They are three feet in diameter, with nine-inch face.

Our Navy Department is about to carry out a series of exhaustive trials with the Protector, and every one in authority seems to speak well of it.

THE HYDROGRAPHIC BUREAUS.

Another office of the navy is that of charting the seas, and here, again, the English navy has given material aid, not only to the English merchant marine, but to all seafarers in general; the hydrographic bureau of the English ad

MERCHANT MARINE.

HE various ways in which the navy can

THE further the interests of the merchant

marine of a country are discussed by Georg Wislicenus in the Deutsche Monatsschrift. In time of war, it assumes the office of protector to the merchant vessels. "Any merchant marine," says the writer, "depends on the strength of the navy of its country. The great secret of all English success lies in the fact that the English navy always has been so well proportioned to the English merchant marine that foreign powers could never interfere with the latter. The boldest French pirates could never seriously cripple English trade, in spite of many single victories, because in all naval wars between England and France the English fleet retained mastery of the sea. To-day, as centuries ago, the protection of transatlantic trade and the merchant marine is the most important task of any independent navy that is not confined merely to coast defense; in order to achieve this task thoroughly;

the enemy must be driven from the sea and blockaded in his ports, for then the merchant vessels of the other power are as safe on all seas as in time of peace. When the Union troops in the War of Secession had blockaded the entire coast of the Confederate States, the sea traffic, and with it the power of resistance, of those States was broken."

IN TIME OF PEACE.

In time of peace, also, the navy acts as protector, or a kind of police that enforces respect for the flag. The writer illustrates this by the case of Holland and England. "Holland's marvelously flourishing foreign trade in the seventeenth century declined almost simultaneously with the downfall of Dutch supremacy on the sea, while England owes its leading position in commerce chiefly to the auspicious coöperation of the navy with the merchant marine. Since the seventeenth century, the development of both has gone hand in hand to such extent as to outdistance all competitors. All the nations are so accustomed to seeing English men-ofwar in all ports that gratuitous insults are hardly ever offered to the English flag. The feeling of security thereby engendered has been of incalculable benefit to English commerce."

and many guide books for mariners, that are used by vessels of all nations. "Other countries, also," the writer concludes, "recognize the value of these naval labors of peace, as is shown by the excellent work done by the French and American hydrographic bureaus; although they cover less ground than the British office, their work is frequently superior to the latter in regard to reliability and careful execution. The Russian hydrographic office, that is working on an extensive scale, is striving hard to become independent of English charts. Even the hydrographic offices of the smaller countries, as of Spain, Italy, Austria - Hungary, Holland, and Sweden, render valuable services to their merchant marine, though confining themselves mostly to their own coasts, leaving the survey of foreign coasts to England and France.

THE MULATTO IN THE NEGRO PROBLEM.

THE large part played by the mulatto factor

in the American race problem is the subject of a suggestive article in the May Atlantie Monthly by Mr. Alfred H. Stone, of Greenville, Miss., who has studied the negro in the YazooMississippi Delta. Mr. Stone advances the thought that we have greatly underestimated the importance of the mulatto in the race problem. In fact, he thinks that were it not for the mulatto, there would be no race problem. He thinks it a matter of regret that the twelfth census did not attempt to enumerate separately the mulatto element. Mr. Stone points out that the people who have argued that the negro is capable of unlimited development, proving it by the achievements of individuals of his race, have really forgotten that these individuals were mulattoes, "from Murillo's favorite pupil down to Crispus Attucks, Benjamin Banneker, Douglass, Bruce, Lynch, the late Sir Conrad Reeves, Du Bois, Washington, Chesnutt, and others."

THE REAL NEGRO IS CONTENTED.

Mr. Stone contends that when free from white or mulatto influence, the negro is of a contented, happy disposition. He is docile, tractable, and unambitious, with but few wants, and those easily satisfied. "He inclines to idleness, and though having a tendency to the commission of

petty crimes, is not malicious, and rarely cherishes hatred. He cares nothing for the sacred right of suffrage,' and when left to his own inclinations, will disfranchise himself by the thousand rather than pay an annual poll-tax. He infinitely prefers the freedom and privileges of a car of his own to the restraint of one in which he would be compelled to mingle with white people." As for the real negro,—the negro of the masses,- -Mr. Stone thinks he presents few, if any, serious problems, and "none which he may not himself work out if let alone and given time. But it will be an individual rather than a race solution; the industrious will as children acquire a common-school education, and as adults will own property; those capable of higher things will find for themselves a field for the exercise of their talents, just as they are doing to-day ; the vicious and shiftless will be as are the vicious and shiftless of other races."

WHERE THE COMPLAINTS COME FROM.

The complaints over the lack of opportunities under which the negro labors," and the "injustice of race distinction," do not come, according to Mr. Stone, from the negro, but from the mulatto or white politician. "Through the medium of race papers and magazines, the pulpit, industrial and political gatherings and associations, the mulatto wields a tremendous influence over the negro. It is here that his importance as a factor in whatever problems may arise from the negro's presence in this country becomes manifest, and the working out of such problems may be advanced or retarded, just as he wisely or unwisely plays the part which fate or Providence has assigned him. The negro, like the white man, responds more readily to bad influences than to good, and the example and precepts of a hundred men like Washington and Du Bois may be easily counteracted by the advice and influence of some of the very men of whom the mulatto type unfortunately furnishes too many examples.

