The Best TONIC When you are all tired out, feel weak, sleep does not rest and the digestion and appetite are poor, there is no remedy so effective as Horsford's Acid Phosphate. It is a nerve food and a tonic that nourishes and strengthens the entire system. Insist on having Horsford's Acid Phosphate If your druggist can't supply you we will send small bottle, prepaid, on receipt of 25 cents. Rumford Chemical Works, Providence, R. I. The Farmers' Loan and Trust Company Chartered 1822 Nos. 16, 18, 20 and 22 WILLIAM STREET NEW YORK CAPITAL, $1,000,000 00 UNDIVIDED PROFITS, 7,000,000 00 The Company is a legal depositary for moneys paid into Court, and is authorized to act as Executor, Administrator, Trustee, Guardian, Receiver, and in all other Fiduciary pacities. Acts as Trustee under Mortgages made by Railroad and other Corporations, and as Transfer Agent and Registrar Stocks and Bonds." Receives deposits upon Certificates of Deposit, or subject to check and allows interest on daily balances. Manages Real Estate and lends money on bond and mortgage Acts as Agent for the transaction of any approved financial business. Mr. Wallace's SATURDAY, JULY About a year ago Mr. John F. Wallace was appointed chief engineer of the Panama Canal Commission, at a salary of $25,000. When, later, the Commission was reorganized, he was consulted, approved the plan adopted by the President, was made, at his own suggestion, a member of the Commission, and was given full charge of the work on the Isthmus. On the 17th of last May he sailed for the Isthmus, reaching it May 24. Twelve days later he requested permission to return to Washington for a conference with the Secretary of War, but without intimating the subject matter, and on the 25th of June had a personal conference with Secretary Taft in New York, in which he reported that he had received and accepted an offer from a private corporation, the name of which has not been given either to the Secretary of War or to the public, at a salary which with added stock benefits would amount to $60,000 or $65,000 a year. He was willing, he said, to remain in the Canal Commission for a time, but his new duties would not permit him to return to the Isthmus. Secretary Taft's reply to this surprising information we can best give in his own words: Within twelve days after your arrival upon the Isthmus you send me a cable which, read in the light of what you say to-day, signifies your practical acceptance of an offer of another position inconsistent with the performance of your duties on the Isthmus. I am astonished that you should be so disregardful of the splendid opportunities of the position which would have made you famous the world over by the honorable performance of your duties as chief engineer. For mere lucre you change your position overnight without thought of the embarrassing position in which you place your Government by this action, when the engineering forces on the Isthmus are left without a real head and your department is not perfected in organization, when the advisory board of engineers is to assemble under call of the President within two months, and when I am departing for the Philippines on public duty. All this you knew as well as I know it, but it has not had the least influence upon your action-you have thought of yourself, and yourself alone. I consider that by every principle of honor and duty you were bound to treat the subject differently. You have permitted the President and all of us to proceed in full confidence that you would perform the functions of chief engineer, and now in an hour you drop your great duties and throw them back upon us as if it were a matter of no consequence, and all this for your personal advantage solely. You make not the least complaint against your associates, superior or inferior (I know of no possible ground for it). You are influenced solely by your personal advantage. Great fame attached to your office, but also equal responsibility, and now you desert them in an hour. Then, from a standpoint of policy, you are making a profound mistake. If you could withdraw from your new arrangements, which I do not suggest, I could have no confidence (since I now know your conception of duty) that you would not in the future repeat the same act at a moment even more critical, when the consequences might be even more embarrassing and injurious to the Government. Under these circumstances, Mr. Wallace, and with great personal pain and disappointment, I am bound to say that I consider the public interests require that you tender your resignation at this moment and turn over the records of your office to the chairman of the Commission. This request of Mr. Taft for a complete resignation, sundering all Mr. Wallace's connection with the Canal, was of course complied with; and the resignation was promptly accepted by the President, with a terse expression of approval of Secretary Taft's request. Mr. Wallace's Mr. Wallace has issued a statement in explanation of his action. In this statement he disposes of most of the defenses which have been interposed on his behalf by the press, such as interference with his work by Government regulations, the supposed necessity of paying extravagant prices for material because of the tariff, an imaginary difference of opinion between him and the Administration on the question whether the Canal shall be a sea-level canal or not, and the like. "A careful consideration," he says, "of the entire subject had brought me to the decision that I should disconnect myself with the work at the earliest possible date that it could be done without embarrassment to the Administration or injury to the work. It is unnecessary to state the reasons for this decision except that in fairness I should say that they involve no criticism of any act of the President or the Secretary of War." It is true that he adds that "the obstacles due to the Governmental methods required by existing laws are so serious that they will have to be eliminated if the