The Review ot Reviews. 



July 1, liuS, 



I The Great City Hall of San Francisco idestroyed by the Earthquake). 



The City Hall was one ot the most costly erections in the United States. The dome was especially noteworthy. 



President Roosevelt appears to be 

 The Presideiil'» given to the interesting but some- 

 Warning, what perilous practice of thinking 



aloud. On April 14th he laid the 

 corner-stone of the new office building for the House 

 of Representatives at Washington, and, as his manner 

 is, he soliloquised somewhat after the fashion of 

 Hamlet on the problems that were vexing his soul. 

 Starting off with a severe condemnation of the men 

 with the muck-rake of the Press, who made gross 

 and reckless assaults on the characters of public 

 men, he went on to say that to denounce mud-sling- 

 ing does not mean the endorsement of whitewash, 

 and to hail the sober and steady assailants of public 

 corruption and civic wrong as the leaders and allies 

 of all engaged in the work for social and political 

 betterment. Then after this balanced opening Pre- 

 sident Roosevelt suddenl)' exploded a bombshell 

 under the seats of the listening millionaires by de- 

 claring 



We shall soon be forced to deal with the problem pre- 

 sented by the accumulation o£ large fortunes. No amount 

 of charity in spending money can atone for misconduct in 

 malting it. As a matter of personal conviction. I feel that 

 W6 shall ultimately have to consider the adoption of some 

 snch sclieme as that of a progressive tax on all fortunes 

 beyond a certain amount, ePther given in life or devised or 

 bequeatlied upon death to any individual— a tax so framed 

 as to put it out of the power of the owner of one of these 

 enormous fortunes to hand on more than a certain amount 

 to any one individual, the tax, of course, to be imposed by 



the national and not the State Government. Such taxation 

 should, of course, be aimed merely at the inheritance or 

 transmission in their entirety of those fortunes swollen 

 beyond all healthy limits. 



Imagine such a message from such a man to such a 

 plutocrat-ridden conununity as the Americans. We 

 shall not hear the last of the echoes of that declara- 

 tion for many a long day. Its reverberations are 

 audible even here, where Mr, Asquith has announced 

 a Select Committee to consider the graduation of 

 the income tax. 



Progress \\'hen Mrs. Wilshire, wife of the 



of editor of the Socialist Wilshire 



Socialistic Ideas Magazine, was in London, she 

 in America. expressed a confident belief that the 

 Americans would adopt Socialism long before it was 

 established in Britain. The trend of opinion in 

 favour of what we call municipal Socialism and the 

 Germans' Socialism of the Chair, is powerfully 

 stimulated by the recent exposures of " Frenzied 

 Finance.' The American Federation of Labour 

 warned Congress recently that Labour would go into 

 politics on its own account if its demands were not 

 attended to. Last month sixty-three separate or- 

 ganisations came together at Chicago to form a La- 

 bour party under the title of the Chicago Progressive 

 Alliance. Its programme puts the initiative and 

 referendum in politics in the forefront, and declares 



