The burden of work carried by the United States post-office is enormous, and it is made vastly more onerous by reason of carelessness on the part of the public in sending improperly directed letters and packages. In Chicago, for instance, a recent count showed that out of 465,750 pieces of first-class .mail received on one day, no fewer than 204,930, or 44 per cent, were insufficiently or improperly directed. Postmaster-General Burleson asks the co-operation of all well-disposed citizens, especially at this time when the holidays are approaching, in saving the post-office from this unnecessary work.

The Young Women's Christian Associations of the country have started a useful movement in appointing a Commission on Thrift and Efficiency. Its report contains valuable suggestions for a Nation-wide programme for promoting better standards of personal efficiency among women. One of the Commission's first achievements is a personal account book which is said to have met with "a wonderful welcome from the girl in the student, the business, and the industrial world."

The Japanese steamship company, the Osaka Shosen Kaisha, will, it is reported, inaugurate a service around the world via New York after the opening of the Panama Canal. The first vessels for the new service are now building at Kobe, Japan.

"What are the ten greatest inventions of our time?" The "Scientific American offered a prize for the best answer. The winner named

these: The electric furnace, the steam turbine, the automobile, moving pictures, wireless telegraphy, the aeroplane, the cyanide process, the linotype machine, the induction motor, and electric welding. X rays, radium, color photography, the Diesel engine, the telephone, and the phonograph, it will be noticed, are omitted.

New Guinea is one of the few countries that still present untrodden fields for the explorer. The difficulties of traveling in the interior of this great island have prompted a German traveler, Lieutenant Graetz, to project the exploration of the island by means of an air-ship. This will enable the explorers to pass without difficulty over rivers, mountains, and jungles which would be traversed only with great toil by ordinary travelers.

"Madame Simone," says the theatrical manager William A. Brady," comments on our weakness for the happy ending.' That is a concession to the public, which time and again has expressed its disfavor at the more artistic' unhappy ending.' ." The" Dramatic Mirror," commenting on this statement, says that the most successful plays have been those with an un

happy ending. It mentions among these "Uncle Tom's Cabin,' ""Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet," "The Darling of the Gods,' ,""East Lynne," and others.

Wooden pails are being displaced by steel receptacles, says the "American Machinist." For the paint trade alone one plant turns out every year 4,000,000 steel pails to hold white lead. All the operations in making these pails are performed by ingenious machinery.

Canada, according to "Shipping Illustrated," has not been enthusiastic in sending recruits to the British navy. The navies of the world, it says, have always recognized the coast fisheries as the cradle of their best men. But the pay in the British navy is meager compared with what the men can earn at home, and, more important still to the independent fishermen, "the retribution which follows upon 'jawing' a superior officer is intolerable to men accustomed to dispute orders with which they do not agree."

The famous Pont du Gard, a Roman bridge at Nîmes, France, is menaced with destruction. It is not owned, it seems, by the public, as it ought to be, but by a private citizen who says he cannot afford to pay for its upkeep; he calls on the Government for assistance, and if this is not forthcoming he threatens to sell the bridge to some wealthy American who may bring it to this country!

An unfortunate known as "the man who can't laugh" recently got a verdict of $25,000 from his former employers. He was thrown 140 feet down an elevator shaft, broke the second cervical vertebra, and has since lived in a steel corset with a head guard which prevents him from moving his head even a fraction of an inch. The slightest twist of his neck might break the spinal cord and kill him. A laugh or a sneeze would probably do this, hence the appellation quoted above.

One half of the world is trying to get its name into the newspapers and the other half is trying to keep its name out of them. In the latter class must be included, as a "headliner," the person who has just given $250,000 to Columbia University, New York City. Not even the trustees of the University, it is said, know the name of the giver.

Among the many definitions of genius, that of Thomas A. Edison has the virtue of brevity, not to say wit: "Genius is two per cent inspiration and ninety-eight per cent perspiration."

"Of all the industries, the railroads, which are second only to agriculture in magnitude and second to none in the range of requirements for trained men," says the "Railway Age Gazette," "obtain the least benefit from the colleges and universities of the country." The "Gazette "

quotes Dr. Humphreys, President of Stevens Institute of Technology, as recommending special apprenticeship courses for engineering graduates as a way to remedy the difficulty.

