the revolution against himself he did not sufficiently intimidate the Parliament which had come to Peking. A very independent body it was, designed by the anti-Yuan elements to curb and control that usurper, and even without the rebel forces behind it, after the latter had been dispersed and scattered, this Parliament which sought to give liberal government to a country that did not understand it endeavored to handicap Yuan with laws of its own devising. It was then that, despite parliamentary laws and protests from members of the Parliament delivered direct to the bankers, the Quintuple Group loaned the sum of about $125,000,000 to Yuan Shih-kai.

Yuan endeavored to persuade the Constitution Drafting Committee of Parliament to pass laws giving him adequate powers for governing, but that body would brook no suggestion from him nor from the American legal adviser, Professor F. J. Goodnow, whom they regarded as a Yuan man. They went ahead with their own ideas and by their Draft Constitution sought to make the President a figure-head with a government that was responsible to Parliament alone.

With a Parliament largely composed of young inexperienced men, many with Western education, Yuan professes to believe I think honestly-that such a government was not practicable. He, too,

is a reformer but no believer that a democracy like America can be made of Old China by the drafting of an untried list of statutes hodgepodged from all the most liberal countries of the world. Indeed, China had no character in all her alphabet of 40,000 that would express such words as "republic" and "constitution," or such an expression as we understand by "liberty, equality, and fraternity." She had no machinery for voting and, as a whole, no knowledge or respect for such new-fangled things. The Parliament itself had not been elected, but was chosen by little cliques of men.

It is curious that while Yuan breaks the laws he strives at all times to surround his actions with the semblance of legality. Having been elected "Provisional President" he required a more substantial mandate. This he obtained from the

recalcitrant Parliament by surrounding that body with soldiers and police and permitting none to leave the building even for food until the election was accomplished. Then, within a few days, he chose to dissolve the Parliament, it being a hindrance to administration, and this he accomplished legally by dissolving the Kwo Ming Tong, the political party of the rebels, which was in the majority. After the dissolution of the rebellious organization the Parliament was without a quorum.

I do not think Yuan Shih-kai is personally ambitious. I have watched him closely since the day he arrived in Peking at the summons of the Prince Regent. He does not exact personal deference as certain European monarchs are wont to do. There is no "side" about Yuan-a statement which can be made of few of the Western-educated students who oppose him. It is my judgment that he is a patriot persuaded by the men about him that the welfare of the country requires a permanent executive and that there is no other man to take the throne.

The new Emperor is not as old a man as he looks; he is but fifty-seven. Asthma and a burden of flesh have physically degenerated him. He is a short, unusually broad, large headed man, with thin white. hair and mustaches. He has a genial smile and manner and never looks disturbed. The attack of an assassin would not startle him. He has fatalism in his character. He will do the best he can according to his lights, take precautions and also chances; and if the regicide gets him, he will smile and take leave of his friends and family philosophically.

His family is large according to Western ideas. His sons are said to number nearly a score and his daughters about that number; and he has also many grandchildren. Following Chinese tradition the whole family live together in the same compound. Fortunately the Winter Palace, which he has made his home, is an extensive enclosure covering several square miles, with beautiful lakes and parks, and many palace residences. It is only a step from the Forbidden City proper, where the boy Emperor of the Manchus is still permitted to maintain his Court and his imperial guard.

HE new Sixty-Fourth Congress, like all its predecessors, must face a national issue of transcendent importance.

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do not refer to "preparedness," to our foreign relations, to Mexico, Germany, or even to the tariff or trust questions. The average American may regard all these as great national matters; the gentlemen from Wyoming, Alabama, Kentucky, and Ohio, however, have one problem of more pressing and immediate interest. As Congress gets down to business, these statesmen do not ask, "Shall we build battle cruisers or submarines?" "Shall we intervene in Mexico?" or "Shall we extend the exemption limit on the income tax?" No; their legislative heartsearchings take this tangible form: “Shall we have a public building bill this year?" Let the Lusitania and the shipping bill go hang; the really absorbing question is whether Sundance, a town in Wyoming of less than 500 people, shall have a $50,000 post office building and court house.

