quadrilateral board of advisers, and the oldtime clashes and conflicts will necessarily disappear. An efficient organization of the Navy Department will not be liked by some of the bureaucrats, who will have to take their proper places, nor will it wholly please one or two well-known Senators, who have long imagined themselves the real rulers of Uncle Sam's navy,-more or less in the interest of certain small navy yards and local industries. But Secretary Meyer is so thoroughly right that his reforms will have general public approval; and it is not to be believed that Congress will obstruct improvements for which we have waited so long. Our Ambassadors. The announcement was made last month that Ambassador Reid would remain at London for a year or two longer, that Mr. Hill would remain indefinitely as Ambassador at Berlin, that Mr. Richard C. Kerens, of St. Louis, would be sent to Vienna, and that the Hon. Robert Bacon, recently First Assistant Secretary of State, would succeed Mr. Henry White as our Ambassador to France. We have elsewhere spoken of the selection of an Illinois lawyer, Mr. Calhoun, as Minister to China. Mr. Henry Lane Wilson is to be transferred from Brussels to become Ambassador to Mexico. The Banner Year for Farmers In the annual report of Secretary Wilson of the Department of Agricuture the value of our farm crops for the year 1909 is given as $8,760,000,000, an increase of $869,000,000 over 1908. This means a total value of agricultural products very much the largest in the history of the country. Only eleven years ago the aggregate worth of these farm crops was just about half the figure for 1909. Corn is the chief contributor to the total, furnishing a value of $1,720,000,000. The year's cotton crop was worth $850,000,000; wheat, $725,000,000; hay, $665,000,000; oats, $400,000,000; potatoes, $212,000,000, and tobacco, $100,000,000. Secretary Wilson does not agree with Mr. J. J. Hill that the productivity of the soils of the country is decreasing. His report shows a tendency toward an increase for the last forty years in the average yields to the acre. It is true, however, that this does not preclude the possibility of a real decline in fertility, which may have been turned into increased productivity by a larger use of fertilizers, and more intensive methods of farming. It is easy to understand how the natural fertility of our soils may be decreasing; as a single instance, the sewage of half the population of the State of New York is wasted by being carried out to sea; this cannot but be dead loss to the soil year by year. Wheat Mr. Hill's most impressive warnYield ing as to the agricultural future too small has been in the matter of the wheat yield in proportion to population. It seems to be true that, while the wheat yields of Europe, Canada, and Australia are increasing faster than their populations, the crops of the United States and Argentina have increased in the past quarter century only 60 per cent., while the population has grown 68 per cent. Mr. Hill points out that this poor showing is due to our small yield of wheat per acre, as compared with other countries. With France's wheat yield, showing twenty bushels to the acre, Austria-Hungary's eighteen, Germany's twenty-eight, and Great Britain's thirty-two, the United States grows only fourteen bushels to the acre. Even Canada, with no more careful or intensive farming than is practiced on our own wheat farms, averages more than twenty bushels to the acre. But this is due to the recent exploitation of great areas of virgin soil. Prosperity Here and The National Association of Manufacturers has published the results of a symposium of 3000 members on the actual conditions of trade in America to-day and the prospects for the future. In the basic industry of iron and steel the percentage of excellent business is reported as 93, with a 100 percentage of excellence in future prospects. An average increase of prosperity since 1908 of no less than 57 per cent. is indicated in iron and steel. The most prosperous of all branches of trade now is in agricultural implements, with 100 per cent. in both present and future business, and a rebound from 1908 of 31 per cent. The least flourishing department of business is that of food products, with 87 per cent. of present prosperity; 78 per cent. of future excellence, and a recovery from 1908 of only 22 per cent. The figures for food products are affected, of course, by the peculiar conditions affecting the brewers at present, resulting from the prohibition movement. The most lively recovery from the depression of 1908 enjoyed by any single industry has been made in the vehicle trade, which comes to the front with an increase of 62 per cent. The sudden vast expansion in the demand for automobiles largely explains this. Labor