No. 94.

As the originator of Yeast or BAKING POWDERS in 1849, I was for many years the largest manufacturer of this class of goods until, through the competition from cheap and adulterated articles, the alternative presented itself of either offering a similar quality of goods or abandoning the field. I chose the latter, and for years I have been out of the market; but now, through a revulsion of public sentiment against adulterated goods, I am enabled to offer a new powder, which I have been experimenting with and perfecting during the interim.

I recommend this powder as absolutely

pure-it contains neither alum, lime, or other injurious substances, and is unexcelled by any in the market.

The illustrations in this advertisement are reduced reproductions of beautiful artists' proof etchings. Upon receipt of six cents in stamps to pay for postage, I will send one of these etchings FREE. The other can be obtained by sending 25 Best Soap wrappers, or 10 1776 Soap Powder fronts, or the coupons found in the cans of our Best Baking Powder. The regular size is 14x28 inches. Be particular to use only the following address, viz.: "Dept. H.," P.O. Box 2917, New York City. BE WISE!

Volume 54

HE plan started in the West for the organization of a commercial, non-partisan, nonpolitical commission to frame some permanent currency scheme for the future has taken definite form. A well-attended preliminary conference was held December 1 at Indianapolis under the auspices of the local Board of Trade. It represented the commercial organization of a number of cities in the interior or Middle West. It provided for calling a general conference of commercial bodies at Indianapolis on January 12 on a basis of representation providing for one delegate from cities of eight to ten thousand, twenty delegates for cities of one million or over, and proportionate representation. for cities of intermediate size. These delegates, as we understand it, are to be chosen by the commercial organizations, such as the Boards of Trade or Chambers of Commerce, of the respective cities. The assembly will consist of upwards of twelve hundred delegates-too large a body, it will be seen, for real deliberation. The purpose is, however, to have this assembly constitute a commission which will deliberate and give to the country the results of its deliberation, and bring public sentiment to bear upon Congress for carrying those results into effect. It is also to be expected that the deliberations of the assembly will determine for the commission its objective point. The fundamental question is very well put in the call for the preliminary conference: "The time has now arrived when the Government must either discontinue the banking business, with its expensive and complicated system, or go into it on a broader, better-defined, and more comprehensive scale."

What is banking business? This is one of the questions which the country has to decide. The Comptroller of the Currency, James H. Eckels, in the current " North American. Review," indicates very clearly one conception of the banking business which Government should discontinue: "The proper business of the Government is not to issue instruments of credit and circulate the same as money. Its fiscal duties lie in the direction of collecting and disbursing revenues, and whenever it undertakes to deal in evidence of debt, as a bank does, it inflicts loss upon the citizen both in his capacity as a taxpayer and as a business man." This is also evidently the view of President Cleveland, and is incorporated in his message. He who holds this view of the relative function of government and private enterprise in dealing with money will necessarily demand, with Mr. Eckels, "the payment, gradual retirement, and cancellation of the legal tenders, and the authorization of the banks, under governmental supervision, to issue the country's credit currency and redeem the same in gold." This policy, it may be noted in passing, was called for only by the National Democratic party, and received so insignificant a support at the polls that the vote for it might be counted as "scattering." The other view of the distinction

Number 24

between the function of government and of private banks would regard it as the exclusive function of government to issue all currency, whether it be gold, silver, or paper; would consider it as inappropriate to authorize banks to issue the country's credit currency as to authorize banks to issue the country's coin currency; would, in short, make it the exclusive duty of government, not only to coin money, but to issue all paper which passes current in lieu of coin, and would confine the banks to the simple function of holding money as depositories, and of loaning money on proper securities. One or the other of these policies will in the future take the place of the present composite policy, in which no clear distinction between private and public functions is drawn. The tendency of our time is to increase, not to decrease, the functions of government, and, whatever the immediate result may be, in our judgment the people of the United States will not consent to the retirement and cancellation of the legal tenders, nor to any policy which involves conferring upon the private banks greater power over the currency than they now possess. Whatever may be the judgment of expert bankers, the indications are unmistakable that the popular judgment is increasingly in favor of limiting the power of the banks over the currency, and increasing the power of the people over it, through their legal representatives.

