National.

Charging that the chairman and other members of the committee on the judiciary were "receiving gifts, franks, employment, and compensation of great and pecuniary value" from railroads, to the extent of disqualifying them to pass upon the bill to prohibit congressmen and judges from receiving such gifts from railroads or other corporations, Representative Randell of Texas brought before the House a privileged resolution to remove the measure reffered to from the committee on judiciary and to have it immediately reported back to the House.

Users of the Curtiss and Paulhan aeroplanes may now fly without giving bond covering possible violations of the Wright brother's patents, at least until after the trail of the injunction suits instituted by the Wrights in the United States courts in New York and in Buffalo several months ago. The United States circuit court of appeals in a unanimous decision vacated the preliminary injunctions granted on behalf of the Wright Company against the Herring-Curtiss Company and Louis Paulhan, pending trail of the suits.

The interstate commerce commission has issued an order requiring the equipment with power brakes of eighty-five per cent of the cars in any train operated in interstate commerce. The order, which will become effective on Sept. 1, 1910, requries that the brakes shall be operated by the engineer of the locomative drawing the train. It increases the percentages of cars equipped with power brakes from seventy-five per cent to eighty-five per cent.

The Senate committee on claims has reported a bill to pay the Southern Pacific railway $773,647, on account of expenditures made by it in repairing the break in the Colorado river, which threatened to overflow the Great Imperial valley in the fall of 1906. The railroad's claim was $1,663,136. The work by the railroad as a result of a request made by former President Roosevelt to the late E.H. Harriman.

As a result of President Taft's insistence that the new railroad bill should include some provision looking to the control of the new issues of stocks and bonds by railroad companies, it was decided at a White House conference recently that a paragraph shall be added to the bill providing for a commission to investigate and report at the next session of Congress the best means of dealing with this situation.

The sentencing of the two men convicted of conspiracy to defraud the Government by means of sugar underweighing, the secretary of the American Sugar Refining Company and the superintendent of the sugar trust's Williamsburg refinery, has been suspended to Aug 30, pending an appeal which counsel for the defendants will file.

By a change ordered in the form of the postal money order and the elimination of the mail advice to postmasters of the issuance of money orders, Postmaster-General Hitchcock expects to save to the Government approximately five hundred thousand dollars a year.

That Government ownership of railroads will be the outcome of the trend of congressional legislation is the opinion expressed by President Daniel Willard of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad at a conference of the company's officials.

When railroad managers plead the necessity for higher freight rates, says Public, in order to pay higher wages to their employees, they should be admonished to meet this increased expense by reducing the wages of their watered stock.

A petition will be filed by the department of justice in the United States court at Chicago, through which the Government will attempt to find out whether or not the Hepburn railroad rate law is applicable to stock yards.

Postmaster-General Hitchcock has appointed a special committee to investigate and report upon the feasibility of increasing the limit of weight of packages and reducing the rate of postage of fourth class mail matter.

Action will be taken by Attorney-General Wickersham, as the result of a report from Mayor Gaynor of New York, to put a stop to a practice of extortion in connection with the securing of naturalization papers.

Charles K. Hamilton last week in a Curtiss aeroplane flew from New York to Philadelphia, a distance of eighty-six miles, in one hour and fifty minutes; also making the return trip.

International.

The announcement that the Chinese throne has approved a recommendation decreeing English as the official language for scientific and technical education has aroused great interest in diplomatic and commercial circles at London.

The vice-president of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company has given the board of control the full details of the company's plan to build a million-dollar tunnel through Ottawa, connecting the Union and Central stations.

The Russian Duma has passed the Finnish bill, giving that body authority over the Finnish Diet. The vote on the third reading was 164 to 23. The measure has aroused intense bitterness in the Duchy.

The American consul in Harbin, Manchuria, has been instructed to notify Americans resident there that they must pay municipal taxes the same as do the Russians and the Chinese.

Industrial and Commercial.

Vice-Consul E. T. Heyn of Reichenberg reports that the spinning department of the Kaiser Franz Josef School of Textile Industry in Reichenberg is experimenting with the cleaned fiber of the nettle. By a new Austrian process the gum is extracted from the fiber of the plant, partly by mechanical and partly by chemical means. The experiment station at Brunn has succeeded in completely separating and spinning the fibers furnished, without destroying their tension or firmness. These experiments were made on knitting-yarn ma chines, and yarns were produced which, it is claimed, owing to their excellent qualities, can be used in various branches of weaving and knitting, in the production of furniture covers, blankets, tapestries, damasks, cloths, ribbons, laces, and underwear.

Efficiency tests are conducted by officials of the Pennsylvania railroad, who, at unusual times and places, set signals of caution or danger, display fusees, or place torpedoes on the track, with a view to keeping all employees constantly on the alert for signals. During the tests for 1909 the following records were made by the men: Block signal rules, 47,384, of which 99.6 per cent showed perfect observance on the part of the employees; 45,887 tests of rules governing flagmen, the use of fusees, torpedoes, and other signals, 99.6 per cent perfect. Altogether, some three hundred thousand efficiency tests showed a practically perfect record for the employees. During 1908 and 1909 only one passenger was killed on this road in an accident.

Development of power and the improvement of navigation of the Connecticut river between Hartford, Conn., and Springfield, Mass., are to be undertaken by the Northern Connecticut Power Company. The estimated cost of carrying out the plan is about four million five hundred thousand dollars. The company offers to meet the expense and to turn over to the United States Government without cost a completed lock to be maintained by the Government and to be always free from tolls. A conservative estimate of the power which could be profitably obtained is twenty-five thousand horse-power.

That a small coke deal recently announced has for its ultimate object control of the coke trade of the great Connellsville region has been revealed. A combination representing about forty million dollars and between six thousand and sixty-five hundred independent ovens is sought. There are fifteen hundred ovens so far in the combination effected.

Thousands of barrels of potatoes will be destroyed in northwestern New Brunswick and in several Maine villages. The low price, lack of demand, and decay of the tubers are some of the reasons why the produce of farmers living at points remote from railroad stations and starch factories will be thrown on the fields, buried, or burned.

The largest Portland cement plant in the world is row being built at Hudson, N. Y., for the Atlas Portland Cement Company. The property consists of 1530 acres. When the entire plant is finished it will have a productive capacity of over twenty thousand barrels daily or seven million barrels yearly.

It is estimated that the southwest Texas watermelon crop will reach the total of two million five hundred thousand. Over one half million of melons have already been shipped from irrigated farms, and it is expected that a million grown on dry lands will enter the market during the present month.

The United Shoe Machinery Company has voted to give its lessees a share in its profits by distributing among them stock purchased with a fund created by setting apart each year a percentage of the amount received from Goodyear royalties.

Thermostats are now installed by progressive fruit-growers in the West and Northwest which give warning when the temperature nears the frost line. Oil burners, of which there are several types, are then lighted and the temperature is raised sufficiently to save the crop.

The New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad has completed the cutting of a tunnel 3,850 feet in length on its line between Waterbury and Bristol, Conn., that cuts off a mile and a half in distance and a heavy grade.

It would require a bin a mile square and one hundred and seventy feet deep to hold the grain produced in the United States in an average year.