their places for a trifle. No laborer earns so precarious a living, or so suffers from the advantage taken of his necessities, as the "casual" at the docks. Such, at least, was his condition before the strike.

We must distinguish between the "casual" and the regular employee at the docks. The export trade employs its own men, who are trained to their work of packing and storage, who work on regular time and receive regular wages. These men have for some time been associated in a trades' union. In the import trade the ship-owners give the cargoes into the hands of the dock companies, and it is from them that the "casual" gets his work, if at all. The employees of the dock companies are divided into three grades, regulars, preferred or ticket-men, and casuals. The proportion between these grades, or classes, at two of the East London docks is as follows:

The strike originated with the casuals, and was continued in their behalf through the support of all associated laborers to the number of 100,000. The demands of the strikers were for an advance from 5d. to 6d. per hour, and 8d. an hour for night work, a minimum of 2s. for all dock laborers employed before being dismissed, and a termination of the contract or sweating system under which the contractors received back a considerable part of the wages nominally paid to the laborer. The companies were willing to accede to the last two demands, but resisted the first, the increase of a penny in the hourly pay, the ground of their resistance being that they could not afford to advance the price as they were not paying reasonable dividends on the investment. They declared that the alternative of paying more for labor would be to increase the cost to ship-owners, and force them to seek other ports of entry. We shall refer to the fallacy of this contention.

The demands of the strikers have been complied with, except in the time of the increase of pay, which is to begin on November 1st. The success of this strike is worthy of careful reflection, as it shows more clearly than any strike of recent years those conditions which justify a strike, and which give it a successful issue.

1 Life and Labour, vol. i., p. 190.

Of course the chief condition everywhere is the justice of the cause. Here it was undeniable and conspicuous. We have described the condition of the "casual" laborer at the dock. The reply of the dock companies to this condition was that they could not afford to do better. But upon investigation it proved that this only meant that they were carrying a great deal of unproductive capital on which they were trying to pay dividends. A well-informed writer in the London "Times" stated that "probably one half of the capital outlay of the London and St. Katherine docks and the East and West India Dock Companies may be considered obsolete for all practical purposes in connection with shipping." A great deal of capital seems to have been sunk in arrangements not suited to the steam navigation of the present time, a condition quite in contrast with the state of the Liverpool docks. Nothing remained for the companies to do in this circumstance except the very necessary, though very trying, expedient of reducing the capital to its actual working value, of "writing off" so much as represented what was obsolete. To attempt to secure returns upon this part of the capital at the expense of the laborer was precisely the same in result, though not so bad in intention, as the attempt which has sometimes been made in this country to oblige the laborer on railroads to pay dividends on watered stock through a reduction in his wages.

Another condition of peculiar significance has been the good order observed by the strikers. Something of this has been due to the unexpected self-restraint and restraining influence of the leader, John Burns, already known as a socialistic agitator of the more violent type. He continually counseled patience, forbearance, sobriety, while he succeeded in infusing that degree of courage and hope which made it possible for men to endure. And the endurance of the men under the prolonged parleying and indecision was admirable and even heroic. We have seen no record of mob violence. Property was as safe in London during the strike as in Edinborough. Pickets were kept out to pick off new laborers hired by the dock companies, but little intimidation was practiced. On the whole, the strikers have won the moral respect of the city and nation by their behavior. The London Press speaks, without exception so far as we have seen, in praise of their conduct under the severe strain put upon them by the delays incident to difficult negotiation.

As a result of both these conditions the further condition of public sympathy was present in a remarkable degree. It was, in fact, the immediate and continued and generous material support of the public which kept the strikers from starvation, and so from surrender. Gifts of money were received from widely different sources. The contributions from Australia were specially prompt and generous. It is estimated that at the close of the strike there was a surplus in the hands of the Committee, an unprecedented event. As an example of the general sympathy

and helpfulness, we quote from the "Christian World" a brief statement of the work of the churches in the neighborhood in the way of feeding the multitude: :

"From the beginning the ministers and churches on the spot have labored incessantly to do all in their power to keep the wolf from the door of the dockers. The military organization of the Salvation Army and its possession of food depots in the midst of the dock districts has enabled General Booth to feed eight or nine thousand daily, at the charge of a farthing or a halfpenny per head. Church of England clergymen, Non-conformist ministers and churches, the Christ Church (Oxford) East London Mission, have labored side by side. Some seven hundred men, morning by morning, have breakfasted at St. George's Chapel, the centre of the Wesleyan East London Mission, and Rev. James Chadburn, the Children's Friend, has, in the Shaftesbury Mission Hall, distributed porridge, sandwiches, and other refreshments, to not far short of a thousand daily. Rev. J. Toulson, President of the Primitive Methodist Conference, with thirteen ministers and several laymen, form a central relief committee, under which five local committees are at work. Rev. F. W. Newland and his church are giving a dinner to 450 children daily. Eleven Southeastern ministers unite in a joint appeal to our readers for help. Many churches have sent collections to the Strike Committee. We believe it is nothing more than the truth to say that but for the relief administered by the churches, the struggle could not have been maintained. Famine would have sided irresistibly with the dock directors."