THE GOOD AND THE BAD INFLUENCES.

Booker Washington may in all sincerity preach the gospel of labor; he may teach his people, as a fundamental lesson, the cultivation of the friendship and esteem of the white man; he may point out the truth that for the negro the privilege of earning a dollar is of much greater importance than that of spending it at the white man's theater or hotel; yet all these lessons must fail of their fullest and best results so long as the negro's mind is being constantly poisoned with the radical teachings and destructive doctrines of the mulatto of the other school."

THE

TRANSPORTING NEW YORK'S MILLIONS. HE most difficult transit problem in the world, is Mr. W. W. Wheatly's characterization of the work of transporting New York's population, in an article in the May World's Work. It is not difficult to believe this phrase when it is considered that the New York street railways carry more passengers than all the other railroads in North and South America.

For practical purposes, the total metropolitan population at the beginning of 1903 is 4,500,000, the figure obtained by adding the three New Jersey counties just across the Hudson to the several boroughs of Greater New York. The annual average rate of increase is more than one hundred thousand, so that even allowing for some decrease in the annual rate during the next decade, the population of the year 1913 should be something more than six million people.

The surface and elevated roads of New York already carry twice as many people every year as all the steam railroads of the United States combined. Experts consider that with a population, ten years hence, of 6,000,000, and a possible daily passenger travel in the metropolitan district of 8,000,000, it is probable that the number of people seeking exit from the business district between 5 and 6 o'clock each evening will be 500,000, instead of half that number, as now. Thus, the gigantic transit plans for the metropolis must be undertaken in anticipation of possibly twice the present great demand on it.

WHERE THE REAL PROBLEM LIES.

"But the real problem of transit relief relates primarily to the lower end of Manhattan. With the exception of the few bridges and tunnels which deliver the east-and-west travel direct to the business district, it is certain that the swarms of people from the other bridges and tunnels will be thrown upon the local Manhattan lines for distribution. The travel from the Blackwell's Island bridge, the Pennsylvania-Long Island Railroad tunnel, and the New York and New Jersey tunnel, will be dumped upon the south-bound lines in the morning, and upon the north-bound lines in the evening, at the height

of the rush hour."

WORK ALREADY CUT OUT FOR THE NEW ROADS.

It is expected that the four tracks in subway No. 1 will be crowded to the maximum limit as soon as operations begin. In this subway, 540 cars an hour will move in one direction, with perhaps 43,000 passengers seated and standing. Nine additional tracks are proposed by Engineer Parsons, but they are not yet authorized, and it will require from three to five years for their com

pletion. In the meantime, the electrical development of the Hudson, Harlem, and Putnam divisions of the New York Central, and the main line of the New Haven road, for a distance of twenty to thirty-five miles to the northward, the building of the new Portchester road, the extension of the elevated and subway routes to various parts of the Bronx and Westchester, will make a further great increase in the number of long-distance passengers seeking through train service to and from the business districts.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LONG ISLAND.

The additional bridges and tunnels pointing toward Long Island will be completed in 1907 or 1908. They provide. for thirty tracks, where now there are but four. This enormous increase of facility in reaching Long Island will bring a tremendous movement toward that suburb of New York along the lines of least resistance. It looks as if there would be an immediate overflow toward Long Island of the hundreds of thousands now unwillingly crowded into the tenements and flat houses of Manhattan. It may be that a magnificent city on Long Island will grow up within a few years, to overshadow Manhattan and carry with it the center of population of Greater New York.

THE

REINDEER IN ALASKA.

HE failure, a few days ago, of an at tempt to bring reindeer from Lapland to Alaska has led some people to make the mistake of assuming that the Alaskan reindeer industry is no longer successful. That such a view of the situation is very far from the truth is clearly shown by Mr. Gilbert H. Grosvenor in the National Geographic Magazine for April. This writer says:

"Twelve years ago, Dr. Sheldon Jackson brought his first herd of sixteen reindeer across Bering Strait from Siberia and started his reindeer colony at Unalaska, off the bleak coast of Alaska. Many then smiled at the experiment and declared his plan for stocking the great barrens of northwestern Alaska with thousands of the animals which for centuries had been indispensable to the natives of Lapland and Siberia was impracticable and wasteful of time and good money. But the experiment prospered from the very first. Other reindeer, numbering nearly one thousand in all, during the succeeding years, were brought over from Siberia. Today, there are nearly six thousand head in the

various herds distributed along the Alaskan coast from Point Barrow to Bethel. The existence of the twenty thousand natives of northwestern Alaska, as well as the success of the miners who are beginning to throng into the interior of the territory in the far North, are

RIDING THE REINDEER IN SUMMER.

dependent upon these domestic reindeer; their clothing, their food, their transportation, their utensils, and their shelter are all furnished them by the reindeer.

"The reindeer enterprise is no longer an experiment, although still in its infancy. There are four hundred thousand square miles of barren tundra in Alaska where no horse, cow, sheep, or goat can find pasture; but everywhere on this vast expanse of frozen land the reindeer can find the long fibrous, white moss which is his food. There is plenty of room for ten million of these hardy animals. The time is coming when Alaska will have great reindeer ranches like the great cattle ranches of the Southwest, and they will be no less profitable."

REINDEER-RAISING AS AN INDUSTRY.

For the introduction into Alaska of domestic reindeer from Siberia, Congress has appropriated,