National.

Lack of practical and commercial unity in the entire inland water system of the United States is the text of part one of the reports on transportation by water submitted to the President by Herbert Knox Smith, commissioner of corporations of the Department of Commerce and Labor. In his letter of transmission he says: "Waterways themselves and their conditions must be so improved that they shall carry a share of the nation's traffic proportioned to their real possibilities, and shall so supplement the rail system as to prevent the recurrence of disastrous traffic congestions. Our coast line is over 5,700 miles, or, with the navigable indentations of the coast, over 26,400 miles. The Great Lakes shore line of the United States is 2,760 miles, or, with the indentations, 4,329. These lakes are connected with each other, and by canals with the Atlantic ocean, St. Lawrence river, and the Mississippi river, there being however a channel of but fourteen feet depth to the St. Lawrence and this through Canadian territory, seven feet to the Atlantic through the Erie canal, and a still lesser depth to the Mississippi. There are over 290 streams in the country used to a substantial degree for navigation, with an approximate navigable mileage of 26,400, but with very little direct connection with each other except the Mississippi system. About 4,500 miles of canals have been constructed. More than one half—2,444 miles, costing over $80,000,000—has been abandoned. Transportation by water now suffers from one far-reaching disadvantage which we can largely remedy, namely, the lack of organization of our waterway system as a whole."

Electric power was used to operate a transcontinental passenger train on the Great Northern Railway through the Cascade tunnel west of Spokane, Wash., the evening of July 1. The test was satisfactory to the company's engineers and those of the General Electric Company, who had charge of the technical part of the work. There is a 2.2 per cent grade east bound in the Cascade tunnel, where passenger and freight trains frequently encountered serious difficulty in negotiating the climb through the bore. The engineering department of the Great Northern Railway has been at work since 1907 in building the 20,000 horse-power electric plant on the upper Wenatchee river, twelve miles above Leavenworth, on the main line of the Hill road, where the power for this test was generated.

In the supreme court in California, East San Jose and Los Angeles have lost tactical victories in their endeavors to regulate the bill-board nuisance by city ordinances. The general principle, however, underlying these attempts has been upheld. During the last six months proposed enactments designed to restric the growing offense have been introduced in the Legislatures of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, and Minnesota. Vigorous efforts to control the nuisance have within a few months been instituted in Chattanooga, Cleveland, St. Louis, Seattle, Pittsburg, Buffalo, Hartford, Cincinnati, Albany, Haverhill, Providence, Newark, and a score or more smaller communities.

The Aero Club of New England has made a special rate during August of $50 for each ascension, for members intending to qualify as pilots. Ten ascensions must be made and the whole amount, $500, paid in advance. The ascensions will be made in the afternoon from Fitchburg in the "Boston." To qualify as international pilots members must make ten ascensions, one of which must be at night and two of which must be alone. The night ascensions will be made from Pittsfield in the "Massachusetts."

Since the Federal Government, under the reclamation act, took up the business of irrigation, it has spent about $42,000,000 on its various projects. It is assumed that every project will in the end pay back all the Government puts into it, and even more if a policy should be adopted which would make profits possible. This would make it possible for the fund to be used for further extensions of the irrigation systems.

The International Harvester Company has announced a comprehensive plan of profitsharing which its employees, similar to that instituted some time ago by the United States Steel Corporation, and provides for a subscription to the stock of the company by the employees, to be paid for by instalments taken from their wages.

The latest gift to the general education board of the Rockefeller Foundation is one of ten million dollars from John D. Rockefeller, making a total of fifty-three million.

The Secretary of the Interior has scaled down the estimates of his department aboutten million dollars for 1910-11, leaving the estimate now at about $175,000,000.

The total attendance for the first forty-two days of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific exposition passed the million mark, the grand total being 1,015,272.

Preparations are being made to make New York city electrically brilliant on the occasion of the Hudson-Fulton celebration Sept. 25 to Oct. 9.

From present prospects this year's farm crops are estimated as likely to reach a value of over eight billions of dollars.

International.

The decision by The Hague Tribunal of the Casablanca case between France and Germany marks another stage of progress in arbitral justice. This case arose Sept. 25, 1908, when six foreigners, deserters from the French foreign legion in Morocco, who were seeking to get home under the direction of the German consul, were forcibly taken from the consul's charge by French soldiers, by whom also the native guards of the German consulate were ill treated. The incident resulted in feelings of outraged national dignity, and in friction between the state departments of both countries. It was finally agreed to refer the matter to The Hague International Commission of Inquiry, which in rendering its decision, said: "While not placing the blame definitely upon either France or Germany, the court censures the representatives of each nation in several particulars."

The extension of the Soudan Government Railway line south of Khartoum, which forms another stage in the Cape-to-Cairo Railway, is being pushed on at the rate of ten miles a week. The line follows the course of the Blue Nile at a distance of one to three miles west of the river, and does not actually strike the Nile until the thirty-eighth mile after leaving Khartoum. The forty-seventh mile has just been reached, and the work has proved remarkably easy. The money at present allotted for its construction on this year's estimates will be sufficient to take the line to the sixty-fifth mile.

One thousand Nationalists entered Teheran at five o'clock on the morning of July 13. Three days later the Shah was dethroned, the Crown Prince was proclaimed Shah, and a regent appointed. This occupation of the Persian capital was a direct result of the insistence of the Persian people that the Shah govern the country under the constitution that was granted Jan. 1, 1907. The Shah showed an inclination to ignore the constitution which he signed when he ascended the throne, and he even went so far as to withdraw it. His course has resulted in widespread unrest in Persia.

After more than two years of negotiations an irade has been secured from the Turkish government for the transfer of the American College for Girls from Scutari upon the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus to its new commanding site above Constantinople upon the European side.

The Russian cabinet has decided that the government shall undertake the drainage of St. Petersburg and the reorganization of the water supply. Fifty million dollars will have to be raised by a loan for the work, which it is estimated will be completed in fifteen years.

The French Chamber of Deputies has adopted the motion to invite the government to call an internaitonal conference of all the Powers interested, for the purpose of securing the gradual and simultaneous reduction of the customs tariff.

The French Senate has adopted the Franco-American extradition convention.

Industrial and Commercial.

The new union passenger station of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford road at Waterbury, Conn., the largest single piece of construction work to be completed this year by the railroad company, is now in use. The new station cost the road upwards of $500,000 and is of the most advanced type for other than terminal points. An architectural feature is a tower 245 feet high, modeled after a similar tower in Italy, on which is an immense clock. The opening of the new station marks the completion of $2,000,000 worth of railroad improvements in Waterbury and vicinity in connection with the double-tracking of the old Naugatuck division between Bridgeport and Waterbury and the old Highland division between Waterbury and Hartford. It is said that the company intends to make this the main line route between New York and Boston.

Announcement is made that by Sept. 1 the entire trackage of the Frisco system between Kansas City and Springfield, two hundred miles in length, will be protected by the block signal system. Work to the same end is to begin at once between Springfield and Memphis, a distance of 284 miles, and later between Memphis and Birmingham, a distance of 251 miles. When all divisions have been block-signaled the Frisco will have 735 miles of thoroughly protected trackage, and will be the only line in the South that can make such a showing in this respect. It is said that the company will also install telephones to facilitate the handling of trains. They will be auxiliary to the telegraph wires now in use.