Political and Governmental Notes.

The National party has abandoned the idea of keeping a presidential ticket in the field, and Archibald L. Howe of Massachusetts, who was nominated for Vice President in New York on the 5th inst., is expected to follow Senator Caffery of Louisiana, the presidential nominee, in formally withdrawing his candidacy.

While the Governor of Utah was absent in Idaho attending a political meeting at which Governor Roosevelt was the speaker, the president of the State Senate, who was acting governor, appointed Judge O. W. Powers, a Democrat, to fill the place in the United States Senate left vacant because of a deadlock in the Legislature.

A general election for the choice of delegates to the constitutional convention was held in Cuba. September 15. There was 186-240 votes registered. The party in favor absolute independence will be in a majority in the convention.

Governor Roosevelt, the Republican candidate for Vice-President, made public his letter of acceptance last week.

Foreign News.

Lord Roberts last week had pushed his lines up close to the Transvaal frontier, with the results shown in the following report which he made September 20: "Of the three thousand Boers who retreated from Komatipoort before the British advance from Machadodorp. seven hundred have entered Portuguese territory: others have deserted in various directions, and the balance are reported to have crossed the Komati River and to be occupying spurs of the Lobombo Mountain south of the railway."

Lord Roberts reported on September 14 that General French had surprised and captured Baberton. a Boer supply depot, and secured forty-three locomotives, many rifles, large numbers of cattle and sheep, and other valuable supplies. Later fifty additional locomotives were captured.

The national debt of Sweden at the end of 1899 was $91,000,000. and against this the State owns about $98,000,000 worth of railroads and has lent $12,400,000 to private roads, with rights of priority. Budgets of recent years have shown a surplus of $3,000,000 to $4,500,000, and the unused surplus in the treasury now amounts to over $21,000,000. The indebtedness per capita of Sweden is 2.47 per cent. only one-tenth that of France, one-fifth that of Great Britain, one-quarter of Germany's and but a small shade more than that of the United States.

The Chinese problem seemed no nearer a settlement last week. Germany, in a circular note to the other powers, asks, as a condition precedent to entering into peace negotiations with China, that the ringleaders of the anti-foreign party be punished personally, and not by proxy. As it is generally believed that the Dowager Empress herself, and leading men in the government were at the head of the movement, it is thought, in some quarters that Germany's demand is equivalent to demanding the downfall of the present dynasty.

Canada's financial statement for the year ending June 30 last, showed that the revenue was $51,000,783 and the expenditures $42,976,051, leaving a surplus of $8,024,732, and after all ordinary obligations were met, there was $771,828 to apply toward the reduction of the public debt.

Justin McCarthy, the novelist and historian, who has been a member of Parliament for North Longford since 1892, and who was formerly chairman of the Irish Parliamentary party, has announced his retirement from parliamentary life.

Count von Waldersee, the German Field Marshal, who is expected to take supreme command of the international forces in China, has arrived on the ground.

A bill has been introduced in the Mexican Congress providing for an appropriation of thirty thousand dollars for the Galveston sufferers.

Industry and Commerce.

The great strike of miners in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania went into effect on September 17, as declared. On the second day of the strike President Mitchell of the mine workers, stated that 118,000 of the 141,000 mine workers of the region affected by the order are idle. The number of men out, he says, exceeds that of any other industrial contest in the history of the United States. At Shenandoah, the men still working in the Indian Ridge colliery belonging to the Reading Railroad Company, were intimidated by the presence of a number of strikers, and the sheriff was asked to protect the men. When the sheriff and his posse were escorting the men from the work on September 21 they were stoned by the crowd, and one shot was fired from a saloon. Thereupon the sheriff ordered his men to fire, killing a man and a little girl and wounding seven other men. The sheriff telegraphed for military assistance and Governor Stone ordered out twenty-five hundred men of the National Guard, and on September 22 the region about Shenandoah was under military control.