The text of the preliminary agreement between Great Britain and the United States for a treaty of arbitration on the Venezuela boundary dispute adds little to the information already before the public. The treaty itself has been submitted to Venezuela, and it is reported that the necessary assent of that country has been obtained. The preliminary agreement describes the constitution of the court-two members to be nominated by the United States Supreme Court, two by the British High Court of Justice, and the fifth by the first four, or by the King of Sweden if the four cannot agree. It then defines the duty of the Tribunal as being to ascertain the extent of the territories belonging to, or that might be lawfully claimed by, the United Netherlands or by the Kingdom of Spain, respectively, at the time of the acquisition by Great Britain of the colony of British Guiana, and to determine the boundary-line between the colony of British Guiana and the republic of Venezuela. Greatest interest attaches to the rules which shall govern the Tribunal, and these we quote in full :

1. Adverse holding or prescription during a period of fifty years shall make good title. The arbitrators may deem exclusive political control of a district, as well as actual settlement thereof, sufficient to constitute adverse holding or to make title by prescription.

2. The arbitrators may recognize and give effect to rights and claims resting upon any other ground whatever, valid according to existing international law, and on any principle of international law which the arbitrators may deem to be applicable to the case and are not in contravention to the foregoing rules.

3. In determining the boundary-line, if the territory of one party be found by the Tribunal to have been in the occupation of the subjects or citizens of the other party, such effect shall be given to such occu

pation as reason, justice, the principles of international law, and the equities of the case shall in the opinion of the Tribunal require. These rules have been, it is said, made clearer and fuller in the treaty itself, but not essentially changed. The main difficulty of the Tribunal will be in settling exactly what is meant by "adverse holding or prescription." In general, the powers given the Tribunal are large, and the treaty may be regarded not only as securing the peaceful settlement of the Venezuelan question, but as setting a precedent and preparing the way for a permanent treaty of arbitration between Great Britain and the United States.

Last week President Cleveland issued a proclamation revoking his proclamation in 1888 which relieved German vessels from tonnage dues in our ports. The previous proclamation was made upon proof that no tonnage or lighthouse dues were imposed upon our vessels entering ports of Germany either by the Imperial Government or by the Governments of the German maritime States. The President, therefore, suspended the collection of the whole of the duty of six cents per ton, not to exceed thirty cents per ton, a year, imposed upon vessels entered in our ports from any German ports. It now appears that tonnage or lighthouse dues, or taxes equivalent thereto, are in fact imposed upon our vessels and their cargoes by the maritime States of Germany, higher and other than those imposed upon German vessels or their cargoes entered in our ports, and therefore the proclamation of 1888 is revoked. The new proclamation affects all vessels coming from German. ports, regardless of the nationality of the vessel. Since our present tariff imposed a differential duty on bountypaid beet-sugar, there have been a number of evidences of a retaliatory spirit on the part of the German Government, one being that our cattle have been excluded on the pretext of danger of contagion from Texas fever; another that our hog products have been excluded on the allegation that, though cooked, they might contain trichinæ; and another being the imposition of discriminating and prohibitive duties on our oleo, glucose, and petroleum. When the law providing for reciprocity in the abolition of the tonnage tax was passed, it was believed that all nations would hasten to repeal such charges. The only maritime powers which accepted our invitation were Germany and the Netherlands, and experience shows that the reciprocity with them was such only in name. During the years since that proclamation was made the levying of a tax of six cents a ton by Germany on our vessels would have produced less than $300 per year, but the same tax on vessels from Germany to the United States (the amount which is levied on vessels from all other European countries except Germany and the Netherlands) would have amounted to about $60,000 per year-a large price to pay for the securing of such a small exemption in taxes on American vessels in German ports.

The annual report of the Commissioner of Navigation urges the passage of a free-ship bill. The Commissioner invites attention to the fact that our maritime rank on the Pacific is now threatened by a new rival-namely, Japan. Foreign tonnage has increased in far greater measure than our own on the Pacific, and the large carrying trade once conducted between Asiatic and European ports by our vessels has almost entirely passed away. Our flag has all but disappeared from the mid-Atlantic-save as borne by the American Line steamers. The bill now before Congress, to impose ten per cent. discriminating duties on all cargoes brought here by foreign vessels, is opposed by the Commissioner, who points out that about four-fifths of our

