C URRENT LITERAT U RE.
A FISCAL ALLEGORY.
Down with the Sign ! a Tale of Free-Trade. By Emptor. (Grant Richards. ls.)—In the course of a brief story the issues of the controversy are here stated in such a form that all who run may read and understand, while the application of disastrous economics to the home life of the people is shown with a pathos that is heart-rending and truly tragic in its un- adorned simplicity of phrase. It might almost have been written by the authoress of "Adam Bede." The scene is the great iron- works on the Territory of Frank English. An industrial settle- ment had arisen for the workers. There were the works, the town, the retail shops, the great establishments of the wholesale traders. It is a stern community working hard for daily bread. The " Home Traders " supplemented the resources of the settlement by those of other wholesale traders (the Quondams and the Foreigners) in the Expanse beyond the Territory. All these dwellers in the Expanse made a charge for admission to their Territory to the people who brought them in goods. "Alone, the Home Traders made no charge : over Frank English's great portals, at the entrance to the Territory, could be read : `Admission Free.' It was with him a steadfast article of faith that the more freely commodities ate exchanged and the more briskly they are circulated, the more brisk and energetic will be the life and movement of the community." English had a general manager of his Territory called Janitor, a worthy but not very judicious sort of person, who in the course of his work came a good deal into contact with the men employed by Everard the ironmaster. The home life of these men is brought vividly before us. There is young Bob Crayke, the fitter, his wife, and their two little children, none of them physically strong, but with careful management doing as well as might be expected on 24e. a week ; there is old Jerry Wilkison, earning £1 a week, and living with his widowed daughter-in-law and helping to maintain the home. The life in the two cottages is obviously drawn from nature. In this community, given the virtues of sobriety and patience, life was possible and not unhappy, but it was very near the margin of production. The social equilibrium was unstable, and depended on stability of prices. Suddenly to the over-anxious Janitor the brilliant thought occurred to imitate the Quondams and Foreigners, who seemed, with their ever-increasing stream of free goods, to be hampering the Home Traders. He would make them pay to come in. So he besieged Frank English. He wished to put up a sign, like the dwellers on the Expanse : "Admission 6d. Special terms on application." A conversation with Jerry led to a change. "Admission 7d.,"—the additional penny to form a pension fund for the old workmen. At last Janitor gets his way, and the fatal sign is raised. The economic consequences are worked out with a ruthless hand. We see them operating in the cottages of Bob Crayke and Jerry Wilkison. The Sign, apart from the misery at home, is a failure. It strains the relations of English and the Quondams, whose trade after all goes to the Foreigners, and not only checks the introduction of food, but raises the price of all food to that of the most heavily taxed importer. Tea and tobacco alone are cheap, and their abuse com- plicates the issue. Wages, it is true, in the end rise through scarcity of labour—for the workmen flee away to happier lands— but not in proportion to the growing price of food. The Angel of Death, as in Egypt of old time, moves from home to home. The breaking point, is reached ; the workman rise with the cry, " Down with the Sign! " and Janitor, with all his ideas, is swept away. But it is too late in at least one home, for Bob, returning from the riot, finds Polly and her wizened new baby dead on the cottage floor. This clever little book deserves a wide circulation.
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