MILLER, WILLIAM (1796-1882), Scottish was born in Edinburgh on May 28, 1796. After studying in Lon don under George Cook, a pupil of Basire's, he returned to Edin burgh. He executed plates after Thomson of Duddingston, Mac culloch, D. a Hill, Sir George Harvey, and other Scottish land scapists, but his chief works were his transcripts from Turner. He engraved Turner's "The Grand Canal, Venice"; "The Rhine, Osterprey and Feltzen"; "The Bell Rock"; "The Tower of London"; and "The Shepherd." The art of William Miller was warmly appreciated by Turner himself, and Ruskin pronounced him to be on the whole the most successful translator into line of the paintings of the greatest English landscapist. In his later years Miller abandoned engraving for landscape-painting. He re sumed his burin, however, to produce two final series of vignettes from drawings by Birket Foster illustrative of Hood's Poem's, published by Moxon in 1871. Miller died on Jan. 20, 1882. MILLERAND, ALEXANDRE ), French Socialist and politician, was born in Paris on Feb. 1o, 1859. He was educated for the bar, and made his reputation by his defence, with Georges Laguerre, of Ernest Roche and Duc-Quercy, the instigators of the strike at Decazeville in 1883; he then took Laguerre's place on Clemenceau's paper, La Justice. He was elected to the chamber of deputies for the department of the Seine in 1885 as a Radical Socialist. He was associated with Cle menceau and Camille Pelletan as an arbitrator in the Carmaux strike (1892). He had long had the ear of the chamber in mat ters of social legislation, and after the Panama scandals had discredited so many politicians his influence grew. He was chief of the Socialist left, which then mustered sixty members, and edited until 1896 their organ in the press, La Petite Repub lique. His programme included the collective ownership of the means of production and the international association of labour, but when in June 1899 he entered Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet of "republican defence" as minister of commerce he limited himself to practical reforms, devoting his attention to the improvement of the mercantile marine, to the development of trade, of techni cal education, of the postal system, and to the amelioration of the conditions of labour.
Labour questions were entrusted to a separate department, the Direction du Travail, and the pension and insurance office was also raised to the status of a "direction." The introduction of
trades-union representatives on the Supreme Labour Council, the organization of local labour councils and the instructions to factory inspectors to put themselves in communication with the councils of the trades-unions, were valuable concessions to labour, and he further secured the rigorous application of earlier laws de vised for the protection of the working-classes. His name was especially associated with a project for the establishment of old age pensions, which became law in 1905. He became in 1898 editor of La Lantern. His influence with the extreme Socialists had already declined, for it was said that his departure from the true Marxist tradition had disintegrated the party.
Millerand, now only a private member, threw himself into his work as a barrister, and appeared in many important civil cases. In the chamber he was a fierce opponent of the Combes min istry, which succeeded that of Waldeck-Rousseau; for he ob jected to its narrow and fanatical anti-clericalism. In July 1909 he became minister of public works in Briand's first cabinet, his principal achievement at this time being the re-organisation of the state railways. Together with Briand he took strong meas ures to suppress the railway strike of October 191o. In Jan uary 1912 he was appointed minister of war under Poincare. His promotion surprised no one, for he had always taken a keen interest in questions of military organisation; and when the menace of Germany increased, he devoted himself to strength ening the national defences. He re-organised the higher com mand, and by the Act of May 29, 1912, he gave a definite status to military aeronautics for the first time. In January 1913 a personal incident brought about his retirement. On Aug. 25, 1914, he was invited by Viviani to take the place of Messimy as minister of war; and during the terrible situation which then prevailed he had constantly to take the initiative, for example, in attempting to remedy as far as possible the shortage of muni tions. He was accused, however, of being too slow in providing the necessary heavy artillery, and he resigned with the other members of the Viviani cabinet at the end of October 1915. In 1918 he was elected a member of the Academie des sciences morales et politiques.