National.

Hundreds of saloons have been closed in Illinois as the result of the local option voted at the last election in fourteen counties. Eight counties are now totally "dry," while six allowed saloons in only a few precincts. The counties principally affected are in the southern tiers and reflect the wave of prohibition that has been sweeping up from the South. Sentiment in favor of strictures upon the liquor traffic is rapidly gaining ground.

As the result of the fall elections in Massachusetts, all but one of the three hundred and fifty-four cities and towns of the State have gone on record on the question of permitting the sale of intoxicating liquors. Tabulation shows that the no-license majority in Massachusetts is now over thirteen thousand. The entire State went no-license last year by about eighteen hundred majority.

The State Grange of Michigan at its recent annual meeting adopted a resolution calling upon the Constitutional Convention now in session at Lansing to insert a clause in the new constitution prohibiting all traffic in liquor. The Grange has a membership of fifty-one thousand and four hundred delegates were in attendance.

The Reclamation Service of the Government, summarizing its work done to Jan. 1, 1907, shows that it has dug 1,427 miles of canals, or nearly the distance from Boston to Omaha. The tunnels excavated are fortyseven in number and have an aggregate length of eleven miles. The service has erected ninety-four large structures, including the great dams in Nevada and the Minidoka dam in Idaho eighty feet high and 650 feet long. It has completed 670 headworks, flumes, etc. It has built 376 miles of wagon road in mountainous country and into heretofore inaccessible regions. It has erected and put in operation 727 miles of telephones. Its own cement mill has manufactured 70,000 barrels of cement, and the purchased amount is 312,000 barrels. Its own sawmills have cut 3,036,000 board feet of lumber, and 6,540,000 feet have been purchased. The expenditures now total nearly one million dollars per month. As a result of the operations of the Reclamation Service eight new towns have been established, one hundred miles of branch railroad have been constructed, and ten thousand people have taken up their residence in the desert.

Secretary of Agriculture Wilson, in his special report transmitted to Congress, recommends that the Government acquire an area not to exceed six hundred thousand acres in the White Mountains, and areas aggregating not more than five million acres in the Southern Appalachians, for the establishment of National forests. The average price to be paid per acre is six dollars in the White Mountains and three dollars and fifty cents in the Southern Appalachians. These various areas lie in the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia, in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern and southern West Virginia and western Virginia, in the Cumberland Mountains of eastern Kentucky, Tennessee, and northern Alabama, and in the four main ranges of the White Mountains, mostly in New Hampshire. Immediate action is urged by the Secretary, since the natural resources of both regions are being seriously impaired by reckless lumbering and wasteful use.

The Public Service Commission will cost the taxpayers of New York City in 1908 over $1,095,000. It will spend in addition $150,000 of the State's money. The old Rapid Transit Commission, which was probably the most important body that the present Commission succeeded, cost the city about $800,000. As a first step under its anti-merger powers the Public Service Commission has sent to all railroads and lighting corporations under its jurisdiction formal orders to make sworn report by Dec. 20 as to their ownership of the stock of all other public service corporations and the ownership by any other corporation or person of their own stock. Under the law no company organized under the laws of New York may hereafter own or acquire more than ten per cent of the capital stock of a public service corporation. This does not apply to the ownership of stock held before the public service law went into effect.

Fanning and Washington Islands, of the Fanning Islands group in the South Pacific, were sold by auction recently at Suva, Fiji, to Father Brougier for the sum of $125,000. These islands lie about three hundred miles south of the Hawaiian Islands, and five degrees north of the equator, near the one hundred and sixtieth meridian of longitude. Fanning Island is in shape a rude oval, nine and three-fourths miles long. It is very fertile. The island sprang into sudden importance in 1895 through the fact that it was selected as a station for the cable between Australasia and America.

Owing to the improvement in the financial situation the Secretary of the Treasury has decided to issue only $25,000,000 of the Panama Canal bonds instead of $50,000,000 as at first contemplated. The average price of all the bonds, bids for which have been accepted, is one hundred and three. The allotment of the three per cent certicates of indebtedness, which were to be issued up to the amount of $100,000,000 in order to meet the money crisis, will not be more than $15,000,000. Not less than four hundred National banks, in nearly every State in the Union, were represented in the purchase of the canal bonds.

Railroad men at the recent River and Harbor Congress at Washington gave hearty indorsement to the development of water routes for freight. The railroads apparently have reached the point where so much business is offered that they would be glad to be relieved of the heavy and bulky matter like lumber, coal, building materials, and other stuff that naturally moves slowly. There is more money for the railroads in the higher class freight, like perishable goods and manufactured articles, and enough of this sort is offering to give the roads plenty to do even if the bulky matter is diverted to water routes.

The question whether a railroad company can be compelled upon the order of a State Railroad Commission to stop its fast mail trains when engaged in interstate commerce, has been decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in the negative in the case of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company us. the Board of Railroad Commissioners of South Carolina.

The Texas Appellate Court has approved the judgment of the Trial Court in the case of the State against the Waters-Pierce Oil Company. Under the terms of this judgment the company was found guilty of violating the State anti-trust laws, was assessed penalties aggregating $1,690,000, and was debarred from doing business in Texas.

A Federal Grand Jury, after investigating alleged land frauds in New Mexico, has returned four, indictments for alleged perjury.

International.

The Russian Finance Minister points out that to cover the extraordinary expenditure for the fiscal year about ninety-three million dollars would be needed. The expenditures include an increase for defense, army, and navy of fifty-six million dollars, twenty-three million dollars for the improvement of communications, six million for agriculture, and three million dollars each for public instruction and the ministries of the interior, finance, and justice.

Every one hundred thousand of the population of Germany, according to the latest statistics, furnished sixty-seven academic students, while in 1881 the percentage was only forty-seven, and in 1872 it was thirty-four. The university attendance is growing twice as rapidly as the population. As a result, there are literally hundreds of university graduates vainly looking for openings in which to make use of what they have acquired.

At the annual meeting of the Peninsula and Oriental Steam Navigation Company the chairman of the company admitted that the entire trade of the line between Bombay and Japan had been absorbed by its Japanese competitors.

The November statement of the Board of Trade of London shows increases of $6,990,000 in imports and $14,435,000 in exports. The principal increase in imports was in grain and in exports coal and manufactured cotton goods.

The German Government has completed plans for the construction of a harbor on the island of Heligoland, in the North Sea, at a cost of $7,500,000.

Industrial and Commercial.

The Bangor (Me.) Brick Company this season manufactured five million bricks. One million bricks of this year's production were shipped to Aroostook County, and two million were used in building operations in Bangor.

The commerce to and from Lake Superior, with the season hardly closed, already aggregates fifty-eight million tons, more than six million tons in excess of the achievement registered in 1906.

The Government estimate of the total production of cotton in the United States for the year 1907-8 is 11,678,000 bales of five hundred pounds gross weight.