National.

The Bourne-Lewis parcels post plan goes into effect Jan. 1, 1913, so far as the establishment of the parcels post rates and zones are concerned, and Postmaster-General Hitchcock will endeavor to have the details worked out by that time. Under this legislation it is provided that hereafter fourth class mail matter shall embrace all other matter, including farm and factory products, not now embraced by law in either the first, second, or third class, not exceeding eleven pounds in weight, not greater in size than seventy-two inches in length and girth combined, nor in form likely to injure the person of any postal employee or damage the mail equipment or other mail matter, and not of a character perishable within a period reasonably required for transportation and delivery.

Recent legislation by the people of Oklahoma has created the position of public defender, whose duty it will be to right wrongs, to protect the helpless, to prosecute in the courts those who are trying to take advantage of the weak and the ignorant. Through the public defender the wronged or threatened man can enter the courts, and at small expense he can see that justice is done. The publicity thus given to attempted rascality will defer men from schemes into which they might enter were they not afraid of exposure and prosecution.

There was filed recently with the register of deeds at Jersey City a deed whereby the Jersey City Water Supply Company transferred to the mayor and aldermen of Jersey City the water-works and eleven hundred and forty-six acres of land in the townships of Hanover and Boonton and the town of Boonton, Morris county, N. J., together with all rights of way for tunnels, pipes, telephone lines, and conduits for conveying water from the waterworks to the reservoir on Bergen hill, in Jersey City. The price paid was $6,992,000.

President Taft has signed the radio-communication bill, carrying out America's part of the international agreements adopted at the Berlin wireless conference in 1906. It also embodies lessons taught by the Titanic disaster. The measure compels all wireless stations to give priority to distress signals, regulates the wireless system on ships, the instruments of which must have a radius of one hundred miles, and requires amateurs to have licenses in addition to controlling their wave-lengths.

No further issue of Panama canal bonds will be made during the present administration, it has been announced at the treasury department. There is now one hundred million dollars in cash on hand and this is believed to be sufficient to meet all expenditures. The total cost of the canal is expected to be about four hundred and fifty million dollars and the total amount expended to date has been two hundred and eighty million dollars.

The federal government has attacked the so-called moving picture trust in a civil suit filed at Philadelphia for the dissolution of the Motion Picture Patents Company and the General Film Company. Ten prominent moving picture film concerns are accused of combining to monopolize the business, even to the extent of increasing or decreasing the number of motion picture theaters in which they have no proprietary interest.

The appropriations in the House for the fiscal year of 1913 amount to the total of $1,019,636,143.66, which is approximately seven million dollars less than the amount appropriated by the last session of the Sixty-first Congress for the fiscal year of 1912.

President Taft signed the Hughes bill providing for an industrial commission to investigate labor conditions and recommend legislation which will bring about more amicable relations between capital and labor.

International.

Dr. Sun Yat Sen last week presided at the formal amalgamation of the Tung Men-hui with four other political parties into a new party named the Kno Ming-tang, or Nationalists. The new organization will comprise two thirds of the advisory council and the same proportion of the Parliament which will assemble in December, and will govern on party lines, thus destroying Yuan Shi Kai's virtual dictatorship. The American experts accompanying Sun Yat Sen have mapped out a program to cover China with a network of railways.

In speeches to two of the leading Chinese political societies at Peking, Dr. Sun Yat Sen emphasized the need of abating party strife and of devoting their energies to the construction of new administrative machinery in the form of a strong central government. Dr. Sun said he believed that Yuan Shi Kai was the ablest head available for the executive office, and he strongly urged Yuan's reappointment as President. Dr. Sun Yat Sen also proposed that China borrow nothing from the six powers group of bankers. He declared it possible for China to obtain funds from other sources without vexatious conditions.

A notable feature of the new sanitation plans for Buenos Aires is the fact that they are calculated for a city of no less than six million inhabitants, which number the city is expected to have inside of fifty years. The area of the works under consideration is something like forty thousand acres. At the present time there are no less than four hundred thousand people in the capital who have neither drainage nor water supply, while fifty thousand have running water but no drainage, and some seven hundred and fifty thousand have both. According to official declarations, the new water supply for the entire city will be completed in 1914 and the drainage system two years later. The works of both water supply and drainage are estimated to cost in the neighborhood of one hundred and sixty million dollars, Argentine currency.

The South Australian statute book includes a number of measures designed for the benefit of the worker. One of these is the advances for homes act, under which loans are granted to persons in receipt of not more than three hundred pounds per annum at a low rate of interest to enable them to erect, purchase, or enlarge a dwelling-house for themselves, or to discharge an existing mortgage on their property. Advances are made through the state bank to the extent of four fifths of the valuation and are repayable by instalments extending up to forty-two years. Since the act came into operation in January, 1911, it has been largely availed of, the advances totaling £417,549.

With reference to the proposal of Count voa Berchthold, the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, to secure gradual autonomy for the European provinces of Turkey, the Ottoman government has notified its representatives abroad, in the event of their being approached concerning the project, that the Porte will not listen to proposals affecting Turkey's internal policy.

Industrial and Commercial.

A newly formed syndicate of Spaniards and Maxicans has purchased for ninety-two hundred and fifty thousand dollars gold one million acres of land along the Rio Grande and San Juan rivers, Mexico. It will prepare about two hundred thousand acres for cultivation, seventy thousand of which will be planted mostly in cotton. A large canal will be constructed, and two hundred-horse-power pumping plant provided for irrigating the two hundred thousand acres. The Mexican government has loaned this new company twenty-five hundred thousand dollars gold, on long time, with the understanding that when this money is due the principal and interest may be liquidated by transferring a sufficient number of acres (developed) to the government at forty dollars per acre.

Fuller's earth, the clay-like material that is used principally as a filtering medium for oils, fats, and greases, is found in fifteen states, as shown by a report of the United States geological survey. Florida continues to be the leading state. In 1911 it reported 27,658 tons, valued at $265,571, or $9.60 a ton. This was sixty-eight per cent of the quantity and sixty-nine per cent of the value of the entire output and value. The other states in the order of their rank in output and value in 1911 were Georgia, Arkansas, Texas, Massachusetts, California, and South Carolina.

The Colorado-Utah 1912 fruit crop will be at least twice as large as that of any previous year. It is estimated that on the line of the Denver & Rio Grande railroad in western Colorado there will be between nine and ten thousand cars of fruit, consisting of peaches, pears, apricots, plums, cantaloups, and apples, to be moved between Sept. 1 and the end of the season. In Utah the crop will approximate three thousand cars.

Acting Governor Gilbert of the Philippines and party has been at Mindanao to inspect in the rich Gettabata valley a site for proposed huge rice plantations to be owned by the government. The object of the government owned plantation is to obviate any future rice famine and to stop importations, which reach a yearly average of sixty million dollars gold.

The Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America was organized in Washington recently, with representatives of practically all the states and territories present. Already more than a hundred separate organizations have been effected to work under the one standard.

Kansas will have an estimated oat crop this season of sixty million bushels, twice as much as last year. Missouri expects to harvest two hundred and forty million bushels of corn from its eight million acres. The fruit crop of Idaho will be a record crop.

Statistics show that 12,165,813 bushels of potatoes were shipped out of Aroostook county, Maine, up to May 1, all from the crop of 1911. It is estimated that the last crop will bring between twelve and thirteen million dollars into Aroostook county.

The imports during the fiscal year ended June 30 of cut precious stones and pearls totaled $29,261,794, and uncut gems, principally diamonds. reached the value of $10,183,491.