National.

Experiments by the postoffice department for the last ten weeks show that the government can effect an immense saving by shipping a large part of its second-class mail matter by freight cars rather than in mail cars, as heretofore. The class of mail in which the change will first be tried is the semimonthly and monthly publications of the East, which it is planned to bring to six distributing points in freight cars. These six points are St. Louis, Cincinnati, Chicago, Kansas City, St. Paul, and Omaha. Bids from the railroads for the freight car service have been asked, to begin July 1. The saving effected at St. Louis alone, where the trial has been made, will mean an annual saving of eight hundred thousand dollars to the government.

As a result of geologic field examinations the administration has withdrawn 62,140,548 acres of probable coal land and has restored to agricultural entry 18,777,756 acres of noncoal land, which had been withdrawn from entry pending the geological survey's determination of its character. A single Montana withdrawal, made last July, included 20,208,-865 acres. The amount of coal contained in this area is almost incredibly great. A single forty-acre tract, for example, contains over two million five hundred thousand tons of coal. The present outstanding withdrawals awaiting geologic classification aggregate 80,-007,688 acres.

Extension of the time to arrange general arbitration treaties will be necessitated by Germany's expressed willingness to enter nenegotiations. It is assumed that each of the four powers engaged, France, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States, will insist upon knowing what the others are doing at every step, in order to make sure that no one power secures any undue advantage, and this will complicate the work.

Coincident with the closing of the term of the supreme court of the United States and the departure of the justices for their summer vacations, has been the planning of an immense amount of work for the court when it meets again next October. Thrity-five cases, some of them of far-reaching importance, have been advanced for hearing on the first day of the next term, "or as soon thereafter as practicable."

The board of estimate of New York city has authorized Commissioner Edwards of the department of street cleaning to rent a sufficient number of patent vacuum machines, which collect the street dirt without raising any dust, to clean one hundred and fifty thousand squares of one thousand square feet each. The expense will be about seventy-five thousand dollars, and the machines will be in use before Dec. 31.

The initiative and referendum have been adopted by eight states—Oregon, Oklahoma, Nevada, Missouri, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Maine, and the territory of Arizona. In addition to this, there are seven states whose Legislatures voted last winter to submit initiative and referendum to the voters at the 1912 election—Colorado, California, Washington, Wyoming, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Florida.

The constitutionality of the law passed by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1907, directing that deposits in savings banks and trust companies, unclaimed for more than thirty years after the date of the last deposit and whose claimant was unknown, be turned over to the state, is upheld by the supreme court of the United States.

The supreme court by a unanimous decision has pronounced the American Tobacco Company and all the elements composing it, both corporate and individual, to be a corporation in restraint of trade within the prohibition of the Sherman antitrust law, and ordered its disintegration.

The recent decision of the supreme court in the Standard Oil and American Tobacco Company cases will result in a sweeping attempt to secure criminal conviction of violators of the antitrust law, according to Attorney-General Wickersham.

A committee of the House of Representatives is investigating the United States Steel Corporation.

International.

An irrigation scheme which it is hoped will make famine in the Deccan, the peninsular portion of India, a practical impossibility, is at present being carried out. The water that falls on the Ghats is being impounded in vast reservoirs, from which it is being led by long canals to the Deccan, and it is hoped by this means to make the area affected richly productive in ordinary years and at any rate productive in the driest possible years. This vast project has resulted, so far, in three different schemes. One of these, the Darna river project, should be brought into partial operation soon; the second, the Pravara project, is making good progress, and the third and greatest, the Nira right bank canal, project, has gone up to the government of India for sanction.

One of the first acts of President de la Barra, on assuming the duties of his office as provisional President of the Republic of Mexico, following the acceptance of the resignation of Porfirio Diaz, was to send notes to the representatives of aggrieved nations, telling them that a court of claims would be established immediately for the consideration of demands against Mexico for damages. It is said that the court will be in session within a month and claims will be considered according to diplomatic precedence.

The Chinese government has complied with the demands of the constitutionalists and the Grand Council has been converted into a ministry responsible to the National Assembly. Prince Ching, who has been president of the Grand Council, assumes the positions of premier and minister of foreign affairs. Six viceroys of important provinces will constitute an advisory board for the ministry. A Privy Council and a committee to draft a constitution have also been appointed.

The Persian National Council has adopted a proposal of the minister of finance, investing W. Morgan Shuster, the American financier, who recently was appointed treasurer general of Porsia, with the most extensive powers for the control of the finances of the country. These will include the proceeds of the recent loans.

The total population of India on March to last, as given by the returns was 315,001,099, an increase of 20,640,043 on the figures of the census of 1901. The division of the population was 244,172,371 in British territory and 70,828,728 in the native states.

The British foreign secretary has informed the Portuguese representative in London that the British government is ready definitely to recognize the Portuguese republic as soon as the constitution is voted.

The acting premier of the commonwealth of Australia declares that Australia will never agree to admit Japanese immigrants.

Scotland has a population of 4,759,445, according to the provisional figures of the census just made public.

Industrial and Commercial.

More than seventeen million five hundred thousand dollars will be expended on municipal and railroad work and building operations in Spokane, Wash., this year, and of this amount the city's share is approximately six million dollars. The Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound, the Northern Pacific, and the third division of the Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation companies have plans for work costing six million five hundred thousand dollars, and architects and contractors estimate that fully five million dollars will be invested in new buildings before the close of the year.

A plan to reclaim eighty million acres of swamp land east of the Rockies has been formulated by the Chicago council of the national irrigation congress. The value of the land to be developed will be increased a billion and a half of dollars. Reclamation of swamp lands by national drainage will be one of the important subjects on the program of the irrigation congress, which will hold its nineteenth annual session in Chicago next fall.

The production of cement in the United States has increased from 760,000,000 pounds in 1880 to 24,827,000,000 in 1909. This increased production has been accompanied by decreasing imports of that article from foreign countries. Thus imports in 1910 were but one tenth as much as in 1895, while exports of domestic cement in 1910 were thirty times as much as in 1895.

The custom of many American manufacturers and exporters of sending letters and packages by mail with insufficient postage is said by consuls to be the cause of much annoyance to foreign correspondents and frequently is responsible for failure to establish profitable relations with foreign commercial houses.

May 24 advertisements were authorized by the war department calling for bids within two months for three hundred and fifty thousand yards of carded woolens; and if this trial proves satisfactory, woolen instead of worsted will be the standard cloth for uniforms.

J. J. Hill, chairman of the board of directors of the Great Northern Railway Company, in a statement announces the execution of a first and refunding mortgage securing a total authorized issue of six hundred million dollars on the Great Northern and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroads.

The Pittsburg Coal Company has sold its coking coal lands to the United States Steel Corporation. This includes seven thousand acres in the Connellsville field and a lot of beehive ovens. The price was between fourteen and fifteen million dollars.

The White Star Line's great steamer Titanic has just been launched at Belfast, Ireland. The Titanic and the Olympic are each forty-five thousand tons register, 882½ feet long (one sixth of a mile) and 92½ feet broad, the largest steamers sailing the seas.

A cave has been discovered in the Big Horn mountains near Story, Wyo., which is said to rival the Mammoth cave in Kentucky.