Sir Edmund Barton, who had been the Prime Minister of the Australian Commonwealth since its Union in 1900 (see Australia in Volume VI. of this work), resigned in 1903 to accept a place on the bench of the High Federal Court, and was succeeded by Mr. Alfred Deakin, previously Attorney-General in the Federal Cabinet. The most important occurrence of the year in the Commonwealth was the election of a new House of Representatives in the Federal Parliament and of one third of its Senate. These were the first federal elections occurring since those of 1900 which constituted the original Parliament, opened in May, 1901, and the first in which women went to the polls. The main issue in the elections was between the Labor Party and its opponents, and the rising power of the former was shown by its gain of six seats in each House, four from the Ministry and two from the opposition in the Senate, and all six from the Ministry in the lower House. This threw the balance of power into its hands in both branches of Parliament. Naturally, in these circumstances, labor questions became dominant in Australian politics, with Socialistic tendencies very strong. The Deakin Ministry was defeated in April, 1904, on an industrial arbitration bill which excluded State railway employés and other civil servants from its provisions, contrary to the demands of the Labor Party. The adverse majority was made up of 23 Labor representatives, 13 opponents of the protectionist policy of the Government, and 4 from the ranks of its own ordinary supporters. The ministry resigned, and the leader of the Labor Party, Mr. J. C. Watson, a young compositor by trade, was called to form a Government, which he did, drawing all but its Law Officer from the Labor Party. It is creditable to the capability of this Labor Ministry that, with so precarious a backing in the House, it should have held the management of Government, with apparently good satisfaction to the public, for about four months. It was defeated in August on another labor question, and gave way to a coalition Ministry of Free Traders and Moderate Protectionists, formed under Mr. George Houston Reid. An account of the Labor Ministry and its leader, from which the following facts are taken, was given by _The Review of Reviews for Australasia_ at the time of its ascendancy: The average age of the members is only forty-three years, while in England sixty is the average age at which corresponding rank is attained. The nationalities of the members are as follows: One, the prime minister, is a New Zealander, two are Australian-born, two are Irish, two are Scotch, and one is Welsh. There is not one who was born in England.