National.

A frenzied demonstration of welcome by the men in gray for the son of the man who defeated them, marked the final scene of the annual reunion of the United Confederate Veterans at Memphis, Tenn., last week. In the reviewing stand during the parade stood Gen. Frederick Dent Grant of the United States army. A cavalry division approached, and its commanding officer, old and grizzled, peered steadily at General Grant a moment. Then he turned in his saddle and yelled, "Come on, you kids! Here's General Grant come to life again in his son." With an old-time yell the division charged on the stand, and the men jostles one another for an opportunity to shake the hand of the son of their old-time enemy. From that moment every gray-clad veteran who could reach the stand rushed up to do the same. The stocky army officer's gray eyes filled with tears and his shoulders shook with emotion as he murmured: "God bless you all, boys." He could say no more.

The largest of all the schemes of reclamation contemplated by the Government has recently been undertaken by the engineers in the Sacramento valley. Its ultimate object is to control the flow from a watershed of over four thousand square miled, and to improve the two great rivers of California. When the task is completed, over six hundred thousand acres of rich land, which at present is dry and sun-baked during eight months of the year, will have been brought underirrigation, and large areas of bottom land, which at present are subject to annual overflow and great destruction by the floods, will have been reclaimed.

Secreatary of the Interior Ballinger announces a new plan for the disposal of Government coal lands. He has had the coal lands on the public domain classified with reference to both the quality and quantity underlying the soil. They will be sold hereafter on this basis, with the prevailing royalty that is usually paid private owners as a fundamental price. The present ruling will increase the price of the most valuable coal lands from $100 an acre to more than $300 an acre. Lignite coal lands of a low value will be sold at the lowest price fixed by law, from $10 to $20 an acre, depending on their distance from a railroad.

The Administration has reduced its estimates for expenditures for the fiscal year 1910-II to the extent of $50,000,000 less than the total appropriations for the exective branch of the Government for the fiscal year 1909-10. To do this it was necessary to go over the estimates two or three times in some departments. About $20,000,000 has been cut out of the army, $10,000,000 from the navy, $8,500,000 from the Interior Department, and $11,500,000 in the other departments and independent bureaus.

The War Department has made a heavy draft on the Civil Service Commission for junior engineers, surveyors, and transit men, who are needed for work on the surveys in connection with the intracoastal waterways from Boston, Mass., to Key West, Fla. It has asked for two hundred of them, and the employment is expected to last from six months to a year. The salaries of junior engineers will range from $125 to $175 a months, while those of surveyors and transit men will range from $100 to $125 a month. The examinations will be held June 21.

The mayor of Boston has proposed for that city the appointment of a committee to censor any theatrical show, the morality of which may have been questioned. He himself has already prevented the appearance of several plays by withholding from them permission to appear.

Business transacted by the Panama Railroad commissary, the main source of supply of food and clothing for forty thousand people in the Canal Zone, amounted in value to more than $3,000,000 during the last fiscal year.

The Chicago traction subway will cost between $40,000,000 and $112,000,000. The final report of the city subway bureau just made public gives in detail four different sets of routes.

Richard Cockburn Maclaurin was formally inaugurated as the new president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week.

Andrew Carnegie has founded eighteen hundred public libraries, representing donations aggregating $51,596,963.

Professor Pickering of Harvard announces that he thinks there is a planet beyond Neptune.

International.

Sir Christopher Furness, whose scheme for copartnership has been working successfully and satisfactorily for several months now in the shipyards of Furness & Withy, at Hartlepool, has brought forward a plan of the same kind for the consideration of the officials and workmen employed at the Wingate colliery, a property recently purchased. The conditions are that while the board of directors retain for the officials of the company the full power to employ men as the circumstances of the moment may determine, the general conditions of working and payment accepted by the Miners' Union will be duly recognized. Every employee, whatever his status, may become a member of the copartnership by signifying assent to its principles and by acquiescing in the regular deduction of five percent from his pay until the shares to be allotted to him, and which he must apply for, are fully paid, thus enabling him to acquire his holding by gradual instalments. No employee will be permitted to continue in the service of the company for more than three months unless he becomes a copartner.

J. Henniker Heaton advocates that the British government purchase the cable lines. He argues that there is no reason why a rate of a penny a word should not be possible between Europe, America, and India. With regard to American cables, he proposes that the British and American governments jointly acquire the property and rights of the existing cable companies at a fair valuation, and thereby establish a common state monopoly of cable communication.

Canada has offered to build a navy of her own, to act, should the occasion arise, as an auxiliary force to Great Britain's fleet. Her contribution to the forces of the empire will consist of eight first-class cruisers, ten torpedo-boat destroyers, and ten torpedo boats. The government is prepared to pay one fifth of the cost for laying down the whole fleet immediately, the other four fifths to be guaranteed paid within the next five years.

The Russian Douma has adopted the law, introduced by the government, dealing with the changing from one religious belief to another, with the amendments, however, which Premier Stolypin recently opposed, saying that if they were incorporated the bill would be vetoed. He stated that the Emperor, as head of the orthodox church, could not allow backsliding from the orthodox to non-Christian beliefs.

Negotiations in progress between Canada, the imperial government, and the United States may result in the suspension for a few seasons of pelagic sealing, with compensation to the sealers for their loss.

Industrial and Commercial.

Two hundred and fifty-one pulp mills in the United States used 3,346,106 cords of wood, and made 2,118,947 tons of pulp last year. Spruce furnished sixty-four per cent of the total quantity used, hemlock seventeen per cent, poplar nine cent. The remainder was supplied by many species, the most important of which were pine, cotton-wood, and balsam. The wood used cost a little more than $28,000,000, or an average of $8.38 per cord, against an average of $8.21 in 1907.

Underground joining of the Hudson river tunnel system with New York city's subway and with the New York Central and New Haven Railroad terminals, has been assured by the granting to the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company by the board of estimates and apportionment of an application for a franchise to extent its Sixth avenue tunnel northward from Thirty-third street to the Grand Central station at Forty-second street and Park avenue.

Bleached flour can no longer be shipped in interstate commerce, as the six months' time limit fixed by the Agricultural Department has expired. All flour bleached by means of nitrogen peroxide is held to be an adulterated product in the meaning of the food and drug act.

The J. & P. Coats Company, Limited, of Pawtucket, R. I., following a custom in vogue at the company's mills in Paisley, Scotland, has converted one of its mills into a restaurant for the benefit of its twenty-five hundred operatives and furnishes warm meals at cost.

The Mauretania of the Cunard line has just bettered by two miles her previous record run of six hundred and seventy-one miles in a day, steaming westward.

Sales of tickets in the New York subway increased from 182,559,990 in 1907 to 220,991,212 in 1908.

It is now estimated that there are forty thousand acres of land seeded to rice in Arkansas.