that they are unduly extravagant in the expenditure of public money, or that they are influenced by any political motives.

The Lamp Department accounts for the expenditure of an additional 3 per cent of the total, and this is practically a fixed expense; the financial departments, which are certainly not extravagantly run, account for a further expenditure of 1.5 per cent; the legislative departments, over which the Mayor has no control, account for .75 per cent and the Water Department accounts for 3 per cent. The aggregate of these lastnamed items amounts to 16.3 per cent, and adding these to the others first named, we have a total of 79.4 per cent, or almost exactly four-fifths of the whole tax levy. The remaining 20.6 per cent covers, besides the Health Department, all of the departments formerly coming under the jurisdiction of the Street Department, including the Sanitary, Sewer, Bridge and Street Cleaning Departments, as well as the present Street Department, and all other departments not enumerated above. Everyone who is at all informed as to the city finances knows that the expenditures for the maintenance of these departments are practically fixed, and that no Mayor can materially reduce them without such curtailment of their service as would soon arouse a public protest, or without such a reduction of salaries and wages as public opinion would not support. I shall be glad to submit the full table from which these figures are drawn to anyone who desires it, and I commend it to the attention of those who are promising large reductions in the expenditures of the city without discharge of employees or impairment of the service now rendered, or the discontinuance of lines of municipal work demanded by the public.

THE IRISH EXILES.

MARCH 17, 1910.

To-night our thoughts turn to Ireland, but not to Ireland alone. What of the "poor exiles"? What of the seed scattered in five continents? Has it thriven and borne fruit? Their blood has reddened every battlefield; their voices have been heard everywhere preaching the gospel of liberty and humanity; their labor has enriched every clime; their energy and virility have founded and sustained tremendous enterprises which have prospered the republic.

But the black history of our race still throws its shadow over us. For hundreds of years all activity in Ireland was political, military or literary. The island was a welter of bloody onslaught and desperate resistance until there settled over it at last the desolate peace of the eighteenth century - the peace of a prison. Walled in by repressive enactments, menaced by the guns of an alien soldiery, this fairest land of Europe wore the grim aspect of a penal colony. The world passed on its way, adding new arts and inventions, all the modern machinery of industry and commerce to the stock of human achievement, while in Ireland the people vegetated in barren acres, dreaming of liberty and writing their passionate visions on the walls of their dungeons.

Is it wonderful that they came out of their experience bewildered and dreaming still; that, like the child torn from its home and only restored after long years, they did not at first know the face of the great parent of success opportunity? The Indian, long a hunter, cannot turn farmer in a day. The Jew, a trader for centuries, does not take readily to the mechanical arts. We must allow the Irishman to shake off the dreams, legacy of the day when nothing was left him but a stifled inward brooding over wrong. He has to learn to look out upon the world as it is, to study anew the importance of skill in hand and eye and head once, many centuries ago, his birthright.

INLAND WATERWAYS.

AT THE WATERWAYS CONVENTION, MAY 19, 1910.

GENTLEMEN,- A century ago Massachusetts was the foremost of American commonwealths in the promotion of inland waterways and canals, but with the introduction of steam as a motor force and the creation of a great network of railroads the water connections fell into disuse and promising projects like the Cape Cod Canal were abandoned. Latterly, we have felt the pinch of high railroad rates and of acute railroad congestion and commerce is now seeking relief through the cheaper and easier outlets afforded by waterways. The movement which has expressed itself on a large scale in the Panama Canal and the proposed development of the Mississippi is reflected in Massachusetts in a dozen smaller projects, some of which exist only on paper, while others are well on the way toward completion.

In all these we are merely imitating the wisdom of the older and more crowded countries of Europe. These nations long ago discovered that transportation by water is the cheapest method and the bulk of their coarser freight goes to its destination along the rivers and canals. The relative cost of various methods of transportation is well shown by a recent writer in the "Outlook":

Suppose we had a ton of freight to ship and a dollar with which to pay for its shipping-how far will the dollar carry the ton by these different methods of transportation? By horse and wagon, 4 miles; by English steam truck, 20 miles; by rail, at the average rate for United States railways in 1907, 127 1-2 miles; at the rate on the group of selected railways, 200 miles; on the Erie Canal, 333 miles; on the European canals, 500 miles; by lake, at the average rate through the "Soo" Canal in 1907, 1,250 miles; while at the rate at which coal has been carried both on the Great Lakes and on the Ohio and Missis

sippi rivers, the ton of freight can be shipped 30 miles for a cent, 300 miles for a dime, 3,000 miles for a dollar.

Marseilles, in France, was once the foremost port of continental Europe; it lost its prestige by not properly maintaining its waterways. The French Government has recently spent millions in the building of a canal, with the idea of helping this city to regain its standing as a seaport. In Russia wonderful engineering feats are now being pushed forward, and waterways of stupendous dimensions are being constructed, the one from the Baltic to Vladivostok being a most unusual feat of engineering. This policy of linking the great river systems has proven a stimulus to the national life of the country.

England has suffered because her inland waterways are practically all canals. Their care and improvement are the subject of continual discussion, but the fact that the greater part of the stock of the controlling companies is owned by the railroads has proven a hindrance to any extensive development. Ireland has not gone ahead because the British Government has not permitted the expenditure of public money to develop the river and water courses so abundant throughout the island. In other sections of Europe and in the large centers of commerce and industry of the United States the important river and harbor frontage is controlled by railway companies. This is not true hereabouts at the present time, but it will be true unless we take care.

Here in New England we have the greatest chance that exists in any part of the world for successful inland waterway development. It is time that definite action be taken in regard to the reclaiming of the flats in East Boston and Dorchester Bay and the extension of the Taunton river and its tributaries, so as to make a complete connection between the Fore river and Taunton, and the development of the Newburyport and Mystic rivers and the waterways leading to the accessible centers in Maine.

When one visits Europe and sees evidence on every side of cities connected by artificial waterways rendered prosperous by the ease with which commerce is conducted, it makes one marvel that we are so laggard in this respect in our own country. It is therefore with the greatest pleasure that I commend the work of this body, and you may be sure that I will accord it every encouragement within my power.