to-day are often interesting, attractive, and stimulating. But they are continually looking forward to something of far greater significance in the future. Many of these compositions will be found to be of no value whatever. That does not matter very much. A research chemist often makes a number of unprofitable experiments, and even if some of us resent our musical chemists carrying out their tests in public, it is as well to realise that a certain proportion of mistakes and blind alleys is inevitable in any department of discovery. Time, and the great men of the future, will put things right. The errors and follies and charlatanisms, conscious or unconscious, of our generation, will even have been worth while for the sake of the valuable explorations in the directions of colour, instrumentation, and contrapuntal inventiveness which the 20th century is formulating.

In the age which is to come, no one will think of writing music in the idiom developed by the great masters on whose music we have been brought up. There can be no looking back. We can no more expect the musician of the future to employ the harmonies and rhythms and thematic phraseology which were utilised by Beethoven, Verdi, and Wagner, or even by Delius and Rimsky-Korsakof, than we can think it likely that 20th- or 21st-century authors will write in the style of Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Browning, or Bernard Shaw. The appreciation of the masterpieces of previous ages can continue undimmed; there is no reason why it should not do so; but they will not be imitated. Future generations will regard the music of the past in a different light from that in which we view it. Their own creations would sound horrible to us if we could hear them. To the men of those days and to their successors they will be a joy and a revelation.

It is not certain that the great age of atonality or polytonality will be in Europe. It may find its most notable exponents in America, and they may even weld it into a 'cultural' art built partly on the foundation of so primitive a folk music as jazz! Spengler may be right, in the main, about the decline of the West, so far as Europe is concerned. But it is exceedingly doubtful whether he was justified in including America. There is a lot to be said for the view-from Spengler's own

angle-that America's will be the next great Culture. At present it is at a very early stage; hence the strange barbarisms which cut across its surface in the shape of political corruption, imperfections in the administration of the criminal law, materialism, and a childish, unreasoning love of speed-combined with that wistful, pathetic hankering after the beauties of older cultures such as those of England, France, and Italy, which sends tourists from the U.S.A. to rush round the beauty-spots of Europe.

In the musical sphere, America has hitherto produced no real genius, and apart from negro folk-songs and syncopated dance tunes, she has created no music in a style of her own but has followed European models. Conversely, the restless, hustling spirit of America has in turn played its part, I suggest-even though it may be largely an unconscious or indirect one-in provoking the strange innovations which modern European composers have produced. An even more potent factor, however, in bringing about these changes has been the vast struggle which drenched Europe in blood from 1914 to 1918. The great conflict opened the door wide to a number of disturbing revolutionary impulses in music as in other spheres, and it is at least true to say that the world has moved on faster than it would have done if the War had never taken place. Mankind is still dazed by the sudden incursion of these curious, reckless notions, and even as the unexpected destruction of an ant-hill means that the busy creatures must begin to build all over again-possibly using different materials and in a different place-so the whole fabric of music after that huge international upheaval must be painstakingly reconstructed with new ingredients and even, maybe, on fresh ground. Of the actual outcome no man alive to-day can form more than a hazy notion.

R. W. S. MENDL.

Art. 6.-THE FACTORIES BILL.

It is so long since the introduction of the Factories Bill that the public seem to have forgotten it; but unless something unforeseen occurs it will be proceeded with in the coming session, and from present indications it appears likely to cause no small disturbance. It was introduced in the House of Commons by the Home Secretary on Aug. 2, 1926, for the purpose of examination and discussion outside the House-an excellent plan, of which some use has been made. Another Bill was introduced by Miss Wilkinson, and came to a second reading on March 26, 1926, but was turned down on the ground that a measure of such far-reaching importance should not be introduced as a private member's Bill. This measure was the Labour Party's Bill. The resemblance between the two is sufficient to have caused some mental confusion. It has been declared that the Government Bill is only the Labour Party's Bill. The fact is that in 1923, when Mr Bridgeman was Home Secretary, a Bill was prepared by the Factory Department of the Home Office. On the Labour Party's acceptance of office in 1924, Mr A. Henderson, the new Home Secretary, took up this Bill and made some alterations and extensions, which are embodied in Miss Wilkinson's Bill. Meanwhile, the Conservatives having returned to office, the present draft Bill was completed under the directions of Sir W. Joynson-Hicks. Consequently the two measures resemble each other in general, but with differences, some of which are of great importance; and since they will be fought to the last by the Labour Party and, to some extent, by the Liberals, stirring scenes may be expected, though every one concerned is agreed that a Bill is needed.