Captain J. H. McClintock, in Ainslee's Magazine, says: "To-day the seat of the sheep-rearing industry of the Union has shifted from the middle west to the plateau region between the Rockies and the Sierras. Ohio is still doing very well in the business, with nearly three million head, but she has dropped from first to fourth in the list of mutton-producing states. New Mexico is at the head with more than four million eight hundred thousand: Montana has nearly as many, while Wyoming leads Ohio by a few hundred thousand head. Idaho closely follows Ohio in the rating. Oregon, California, and Texas each has about two million five hundred thousand sheep.

A French scientist, M. A. Dufour, has succeeded in constructing a thermometer for high temperature by employing quartz. For a long time quartz, or rock crystal, was regarded as a matter which could not be melted or softened, but the English physician, Dr. Boys, succeeded finally in softening it to a paste with a flame of oxy-hydrogen. M. Dufour based his experiments on this fact, and finally succeeded in making tubes of quartz for his thermometer. In this instrument the bulb and tube of quartz are similar to those of an ordinary mercury thermometer, but the metal inside is tin. The scale runs from 240 up to 580 degrees Centigrade.

Coal deposits in China are said to be the largest in the world, and Herr von Richthafen, the famous geographer, estimated the anthracite coal deposits in the southern milliards of tons. But these are only a small part of China's wealth of coal, more especially in the provinces of Shangpi, Hunan, Shantung, Szetschwan, and Yunnan. Mining of coal in China is far older than in Europe, more especially in the western and northern part of Chinese Empire, where it dates back more than one thousand years.

It will take two and one-half years more and $7,000,000 to finish the new East River bridge between New York and Brooklyn. It was begun May, 1896, and has cost, up to the present, $5,135,516. It will have twelve highways, with total width of 118 feet, suspended 115 feet above the river.

To change the motive power on the New York elevated railway system from steam to electricity will cost twelve million dollars, it is said, not including the loss entailed through the abandonment of the locomotives now in use, of which there are several hundred.

W. W. Sylvester, vice-president of the Kansas City, Mexico, & Orient Railway Company, which purposes building a new transcontinental line to the Pacific coast, says that contracts have been awarded for the construction of about four hundred miles of the total fourteen hundred miles

Chicago is agitating the question of a subway to relieve the congested street traffic in the down-town sections. The plans provide six loops, and are so arranged that passengers desiring to be transferred will not have to walk further than a single block.

A Constantinople dispatch says that the bid of the Carnegie Company to supply all material for the railway from Damascus to Mecca is lower than that of any other competing firm.

Sudero, one of the Faroe islands in the Atlantic ocean between Scotland, Norway, and Iceland, is thirty miles long by twelve miles wide, and is said to be virtually a solid block of coal.

According to Chicago Board of Trade statistics the damaged grain elevators at Galveston contained 2,223,000 bushels of wheat.

General News.

The fourth Zionist Congress, which met in London last month, numbered 748 delegates. It voted one thousand francs to the Jewish public library at Jerusalem, and two thousand francs to the Agricultural Society at Jaffa. It reported increased antipathy to the Jewish race in nearly every country. The aggregate funds in the bank in support of the movement are $2,000,000

Professor Hilpreche estimates that five more years will be necessary to excavate the unexplored part of the great library at Nippur. When he thinks one hundred and fifty thousand tablets will be added to those already unearthed. There will be no example in the world's history of so complete a recovery of the records of an ancient civilization.

Four Filipinos, who have won the privilege by gaining the highest rank in competitive examinations held in Manila, have arrived in this country, one of whom will go to the University of California and three to the University of Michigan, to study on scholarships provided by the International Club of Manila.

Colonel Henry M. Robert. United States Corps of Engineers, and divisional engineer of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, says that Galveston can be absolutely protected from every storm by a sea-wall built along the Gulf front.

Galveston was thoroughly renovated last week and order was established. The needy were cared for and prospects for the rebuilding of the destroyed portion of the city are bright.