Railroads The middle of December saw Troubles for the end of the strike of the switchmen on the Northwestern railroads, which had seriously tied up traffic. for two weeks, and had forced the closing down of mines, smelters, and flour mills in Minnesota and Montana. The trouble ended in the quiet return of the employees to work without having secured the concessions they demanded. At the same time the Eastern roads are confronted with the prospect of demands to be made upon them in January by their firemen, conductors, and trainmen, who will demand an increase of from 10 to 30 per cent. in wages, and a number of concessions affecting the conditions of labor, the latter too complicated for the layman's ready understanding. Thirtytwo railroads east of Chicago are affected. The officers of the roads contend that while traffic has undoubtedly come back to their lines in the large volume of 1907, it is also true that wages were raised in 1906 and 1907, and that they were not reduced in the years of depression. They say flatly that the coming demands cannot be satisfied without a horizontal increase in freight rates. The employees base their demands on the in Copyright, 1909, by Paul Thompson, New York President Vai! Chief Counsel Meany OFFICERS OF THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY, THE BELL" COMBINATION WHICH RECENTLY PURCHASED CONTROL OF THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH creased cost of living, a fact as undeniable as it is portentous, and on the higher wages paid to Western trainmen. As to the last, the railroads reply that while it is true that higher wages are paid in the West, it is also true that freight rates are higher in the West in a greater proportion than wages. The news, on December 18, that the Pennsylvania Railroad had come to an amicable settlement with its locomotive engineers is a good augur that these differences may be adjusted without the waste and suffering of a strike, which, in the case of the anthracite dent of the American "Tel. & Tel." Com- resources of banks of all classes,―national pany, which owns the Bell patents, and which banks, State banks, savings banks, and loan through its recent purchase of control of the and trust companies, of $21,100,000,000. Western Union Telegraph will have an op- Of this huge sum, no less than $4,614,000,portunity to send both kinds of messages ooo consists of investments in bonds; railover the same wire, and demonstrate econo- road bonds alone account for $1,560,000,mies and better service to the public at the ooo and public utility bonds for $466,000,same price. Further discussion of this sub- 000, while the holdings of State, county, and ject will be found on pages 116 and 117. A city bonds amount to over a billion dollars. week later, December 17th, the control of The total assets represented by commercial. eight large "independent" telephone com- paper are considerably less than the bond panies passed to J. P. Morgan & Co., bank- holdings. This condition reinforces the criters, for the Bell interests. Thus a system icism of those who believe that our banks embracing 101,500 telephones and 40,000 have come to be, in too great degree, investmiles of long distance lines in Ohio, Indiana, ment concerns, rather than effective aids to and Michigan, previously the stronghold of trade activity, and that their operations the independents, will probably become as- might profitably be less bound up in Wall similated with the "Bell" lines in that terri- Street and directed more to the accommodatory, and ultimately have connections with tion of commercial borrowers. In the disthe entire 12,300,000-mile system, although astrous time of 1907 every dollar of comit is announced that there will be no new mercial paper was paid at maturity at par, general holding company. and the chief advantage of the investment securities, namely, their marketability,practically disappeared at the very juncture when this quality was most needed. In the Monetary Commission's interesting classification of the country's banking resources, it appears that the Middle Eastern States lead in per capita resources, with $450.19 per unit of population; the New England States come next with $433.60; the Pacific States third, with $347.78; the Middle Western, $190.64; the Far Western, $161.35, and the Southern States last, with $71.19 per capita. New York leads all the States, with $676.07; Massachusetts next, with $517.25, and Arkansas shows the smallest, $41.14 per capita. Mr. Morgan Equitable A striking incident in the finanControls the cial happenings of last month was the purchase by Mr. J. P. Morgan of the stock control of the Equitable Life Assurance Association. It will be remembered that in 1905 this control was purchased from Mr. James Hazen Hyde by Mr. Thomas