A somewhat unusual but very effective condition of success in the result of the strike was the mediating influence brought to bear upon the companies and upon the strikers. In this work the figure of Cardinal Manning holds a deserved prominence. The Lord Mayor of the City and the Bishop of London labored to the same end, but the work of the Cardinal was more patient and persistent, and, in the end, really brought about the agreement by which November 1st was accepted as the time for the increase of pay, the strikers demanding immediate increase, and the companies holding out for January 1st. It is not always that any one occupies a position inviting the confidence of one party and the sympathy of the other. The office of mediator is a most difficult one to hold with firmness and patience to the end. But the example of Cardinal Manning shows what can be done, and will prove a most helpful precedent in allaying strife in the future conflicts of capital and labor.

Without question the London strike has wrought much good in various ways. It has done something to take the lowest class of laborers out of the terrible "residium" of the unemployed and to give them a foothold in the ranks of labor. It has brought together the people and the masses, especially the church and the masses. "He would be a bold man," the Rev. James Chadburn says, "who attacked a Salvation Army meeting in East London to-day; and our mission hall" (Mr. Chadburn writes from Trinity Parsonage), "where we have fed 1,100 children daily, is quite safe. God bless you, sir,' with finger raised to his hat, says the docker

East

to the minister to-day." Above all it has taught the lowest laborer selfrespect. It has given him a new reliance and a new courage. London is on a higher moral level than that of two months ago.

It would be foolish for any party or for any sect to attempt to make capital out of the result. The strike proves nothing for or against Socialism, for example. John Burns, the leader, is a Socialist, but it was the coöperation of all classes which gave him success. He would probably allow that it was a victory of English justice and English pluck over an inherited system of oppression and wrong.

"THE DEATH OF COPERNICUS." 1

MR. AUBREY DE VERE'S recent poem, "The Death of Copernicus," deserves attention for its historic insight and apologetic value, as well as for its literary merits. In the latter respect its diction seems to us at times to become slightly prosaic, as though the serious argument of the poem weighted too heavily its wings, yet this is only an occasional lapse, and there are passages of sustained imaginative and rhythmical power in no ordinary degree.

The conception of the poem is noble and fitted to finest uses. Copernicus is narrated to have received the day before his death the first printed copy of his "De Orbium Coelestium Revolutionibus." He had kept it back for thirty-six years, that he might thoroughly test its conclusions, and not needlessly disturb the established Faith. The burden of the poem is his musings called up by the sight of his book, on the relations of the "Truth of Nature" and the "Truth Revealed." The former is

more especially astronomic truth the new outlook upon the vastness and unity of the stellar universe, an infinitude of worlds of which he had demonstrated that the earth could no longer be deemed the centre. But should he publish his discovery? The central significance and importance of this planet was to the faithful a sacred truth, attested in a supernatural and infallible revelation which affirms that the earth "cannot be moved," cherished in church traditions practically as authoritative as Sacred Writ, and congruous with its essential dogmas of the Incarnation and the Cross. The astronomer recalls how he had tested his conclusions, trying them by all the methods known to investigation; how he had tested no less the teaching of Scripture by its own laws. Here, as in his special science, he discovered that the text and the interpretation which had been put upon it were things very distinct. The Ptolemaic system was not Nature's teaching, but a human gloss. No less had Scripture been misunderstood.

"Faith is more than Science :

But 'twixt the interpretation and the text
Lies space world-wide."

1 The Death of Copernicus. By Aubrey De Vere. Contemporary Review, September, 1889, pp. 421-430.

Satisfied that the special revelation did not contradict what seemed to him to be the truth taught by his Science, he had at last printed his book; but on the verge of the shadow of death, as he turned to the world of faith, one doubt arose - what would be the effect upon the minds of men of divulging his discovery? If the earth is not the centre of the Universe, what of the Incarnation? As the Psalmist of old turned from the starry heavens to the divine law in a sublime sense of their correlation in purity and majesty, so the dying astronomer sets the universality of Christianity over against the infinitude of the skies.

"The stars do this for man ;

They make infinitude imaginable;

God, by our instincts felt as infinite,

When known, becomes such to our total being,

Mind, spirit, heart, and soul. The greater Theist
Should make the greater Christian."

And the heart of the poem and the solution of the religious difficulty is given in these lines:

"This Earth too small

For Love Divine! Is God not Infinite?

If so, his love is infinite. Too small!

One famished babe meets pity oft from man
More than an army slain! Too small for Love!
Was Earth too small to be of God created?

Why then too small to be redeemed?

"Is not the Universe a whole ?

Doth not the sunbeam herald from the sun
Gladden the violet's bosom? Moons uplift
The tides remotest stars lead home the lost :
Judæa was one country, one alone :

Not less Who died there died for all. The Cross
Brought help to vanished nations: Time opposed

No bar to Love: why then should Space oppose one?

If Earth be small, likelier it seems that Love

Compassionate most and condescending most

To Sorrow's nadir depths, should choose that Earth
For Love's chief triumph, missioning thence her gift
Even to the utmost zenith."

From this point of view, elevated as that from which the astronomer had surveyed the worlds in space, the Christian believer looks out upon the cycles of human history. With subtle insight he discerns the necessity, in a moral ordering of the world, of a gradual and adjusted bestowment of blessings.