The 19,000 co-operating families receive as their share of the profits 12 per cent of the money they pay for bread, 6 per cent of what their groceries cost them and 5 per cent of the purchase price of their clothing. Among the protective features are an employment bureau for men and women, a pharmacy and a corps of thirteen physicians rendering free service to all members of one year’s standing, and a sick benefit society with 8,000 members. Singing and ethical classes are maintained for children and a well-trained orchestra and choral club for adults. Small halls adequately provide for the meetings of the trade sections, and a great auditorium, seating 2,436 persons, rallies the festival gatherings and supplies room for political mass meetings. From this national center the procession of mid August took up its line of march, carrying banners which took the keynote of their inscriptions from the following figures emblazoned everywhere: 993,070 have 1 vote; 395,866 have 2 votes; 704,549 voters, having two, three or four votes, cast 1,717,871 votes, a majority of 88,523 over those having one vote; One man one vote! In Belgium a man over twenty-five years of age gets an extra vote if he owns property. He is granted another vote if he has a university diploma. He casts a fourth vote if he is over thirty-five years of age, is the father of a family and pays taxes on more than a certain amount of property. The majority of the industrial population thus have only one vote, while the rural, well-to-do and richer people outvote each wage earner by two, three or even four votes. The rural population thus controls the city industrial population and the church is charged by the Socialists with controlling the rural vote. Against this rule of the minority, this great demonstration of 1911 was a protest. But to the onlooker from abroad it then seemed to be a patriotic proclamation of Belgium’s one great hope of national evolution without revolution. The primary cause of the movement which has culminated in the present national strike was the defeat of the liberal and Socialist coalition in parliament by a combination of the government and clerical forces in the elections of 1912. The Socialist congress summoned to meet the issue brought to a crisis by that event decided upon a general strike as a last resort if all other means of obtaining manhood suffrage failed. But before resorting to that measure a general suffrage bill was introduced into parliament by the Socialists and supported by the liberals. As serious consideration of it was refused by the clerical and government authorities, a general strike was voted on April 14.