In the same way the twenty hours’ weekly labor for which the children are paid are the hours they spend in school.  By going to school and learning they, too, are benefiting the community, so that their labor is also for the general good.

When school is over, children who wish to do so can wait on table in the community dining-hall, and then they earn more time-checks.

These checks can be exchanged at the general store for goods, the prices of articles not being reckoned at so many cents but at so many hours of labor.

The Ruskin people seem to be hopeful that they have solved the problem of living.

A similar experiment is to be tried under the management of Eugene Debs.  He is the man who led the strikers in Chicago, got into trouble with the authorities, and was finally sent to prison.

Debs proposes to start a co-operative town in the West, taking one hundred thousand men and women along with him to settle it.

He is going to build factories and start all kinds of industries, which are to belong to all the people in common, the profits and the losses to be shared by all the citizens alike.

Peace and prosperity are promised to all who will enter this ideal town.  It will be interesting to watch the experiment and see just what results can be achieved.

* * * * *

Foreign governments are beginning to be heard from on the subject of the annexation of Hawaii.

A member of the English House of Commons has asked the Government whether it intends to allow this very important coaling-station to pass out of its reach without protest.

The Secretary of the Foreign Office replied that no decision had as yet been reached by the United States, and therefore the Government did not see that any action was necessary at present.

The Secretary went on to state that the English ministers would be careful that none of the rights of British subjects were interfered with.

Russia, on her part, has stated that she thinks that the annexation of Hawaii may be followed by the seizure of Cuba, and considers it a step very dangerous to Europe.  She will not, however, join with Japan in her protest.

A report was circulated that Spain and Japan were forming an alliance to resist the annexation of the Sandwich Islands, but this report has been denied.

The German Emperor is said to have declared that he fears the interference of the United States with European affairs if she is allowed to extend her territory in this way.

With all these more or less unfriendly comments there has been but the one serious objection to the project, and that has come from Japan.

The State Department has replied to the protest from the Japanese minister.  The Department refuses to allow the claim that the treaty between Japan and Hawaii was a perpetual treaty.  The refusal was based on the grounds that we gave you last week.