Rhode Island farmers have established a cooperative market in Providence. They bought four acres of land in a suitable locality, paying about $63,000 for the tract; and have provided a much better market than the old one under the management of the city. Retail dealers' prices are said to have become much more reasonable since the farmers started their own market.

Dr. William S. Rainsford, former rector of St. George's Church, New York City, was the guest of honor at the recent celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of St. George's Club, of which he was the founder. One of its most prominent members was the late J. P. Morgan, who built a memorial house for the club.

The manufacturers of typesetting machines, says the "American Printer," have been hard hit by the new tariff, such machines being now on the free list, though heretofore protected by a duty of thirty per cent. No foreign machines of this sort, however, are now in use in the United States; but representatives of foreign firms that deal in such machinery have recently been looking over the field with a view to entering our market. Perhaps they will decide to lower the cost of living for the printers of the country.

Summarizing the difference between Western and Oriental ideas in art, Laurence Binyon says in the "Atlantic:" "Our eyes are led to a central object [in Western design], which holds the design together, as a keystone holds an arch. But in the typical Chinese or Japanese painting there is no one central or dominant object; it is the relation between the several objects that makes the unity of the design. The art of the West has been like a fire choked with the fuel which we have heaped on it so eagerly. In the art of the East the flame has burned far clearer and purer."

German housewives, according to a magazine writer, are as complaisant in giving their unreliable servants good references as are American women. But some of them have discovered a way out of the conventional deception. They put their telephone number beneath the name and address which garnish a too flattering "character "-and the mistress who is aware of the purport of the signal does not engage the unsatisfactory maid.

S. S. McClure, in his autobiography now being published in "McClure's," says that it was only by a narrow chance that he escaped being a professional tramp. The tramp's life was so attractive to him when he was attending school at Valparaiso, Indiana, that he ran away,

not once or twice, but dozens and dozens of times." One stronger impulse he had, however the determination to get an education. This always brought him back after his fit of Wanderlust.

Denver is to have a fine new union railway station, to cost two million dollars. Spokane is spending seven millions on freight and passenger terminals. The Western cities that are without palatial railway facilities will soon be uncomfortably conspicuous.

Copenhagen is the most law-abiding city in the world, according to statistics concerning homicide. In the year 1910, among its population of 554,400, there was but one murder. This was at the rate of 0.18 to 100,000 population. The rate of homicides per 100,000 in Paris in the same year was 3.6; in New York, 6.9; in Chicago, 9.2.

Philadelphia waiters must receive high tips if the statement of one of them was intended to appear plausible. He was trying to dispose of a $50 gold piece which had belonged to a collection of extremely rare coins. On being arrested for complicity in stealing the collection, the waiter asserted that the coin had been given to him as a tip by a guest at the hotel where he worked! Even New York's fashionable restaurants seem to be outclassed in this waiter's experience.

The new 1,000-foot piers for New York City have been started. They are to be at the foot of West Forty-fourth, Forty-fifth, and Fortysixth Streets. Each pier will cost about

$3,000,000.

New records for upper air research have been made by the Government in experiments at Catalina Island, California. A number of balloons, each equipped with instruments, were sent up, and one of them reached a height of twenty miles. At eleven miles the thermometers recorded a temperature of 85 degrees below zero; at twenty miles, strange to say, the temperature was slightly higher-48 degrees below.

An extensive housing scheme on the part of London's city government is reported. Ten thousand houses for laborers are to be built, according to a statement by President Runciman, of the Board of Education. The sum of $7,500,000 is to be expended in this project for better conditions for those who most need them.

In a symposium on the comparative cost of living in country and city one man writes to a daily paper: "I have lived in both city and country and find that it costs all you have, can earn, borrow, beg, or, if fortunately situated, steal, to live in either." The frank naïveté oi this humorist seems incompatible with the guile that he would have us believe he possesses.

OF TRUSTS

In all probability the most important and difficult subject to come before the session of Congress which meets THE REGULATION in December will be the right way to deal with corporations guilty of unfair and injurious practices and with monopolies which are such in a wrongful sense. Mr. Victor Murdock, the Progressive leader, has introduced in the lower house three bills, known popularly as the "Trust Triplets," in allusion to Mr. Wilson's "Seven Sisters," the anti-trust bills enacted in New Jersey. Senator Newlands, for the Democrats, has also prepared a bill. It is proposed here to outline the more important features of these bills, reserving for the present any editorial comment.