imports last year were brought in foreign vessels, and this bill will put an additional charge of nearly $60,000,000 on our international exchanges, an amount approximately equal to our ocean freight bills on imports and exports. The Commissioner cites the enormous importations of tea and coffee, aggregating in 1895 about $125,000,000, and points out that the proposed tax would be a tax on the consumers of those articles. The tax on coffee alone would subsidize twenty-five steamers equal to the St. Louis or St. Paul. The supporters of the bill, however, declare that the decline of our shipping is entirely attributable to assaults upon the protective system. The law of 1794 afforded protection to our. shipping by means of discriminating duties and tonnage dues, while the first Congress specifically interdicted the owners of foreign ships from registering them as American vessels and sailing them under the American flag. To abrogate this interdiction, the Fithian Free-Ship Bill was introduced in 1894, and the only exception to the rule imposed was the well-known arrangement with the American Line, an arrangement now amplified by the proposal to issue an American register to any foreignbuilt vessel owned by Americans, if the owner will give bond to build in our shipyards a vessel of equal tonnage and value. The first year after 1794 our ships carried two-fifths of our foreign commerce, the second year over half, the third year over two-thirds, the fourth year fourfifths, the fifth year nine-tenths, and the same amount thereafter until the war of 1812. After that war we agreed with Great Britain not to impose differential duties. Shipping declined, but rose in 1855-60 to the carriage of three-quarters of our foreign commerce, thereafter steadily declining. We now carry about eleven per cent. It is averred that we pay $300,000,000 a year to foreign ship-owners in return for carrying our passengers, mails, imports, and exports, and that in the last thirty years we have paid to such ship-owners enough to have settled our National debt more than twice over.

Labor Commissioner Meriwether, of Missouri, has published an invaluable report upon the taxation of street railways in Missouri. The abuses he points out are by no means local, and his report would deserve National attention even if he had not with great care compared the practice in the cities of Missouri with that in other large cities throughout the Nation. Commissioner Meriwether estimates the value of Missouri street-car systems according to the rational method employed by the Inter-State Commerce Commission with reference to the railroads of the country. He assumes that their market value is the sum upon which they yield five per cent. income clear of taxes. When the value of the street railroads is thus estimated, the assessed value of the road stands out in sharp contrast. For example, the Missouri Street Railroad Company has a market value of $4,440,000, yet according to the assessor's figures this company is worth only $622,000. This illustration is by no means an extreme one. In fact, the average assessment of the street railways in St. Louis is but eleven per cent. of their true value. The average assessment of the homes and stores of private citizens is 50.4 per cent. The street railway companies, therefore, which receive from the public peculiar privileges, are not taxed one-fourth as heavily as private citizens who receive no privileges. The value of the public privileges given to these companies is also brought out by the Commissioner in a striking form. The cost of constructing and equipping the 245 miles of track in St. Louis the Commissioner estimates at $8,400,000. This estimate allows half again as much per mile for constructing railroad

along the graded streets as it cost to build the Great Northern from Minnesota across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The Commissioner reasonably claims that the cost of building the street railways cannot have been greater than his estimate. Yet these roads, representing a probable cost of $8,400,000, have a market value of $38,000,000. In other words, the value of the public franchises lent to the companies is nearly $30,000,000. Upon a three per cent. basis, the public should be receiving from these franchises an income of $900,000 a year. It actually does receive but $47,000. Why should the taking of private property for public purposes be so heartily condemned, and such taking of public property for private purposes arouse so little popular indignation?

The investigation in this city into the working of the Raines Law has made more and more striking the fact that the law has become steadily less effective as time has gone on. It was shown, indeed, that the number of arrests for drunkenness in nineteen cities of the State this year has not reached the same total as last, but each month lessens the difference in favor of the new law. All the flaws shown

in the new law are in the clauses relating to "hotel" privileges. The law, it will be recalled, authorizes "hotels" to sell their "guests" liquor with their "meals." The courts have permitted an indefinitely small amount of food to be considered a “meal," and permitted an indefinitely large amount of liquor to be sold with it; they have permitted every one who slipped in from the street and ordered one of these "meals" to be considered a "guest," and they have permitted every saloon which anywhere had ten spaces for beds partitioned off to be considered a "hotel." How grotesque some of these interpretations have been is brought out by Commissioner Roosevelt's description of one of these hotels: "At 33 Bowery," he says, "the rooms are little closets with partitions not going up to the ceiling, but simply boxes put up at the rear of the barroom. It is such a farce that the proprietor has a large sign placarded on the outside of the room which reads Sleeping not allowed.""

Hardly less flagrant is the interpretation placed by the Grand Jury upon the section in the law forbidding hotels to sell on Sunday even to guests "in the barroom or other similar place." "The words quoted from the statute," says the Grand Jury, "are vague and indefinite, and under the principle that all penal statutes must be strictly construed, the Grand Jury has been compelled to find that when liquor was served with meals [on Sunday] in rooms where meals were also served during week-days, such service was not illegal, even though the room was also used as a bar-room." The real difficulty is a public sentiment which corrupts judges and juries and prosecuting attorneys, who seem, in many cases, more anxious to set the law aside than to enforce it. We doubt whether any definitions in a statute can secure just and rational interpretations from the police courts, but we trust that the Legislature will do what can be done in this respect. In Ontario, Canada, the hotels sell on Sunday only to guests and at regular meals, and if similar conditions cannot be secured here it is a disgrace, not only to our legislation, but to the interpretation the courts are permitted to place upon it.

