The nation-wide strike for manhood suffrage in Belgium which paralyzed the industries and almost suspended the normal life of the people was foreshadowed in a spectacular demonstration in Brussels two years ago. On August 15, 1911, the streets of that gay, medieval capital witnessed scenes which every American who looked on knew were making history. Over 60,000 men, from larger and smaller places throughout Belgium, took a day off without wages and paid their way to the capital of their country, in order to voice their protest against the unjust inequalities of the suffrage. The show of force by the extraordinary police and military precautions betrayed the furtive apprehension of both the municipal and national governments as to what might happen. With no sign of timidity or intimation of being overawed, this vast industrial army marched ten abreast for hours—silent, grim, determined, united, unarmed—between long files of armed soldiery which lined the curbs, and past stronger detachments of all arms of the service massed at strategic centers. The great procession assembled at the Socialist headquarters, a large and impressive building bearing the significant name _Maison de Peuple_, the House of the People. The permanent background of the stage in the assembly hall of that building is a colossal head of Jesus of Nazareth, the reverent work of a Belgian Socialist. This House of the People is the most practical expression, or perhaps demonstration, of the co-operative commonwealth in miniature, which is to be found anywhere in the world. Starting with a sack of potatoes and a bag of flour, these wage-workers in ten years erected a building costing $250,000. Of this sum, which was loaned by the national bank, they had then paid $100,000 and had assets worth three times as much as the balance due on the mortgage, which they continue to reduce by annual payments. In this four-story semi-circular building, at one of the principal business centers, ample accomodations are provided for a great variety of practical agencies. A café, which paid a profit of $2,400 in three months, shares the front of the ground floor with a large co-operative department store, where dry goods, house furnishings, clothing, meats, groceries, butter and milk, hats, hosiery and shoes are sold. A bakery, with a capacity of 125,000 loaves of bread a week; a coal depot, with twenty-nine delivery carts; a laundry, and a clothing manufactory are among the business enterprises conducted here.