National.

The Secretary of the Interior, in his annual report, says that in the General Land Office 29,997,566 acres were disposed of, for which the Government received $9,547,273. Fifty-seven additional National forests, embracing 43,838,647 acres, were created in the year. For timber trespasses without suit $80,917 have been collected, and through suits $203,552. It is estimated that approximately seventy million acres in the Western States are underlaid with coal. Further educational work among the Indians is urged. It is suggested that the Crow Indians could profitably engage in the raising of horses for use in the army.

The first session of the Philippine Legislature has adjourned. During the session of ninety days one hundred and twenty-five bills and resolutions were considered. Five of these passed both houses, and one passed the Assembly and was rejected by the Commission. The important acts of the Legislature include the appropriation of one million dollars for suburban schools, the cancelation of loans of provinces by the Insular Government, and the increase of assemblymen's pay.

The rulings of the Postoffice Department, designed to reach the abuses of the second-class mailing privileges, have resulted in eliminating much mail matter that formerly went as second-class. This class constituted sixty-seven percent of all matter handled and yielded only four percent of the revenue. The circulation of mail-order publications in January was said to be eighteen million copies less than in the month of December.

In reporting the annual pension appropriation bill, the Committee on Pensions excluded the eighteen pension agencies of the country, on the theory that payments should be made from Washington. It is estimated that this elimination of the local agencies would save the Government two hundred and twenty-five thousands dollars a year.

That the section of the anti-trust act awarding to the complainant three times the amount of damages sustained by a combination in restraint of interstate trade, can be invoked to prevent a boycott by organized labor, is held in a decision just handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Secretary of the Interior says: "The questions of the drainage of swamp lands and the irrigation of arid lands are closly connected. There are about seventy-eight million acres of swamp lands in the central and southwestern States. It is feasible to drain much of this land and provide homes for thousands of families."

The American fleet of sixteen battleships, which left Rio Janeiro Jan. 22, entered the Strait of Magellan in the afternoon of Jan. 31 and anchored in Possession Bay. It proceeded the next day to Punta Arenas, its scheduled stop, where it remained several days.

There were received at the Patent Office in the last fiscal year 58,762 applications. The number of patents granted, including reissues and designs, was 36,620. The total receipts of the office from all sources were $1,910,618, the total expenditures $1,631,458.

The seven Chicago street railway properties in the hands of the receiver were bid in at auction by the Chicago Railways Company, the only bidder, as was expected, for $2,090,000.

The Tariff Committee of the National Association of Manufacturers last week called upon President Roosevelt to present their reasons for a revision of the tariff.

International.

It has been announced at Brussels before a meeting of the Congo Commission that the treaty of annexation between the Congo Independent State and Belgium has been withdrawn. A new clause, which is to take the place of the previous measure relating to the crown domain, provides for the establishment of a fund of thirty million dollars, to be known as the "Leopold II. Fund." This fund will be provided by a series of special taxes to be met by the Belgian people, and it is created in recognition of the fact that the king turns over the Congo Independent State to Belgium. The king is to use the interest from this sum of money for the creation of a Belgian marine and to found a hospital for aged men.

Premier Campbell-Bannerman declared in House of Commons last week that material changes would have to be enacted by Parliament in various British and colonial laws before the convention adopted at The Hague last summer, establishing an international prize court, could be ratified.

A customs agreement with regard to Manchuria has been concluded between China and Russia, and China has notified Japan that she has opened stations for the collection of customs on the eastern and western Manchurjan frontier.

The census of the Republic of Chile, which has just been completed, shows a population of 3,250,000. The population in 1903 was given as 3,205,992.

Industrial and Commercial.

Judge Gary, chairman of the United States Steel Corporation, in a recent interview said: "The net results of the business of this country for 1907, including the iron and steel industry, are gratifying. A comparison of figures will show that more iron ore has been mined and shipped, more pig iron and semi-finished steel have been manufactured and sold, more men employed, higher wages and a larger sum in the aggregate paid to laborers, and greater profits realized than ever before during a single year. In fact, the volume of business during the first six months was too great, and extended beyond safe and prudent limits."

The conferences recently held among representatives of the different steel rail manufacturers and the railroads, with a view to get a new steel rail that will not break, have resulted in an agreement on a new type of rail. The conferences were the result of many complaints from the railroads of the breaking of rails and some questions which were raised last fall as to the safety of fast trains. The new rail is heavier and has an improved section.

The Pullman Palace Car Company has distributed $174,850 among 3,770 employes of its car service department. The bonus amounts to one month's salary for every conductor and porter who continued on the payroll of the company throughout 1907 and escaped demerits.

The production of potato starch in Aroostook County, Maine, from the 1907 crop, will be about nine thousands tons, worth about five hundred thousand dollars.

The Manufacturer's Record says that the United States is now mining more than one million tons of coal a day.

The total value of the different classes of farm animals in the United States for 1907 is placed at $4,183,000,000.

The total value of exports from Philadelphia for 1907 is $107,263,444.

General.

Before the Civic Forum of New York, William Jennings Bryan recently said: "and now, at the risk of being accused of sacrilege, I venture to introduce to the Stock Exchange the commandment which we have been considering, "Thou shalt not steal." Gambling is one of the worst of vices, and gambling in stocks and in farm products is the most destructive form in which the vice appears. Measured by the number of suicides caused by the New York Stock Exchange, Monte Carlo is an innocent pleasure resort by comparison. Measured by the amount of money changing hands, the contrast is still greater in favor of Monte Carlo; and measured by the influence upon those who do not gamble, the evils of Monte Carlo are insignificant when compared with the evils of New York's commercial gambling houses. The New York Stock Exchange has graduated more embezzlers than Fagin's school did thieves."

Benjamin F. Trueblood, LL.D., of the American Peace-Society, says: "One's estimate of the accomplishments of The Hague Conference will depend very largely on one's point of view. If it be viewed as a single gathering with a definite program, without relation to the past or to the future, it may well be regarded, in considerable measure, a failure. Unfortunately, this is the point of view from which many have regarded it. If, on the contrary, it be looked at as the outcome of the long processes of civilization, especially of the peace and arbitration propaganda of the last hundred years, and as a beginning of a series of world assemblies to meet periodically hereafter for deliberation upon the great coming problems of the nations, then it seems to me that the Conference must be regarded as a conspicuous and memorable success; and this is the only sane point of view from which to regard it."