National.

President Taft has issued a proclamation fixing the rates that the foreign shipping of the world shall pay for passage through the Panama canal. The provisions of the proclamation are as follows:—

First, on merchant vessels carrying passengers or cargo, one dollar and twenty cents per net vessel ton—each hundred cubic feet—of actual earning capacity; second, on vessels in ballast without passengers or cargo forty per cent less than the rate of tolls for vessels with passengers or cargo; third, upon naval vessels, other than transports, colliers, hospital ships, and supply ships, fifty cents per displacement ton; fourth, upon army and navy transports, colliers, hospital ships, and supply ships, one dollar and twenty cents per net ton, the vessels to be measured by the same rules as are employed in determining the net tonnage of merchant vessels. The secretary of war will prepare and prescribe such rules for the measurement of vessels and such regulations as may be necessary and proper to carry this proclamation into full force and effect.

The plan has recently been revived of continuing the original Washington street of Boston, which now runs as far south as Providence, R. I., from the New Hampshire line, north of Lowell, through Massachusetts and Rhode Island and across the Connecticut border to New London. If the plan is carried out, Washington street will be approximately one hundred and fifty miles long, one of the longest thoroughfares under a single name in the world, and a very effective memorial to the name and fame of the father of this country.

The secretary of the Amateur Athletic Union and chairman of the New York City recreation commission will shortly present to the New York board of estimate plans for a stadium which he proposes to have erected in Central Park, where all kinds of athletic contests may be held. He will ask for an appropriation of five million dollars for the structure, which would be a duplicate of the white marble stadium in Athens.

Delegates to the thirty-second convention of the Farmers' National Congress, which met in New Orleans last week, discussed a proposal for the merger of all agricultural associations under the name of the United States Country Life Association. The advantages of a merger were urged by Assistant Secretary Hays of the department of agriculture, and he suggested the American Grange, the Farmers' National Congress, the Southern Cotton Growers' Association, and the Farmers' Union for membership.

Determined effort to push as near to conclusion as possible all the pending antitrust prosecutions of the Taft administration before President-elect Wilson and his attorney-general take the oath of office on March 4, is being made by the department of justice.

The total amount to be collected by the commonwealth of Massachusetts this year in the form of taxes on corporations will be greater than ever before, the exact figure being $9,205,319.62.

Messages have been exchanged by the navy wireless station on Point Loma, Cal., and the big new navy station at Arlington, Va., approximately thirty-five hundred miles across country.

A device has been invented by which it is possible to make for automatic piano players permanent records of the pianistic interpretations and mannerisms of the great pianists.

Statistics of subway travel in New York city for the twelve months ended June 30 show that 302,973,856 passengers were carried.

James Bryce of Great Britain, ambassador to the United States, has resigned his post.

International.

In support of a spirited speech made in the Brazilian Congress by Deputy Calogeras against the concession granted to a British syndicate—the Amazon Land and Colonization Company—by the state of Para, covering an area of no less than sixty thousand square kilometers—twice the area of Belgium—the metropolitan press comes out with earnest warnings against such concessions, which, it is pointed out, have been multiplying of late. The policy is denounced as leading to the establishment of footholds of foreign domination.

The British government was beaten last week by twenty-six votes on the financial amendment of Sir Frederick Banbury to the home rule bill. Mr. Asquith at once moved the adjournment of the House to consider the government's position. When the House again convened there was so much disorder over the question of rescinding the amendment that the speaker adjourned the body from the 14th to the 18th.

Officials of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company say that the ocean-to-ocean system will be completed some time next year. Forty-five hundred men are at work on the divisions west of Edmonton, and seventeen hundred are employed on the eastern divisions.

The vested interests of great landlords in South St. Pancras, London, are being attacked by the Progressives. It was stated that land which in 1776 was rented at five thousand pounds is now rented at two million one hundred thousand pounds.

The Canadian Pacific railway is to build a terminal passenger station in Vancouver, B. C., which will cost about one million dollars.

The British government has accepted the offer of the Malay states to provide a cruiser costing twelve million dollars.

Industrial and Commercial.

One thousand apple growers of the Pacific Northwest, together with orchard by-product manufacturers, railway traffic managers, and bankers, held a conference in Spokane, Wash., last week and endeavored to solve a number of pressing problems affecting the apple industry, particularly the question of distribution of the fast increasing apple crop, and the matter of profitable utilization of orchard byproducts. Regarding the conference, W. T. Day, chairman of the Apple Show board of trustees, said, "Cooperation between growers, bankers, by-product manufacturers, and railroad officials is vital to the success of the apple industry. It is established beyond doubt that we can raise large quantities of first-class apples in the Pacific Northwest, but we must get them to the average consumer at a price which he can afford to pay. It is to secure cooperation and to devise a marketing plan that this conference has been called. The system must be on such a basis that the apples will go where needed, and without so great a difference between the price paid by the consumer and that received by the grower."

Imports of cocoa into the United States in the calendar year will approximate one hundred and fifty million pounds, against fifty-seven million pounds ten years ago. The value of tropical and subtropical products which entered continental United States in the fiscal year 1912 was $750,000,000, against $335,000,000 in 1900. Of this grand total over one half was foodstuffs, sugar alone amounting in value to practically $200,000,000; coffee, over $100,000,000; fruits and nuts, $50,000,000; tea, $18,000,000; cacao and chocolate, $16,500,000; olive oil, $6,500,000; spices, $6,000,000; and rice, nearly $5,000,000. Of the manufacturers' material imported, india rubber amounted to practically $100,000,000; raw silk, $70,000,000; tobacco, $45,000,000; fibers, $34,000,000; cotton, $22,000,000; vegetable oils, $20,000,000; gums, $11,000,000; and cork and manufactures thereof, $5,500,000.

Commissioner Tomkins, of the department of docks and ferries of New York city, has been working to find a suitable solution of the pier problem. His recommendation is to straighten the pier head line from the Battery to the Chelsea piers, so that it will go out to meet the extended piers of the White Star Line, and also to make two nine-hundred-foot piers by cutting into the land at the point where the West Washington market is at present. Another scheme is to run the piers obliquely instead of at right angles to the shore line. This would make it possible to build piers ten hundred and fifty feet long in the neighborhood of Desbrosses street.

The New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company is about to make a second investigation of the matter of reclaiming the many miles of salt meadows along the Connecticut shore of Long Island sound. The first investigation was conducted by the New England Lines Industrial Bureau at Boston, but the results indicated that the scheme would be a difficult one to put through, because of the chemical constituents of the soils of these salt meadows and also because their owners have not yet been brought to see the benefits of such a plan sufficiently to insure their cooperation in draining them.

The Michigan State Horticultural Society, at its forty-second annual meeting at Grand Rapids last week, considered the question of low prices, which have been the rule this season for all kinds of fruit, making it obvious that methods must be changed or risk still weaker markets and more reduced prices. Much time was allowed to this problem and especial attention given by experts who reviewed the situation and explained how the matter is being met elsewhere.

The enormous sum of $4,171,134,000 represents the farm value on Nov. 1 of the United States crops of corn, hay, wheat, oats, potatoes, barley, flaxseed, rye, and buckwheat. With the value of the growing cotton crop and the crops of tobacco, rice, and apples, the aggregate value of these principal farm products will mount well beyond five billion dollars.

Rich deposits of alluvial tin ore have been found in a new district in the northeastern part of Tasmania, to the south of the known tin deposits near Ringarooma. The wash is twenty feet and over in depth, and contains up to two and one half pounds of tin ore to the cubic yard.

Twenty million pounds of butter were sent out of European Russia in the first three months of 1912. It was valued at $4,859,000.