Of the many results of the Tenement-House Committee appointed by Mayor Strong, of New York, of which Mr. R. W. Gilder is chairman, none is more important than the public sentiment created in favor of the demolition of the

rear tenements and the indication of a most legitimate channel for the use of capital afforded by the erection of improved tenements. Improved tenements have been erected in New York in the past, but the purpose of these tenements has been to reduce rents, and there has been an element of philanthropic effort in behalf of the dwellers in these houses which has taken the form of the introduction of kindergartens, sewing-schools, and the like. The direct outcome of the Tenement-House Committee's investigation has been the formation of the City and Suburban Homes Company, with a capital stock of $1,000,000. Through the public spirit and generosity of Mrs. Alfred Corning Clark, of New York, the first model tenement built by this company will be erected on Sixty-eighth and Sixty-ninth Streets, between West End and Amsterdam Avenues. No better location could be found in New York for this model tenement-house property. The locality is not overcrowded. It stands between Central Park and the Riverside Drive, two of New York's most beautiful parks. The people of this immediate vicinity are independent wage-earners. The public schools of the neighborhood are among the best in New York, and churches of all denominations are within

walking distance.

Mrs. Clark has deeded to the company this large block of land at an appraised value, and taken stock in the company at par in exchange, besides which she has purchased stock with cash, which practically makes this whole enterprise an expression of Mrs. Clark's civic pride and humanitarian interest. Among the many advantages of the location selected is, that directly opposite has been in active operation for the past four years the Riverside Association. The building has library facilities, a kindergarten, probably the best bathing facilities in the country, and a large gymnasium. Classes in cooking and sewing are maintained for girls and women, and in manual training for boys, and working-girls' clubs and mothers' clubs, the members of which pay dues. The ground on which the new tenements are to be built was loaned to the Riverside Association by Mrs. Clark as a playground for the children and youths of the neighborhood for two or three years, and it seems natural that the interest in the neighborhood should have eventually led her to this generous expression of her interest in independent wage-earners. The City and Suburban Homes Company is in no sense a charitable organization. organization. It is entirely a business organization. It does not propose to reduce the cost of rent in its buildings below the standard of the tenement-house property in the region where its buildings are located; but it proposes to make a fair return for the rent received in space, light, air, and bathing facilities, protection from fire, and to secure privacy to its tenants. It will also erect small houses in the suburbs-land has been acquired on Long Island-and the wage-earners will pay monthly installments, becoming owners at the expiration of specified periods. The company insures the purchaser's life, thus protecting the family-the house and land, on the death of the purchaser, descending to his heirs.

The capital stock of this company is $1,000,000. Shares are sold at $10 each. The purpose of the company in putting the shares at this low denomination is in order to encourage wage-earners to invest their savings in the stock of this company, which, of course, is organized in the interests of wage-earners only. There is no doubt as to the safety of this investment. That model tenements pay has been proven in this country as well as abroad. Mr.

A. T. White, in Brooklyn, has demonstrated this, and has publicly declared that it is one of the safest investments he ever made; and to him the whole country is indebted for the courage and inventiveness that created the model tenement-houses of Brooklyn. What is needed in New York more than anything else is good homes for the poor. It has been demonstrated that the people living on the East Side pay more per cubic foot for the air-space they occupy than do the people in the large apartment-houses facing on Central Park. This, of course, is due to overcrowding the result of high rents. That tenement-house

property is the best-paying property in the city has been demonstrated many times. There are houses that are paying twenty-two per cent. to their owners. Morally, no estimate can be given of the gain to the citizens of New York in the wiping out of the present type of tenement-house. The dark halls and stairways, the impossibility of privacy, the lack of bathing facilities, the dark bedrooms, all combine to produce disastrous effects, physically and morally, on the rising generation. The moral advantages of light are acknowledged; when to this privacy is added, there is a tremendous gain in the development of character. The awful waste of men and money in philanthropic effort is acknowledged. The whole country is indebted to Mr. R. W. Gilder and his associates for the thorough work done by the Tenement-House Committee, and for the admirable report, which was so freely circulated, and was such a revelation to the mass of people of this country.

