National

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has decided to undertake an investigation into the conditions under which instruction in the law is conducted in the United States. The request that this investigation be made was brought to the attention of the Carnegie Foundation by the committee on legal education and bar admissions of the America Bar Association. The work will be commenced at once and will be as thoroughly conducted as the investigation made by the Foundation into the conditions under which medical instruction is given.

The arbitration board chosen to settle the differences between the eastern railroads and their conductors and trainmen filed its award last week in the United States district court. Wages were increased, approximately, 7 per cent, as against about 21 per cent asked by the men. The pay-rolls of the fifty-one roads concerned will be increased about six million dollars, as against eighteen million dollars which the granting of their entire demands would have cost. The new scale is to take effect from Oct. 1, 1913.

Any stockholder, even though he owns only one share of stock, may have access to the books of a corporation and make a copy of the list of stockholders, according to Associate Justice Haley of the supreme court of the state of Maine. Judge Haley ruled that it is justly a part of a stockholder's interests to know who the other stockholders are. Exceptions will be taken, and the case will go to the full bench of the state supreme court.

In order to simplify the placing of pupils who move from one part of the country to another, the United States bureau of education has prepared an accredited list of the secondary schools in the country. Both public and private schools are represented on the list, which is intended mainly as a guide to school and college officers in admitting students to advanced high school standing or to college.

Gross misappropriation of funds belonging to the minor children of the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma, has been disclosed by investigations conducted by Secretary Lane. The secretary has announced that he will call the cases to the attention of a federal grand jury and begin criminal prosecutions.

Election of state officers and legislators once in two years, the biennial election plan, so called, is provided for in a resolve filed with the clerk of the Massachusetts House. Fifteen years ago the voters rejected a similar resolve submitted by the Legislature.

High school fraternities in Illinois were doomed by a decision of the appellate court upholding the right of school boards to expel all pupils refusing to obey rules prohibiting them from joining fraternities.

The Russian government has arranged to purchase in Washington, D. C., for the permanent use of its embassy in the United States, the Pullman home, situated at 1125 Avenue of the Presidents.

International

The British South African Company have been prospecting in Rhodesia, and the possibility exists that certain outlying districts, portions of land lying sometimes twenty-five miles from the railway, will be used as ranching centers. Experts consider ranching to be the best way to begin the taming of the wild prairie, for after a few years of such treatment it becomes possible to start on closer operations.

The subcommittee of five which was appointed some months ago to draft a constitution for China, has just finished its labors, and the entire constitution, consisting of one hundred and thirteen articles, is complete, and will shortly be submitted to the constituent assembly of both houses.

Cuevas Garcia, Ecuadorean minister to Panama, has been commissioned by his government to proceed to Europe to contract a loan of thirty-three million dollars, which will be used for water works and sewer systems in Guayaquil, and also for the building of railroads into the interior of Ecuador.

A record number of steamers passed through the Straits of Magellan in the ten months from Jan. 1 to Oct. 31, this year. The traffic comprised two hundred and twenty-one steamers from the Atlantic and one hundred and thirtyseven from the Pacific.

A committee has been appointed by the postmaster-general of Great Britain to consider methods and how far the state should provide for research work in the science of wireless telegraphy.

Application of the principle of universal suffrage to the Italian elections shows that the Conservatives disapprove of the change advanced, while the Liberals strongly approve.

The Longitudinal Railway will extend from Peru to the Straits of Magellan, a distance of eighteen hundred and fifty miles.

Seventy million dollars has been sent to Italy during the past year by the immigrants in North and South America.

Industrial and Commercial

The subsistence department of the Canal Zone has taken charge of the estate known as Palenquillo and Frijol Grande, which com prises lands lying along the Panama railroad relocation. Title to this land passed to the United States through awards for damages made to the owners by the joint land commission. Some of the land contains valuable fruit trees, together with a considerable amount of cane and bananas. It is planned to go into banana culture on a scale sufficient to meet the commissary and hotel requirements, and also to raise an adequate supply of oranges, limes, and avocadoes. There are about two hundred and seventy-five acres of cultivable land in the tract. A great deal of the original estate was inundated by Gatun lake, and a considerable part of the remaining portion above the eighty-seven-foot level has been detached and isolated, making it necessary to use a launch in visiting the various sections.

Practically every cottonseed oil mill company in Mississippi is made a defendant in an antitrust suit just filed by state Attorney-General Ross Collins. The suit charged that the American Cotton Oil Company is practically owned by the Standard Oil Company, and that it controls 90 per cent of the cotton oil business of Mississippi and seeks to forfeit the charters of domestic corporations made defendants and to oust from the state the foreign corporations named in the suit. The petition charges that all of the one hundred and three defendants have conspired to fix the price of cottonseed, as well as to control the cotton-ginning industry in the state, and asserts that they have become dealers in bagging and ties with the purpose of controlling the entire cotton business in all its branches.

Auction sales of live poultry have begun at the Gansevoort market in New York city by the Live Poultry Auction Company. It is expected they will bring about a saving to the public of Greater New York of one million dollars annually. The company is capitalized at one million five hundred thousand dollars. The sales are conducted along the same lines as the fruit auction sales. They will continue at Gansevoort market until such time as there shall be completed in the Lackawanna railroad yards, Hoboken, a large sales market, where the great bulk of the live poultry is now received. Then the sales will take place in the new quarters. The total live poultry business in this section now amounts to sixteen million dollars annually. As a result of the establishment of the auction sales, it is said there will be a saving of three hundred and twenty thousand dollars alone on commissions, as well as the difference in cartage.

Government investigations on the Bald Hills, Tasmania, have proved beyond doubt the existence of osmiridium metal in situ in the serpentine rock, and samples have assayed fiftynine ounces to the ton.

The cotton crop of 1912 in Uganda, British East Africa, was thirty-one thousand bales, and that of 1913, twenty-two thousand bales. The estimated crop for 1914 is fifty-five thousand bales.

At the national dairy show, held in Chicago, the Massachusetts Agricultural College has been awarded the gold medal for the best certified milk, in competition with the whole United States. Washington State College was second.

A call has been issued by Postmaster-General Burleson for bids for two million two hundred thousand pounds of twine with which to tie up letters.

It is estimated that the profits to the government from the operation of the new parcelpost system during the calendar year 1913 will be about thirty million dollars.

The United States mints in the fiscal year ended June 30, 1913, turned out 186,626,871 coins, having a face value of $37,496,530.