National.

The steam shovel men at work at the Panama Canal on March I last applied to Secretary Taft for increases as follows: Engineers from $210 to $300 per month, crane men from $185 to $250 per month, firemen from $83.33 to $110 per month. In reaching the conclusion that the present rates of pay are liberal ones, Secretary Taft says that the average pay in the United States is $163 for engineers, $110 for crane men, and $71 for firemen. Taking into consideration the hardships, and the advantages of free rent, free medical attendance, and supplies at cost, he believes the pay of the men is question is sufficient. A number of steam shovel men are entitled to three per cent increases under the plan to make these increases yearly. The demand for construction locomotive engineers for an increase in pay is also denied. Construction train conductors he raises from $170 to $190 a month.

Secretary of the Treasury Cortelyou has undertaken the solution of the difficult problem of equitably distributing the deposits of Government moneys in the National banks of the country,—how to get them out of politics and handle them systematically. He has appointed a commission of five: United States Treasurer Treat, chairman; Director Roberts of the Mint, Comptroller of the Currency Ridgley, E. W. Huntington of the Division of Loans and Currency, and E. B. Daskem of the Division of Public Moneys of the Treasury Department. There are about six thousand National banks in the United States, and of these about twelve hundred and fifty have been designated as banks in which public money is placed on deposit on giving the Treasury adequate security in the form of Government bonds or some other acceptable bonds.

Secretary Root has made public the names of eight architects who will be invited to furnish plans for the new Bureau of American Republics Building or Palace of Peace. Each of these firms will be paid $1,000 for the plans submitted and the plans will be entered in the general competition. In addition to the eight invited to compete one hundred and twenty-six other firms have registered for the competition. The building is to cost $600,000 and the interior finishings $150,000. The site, which is to be the historic Van Ness Park, has already been selected at a cost of $250,000. The Government appropriated $250,000, and Andrew Carnegie donated $750,000, with the condition that the building be known as the Pan-American Palace of Peace.

The thirteenth annual meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration will be held May 22 to 24. Coming so closely after the National Arbitration and Peace Congress just closed in New York, the Mohonk Conference will devote much time to the primal object of that gathering—the consideration of subjects for discussion by the coming Hague Conference. Doubtless the three propositions urged by the Mohonk Conference of last year, the chief of which was that The Hague or a like Conference be made a permanent and periodic assembly, will be reaffirmed in decided tones.

The Legislature of Missouri has passed a resolution providing for the proper pronunciation of the name of the State, which reads as follows: "That the only true pronunciation of the name of the State, in the opinion of this body, is that received from the native Indians, and that it should be pronounced in three syllables, accented on the second syllable. The vowel in the first syllable is short 'i,' in the second syllable long 'o,' in the third syllable short 'i.' 'S' in the two syllables in which it occurs has the sound of 's' and not 'z.'"

An Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition is to be held in Seattle in the summer of 1909. The territory cost the United States $7,200000. It has returned to the United States over $100,000,000 in gold, $11,000,000 in revenue taxes, $80,000,000 in furs, and $96,000,000 in fish. Besides all this it has the largest and richest copper veins in the world, the ore being the highest grade yet found.

The so-called "drug trust" was perpetually enjoined last week from continuing its operations by the entering of a decree in the United States Circuit Court for the district of Indiana. The defendants, ninety-two in number, are perpetually enjoined from combining and conspiring to restrain trade in drugs, fix prices by agreement, blacklist retailers who cut prices, or who refuse to sell to any retailer on equal terms.

The old frigate Saratoga, built at Kittery, Me., in 1842, now tied up at the League Island yard, has made her last sea voyage, as she is found to be in parts beyond repair. She may be used as a receiving ship.

On May I there were in operation 37,597 rural postal routes, served by 37,447 regular carriers.

The Department of Justice has decided to make an investigation of the so-called watch trust.

Foreign.

Excavations in the ancient Greek city of Pæstum, in Italy, have brought to light a magnificent roadway twenty-five feet wide and flanked by sidewalks. The pavement is of large stone blocks, which show deep ruts worn by the wheels of heavy chariots. A beautiful Doric temple to Neptune, a very ancient specimen of Greek art, has been uncovered for a distance of one hundred and twenty feet. The excavations now being carried on on the Palatine Hill of Rome resulted recently in the discovery of the ruins of church of the fifth century, built originally as a private chapel and used by the first Christian Emperors of Rome.

The Duke of Abruzzi has solved a geographical riddle by ascending all the peaks of the Ruwenzgori range. These were duly located by Ptolemy as the Mountains of the Moon between the lakes that feed the Nile; but, because usually rendered invisible by the fogs surrounding them, they were removed from the map by more modern geographers skeptical of Alexandrian science, and not until 1889, when Sir Henry Stanley climbed one of the northwestern spurs to the height of 10,677 feet, and gave to the mountains the name of Ruwenzgori, which means "Rainmaker," were they restored to their place on the map.

The experiment with a lot of American cotton seed sent for planting in the Italian province of Eritrea in Africa some months ago by Italian Consul Sottile, was so successful that it has been decided to raise cotton on a large scale, and many hundred pounds of seed will be bought in the United States and sent to the Italian province.

Newspaper statistics just published give the number of sentences imposed in Russia under the drumhead court-martial law, which has now expired. It appears that 1,144 persons were executed, 79 were sent to the mines for life, 710 were condemned to minor terms of imprisonment, and 71 were acquitted.

Iceland, the chief dependency of Denmark, is reported as wanting a special Icelandic flag and as contemplating the use of one during the expected visit to Iceland of the King of Denmark. Denmark is said to maintain that so long as Iceland is a Danish colony the Danish flag must be supreme.

All arrangements have been perfected for the opening of the new training school for aeronauts at Chemnitz, Germany. The authorities have given their official approval of the institution and of its curriculum of studies. The director, Herr Paul Spiegel, has made over six hundred ascents.

Industrial and Commercial.

Little is being done at present in the way of recovering the sunken logs in Michigan streams and putting them to commerical uses, because of adverse court decisions, which have held that the sunken logs belonged to the owners of the river banks and not to the lumbermen who lost the timber as it was being driven down the streams to the mills years ago. As it was necessary now to come to some agreement with farm ers and other possessors of riparian rights, the plans of the companies that had been organized to recover the logs have been seriously deranged. It is estimated that there are fully one hundred million feet of timber lying at the bottom of Saginaw River and its tributaries alone. There are large quantities of sunken logs in the Muskegon, Rifle, Au Sable, Au Gres, and other rivers.

Massachusetts as a manufacturing State stands first in cotton goods, woolen goods, worsted goods, boots and shoes; second in leather, paper and wood pulp, rubber and elastic goods; third confectionery, carpets and rugs, jewelry, musical instruments, canning and preserving fish; fourth in electrical machinery; fifth in women's clothing. silk and silk goods, slaughtering and meat packing; eighth in malt liquors, carriages and wagons, cigars and cigarettes.

The State of Connecticut contains fourteen thousand miles of public road, of which nearly two thousand miles are surfaced with gravel and about five hundred miles with stone. About six hundred miles of these roads were constructed under the State aid plan.

J. V. Thompson, president of the First National Bank of Uniontown, Pa., is said to be the largest individual owner of bituminous coal lands in the United States. His holdings aggregate about $20,000,000 in value in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Negotiations to consolidate the Intercontinental Rubber Company and the United States Rubber Company have failed, and the scheme has been abandoned.