The first of. Mr. Murdock's three bills creates an Inter-State Trade Commission; the second defines and prohibits unfair competition; the third deals with monopolies. The Inter-State Trade Commission would have seven members, six to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, the seventh to be the man who should, at the time of the bills' passage, be Commissioner of Corporations-the Bureau of Corporations would go out of existence. As the terms of office expire once every year after the first year, in time all of the members will be appointed by the President, and all are removable by the President for cause.

The Commission has ample powers to require information from all corporations as to their books and business; to make public all cases of over-capitalization, unfair competition, misrepresentation, or oppressive use of credit; to make and enforce regulations to carry out the provisions of the Act; to compel attendance of witnesses and production of documentary evidence; to employ agents and examiners of its own; and to punish neglect or failure to comply with its orders. Perhaps the most important point in this first bill, and one which is sure to

arouse opposition, is its statement of what corporations are to be subject to the Commission's jurisdiction. They must, of course, be engaged in inter-State or foreign commerce (otherwise a Federal law would not apply), and must not be corporations subject to the Inter-State Commerce Commission. But the special and important restriction is that a corporation must have "annual gross receipts exceeding three million dollars from business within the United States," to bring it under the law.

WHAT IS UNFAIR COMPETITION?

The second of Mr. Murdock's bills empowers the Inter-State Trade Commission to deal by its own order, or by a prohibition or injunction obtained through the United States district courts, with any corporation within its jurisdiction guilty of unfair or oppressive competition. Briefly, such acts as defined by the bill include: Taking special rates from common carriers not granted to others; discriminating in selling prices between localities or individuals, except as justified by cost of distribution; bribery to get competitors' secrets, or any bribing of competitors' employees; making oppressive or exclusive contracts for sales where the seller has a substantial monopoly; maintaining secret subsidiaries or agencies for unfair trade purposes; and destroying competition through interlocking directories.

defined as being "whenever such corporation or association, not being subject to the obligation of public service in the given industry in question, exercises control over a sufficient portion of such industry or over sufficient factors therein to determine the price policy in that industry, either as to raw materials or finished or partly finished products."

A natural monopoly is defined as resting on one of the following natural bases: control of natural resources; control of terminal or transportation facilities; control of financial resources; any other economic condition inherent in the character of the industry, including, among such conditions, patent rights. When the corporation is a natural monopoly, the Commission for good reasons may by its own order terminate "such monopolistic power, while at the same time safeguarding property rights and business efficiency." When the corporation refuses or neglects to obey such an order from the Commission, the latter may ask a United States district court to appoint over the corporation one or more supervisors who would have practically the same powers that a receiver has over a bankrupt firm. The supervisor would report, not to the court, but to the Commission, and, in the long run, the corporation must purge itself of its faults or wrong organization.

An artificial monopoly is one created by "artificial bases "-that is, by the corporations doing the things included in the definition given in the second of the three bills of what constitutes unfair and oppressive competition. And the Commission would act in case of wrongful artificial monopolies as provided in the second bill and outlined in our summary thereof.

THE NEWLANDS BILL

The bill. introduced by Senator Newlands creates an Inter-State Trade Commission of three members, only two of whom may belong to the same political party; they are to be appointed by the President, and to take over the records and duties of the present Bureau of Corporations. Like the Murdock bills, it gives ample authority for investigation of corporations, hearing of evidence, and ordering the production of books and papers. But the Commission would have far less power of action than under the proposal of Mr. Murdock. It would make reports to Congress and could

recommend legislation. It could not dissolve or regulate a corporation directly, or through the courts; but when a court, of its own instance and without the intervention of the Commission, shall issue a decree against a corporation, because it had violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Law or other regulative acts, then that court may, "in its discretion," refer the decree to the Commission with instruction to take evidence and report to the court what it thinks the right method of dissolution or reorganization. The Commission may also, of its own initiative, inquire whether a corporation has violated the Sherman AntiTrust Law, may instruct the corporation as to what it should do to comply with the law, and if its instructions are not followed may report the non-compliance to the AttorneyGeneral, so that he may act as he sees fit. The general criticism on the Newlands Bill is expressed by the popular phrase, “It has no teeth."

