National.

The Navy Department is arranging to establish coastwise stations of wireless telegraphy in the Philippines, similar to the chain of stations reaching from Portland, Me., to Galveston, Tex., on the Atlantic seaboard. A naval officer has been enegaged on this work for a year or more, having been sent to the Asiatic station by the Bureau of Equipment to install wireless apparatus on the ships of the Far Eastern fleet. The sites for the new stations on land have been selected, and the islands have been fully covered by the system of communication. In the arrangement of this system special pains have been taken to establish communication with ships bound for Hong Kong. The system will connect with the army stations, which are situated in the southern part of the islands. It is hoped eventually to install stations of sufficient power to send messages from the Philippines to Guam, thence to Hawaii, and so on to the Pacific coast.

The Western Union Telegraph Company has received a communication from the director of the Imperial Chinese Telegraphs, dated Shanghai, Aug. 1. It says: "The development of telegraphs and posts in the Empire of China has necessitated that a uniform system of Romanization of Chinese city names should be adopted, and for this purpose a special committee was appointed." As a result of the work of the committee, it is stated, a uniform spelling system has been adopted, and will in future be applied to all Chinese names. The Chinese Government adopted the telegraph system before it allowed the building of railroads because the officials recognized in it an important factor for the maintenance of order in the interior of the country. To-day there are about 4,000 miles of railroad and 15,000 miles of telegraphs in the 4,277,170 square miles of territory which comprises the Chinese Empire.

The Isthmian Canal Commission advertised recently for five thousand tons of steel rails for use on the Isthmus, and the United States Steel Products Export Company of New York, a subsidiary of the Steel trust, was the only bidder. The price asked for the rails was $29.45 a ton f. o. b. Baltimore, or $45.70 laid down in Colon. These prices are regarded as extortionate. When Congress passed the Aldrich resolution, providing that materials for the canal should be purchased in the United States, it expressly stipulated that this should be done unless an attempt at extortion was made by American bidders. The Commission also advertised at the same time for forty mogul locomotives, and the Baldwin Locomotive Works proved the successful bidder, its price being $458,600.

An association in Georgia, to be composed of the trade and commercial bodies, is to be formed, with the Savannah Chamber of Commerce and Board of Trade taking the initiative. An immigration agent will be appointed as the representative of the allied bodies, and prior to the formal organization the Savannah Chamber of Commerce will receive applications for immigrants and when they arrive they will be sent to such destinations as may be most desirable for them. A foreign line of steamers will be established between Savannah and European ports within the next three months.

The Department of Justice at Washington received notice of the arrest on Sept. 5 of five Japanese, members of the crew of the schooner Tokiowah, for seal poaching on St. George's Island. On a statement of the United States Attorney at Valdez, however, the Department gave authority for the release of the prisoners, on the ground that they were not guilty as charged.

About one million dollars will be spent by the United States Government in paying for the site and the erection of buildings for the new Naval Magazine on the banks of the Weymouth Back River, in Hingham and Weymouth, Mass. The plant will not be finished for several years and actual work on the site probably will not begin before next summer.

The United States Fish Commission schooner Grampus during the summer has made weekly trips between Portsmouth, N. H., and Boothbay, Me., collecting lobster spawn at all intermediate points. Over ninety-seven million lobsters have been hatched and liberated during the summer between these two ports.

Three more defendants in the land fraud cases were convicted of a conspiracy to defraud the Government in the Blue Mountain case in Oregon.

Of the $12,500 which the British committee underlook to raise for the Keats-Shelley memorial at Rome, only $3,135 has thus far been secured.

Foreign.

At the session of the Polar Congress at Brussels, Sept. 11. Dr. Jean Charcot announced that he was organizing an expedition to the South Pole, and Charles Benard, President of the Belgian Oceanographic Society, said that society was organizing an expedition to the North Pole. The two expeditions will operate simultaneously and in concert. M. Benard is a member of the permanent commission of the International Association of the Navy. The plan of Arctic exploration which he is understood to favor is one employing two ships in communication by wireless telegraphy. Reaching in the autumn the island of New Siberia, a rush would be made for a point on the 158th degree of latitude east, to drift from thence with the concrete ice. He argued that this drifting would carry the ships to the immediate neighborhood of the North Pole. The ships, he calculated, would be separated by the ice acting as a wedge until they were from sixty to eighty miles apart, each ship meanwhile tracing in the basin a line of soundings and dredging, and thus constituting two metallurgical, magnetic, and floating observatories. The term of the exploration M. Benard estimated at three years, recommending provisions for five years. The cost of such an expedition he estimated at $300,000.

The second Hague Conference will probably be held next May or June. The postponement of this gathering is now believed by the officials to have been very fortunate. Several important events have taken place in the meantime, raising issues which it will now be possible to bring before The Hague conference; and as a result of Secretary Root's South American tour, it is probable that nearly all of the governments of that continent will be represented at the second conference, which was not at all certain had the conference been held when originally proposed. The representation will thus be increased from thirty nations to about forty-five.

Porto Rico has espoused the good roads movement and its Legislature has authorized a loan of $1,000,000. the proceeds of which are to be devoted to improving the Porto Rican highways. The island now has difficulty in getting products to market, and especially to the seaports. Careful estimates have shown, however, that by the expenditure of $1,000,000, great improvements in this respect can be effected, and as soon as the bonds are disposed of the work will be undertaken.

A new banking institution entitled the Amerika Bank is about to be organized in Berlin under the auspices of the Darmstadter Bank, with a capital of $6,250,000. Besides engaging in the ordinary banking business between the United States and Germany, this bank will make a specialty of introducing American securities to the German public. The bank will also co-operate in large financial transactions in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

There is a movement on foot in Jamaica to organize a food reform committee, in order to get the people to develop the agricultural resources of the colony and discontinue the importation of corn, peas, and other foodstuffs. It is the plan of the committee to give prizes to peasants for agricultural improvements.

Eleven railway bridges span the Thames in London. Four thousand postmen deliver ten million letters weekly, walking a distance equal to twice the circumference of the globe. There are ten thousand miles of overhead telegraph wires and the number of telegraph messages received in London in a year is six million.

The Hamburg-American Steamship Company at Hamburg has announced a plan to issue $5,000,000 new capital, making a total of $30,000,000. Travel between this country and Europe has become so great that many new steamers are needed to handle the traffic.

Industrial and Commercial.

Illinois, the great prairie State, outranks every other State in the Union in the average value of its medium farms per acre, having outstripped New Jersey, its nearest rival, since the census of 1900 was taken. Recent figures show that a tremendous growth in farm land values has taken place in this country since 1900. When the 1900 census was taken the total real estate value of farms of all classes in the United States, including improvements, was $16,614,647,491. In 1905 this value had jumped to $22,745,420,567. Illinois now has farms valued at $2,437,437,180. Iowa comes next with farming country worth $2,004,109,770. No less than five States in the Union have farm lands which have passed the billion mark in value. They are Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, and Missouri. The average real estate value of Illinois farms has risen to $75.31 per acre.

The Baldwin Locomotive Works closed the first half of the year 1906 with an output of 1,311 engines, exceeding all previous records, and that of the last six months of 1905 by sixty-two locomotives. At the present rate of production for the balance of the year the output for twelve months will be fully 2,600 engines, or 350 more than were turned out in 1905, which was a record year. The works now have on their payrolls 21,245 names.