National

At Lake Mohonk, N. Y., scholars, diplomatists, business men, and labor representatives met last week for the seventeenth annual conference on international arbitration inagurated by Albert K. Smiley in 1895. The hundreds of guests who have accepted Mr. Smiley's hospitality meet this time under conditions which promise great things for the peace movement throughout the world. A comparison of the programs of 1895 and 1911 shows clearly that the arbitration movement has now enlisted the services of many who once felt disinclined to take the cause seriously. As education has advanced, as business has expanded at home and abroad, as American industrialism has risen to a height not dreamed of some years ago, financiers and workingmen realize more and more that wars must be made to cease if prosperity is to continue.

The new public library building, the cornerstone of which was laid nine years ago, was dedicated in New York May 23. The building is said to be without an equal in the world among those dedicated to the convenience and instruction of the public, for size and cost. It holds shelf room for 3,500,000 volumes; it has floor space of 375,000 feet, as against 326,000 feet in the Congressional Library at Washington, and it has cost for erection more than ten million dollars, a figure which, when all details have been attended to, may rise to twelve million dollars. The land on which it stands—fronting two blocks on Fifth Avenue, between Fortieth and Forty-second streets—was last valued at twenty million dollars.

The Wisconsin Legislature has passed a law having for its purpose the abolition of "logrolling," or vote swapping, in the enactment of state laws. The law provides that any member who agrees to support the bill of another member on condition of receiving help for his own bill, will be guilty of a felony and subject to imprisonment or fine. A penalty is also provided for a member of the Legislature who agrees to support or oppose a bill on condition that the Governor approve or veto any particular measure, or that the Governor shall appoint or remove any person from public office.

The German government has been made aware by the United States that the same general arbitration proposition submitted to Great Britain and France is open to Germany if that country is interested. The tentative draft now in the hands of Great Britain and France constitutes a basis upon which this country is prepared to enter into negotiations with any power desiring to do so. There have been informal discussions between the United States and Japan on the new arbitration proposition, but Japan has not yet definitely made known her intentions in the matter.

The advance guard of a Yale expedition that expects to find the ruins of Vilcabanca, the last stronghold of the Incas of Peru, sailed for Colon last week. The other members of the party, which includes several Yale professors, will leave next week. The expedition will start from Cusco, terminus of the railroad in Peru, and spend five months in the mountains. About three hundred miles of untrodden territory will be explored.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has selected a site for a summer engineering camp on the east shore of Gardner lake, Me., near Machias, containing more than a square mile of land. It is the intention of the faculty of the institute to replace a portion of the surveying work, a large part of the out of door practice, that is now pursued in Boston only under disadvantages, by courses at the summer camp.

The interesting thing about the government's suit to dissolve the so-called lumber trust is that the persons charged with maintaining a trust are not the men "higher up," but men close to the people. In other words, if the government's contention is correct, it is not the owners of standing timber, the mill men, or the wholesalers that are offending against the Sherman antitrust law, but the retail dealers.

A resolution declaring that all the personal defendants in the Standard Oil case are subject to criminal prosecution under the decision of the supreme court of the United States has been adopted in the United States Senate. It instructs the attorney-general to report whether criminal proceedings "have been or will be started against them."

A concurrent resolution of the Senate and House of Hawaii, asking Congress to pass an ena' ling act for the constitutional convention and to admit the territory to statehood, was laid before the House of Representatives last week by Speaker Clark.

A sweeping and immediate investigation of the renewed charges that Senator Lorimer of Ill'nois is not entitled to his seat is provided for in two resolutions introduced by Senators Dillingham and La Follette.

Postmaster-General Hitchcock is so well pleased with the eagerness of communities to have postal savings banks opened at the local postoffices, that he has decided to raise the number of weekly openings from fifty to one hundred.

The battleship Idaho last week proceeded up the Mississippi river as far as Vicksburg. The five-hundred-mile river trip will end when she steams into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, on June 6 or 7, en route to Pensacola.

If Congress does not order otherwise, all that remains of the battleship Maine after it has been raised from Havana harbor and stripped of parts of value, will be towed out to sea and sunk in deep water.

The topographic survey for levee work along the Brazos, Little, and Trinity rivers, Texas, contemplates the reclamation of one hundred and sixty-seven thousand acres of land.

The fifteen hundred thousand-dollar concrete and steel causeway to connect Galveston with the mainland is expected to be completed on contract time in October.

Since June 1, 1910, nearly twenty-two million dollars has been given or announced to be given to seven of the largest educational institutions of the country.

Only one fourth of the great task of excavation at the Panama canal remains to be done.

International

Provisional figures returned by the census officers give the population of England and Wales this year as 36,075,269, compared with 32,527,843 in 1901. While most of the cities and counties show an increase, there are many cases, particularly in Wales, where there has teen a decrease. Greater London's population has increased to 7,252,963 from from 6,581,402 in 1901. This increase is entirely in what is known as the outer ring, showing that the people are moving from the more crowded centers. In fact many of the old metropolitan throughs and the city of London proper have lost their population to the suburbs. The county of London, including the city of London and the boroughs immediately about it. shows a decrease.

"We believe that the day will come of an alliance of all lands springing from England's loins, insuring the peace of the world forever," declared Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Canadian premier, at the dinner of the Pilgrims Society in honor of the prime ministers of Greater Britain, who are assembled at London for the imperial conference. The premier aroused enthusiasm when he declared that Canada and the United States proposed to continue to show to the world two nations with the longest boundary extending from ocean to ocean, living in peace and mutual respect, without a fortress, a soldier, or a gun on either side of that boundary.

The Russian Douma has authorized the expenditure of one hundred and fifty million dollars for a reorganization of the fleet. The program includes four dreadnoughts and six submarines for the Black sea and four dreadnoughts for the Baltic, in addition to four battleships which will be launched in July. A small island at the mouth of the river Neva is to be transferred to the admiralty for a new dock yard.

On May 25 President Diaz of Mexico, after serving continuously for thirty years as President, offered his resignation in the Chamber of Deputies. His years of service have been marked by a wonderful commercial development of Mexico, the establishment of a stable government and of national credit at home and abroad.

By a big majority the Mexican Chamber of Deputies passed the bill providing amnesty to political prisoners. It became effective immediately.

Industrial and Commercial

The feature of the opening session of the American Cotton Manufacturers Association at Richmond, Va., was a prolonged debate between President Marsh of the New York Cotton Exchange and Chairman Parker of the committee on relations with cotton exchanges. Mr. Parker's assertion that the New York Cotton Exchange caters to speculators rather than to the needs of legitimate business, and that the prices of cotton have been manipulated by members of the exchange, to the great detriment of both spinners and producers, was cheered to the echo by the convention.

Competition in the steel trade is on in earnest. The Carnegie Steel Company announces that it has met the cut made by the Republic Iron & Steel Company on steel bars and is accepting orders at $1.25 a hundred pounds, Pittsburg, a reduction of three dollars a ton. All of the other independent companies are expected to take similar action.

A remarkable record has been made this past winter by the revenue cutter Acushnet, whose range of action has been from Great Point, Nantucket, to Watch Hill, and which is credited with having saved seven vessels, seventy-one persons, and property valued at $328,900.

A bill for a state appropriation of nine million dollars for developing Boston harbor has been submitted to the Massachusetts committee on metropolitan affairs.

It is estimated that more than four thousand cars will be required to market this year's two million-dollar peach crop.

Cotton men of New Orleans are said to be planning to spend several million dollars on a gigantic warehouse project.