thousand railway workers on the Sunset division of the Southern Pacific Railroad went out on strike, and the situation was threatening in the extreme, both for the public peace and for the enormous traffic involved. The division extends from New Orleans to El Paso, and enormous loss to sugar and cotton planters, whose crops must be moved, was involved. The difficulties had been argued back and forth for months without result, and attempts to arbitrate had failed. It is said that a thousand strikebreakers were in New Orleans ready to take strikers' places, and violence on a small scale began immediately.

As we pointed out last week in recording the peaceful settlement of the dispute between the Eastern railway companies and their trainmen, there is now no excuse for a railway strike on a large scale. The revised Erdman Law, as supplemented by the Newlands Act, offers such fair and practical methods for arbitration that either party to such a controversy which refuses to arbitrate must almost certainly incur public censure if public inconvenience and money loss follow. Happily this truth was realized before the Sunset line strike was a day old. The railway yielded to the request of the workmen for

a conference between the officials of the road and a joint committee of the four unions. This conference will consider the demands, which seem to be less for higher pay than for the removal of alleged grievances in methods of work and the treatment of employees. If agreement by the conference fails in whole or in part, any points unsettled will be referred to the Board of Mediation and Consideration provided for under the Newlands Act, and thus the principle of Federal arbitration will be applied.

Every time a great railway war is thus avoided the old hateful idea of industrial war yields way to the peaceful and economic method of fair play and mutual concession.

threatened with industrial war.

Readers of The Outlook will remember that during the progress of the recent Paterson strike the authorities of that city attracted to themselves no little notoriety because of the manner in which they handled the admittedly difficult situation that confronted them. Believing that the Industrial Workers of the World, the organization responsible for the conduct of the strike, must be defeated at all costs, they fought its revolutionary ideas and ideals by lawless practices, apparently with little realization of the fact that the best defense the law can have is its proper use. One instance that showed the spirit in which the strikers were handled was the arrest and conviction of Haywood, Tresca, and Lessig for

disorderly conduct." These three men, who had incurred the hostility of the Paterson police more by reason of their prominence as labor leaders than by any overt acts, were walking along the streets of the city followed by a large crowd of strikers when their arrest occurred: They were sentenced to six months in jail by Recorder Carroll, of the Passaic County Court. An appeal was taken in the case of Haywood. It was in setting aside his sentence that Justice Bergen, of the New Jersey Supreme Court, rendered the opinion to which we have referred.

The Act under which Haywood was convicted, he said, "declares that persons who shall loiter or assemble on the streets or public places of any city, being under the

influence of intoxicating liquor, or who, not being under such influence, shall indulge in or utter aloud indecent language, or shall address or make audible offensive remarks or comment upon any person passing along such streets or public places, or shall obstruct or interfere with any person or persons lawfully being upon such streets or public places, shall be deemed . . . to be a disorderly person. This conviction by its terms is restricted to the latter paragraph of the section, and therefore to sustain this conviction there must be some evidence that this defendant did obstruct or interfere with persons lawfully upon a public street.

"A very careful examination of the evidence in this case fails to disclose anything which would justify this conviction. . . . All that the evidence shows is that this defendant was walking on the sidewalk of one of the streets of Paterson, and that following him was a large crowd, marching on the sidewalk five or six abreast. There is not a particle of testimony showing that this defendant obstructed or interfered with any person or persons. .. Why the crowd followed him is not made to appear, and the mere fact that he or any number of persons were walking upon the sidewalk, no other fact appearing, would not render him liable to the charge of obstructing or interfering with persons on the street. . . . If it can be said that whenever a person who is walking along a public highway, quietly and peaceably, shall be followed by a crowd, that he may be adjudged to be a disorderly person upon the ground that he is obstructing or interfering with other persons upon such street, then almost every person having something more than a local reputation sufficient to arouse the curiosity of the public would be liable to be apprehended as a disorderly person.

"No such construction has ever been given to this law, and, in my judgment, never should. This conviction has not the slightest evidence to support the judgment that this defendant was at the time complained of a disorderly person."