several thousand. In September, 1916, the factory law will become effective. Under this law the employer is permitted to set children to work for 14 hours a day and also to employ women and children over 15 years of age in cotton factories at night.

The oppression and persecution of Socialists and class conscious unionists may be expected to continue, for the annual budget provides 270,000 Yen for the suppression of the genuine Labor movement. The government keeps a secret list of all known Socialists and has one special police inspector at every police headquarters in charge of the antiSocialist activities. This list is also sent to foreign countries, such as America, Canada, Germany and China with instructions to the vice-consuls to watch their countrymen and report as soon as one becomes active in the Socialist movement. Fusatoro Ota, a resident of Seattle, Wash., was thus suspected to be a Socialist; the Vice-Consul notified his government and was instructed to send Ota home. The Consul found a pretext to have him arrested by the United States Government and had him deported to Japan, where he now awaits trial in Yokahoma. That is a fair sample of the anti-socialist activity of the Japanese government.

CANADA.

The Government of Canada is federal, centred at Ottawa, which city is the capital of the Dominion, while the provinces have their respec, tive local Legislatures. The head of the Federal Government is the Governor-General, representing the British Crown. The Lieutenant-Governors of the several provinces are appointed by the Federal Government. The Legislatures are elected by the people of each province. The Senate (Dominion Parliament) is composed of 87 members. The House of Commons is composed of 234 members. The members of the House are elected under the several provincial franchises, in accordance with a Federal act passed in 1898. The Senators are appointed for life.

Canada with its vast territorial extent is still thinly populated, which fact alone would place it among the great agrarian_nations. It is rightly called the granary of the world. The Canadian government and a number of organizations have been vigorously conducting an immigration campaign, which has attracted many thousands to its promising lands, not only from European nations, but even from the United States. This immigration has likewise encouraged the growth of industrial centers in certain parts of Canada, some of which rank to-day with the large manufacturing cities of the American continent. Yet these are only the beginnings, which are certain to become of international importance. It was inevitable that the industrial workers who came to Canada from other than the English shores should inject into Canadian politics a new element of dissatisfaction with the traditional method of supporting one or the other of the two old parties. This dissatisfaction led to the founding of Socialist organizations. In 1890, there were branches of the American Socialist Labor Party in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg. A short time before the split of the S. L. P. in the U. S. in 1899 a Canadian Socialist League was organized, because there was lively dissatisfaction with the methods and tactics of the S. L. P. In a short time 60 Leagues had been organized in the Province of Ontario, which were followed, two years later, by the Socialist Party of British Columbia. In 1905 all existing Socialist organizations of Canada were united in the Socialist Party of Canada. The Western Clarion became the official party organ.

The way of the Canadian Party is a stony one, for the labor unions are almost wholly followers of the old capitalist parties, who reward them by occasionally putting one or the other of the union leaders into public office. But the Party is progressing, nevertheless, as the following table will show:

The Canadian Socialists have not yet succeeded in sending representatives to the Dominion Parliament. They did