Sixteen thousand union carpenters in Chicago, striking for an increase of five cents an hour, were under the ban of a lockout order by their former employers a few days ago. Painters, lathers, plasterers, and sheet-metal workers found themselves in similar circumstances, and enough allied trades were affected to bring the total of idle men beyond seventy-five thousand. Contracting painters and decorators have decided to substitute strangers for nine thousand union men who were locked out, because three thousand of their number struck in protest against the antistrike agreement which all members of the Building Constructors Employers' Association were pledged to exact from all building crafts. Work was virtually tied up on building operations valued at thirty millions of dollars. The strike, ordered by union leaders, was declared after a demand for an increase in wages from 65 to 70 cents an hour had been refused by the Building Constructors Employers' Association. The association had offered the men an increase of two and a half cents an hour for the last eighteen months of the three-year agreement. Contractors estimated that the amount of building operations which would be affected by the extended strike will reach a figure close to one hundred million dollars.

In connection with the water-power leasing bill, which was passed by the national House of Representatives during the last session of Congress, but which failed to pass in the Senate, Secretary of the Interior Lane states that the bill will again be introduced immediately upon the convening of Congress, and expresses the hope that it will be speedily passed. As showing the necessity for such legislation to safeguard the public interest, he calls attention to the rumor of consolidation of the Western

Water Power Company in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Washington, and points out that if consummated it will place under a single corporate control about 50 per cent of the developed water power of the western states. Such a consolidation, involving widely separated power plants, interand intra-state transmission lines, and federal questions beyond the scope of state utility commissions, he says, emphasizes the necessity of federal control and regulation in the interest of the people. It is apparent, the secretary says, that if the water-power sites of the West are allowed to pass into private ownership without restriction, it will be practically impossible to regulate or control monopoly in this important resource or to regulate this product in the interest of the consumers.

Up to March 1 the earnings of the Panama canal fell short by $261,098, or 10 per cent, of meeting the expenses of operation and maintenance. During March, however, there was a considerable increase in the number of vessels using the canal, with the result that on April 1 the loss was only about one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, or 4 per cent. These figures cover the nine months the canal has been in operation. From July 1, 1914, to March 1, 1915, eight months, the total expenditure attributed to operation and maintenance was $2,595,613.33. The total earnings during the same period were $2,334,515.24.

The operation and maintenance items, as figured in the official accounts, include all the expenditures necessary to keep the canal open and in order, and the work of handling vessels through; and to such expenditures have been added a prorated part of the expenses of the civil government, of the sanitary work, and of general administration. These three latter items have amounted to $574,570.82 during the nine-month period.

The annual inquiry of the Canadian government as to the stocks of grain and other crops remaining in the hands of farmers on March 31, and the proportion of the harvested crops which turned out to be of merchantable quality, shows that of the total estimated yield of wheat last year, 12 per cent, or 20,247,000 bushels, remained in the hands of the farmers. At the rate of one and three quarters bushels an acre for seeding, this quantity will allow the sowing of about 11,570,000 acres this spring, or 1,522,000 acres more than were sown last year. This estimate is independent of the quantities stored in elevators, a portion of which is likely to be returned for seeding purposes. The quantity of wheat remaining this year in the hands of farmers is smaller than in any previous year on record. Last year it was 38,353,000 bushels, in 1913 it was 50,234,000, and in 1912 it was 62,188,000. Out of last year's wheat crop of 161,280,000 bushels, 150,793,000 bushels was of merchantable quality.

Three hundred and twenty miles of shadetrees on a highway circuit, starting and ending in Boston and passing through fifty-seven towns and cities of Massachusetts, is the aim of a movement to be launched by the Massachusetts Forestry Association at a conference in Worcester May 8. Much of the distance is already improved state roads or city streets, and sections of the roadsides are already planted with shade-trees. The association aims to connect these sections by planting trees in the intervening distances. At the conference will be delegates from the fifty-five cities and towns, city and tree wardens, representatives of local women's clubs, boards of trade, and granges.

Complete preliminary estimates from all internal revenue collection districts, received at the treasury department, indicate that the individual and corporation income tax this year will not only come up to the original estimates of eighty million dollars, but probably will ex ceed that sum. It is understood that the year will show more individual taxables than last year, when about three hundred and fifty-seven thousand persons paid. Secretary McAdoo and Commissioner of Internal Revenue Osborn have made it clear that they propose this year to pursue all persons suspected of tax dodging, and this is believed to have had an effect.

Following its policy of completing as rapidly as possible the trunk routes of state highway that are most used by road travelers, the highway commission of Massachusetts has recently let a number of contracts, which when finished, will add several more all-macadam main routes to those which are already available. The regular appropriations amount to $2,150,000, which with the special appropriation of $2,000,000 and the $500,000 from the counties, if the western roads bill goes through, will make available a total of $4,650,000 to be used on the roads this year, the larger part of it being for construction work.

Massachusetts farmers won a distinct victory when the House passed to be engrossed the bill authorizing the incorporation of farm land banks in the commonweath. It provides that ten or more persons resident in the state who have associated themselves by a written agreement with the intention of forming a farm land bank for the purpose of promoting rural mortgage credit, may, with the consent of the board of bank incorporation, become a corporation upon complying with all the provisions of the proposed act.

The Illinois legislature is considering linking Chicago with the Mississippi river by means of an eight-foot channel utilizing the Illinois river and the old Illinois and Michigan canal. If favorable action is taken, barges with a capacity of from seven hundred and fifty to one thousand tons will be able to load on the Chicago water-front and transship at New Orleans to any points desired. Engineers estimate the cost of the connecting link between Chicago and Utica at $3,075,000, mostly for dams and locks.

Within a short time the railroads entering Indianapolis, Ind., expect to have a large number of men at work on the track elevation project. The plan is to raise the tracks of the steam lines, to convert a natural watercourse into a cement-cased drain, and to enlarge the passenger train sheds. The whole plan, as entered into by the city and the various transportation companies, involves the expenditure of seven million dollars, and cannot be completed under three or four years.

In 1913, it appears, two hundred and seventy-five million dollars was paid by the general public in the United States for admission to motion-picture houses throughout the country. In the same year twenty-five million dollars was paid for rental of films. More than one hundred and twenty million dollars is invested in motion-picture theaters United States, and eleven million persons visit those places daily.

The canalization of the Magdalena river and the Loba and Mompos branches, in Colombia, is to be undertaken, and two engineers of known reputation are to be engaged for that purpose.

The third annual conference of the American Association of Agricultural College Editors will be held at the University of Wisconsin on Thursday and Friday, June 24 and 25.

Motoring will be permitted in Yellowstone national park, beginning Aug. 1, thus opening the last of the great government reserves to automobiles.

The coinage of two million dollars in silver of the denomination of one peso has been decreed by the government of Colombia.