To the deep chagrin of English Cricketers, but by no means to their surprise, the last of the five test matches has ended in another draw. The result, therefore, of the five test matches is one victory for the Australians, and four drawn matches, and the fact that of these four drawn matches three would almost certainly have been won by England if they could have been played to a finish does not affect Australia's claim to be the winner of the rubber. In this last test match at the Oval England's advantage was greater than ever, and she had the satisfaction of making the Austra-lions follow on, There has, of course, been some grumbling about stonewalling" on the part of the Australians; but the complaint oan only be made against a few of the visitors. Of course they played with a view to the draw, but so did England in the match in which she just escaped defeat on the third day of the match, The Australians scored in the latter part of their first and their unfinished second innings 386 runs. This does not of course compare very well with the 435 made by England on the first day of the match, but it is not far enough behind to justify the charge of carrying stonewalling" to an unfair length. What everybody feels must be done, however, to take measures in view of the next visit to England of an Australian team that so large a proportion of the test matches shall Dot end in draws. Even at the risk of dislocating county cricket to some extent, more than three days must be allowed for the test matches, of which it is not absolurely necessary that there should be as many five. Although it is gener lly agreed that this is the strongest Australian team which has visited England, its record will scarcely be as good as those of some of its predecessors. It is true that it has won the rubber in the test matches, but it has suffered defeat at the hands of three counties already, Essex, Surrey, and Kent.
The ce-operators have just been holding their annual festival and exhibition at the Crystal Palace, It must to confessed, however, that while distributive ce-operative societies increase and fi -urish the productive societies make comparatively little progress. In London indeed they have obtained no foothold at all. Mr. Gerald Balfour, the Chief Sect ary for Ireland, who opened the exhi tion, retold the old story of the beginning of the movement at Rochdale little more than fifty years ago, when a fow working men clubbed together and bought a chest of tea and a cask of flour, thus saving the middlemen's profits. From that movement have sprung societies which now do a trade of £65,000,000 a year. But not more than five per cent of this business is
societies, and as Mr. Gerald Balfour pointed done by productive, or \+eo-partnership" out, these are all the most valuable of cooperative societies. They do not imply merely ce-operation of consumers to yet rid of the middlemen, but ce-operation of workmen to obtain the full proceeds of their labour. Mr. Balfour pointed out that the working men of this country have at the present time savings amounting to something like £300,000,000; and if the ce-operative manufacturing societies could show that they can give adequate security of investment much of this money might be put into these societies as capital, for the object of co.operative production is not to get rid of capital but to make the workman his own employer, and so to a great extent solve the vexed question of the relations between employer and workman. two WEDD
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.