It is a somewhat formidable measure, being both a consolidating and an amending Bill. In that respect it resembles the Act of 1901, which took the place of the 1878 Act. With regard to consolidation there is, I believe, no doubt or difference. The twenty-seven years that will have elapsed since the 1901 Act have witnessed the passing of eight special Acts, which it is desirable to incorporate. Then there are other measures, such as Education Acts, which affect the law; and, in addition, a

large number of regulations have been issued by the Home Office. The law is in many details quite different from what it was, and administration requires that it should be codified. But if the case is so strong for consolidation, it is equally strong for amendment. Since 1901 much has happened to industry. It never stands still, but this quarter of a century has been extraordinarily prolific, with the development of automatic machinery, the general speeding up, the advance of the electrical industry, motor-car construction, rubber, films, artificial silk, aeroplanes, and many other things which affect health and safety in various ways. Then the application of welfare measures has become general and is based on scientific research, which has thrown an entirely new light upon it. Lastly, there are the effects of the International Labour Office, and the practice in competing countries in regard to measures which make for efficiency. For all these reasons amendment of our factory laws is called for, to bring them up to the highest standard. The Factory Department is well aware of the fact. The draft Bill is really its work. As Miss Wilkinson put it in the House of Commons, it is the result of 36 special reports, 25 ordinary reports, 9 conferences with employers and employed, 17 welfare and safety reports, 2 draft international conventions, and innumerable departmental memoranda and research. She was speaking of her own Bill, and there are those differences in detail; but I am writing of the Bill as a whole, and arguing the case for an amending measure, without reference to details, on which opinions may differ. At the same time it does not follow that everything in the draft Bill is right. It was introduced in 1926 for circulation and discussion by the people concerned, in order to ascertain their feelings and give them an opportunity to express themselves, which they have to some extent done. But on the need of an amending, as well as a consolidating measure, the case is clear.

Nor should there be any doubts about the right of the Conservative Party to undertake the duty. Hesitation on that ground is due to ignorance. From its origin factory legislation, which aims at protecting the wageearners and promoting their efficiency, has been mainly the work of the Conservative Party. The earliest and

the principal Acts are theirs. Liberals at one time flatly opposed all this sort of interference when they stood up for 'Manchesterism' and laissez-faire. The earliest legislative interference with industry in modern times was the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act of 1802. It was introduced by Sir Robert Peel, Home Secretary in Mr Addingtons Tory Ministry, and himself a cotton manufacturer. He gave as a reason for bringing in the Bill that he was convinced of the existence of gross mismanagement in his own mills, which he was unable to put right without the assistance of an Act of Parliament. What he had in mind was to overcome the opposition of his own manager-and of others like him -by a common rule applicable to all mills, so as to place them on the same footing and not put the better conducted ones at a disadvantage. This was, in fact, the main reason for legislative interference both then and later. It was to bring the practice of the less scrupulous employers up to the standard of the more enlightened and so enable the latter to carry out improvements without detriment. For the notion that improved conditions meant increased efficiency, which has not yet entered some heads, would have been scouted at the time. Individual employers were the pioneers, and the law followed in their wake, as Miss Proud has pointed out in her book on Welfare Work. The systematic distortion of history by sundry writers makes it necessary to insist upon the fact that if on the one hand private enterprise built up the mechanised industry of the period and was so far responsible for the abuses accompanying that economic development, it was also responsible for the initiation of reforms for the prevention of those abuses and for the improvement of standing conditions. It is only necessary to consider the matter for a moment to see that it must have been so. Trade unionism was then illegal, and Socialism was unborn. There was no one to bring before Parliament the evils existing in factories but the more humanitarian employers. Moreover, the adult workers, even if they had had the power, had not the will to expose the treatment of children in the mills, for which they were themselves responsible, as was shown by the public inquiry a few years later.