Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Th.e N a t i o n .
49s
,40 to 60 per cent. of the highest eligibles on the various lists decline appointments.The
Government cannot hope
to compete with
private
employers,
saysthe Commission, unless it pays
salaries that measure up fairly well t o
thestandard
6f private business. In
order t o make Government posltions
more attractive, a bill has been introduced increasing thesalaries of civil employees
by
1 0 per cent.
The
complaint
of thls class does not, however, come
alone. Congress i s coming t o the point
of raising the salaries of its own members. A Cabinet officer has embodied
an allusion t o
inhisannualreport
the inadequacy of hispay Generally
speaking, there is not a man in public
position, hlgh or low,whodoes
not
make a convincing demonstration that,
on a basis of the.private demand for
like services, he ought to receive more
thanhe does. Logically, we should expect the announcement that the Government machinery is inadequatelymanned.
yetthe speciqcations in regard t o the
presentlabor famine are not alarmlng
T o saythat Government salaries have
not been adjusted t o meet the present
cost of living, is merely stating one of
their shortcomings. They have not properly been adjusted a t all. Most of them
Just growed.And
theman really t o
be pitied is not the ambitious outsider,
whether he be a candidate for a Cabinet
post or a rural free delivery route, but
the sheltered clerk who entered the service in the days when the salary looked larger,and to-day can neither have
It enlarged nor summon theinitiative
10 go elsewhere.
The Nation.
499
any one else can deny; in this respect
the German colonial record is black, and
Debels assertions are not t o be brushed
asidewith a merecharge of exaggeration.
The most significant passage in Jacob
H Schlbs plea at the Zionist massmeeting, in this city Sunday night, was
addressed to the secretagents
of the
Russian Government, of whose presence inthe meeting the speaker felt
convlnced:
in Russlahave
become revolutionary.
Therehas
always been a pronounced
tendency to slur over thepart played
by Jews in the present Russian disorders, withthe
benevolent object, no
doubt. of representing them as the innocent vlctims of sa murderous autocraEspecially afterthe
different p o groms, the sympatheticpress has been
at p a l m t o refuteall stories as t o the
responsibllity of Jemsh revolutionaries
for the outbreak of massacre. It is true
that the victlms are for the most part
innooent and inoffensive, but it, is no
service t o their cause t o evade the fact
that the Russian Jews are the mam support of the revolution, andthe
most
dangerousenemies of the existing regime. This onlyserves
tobringout
in a clearer lightthe
iniquities of a
system that has driven an entire people
to desperate resistawe,not only
ish sociallstsand
agnostics, b u t even
that large part of the race which 1s
capable of cherishing so idealistica
Iream as Zionism.
Increase inthe
consumption of absinthe 1s causing some uneasiness in
Europe In Belgium, a law has lately
been passed forbiddmg its manufacture,
importation, transportation, or sale. A
similar
measure
was
adopted in the
Canton of Vaud, by a popular vote. The
Cathollc Congress of Fribourg passed
resolutions approving this Swiss initiative In the
des Ddbats. Dr.
Daremberg states that in 1884 France
2onsumed absinthe t o the amount of
19,335 hectolitres, in 1894, 125,078, and
,n 1904, 207,929. It is said that the abjinthe habit prevails especially among
;he younger llteraryfolk;
but it is
spreading rapidly among business men.
Ihe hablt increases the liability t o tuJerculosis, for most patients in the conjumptive hospitals in France have been
tbsinthe-drinkersThesubject
is one of
nterest in the United Statesalso; for
.uring the last twenty-five years there
.as been a considerable iqcrease in abinthe drinking here; it is usuallytakn in the form of vermouth, which is an
ofusion of-absinthe in white wine.