For eign relations, new taxation schemes, the Army and Navy-are all well enough in their place; what really thrills, however, is the necessity of so "putting money into circulation" in the districts that the reëlection of particular statesmen shall be assured.

"Shall we have a public buildings bill this year?" Every Congress asks itself this question. Every one that has the courage and Congress is usually courageous on these points-answers it in the

affirmative. The Federal Government is now spending about $20,000,000 a year in public works of an architectural character. Next to pensions and rivers and harbors, public buildings make up our greatest "pork barrel." Moreover, the vice is a rapidly growing one. In 1906, the Federal Government possessed 503 public buildings: it now has 967. That is, we have built almost as many post offices and court houses in the last nine years as in the preceding 130 years. The 1913 bill authorized the construction of 303 federal buildings-almost as many, in one bill, as we had built in the first century and a quarter of our national existence.

In no other civilized country does the legislative branch ask this question, “Shall we have a public buildings bill this year?" Our Congress asks it because we have no centralized system of responsible government. We have no budget system— something which every other republic, autocracy, and limited monarchy in the world has found indispensable to the conduct of public business. England, France, Brazil, Venezuela-these nations, and dozens of others, have no pork barrels

no river and harbor bills, no public buildings bill. They do have post offices. court houses, and great public works; they do not obtain them, however, after the American fashion. They really provide these necessities where the conduct of the public business demands them; they do not erect them as campaign funds to re

turn certain obsequious and needy lawmakers to the capitol.

The American Government, for example, maintains a "monumental" court house at Texarkana, Tex. We built this five years ago at a cost of $110,000. It is a court house only; a separate buildingalso of "monumental" character does service as a post office. This Texarkana court house contains elaborate court rooms, a robing chamber for the judge, witness rooms, grand jury rooms, district attorney's office, and other expensive accommodations. It is open for business three or four days every year! On these occasions the judge solemnly enters his robing room, puts on his gown, hears court-and gets out of town as quickly as he can. All the All the rest of the year the building stands silent, majestic, vacant, unused.

Meanwhile, in New York City, where the Federal Courts are constantly sitting and are overburdened with business, the Federal Government leases court room space in the twenty-seventh story of the Woolworth Building. Probably Texarkana thinks it is entitled to a court house in preference to New York. A most unfortunate feeling exists in these small towns against the large cities. I mention these illustrations not to champion the city against the smaller communities. Unfortunately, the Federal Courts do enormous business in New York City and very little in Texarkana. The point at issue is that we should put these buildings where the public necessities demand.

do an

On one hand Texarkana, with an elaborate court house used three or four days in the year; on the other, the busy court in New York City, forced to hold its sessions in a commercial skyscraper: here we have the beginning and the end of the great American pork barrel system of legislation. Congress, in the last public buildings bill, cut out an appropriation to purchase a court house site in New York City, but insisted on appropriations for post office sites at a Paintsville, in Kentucky, with a population of 942 souls, and Newcastle, in Wyoming, which has a population of 975. Chicago, which has postal receipts of $23,000,000 a year, could not get money enough to buy a site for a sadly needed

post office, but Vernal, Utah, which contains 836 people and has annual postal receipts of $6,060, obtained an appropriation for both a site and a building.

ENGLAND'S ANCIENT PORK BARREL

Only a detailed examination of the way a nation with a budget authorizes a public building, and a corresponding description of American methods, will make the situation clear. Here, for example, is England, the country that has developed the budget to the greatest precision. Like the United States, England has a Post Office Department; like the United States, it is constantly putting up post office buildings. Here, again, is an English town, small or large, that has apparently outgrown its post office facilities, or that, for various reasons, worthy or unworthy, desires a new post office building. The pork barrel tendency is a fundamental human trait; it affects the people of all lands; every town in England, we may rest assured, wants its post office and wants as fine and expensive a structure as it can get. Like most American localities to-day, our English ancestors