A prize-fight of even more than usual brutality took place in San Francisco last week. At the time when it was decided that San Francisco should be the scene of this particular fight, some of the papers of that city rejoiced that sentiment there was not so effeminate and priggish as to forbid such a manly exposition of a noble art. Now the fight is over, we believe that sentiment in San Francisco is all but universal against ever again allowing a disgraceful exhibition of this kind. One of the contestants was knocked senseless by what was charged to be a foul blow; counter charges were made that drugs were used by his own backers to put him in such a state that the doctor's examination would sustain their claim of foul play; the referee was charged with having been bribed, and later was arrested for carrying concealed weapons; the courts were appealed to to decide the bets. Shocking as was the whole affair, the most wretched feature was the presence of many women. It is stated that some of these were "of good social position," but we should need strong evidence to convince us of this. The directors of the National Athletic Club (which, as we understand it, had charge of the affair) say that they will have a law passed at the coming session of the Legislature declaring the sport illegitimate. The East cannot claim superior moral virtue in regard to this matter, for almost all our papers reported it in sickening detail. Simultaneously the "Critic" reports that John L. Sullivan is to have a benefit at the Madison Square Garden, and that one hundred admirers of the manly art will give $1,000 each toward a trust fund for his maintenance !

A correspondent in California questions the statement made editorially in The Outlook of November 14 that "a principal influence" in the defeat of the woman's suffrage amendment in that State "came from the women themselves." Our correspondent is in a position to know the facts, and she furnishes us with figures which certainly seem to indicate that the liquor interests in the State were also a principal source of influence against the extension of

the suffrage to women. Los Angeles and San Diego Counties-the seats of the two leading cities of the State after San Francisco-gave majorities for woman's suffrage of 3,596 and 2,717 respectively. The amendment would have been carried but for the majority against it of 14,772 in San Francisco and Oakland, San Francisco's residential suburb across the bay-a majority which our correspondent thinks she has good reason for believing was largely due to the vote of the liquor trade and its allied interests. It must be borne in mind that grape-growing and wine-making form one of the most important industries of California, and that many respectable citizens would therefore be likely to oppose woman's suffrage on the not unnatural supposition that women voters as a body would support measures restricting or curtailing the trade in wines and brandies. Nevertheless, we are still of the opinion, founded on private and reliable sources of information, that there was a vigorous opposition to the woman's suffrage amendment on the part of some of the most high-minded and intelligent women in the State. The California election is at least another indication that the women of this country are very far from having a unanimous desire for the suffrage.

The New York "Times " gives an account, too brief to be wholly satisfactory, of an ecclesiastical trial in Iowa, which certainly indicates a greater limitation on the power of the bishops in the Roman Catholic Church than has been generally supposed to exist by Protestants. In this decision the Bishop of Lincoln, Neb., on an appeal from his decision ordered by the Propaganda at Rome after Mgr. Satolli had refused to grant an appeal, has been convicted of abusing his authority, of having been actuated by sinister and vindictive motives, and of having deceived Cardinal Satolli. The sentences passed by the Bishop on the defendant priests are declared null and void. The costs of the trial he is required to pay, with damages in addition to the persecuted priests-$875 to one, $325 to the other; and he is required to restore the priests to the churches from which they had been removed. From this decree there is no further appeal. The details of the case are not of any great importance to the general public. The ecclesiastical principles are of universal interest, and they seem to us to be correctly defined in the following interpretation of them given by one of the successful priests, Father Murphy:

"This decision establishes as a precedent that will hereafter be quoted in all contentions between priests and bishop, that the priest has rights the bishop is bound to respect; that no order of a bishop acting outside the limitations placed upon his authority by canonical law is binding or bound to be obeyed; that the priest who devotes his time and talents to the building up of a strong parish cannot be deprived of it arbitrarily or removed from it without the proper preferment of charges passed upon by a competent court of jurisdiction. For a hundred years the bishops have been a law unto themselves; they have wielded an arbitrary power that amounted to practical anarchy. This decision cannot be appealed from, and establishes the rights of priests for all time."

A few months ago it seemed as if the English Liberal party were on the verge of disruption, and the disorder was complete when Lord Rosebery resigned the leadership. His successor has not yet been named, and there has been no formal reorganization of the party, but the dissensions among the Liberals are likely to be forgotten by the common antagonism which is springing up against the Government policy with regard to schools. Not content with the disaster of last session, which ended in the humiliation of being obliged to withdraw the bill, the Ministry are understood to be proposing to introduce into the next session of Parliament a measure not less offensive to all