National.

It is likely that books and other printed matter now handled as third-class mail at eight cents a pound wil be made mailable as parcel-post matter. Steps have already been taken to induce Congress so to amend the parcel-post act as to permit this. Reports received for the first ten days from fifty leading cities of the country are said to indicate success of the parcel-post project at the start. The number of packages sent through these fifty post-offices was 1,989,687; and as these cities handle about one half of the postal business of the country, postal officials estimate that between three and four million parcel-post packages were mailed from Jan. 1 to Jan. 7.

Senator Nelson's bill prohibiting the taking of testimony behind closed doors in suits brought by the United States under the Sherman antitrust act, has passed the Senate. The bill was introduced soon after the institution of the United Shoe Machinery suit in Massachusetts, as a result of the order of Judge Putman for secret proceedsings. According to the measure, in taking testimony in antitrust suits and in hearings before any examiner or special master appointed to take testimony therein, "the proceedings shall be open to the public as freely as are trials in open court, and no excluding the public from attendance on any such proceedings shall be valid or enforceable."

Utilization of the Patuxent river in Maryland as a source of the future water-supply of the District of Columbia, and the installation of a plant and conduit system costing $5,583,000, to bring the water to the city, are conditional recommendations contained in a report submitted to Congress. The condition accompanying the recommendations was the probability of the development of the Great falls of the Potomac as a means of furnishing power to produce electricity by which the streets and public buildings of Washington could be lighted.

Claims to the amount of more than ten million dollars have been filed against the White Star line for damages for loss of life and property on the steamship Titanic. The line contends that its entire liability is limited under the United States statutes to less than one hundred thousand dollars,—the value of recovered wreckage and passage money,—and this contention has been upheld in the American courts. American claimants allege that this limitation is invalid, because the line was itself responsible for the loss of life by reason of negligence.

Election of United States senators by popular vote became a certainty for New York state when the Senate passed the Wagner constitutional amendment by a vote of 43 to 4. The Assembly passed the amendment the day before, and Governor Sulzer will sign the measure as soon as it is presented.

Congressman John W. Weeks has been elected as the junior senator from Massachusetts, the successor to Winthrop Murray Crane in the United States Senate. He was the nominee of the Republican caucus on the thirty-first ballot.

The House rivers and harbors committee has brought in its annual appropriation bill providing forty million eight hundred thousand dollars for the improvement of rivers and harbors throughout the country.

President Taft has named the members of the industrial commission which was created by Congress to investigate working conditions and endeavor to make more amicable the relations between capital and labor.

Judge Robert W. Archbald has been removed by the Senate from the commerce court by a vote of 68 to 5 upon the first of the thirteen articles of impeachment.

The army appropriation bill, carrying $93,830,177, an increase of nearly three million dollars over the amount appropriated last year, has been reported to the House.

The validity of the Chicago ordinance fixing the size of loaves of bread, has been upheld by the United States Supreme Court.

International.

Jerusalem is becoming modernized. She already has a new American road machine, is getting ready to install an electric lighting and telephone system, and the construction of a city tramway has begun. People have been moving into the old city so numerously of late that building space could not be had within the walls, and the construction of houses has begun outside the walls. This has led to the discontinuance of the ancient practise of closing the city gates at night, and is the main occasion for starting a tramway. The construction of a port and landing quay at Jaffa is said now to be actually pending.

The road planned and ordered to be made by Lord Kitchener between Cairo and Alexandria is only the first of a vast scheme for roads all over Egypt. It is announced by the under secretary of state for public works that Lord Kitchener has under consideration maps and plans at the present time for a complete series of main arteries north, south, east, and west across the land. By this means districts will be opened which through lack of communication have hitherto been useless, and country will be cultivated and developed which at present depends entirely on slow river transport.

In the detailed financial report that the minister of finance has submitted to Parliament, is an item denoting the cost to Italy of the Italo-Turkish war. This is reckoned at one hundred and ten million dollars, although a further sum of about forty million dollars will be required before the account can be closed.

The French highroads, which up to ten or fifteen years ago held a position of preeminence among European highways, are, owing to the heavy motor traffic, deteriorating rapidly. Steps have been taken by motorists to obtain some amelioration in the up-keep of the public ways.

The German government has been asked to take immediate measures to counteract the high price of coffee brought about by the Brazilian valorization. The budget committee of the imperial Parliament passed a unanimous resolution calling on the government to take action.

M. Raymond Poincare has been elected the ninth President of France.

Industrial and Commercial.

Control of the Central Pacific, with its fifteen hundred and sixty-one miles of track and a considerable additional mileage of branch lines, is to pass from the Southern Pacific to the Union Pacific, through a plan for the reorganization of the Union Pacific system now in process of elaboration by Attorney-General Wickersham and the Union Pacific managers. With the transfer of this control, Mr. Wickersham contends, will be made effective the intention of Congress when it aided the construction of the Pacific lines. There will be under one control a railroad running through the middle of the West from the Missouri river to the Pacific.

The aim of a bil to be introduced in the Oregon Legislature is to harness the current of the Columbia river two miles above the lower entrance of the Celilo canal, thus developing a minimum of one hundred thousand horse-power, the project to be prosecuted and operated by the states of Oregon and Washington for the benefit of the municipalities in the two states tributary to the river. The bill will embody a memorial addressed to the Washington Legislature asking that body to appoint a commission to work with the Oregon commission in the development of the enterprise.

Differences between the Rock Island railroad system and the city of Memphis with reference to the building of a bridge across the Mississippi have been settled, and an ordinance is now in process of adoption by the city commissioners covering the details agreed upon. Work is to begin in July on the new bridge, which, together with the terminals to be constructed by the Rock Island system, will involve an expenditure of about five million dollars.

The report of the New South Wales department of mines states that during the financial year ending last June, diamonds worth four thousand and sixty-four pounds were won from diamond fields in New South Wales. The yield was wholly obtained from the deposits at and near Copston and represented 5,771 carats. The value of the opals won in New South Wales during the same period was fifty-seven thousand three hundred pounds.

The second larges railroad repair shops in the world, those of the Canadian Pacific railway, near Calgary, Alberta, are being built. They will cost two million five hundred thousand dollars, and will be completed within twelve months of the day when the prairie was broken and work begun, April 1 last.

As a result of the recent cold wave, it is estimated that California fruit-growers will lost $19,169,880; shippers will lost $4,792,000, and the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, and Salt Lake roads will suffer to the extent of $9,765,000. Fruit-shippers have canceled orders for thirty thousand five hundred cars.

Exports from the United States to South America have grown from thirty-eight million dollars in 1902 to approximately one hundred and thirty-eight million in 1912.

More than forty million dollars' worth of agricultural implements were exported from the United States to foreign countries in the calendar year just ended.

The fire loss of the country for 1912 is computed at $225,320,900. This is nine million dollars less than that for the year 1911.

India's present cotton acreage is more than one million acres greater than at this time last year.