of the time of Queen Elizabeth or James the First-preferred to defray the cost of improvements out of the central purse, instead of taxing themselves; their representative in Parliament, therefore, would introduce bills, just as Senator Smoot or Senator Sutherland to-day introduce bills in Congress for post offices. Two hundred years ago, that is, England had its pork barrel. About 1713, however, English statesmen realized that Parliament was bridging creeks and building roads for communities that should properly stand the expense themselves. Our pork barrel has only recently become a national issue; pork barrelism, however, became a national issue in England two centuries ago. Parliament solved its problem with little difficulty. It did not have to spend several years amending a Constitution; it simply adopted a new rule of business. This rule provides that "The House will receive no petition for any sum relating to the public service, or proceed upon any line for a grant upon the public revenues, unless recommended by the Crown." That looks at first a little monarchical, perhaps even

autocratic; it apparently says that Parliament shall vote no money unless the King requests the grant. But the "Crown," in the English Parliamentary system, really means the Cabinet, and back of the Cabinet the prevailing Parliamentary majority -the gentlemen whom the freemen of England have chosen as their rulers. If we wish the same idea expressed in modern language, we can take the following provision regulating appropriations from the Act of 1867, establishing the Dominion of Canada-essentially the Canadian Constitution: "It shall not be lawful for the House of Commons to adopt or pass any vote, resolution or address, or bill, for the appropriation of any part of the public service, or of any tax or imports for any purpose, that has not been first recommended to that House by a message of the Governor-General in the session in which such vote, resolution, address, or bill is proposed." The Governor-General, again, is merely the automatic spokesman of the Parliamentary majority.

An English town that wants a post office does not compel its representative to introduce a bill in Parliament. A representative who did such an unheard-of thing would promptly be declared out of order. The local postmaster simply appeals to the "lords commissioners of his Majesty's treasury." These officials refer the application to the "office of works," whose officials carefully determine the case. Not politics, but public necessity, decides the matter. If they find that the building is required and that the condition of the public revenue justifies the expenditure, the item is included in the annual estimates for the Civil Service. The "administration" asks Parliament to grant this appropriation. Parliament, that is, finally controls the matter. Members can ask all kinds of questions and investigate to their heart's content; if the project seems unadvised, they can refuse to grant the money. They can even reduce the item; they cannot, however, increase it or propose an entirely new appropriation for a building in some other town. Parliament's business is that of investigation, criticism, of granting or refusing to grant the money-the one thing it cannot do is to initiate. If we had such

a system in the United States, this is what would happen: the village of Hodgensville, in Kentucky, ambitious for a post off.ce would present its case to PostmasterGeneral Burleson. Mr. Burleson and his expert assistants would decide the case or its merits. If the post office business at Hodgensville justified the expenditure, Mr. Burleson would include a $50,000 item for the purpose in his annual estimates. Congress would then control the situation. It could vote Hodgensville its post office or decline to do so. reduce the appropriation to $30,000; but it could not increase it and it could not decide to build instead or in addition post offices at Newcastle, in Wyoming, or Chapel Hill, in North Carolina-both towns, which, although they have only about 1,000 population, were "taken care of" in the latest omnibus public buildings bill. It could not appropriate for these latter places unless the Post Office Department presented estimates for them.

PORK THAT "SMELLS TO HEAVEN" Now, for contrast, let us transplant ourselves to the Capitol of Washington at midnight of March 3-4, 1913. The date, take notice, is a momentous one. Mr. Taft has only a few more hours of official life; Mr. Wilson, with the huzzas of Washington already sounding in his ears, is awaiting the hour of his inauguration. The historic nature of the occasion occupies the Senators' minds and fills their speeches "Mr. President," says Senator Thomas, "I indulge the hope that the time has come

not that it is coming, but that the time has come when different methods will prevail and a different system of legislation will obtain. The light will break in the East to-morrow morning and the old order will be changed." The Senator is dis cussing the public buildings bill, which the lawmakers are frantically rushing through in the final minutes-in time to get the signature of President Taft, who will have only for a few hours more the power to sign bills. That this is the most odious bill of its kind ever passed by an American Congress, everybody knows. "This measure," says Senator Kern, "is the boldest and most audacious raid on the