F. Ryan after internal dissensions in the company had led to a very serious rupture, and that the shares were turned over by Mr. Ryan to a voting trust, the members of which were Ex-President Grover Cleveland, Justice Morgan J. O'Brien, and Mr. George Westinghouse. The stock that has come to Mr. Morgan is of insignificant amount in figures, but as giving the control of an institution with assets of nearly a halfbillion dollars, it is of decided importance. Much interest has been taken in Mr. Morgan's action and its motives. Superintendent Hotchkiss, of the New York State Insurance Department, has made personal inquiry as to Mr. Morgan's intentions, and reports that the financier's sole purpose was to prevent such distribution of the stock, after the expiration of the present voting trust, as would lead to detrimental consequences to the policyholders. Women's Laws Laws limiting the hours of factory labor for women have been on the statute books of some of cur States for more than a third of a century, but not until 1908 was the federal Supreme Court called upon to decide on the constitutionality of such enactments. At that time. in what was known as the Oregon case the court unanimously held that a State Legislature might pass a law prohibiting more than ten hours' work in one day for women in tactories and laundries. In June last the Illinois Legislature enacted a law identical in terms with the Oregon statute. A firm of paper box manufacturers obtained an injunction restraining the State Factory Inspector from enforcing the law on the ground that it interfered with women's freedom, prevented them from earning a living, and interrupted business. The Illinois Manufacturers' Association indorsed these contentions. Meanwhile the friends of the new law were not idle; they had the co-operation of the Woman's Trade Union League and the National Consumers' League, and Mr. Louis D. Brandeis, of Boston, the lawyer who had argued the Oregon case before the United States Supreme Court, volunteered his services as special counsel for the Illinois officials who had been enjoined from enforcing the ten-hour law. The Russell Sage Foundation supplied funds for the compiling of data on the subject of womer. workers' hours throughout the world. This work was done under the direction of Miss Josephine Goldmark, publication secretary of the Consumers' League. The material thus compiled has now been digested and arranged in the form of a brief and argument before the Illinois Supreme Court for the appellants in the injunction case. The most remarkable feature of this brief is the array of medical testimony that it cites in regard to the effect of long working hours on the health and general well-being of women. This testimony points unerringly to the necessity of restricting the hours of women's labor on purely physiological grounds, not to speak of the moral and economic aspects of the question. Panama The report of the Isthmian Canal Commission, recently issued, Progress serves to remind us of the great engineering work going on down in the Canal Zone under the direction of the United States. During the year beginning July 1, 1908, a complete reorganization of Copyright, 1909, by Harris & Ewing the work was begun and gradually extended SENATOR MONEY, OF MISSISSIPPI that nearly 50 per cent. more work will be required for the completion of the canal than was at first contemplated, while there has also been a rise of about 20 per cent. in the prices of labor and material. throughout all departments. The purpose of (The new leader of the Democrats on the Senate floor) this change was to concentrate authority, expedite the transaction of business, secure the later and more detailed estimates show better co-ordination, more definitely fix responsibility, and reduce cost of administration. The designs for the upper locks at Gatun and Pedro Miguel have been finished, and the work of excavation has gone steadily on in all divisions, although in the Culebra Cut some difficulties have been encountered The work to be done by Congress by reason of excessive rainfall. Health conthis winter had not been defiditions among the workers on the canal have nitely presented to the public improved. Not a single case of yellow fever when, after nearly three weeks of the long or plague occurred on the Isthmus during the session, adjournment was taken until early year. The schools maintained by the Gov- in January. The Democrats mean to fight ernment in the Canal Zone have also been for success in the November elections, and reorganized and systematized. The cost of will have that object somewhat in view in the canal will necessarily reach a considerably their Congressional positions during the comhigher figure than originally estimated, as ing four or five months. Congress Pians |