American people are to see the Panama Canal constructed in a reasonable time and at a moderate cost." But it is evident that these obstacles constitute, in his mind, no ground of complaint against the Administration, nor do they furnish the reason for his present act. He resents "the charge that my motive in leaving the work was a financial one," but he assigns no other reason, and defends his right to leave at any time in his discretion and without assigning reasons. We give his own statement in this respect in his own words: While it was my own expectation that I should continue my connection with the work, it did not occur to me that I was not free to withdraw, if justice to myself and my family and to my reputation as an engineer required me to do so. It was not only my right, but my duty, to give the matter the most careful consideration in all its bearings, considering not only the general situation as it affected the work, but my family, personal and business relations, and all the various factors entering into the problem, and I could not concede the right to the Secretary of War or any one to dictate my decision. The only deliberate questions were the details as to putting my decision into effect, and while I stated to the Secretary what my desires were, I told him that I was perfectly willing to conform to his wishes, as far as possible, as to the time and manner of my withdrawal. He also contends at some length that "at no time during the progress of the work could my relations have been severed more opportunely than now, and with less damage to the work;" but it does not seem to occur to him that upon this question the Administration was entitled to be consulted before his decision was reached and announced. Mr. John F. Stevens, of Chicago, has been appointed Mr. Wallace's successor, at a salary of $30,000 a year. He was in the service of the Philippine Commission as Government railway expert in the construction of a thousand miles of Philippine railways about to be built under Government aid, and was to have accompanied Secretary Taft to the Philippines on the Government excursion just starting. He was formerly Vice-President and General Manager of the Rock Island System, and, before that, Chief Engineer and General Manager of the Great Northern Railway, where he had extended experience in the management of large engineering works. We have commented elsewhere on Mr. Wallace's resignation and the action of the Government regarding it. At a meeting of the Directors Mr. Hyde's of the Equitable Life Assur Defense ance Society on Wednesday of last week Mr. James H. Hyde read a communication replying to the charges in the report of Superintendent Hendricks. Mr. Hendricks's report dealt in large measure with leases to various safe deposit companies of premises owned by the Society, which he criticised on the ground that they yielded little profit to the Society and in some cases entailed a loss, while the safe deposit companies, really controlled by officers of the Society, were making large profits from the use of the premises. Mr. Hyde does not attempt to show that these leases were profitable to the Society, but he does attempt to show that his father organized or purchased control in these safe deposit companies at personal risk to himself, for the purpose of increasing the funds and improving the condition of affairs of the Mercantile Trust Company -a subsidiary organization in which the Society held a controlling interest. states that the resulting prosperity of this trust company has profited the Society to the extent of nearly ten millions of dollars. The syndicate transactions Mr. Hyde defends on the ground that He "except in very rare cases, the trust funds of the Society should not be risked in guaranteeing the sale of an untried security, or, in other words, in underwriting its issue. When, however, the issue has been entirely underwritten by responsible people, and a market for the securities thereby established, their value as an investment may be considered as substantially increased, and the purchase under the circumstances by the Society would be justifiable, when in most instances the underwriting would not be." We do not think his statement will materially modify the public opinion already formed on the past management of the Equitable. But the transactions which Mr. Hendricks criticises in his report, and which Mr. Hyde attempts to explain, are of so complicated a nature that only the courts or the proper officials of the Society, after careful consideration, can pronounce the final word upon them. Until the results of the investigation set on foot by Mr. Morton, and of the various suits in progress and to be instituted, are made known, the general public will not feel that the charges brought forth by the Frick Committee and the Superintendent of Insurance have been in any great degree weakened. New Directors Nominated by the Trustees At the same meeting nine names were presented by the trustees holding the stock bought by Mr. Thomas Ryan, for election to fill vacancies in the Board of Directors caused by recent resignations. The names are those of E. B. Thomas, New York, President of the Lehigh Valley Railway Company; F. G. Bourne, New York, President of the Singer Manufacturing Company; William Whitman, Boston, Massachusetts; John J. Albright, Buffalo, New York; F. W. Roebling, Trenton, New Jersey; J. D. Schmidlapp, President Union Savings Bank and Trust Company, Cincinnati; E. W. Robertson, Columbia, South Carolina; Joseph Bryan, Richmond, Virginia; and E. W. Bloomingdale, New York. All are policy-holders in the Society, but none of them, so far as is known, owns any stock. These men, who are of high business standing, have been selected with the idea of avoiding all who have entangling connections with large interests, and of giving representation to all parts of the country. Three of the names were suggested by bodies of policyholders in different localities. Probably until some comprehensive