OCTOBEE 16, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



559 



corresponding apprehension and disestima- 

 tion. Several of these main contributing 

 causes are not of human or legislative con- 

 trivance, and evidently cannot be banished 

 by legislation, certainly not by the United 

 States alone, as Prof. Walker and Euro- 

 pean students unhesitatingly declare. This 

 is manifestly a question in which the 

 executive and law-making powers might 

 well avail themselves of expert advice, as 

 in the case of weights and measures, nauti- 

 cal almanac, geodetic and coast survey, and 

 other technical matters. European govern- 

 ments habitually do this, but the people of 

 the United States feel quite competent to 

 grapple with it ; hence the need of * a 

 campaign of education,' and the paralysis 

 of industry until the right decision is 

 reached. 



Edward Atkinson, as usual, led off in the 

 discussion by two papers, ' What is true 

 Money?' and 'The Crime against Labor;' 

 the first being, for the most part, a con- 

 densed history of the various substances 

 which have been used as money in historic, 

 prehistoric and barbaric times, with the pen- 

 dant that by a process of natural selection, 

 gold and silver had come to be the most 

 convenient and stable ; and that all artifi- 

 cial attempts at establishing by enactment 

 a fixed ratio between them had failed, and 

 must fail ; any apparent agreement to the 

 contrary being transient and approximate 

 only. The second paper supplemented the 

 first by showing that bad money could not 

 bring benefit to the wage earners, but was 

 more likely to produce paralysis of trade 

 and manufacture, and want and suffering to 

 laborers. A third paper on the same topics, 

 by Dr. Wm. H. Hale, went over the well- 

 worn theme on a much higher level and in 

 better spirit than the average partisan de- 

 bates. The discussion brought out two or 

 three advocates of the silver heresy, who 

 made the claim that gold had appreciated, 

 all other commodities being by so much 



lowered in price. ITo very new and strik- 

 ing evidence was adduced on either side. 



Quite a surprising degree of interest was 

 exhibited in the reading and subsequent 

 discussion of a paper on ' The Competition 

 of the Sexes and its Eesults,' by Laurence 

 Irwell, of Buffalo, an Oxford graduate. 

 His contention that the new woman should 

 abstain from the professions of law, medi- 

 cine and politics was not merely because 

 she would thereby displace an equal num- 

 ber of men who might have families to sup- 

 port, but also because the child-bearing sex 

 are not physically or mentally qualified to 

 stand the strain. The ladies of the audi- 

 ence seemed to be divided on this point, but 

 agreed that the blame for women pushing 

 into new fields of labor did not rest with 

 their sex. 



A paper on the ' Tin-plate Experiment,' 

 by Prof. A. P. Winston, was the result of 

 careful and impartial inquiries as to the 

 working of the clause in the (McKinley) 

 Act of 1890 raising the impost from 1 to 

 2.20 cents per pound in order to wrest, if 

 possible, the American trade from the 

 Welsh makers. In 1894 the rate was, by 

 the Wilson bill, reduced to 1.20 cents per 

 pound. The statistics show that for the 

 four years ending June 30, 1895, a gratify- 

 ing and rapid growth of production, viz., 

 19,000,000, 108,000,000, 145,000,000 and 

 200,000,000 pounds. Importations showed 

 a marked decline. The conclusion to be 

 drawn from the figures adduced was that, 

 even if no further encouragement of tariff 

 be given, the tin-plate industry, which has 

 a large expectation of natural growth be- 

 fore it, can maintain itself against British 

 competition, partly by superior mechanism 

 and intelligence, proximity of raw material, 

 and incoming of Welsh operatives. 



Dr. C. F. Taylor, of Philadelphia, pre- 

 sented a paper entitled ' An Inheritance for 

 the Waifs,' which was an ingenious appeal 

 to the National Congress to tax heavily, by 