system of recording the wishes of the large body of policy-holders throughout the country can be procured, this method of selecting Directors, from candidates proposed by bodies of policy-holders in various localities, is the best one on which to proceed. The trustees have issued an appeal to the policy-holders of the Society, asking their co-operation in the selection of men, from among their number, to fill further vacancies in the Board of Directors. In this appeal they lay down the principles which will govern them in the selection of Directors, as follows: "It shall be our effort to avail ourselves of all the knowledge and information within our reach to secure for Directors from among policy-holders such persons as are imbued with conservative views of management and who will regard as distinctly violative of duty the use of the funds of the Society, directly or indirectly, in the promotion, underwriting, or syndicating of new and uncertain enterprises or the investment of such funds in speculative stocks and securities. The published reports of those who have investigated the past management of the Society and the astounding revelations they bring to light have impressed us with the grave responsibility resting upon us to prevent, so far as it is in our power, a repetition of a scandalous and tragic chapter in the history of a great life insurance company. The lessons to be learned from the exposures made in these reports are that men who are more concerned in making money for themselves than in discharging a sacred trust should not have control of a life insurance company, and that in the investment of life insurance funds safety rather than large profits should be the rule. The same obligations that rest on the trustees of savings banks rest on the directors of life insurance companies, because in more than one sense a life insurance company is a savings bank. The same conservative management, the same economy in expenditure, and the same care as to investments are as necessary in the one case as in the other. The history of savings banks in the State of New York is most creditable, and we believe this is due, not alone to the able, honest, and disinterested men who have managed them, but also to the laws which have limited the character of the securities in which they could invest." The reassurance which the Equitable policyholders have already received from the appointment of men of such high character as Mr. Cleveland, Judge O'Brien, and Mr. Westinghouse as trustees of the Ryan stock will be further strengthened by the trustees' first official act in nominating Directors, and by their utterances in this appeal to the policy-holders. Judge Hooker on Trial The danger, which at first seemed a very real one, that the New York Legislature might take the view that it had no Constitutional power to deal with the charges against Judge Hooker, last week vanished with astonishing quickness and completeness. The report of the Senate Judiciary Committee brought out so clearly the points summarized in The Outlook last week as they were stated by the committee of the New York Bar Association that opposition was no longer possible. As Senator Brackett pointed out, the theory that the right to the removal of a Judge for cause is closely limited by Constitution or statute had no substance or basis. Mr. Brackett said that because the power resides in the people, and is derived from them, all officers, including judges, are accountable to them. This does not mean that the judiciary shall not be independent, but that the Judge must have the wholesome knowledge that his personal conduct is subject to scrutiny. Indications, as reported in the press, are that the trial will be as brief as fairness permits, and, if press reports are to be believed, there has been a perceptible change of sentiment not favorable to Judge Hooker since the publication through an interview of his explanation of the acts charged against him. This informal explanation will, of course, be supplemented by a complete and formal statement, but as it stands it is almost in the nature of what lawyers call "confession and avoidance;" that is, Judge Hooker admits many of the things charged against him, but declares that not he but the Government was responsible for some of the worst things charged-for instance, that while he obtained the appointment of favorites and friends to positions in which they did no work, but drew pay, it was the duty of their superior officers to see that the work was performed, and that he had nothing to do with that side of the case. A correspondent calls our attention to an error in The Outlook's history of this case: most of the acts of Judge Hooker complained of were performed by him after his appointment to the bench by Governor Black, though not in the performance of his judicial duties. Mutiny and Anarchy The revolts among the naval forces at the ports of Odessa on the Black Sea, Libau on the Baltic, and Cronstadt on the Gulf of Finland are as significant as they are startling. startling. Upon the question whether these revolts are sporadic or symptomatic may depend the very existence of the Russian Empire. No Government can live if it cannot maintain discipline in the forces upon which it must rely to preserve order. Rumors of disaffection in the Russian army and navy have been frequent; certainly in one and probably in more than one instance troops have refused to fire upon the mob; at the naval ports there have been evidences of disaffection, quickly suppressed and so far as possible concealed; the horrible stories of mutiny on board the battle-ship Orel during the Battle of the Sea of Japan have not been fully confirmed, yet have not been disproved. But the events of last week strongly indicate the presence of a concerted revolutionary movement throughout the navy. The story of the mutinous crew of the battleship Kniaz Potemkin at Odessa reads like a page of melodramatic sea-fiction. The city of Odessa was already in a state of |