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IN GENERAL.

An order has been issued by the Boston Police Board that the law forbidding the sale of intoxicating liquors over bars, would be enforced. Twenty days were allowed the saloon-keepers to remove bars.

In Michigan, the Supreme Court held the High License Liquor Law of 1889 to be void, owing to a mistake in engrossing the bill. This leaves the law of 1887 in force, and reduces the license for the sale of malt liquors from $500 to $300. This entails large losses of revenue on the cities,-Detroit alone losing $200,000.

The Supreme Court of Connecticut has decided that the inclosing of a circular with a ballot in the official envelope is a violation of the new Connecticut Ballot Act. Also that the placing of the title, "Citizen's Ticket" over the names of the Republican candidates, throws the vote out.

The United States Supreme Court has lately given a decision bearing upon the law of agency. An agent who was commissioned by his principal to buy some real estate for $55,000, procured from the owners a contract to sell the property to his own wife for $49,000. Then the plaintiffs, who were ignorant of this, and who supposed the agent's wife to be the original owner, agreed to purchase from her for the first mentioned

sum.

The Court held that the principals were entitled to the first contract made with the owners by the agent for $49,000.

The Supreme Court of the United States has decided against the constitutionality of State laws which prescribe the seizure of liquor brought into the State in original packages. The Court holds that such laws are an interference with interstate commerce. After the liquor becomes the property of the importer, and the package, whether keg, bottle or flask, has been delivered to him, the State may regulate or prohibit its sale. This case was brought up on appeal from the Supreme Court of Iowa. This decision is the reverse of that given forty years ago in an almost similar case.

In reply to an order from the House, Attorney-General Waterman, of Massachusetts, handed up his opinion that cities and towns have no right to make and sell gas for private use, nor for their own use. He states that there is no law or statute which authorizes cities or towns to enter into any business of a commercial or private nature.

The New Jersey Committee, which has been investigating election frauds in Trenton and Jersey City, closed its session on Thursday of last week. About 500 witnesses have been examined, and the Committee found that in Jersey City about 2,500 fraudulent votes were cast.

The American Cotten Oil Trust has been organized into a company or corporation under the laws of New Jersey. By a peculiar coincidence, a number of the directors in the new corporation were trustees in the defunct trust.

The American Axe and Tool Company has now secured a practical monopoly of the edgetool business in this country. Five of the largest New England companies have been absorbed, and the corporation's capital is placed at $4,000,000.

The United States Gas Improvement Company of Philadelphia is to be merged into a large company just formed to secure control of the manufacture of gas throughout the country. Franchises in forty cities have been secured, and the company's capital is placed at $50,000,000.

STRIKES.

On Saturday of last week, no settlement had been reached in the war between employers and workmen. It is understood that the mill-owners and proprietors generally, are in favor of acceding to the wages and time demands. The hitch is still on the matter of recognition of the Unions, and until that is granted, the strikers assert that they will remain idle. The great "Eight-Hour" struggle, planned for this month, and of which the Chicago carpenters are the vanguard, attracts many adherents from the other trades.

Ten thousand men from the sash and blind factories have struck. They say that the remaining fifteen thousand workmen in that trade will soon follow.

Boiler-men, as well as cigar-makers, are taking advantage of the opportunity to strike for the coveted eight-hour day.

Neither the employment of non-union men, nor the importation of workmen from other cities, has succeeded in saving the employers from loss-as the "outside" men are very generally persuaded to join the strikers.

In New York City the carpenters and joiners are making extensive preparations to secure an eight-hour day with pay of $3.50. Twenty-four of the contractors in the city have agreed to the proposed terms.

The cigar makers of New York are out on strike in many factories, demanding higher wages. Some 500 men struck last week, while 250 others returned to work, their demands having been granted.

The makers of knee-breeches, who are striking in New York city, receive their shares from the common strike fund at the rate of 60 cents a day for married men and 40 for single men. Six hundred of them are striking, with a fair prospect of success, as thirty out of seventy contractors have yielded to their demands.

The striking carpenters of Indianapolis have gained their end, and signed an agreement to work for one year at the rate of thirty cents per hour, for an eight-hour day. They originally demanded thirty-five cents per hour, but compromised. Over 500 have returned to work.

In Chicago the carpenters' strike ran the career that almost every large strike runs, of riot and even bloodshed. The strikers, flushed with their victory over the contractors, who agreed to all their demands, further stated that they would return to work only when their council was recognized. This recognition the contractors refused, and the usual sequel of persecution of non-union men, and attacks upon police officers, followed. Fifty strikers were arrested in one place. Two non-union

men

337 strikes were reported, affecting directly 68,947 workmen. The number of May-day strikes reached the large number of 511, with a total of 12,987 men. On May 2 the number of men actually idle on account of the different strikes was estimated at 75,000. In nearly all these cases the Eight-Hour demand is the most important and conspicuous. The success of many of the strikes, naturally encourages others to try their fortune. In some cases a compromise is reached by arbitration; but in many, the strikers gain all their demands. Five strikes in Chicago obtained for the men an increase of wages. Two in Philadelphia succeeded in gaining a shorter day. Boston and New York are having the carpenters eight-hour problem placed before them in such a light that it has become simply a question of what the strikers will be satisfied with, as the builders state they are willing to grant many concessions.

THE STRIKES ON THE CONTINENT. The epidemic of strikes now visiting every part of the Continent, which amazes many politicians, and is said to have elicited from Prince Bismarck a despondent doubt whether capitalists would not in future shrink from industrial enterprises-as they did, remember, in England before our own century, preferring commerce or the purchase of land-is not wholly due to the German Emperor, or to Socialism, or to the "spread of the modern spirit." All those things have, no doubt, helped the agitation by dissipating the old belief that suffering, like hail, can only be endured in patience; but they are not its sole causes. There is reason to believe that throughout the Continent the laboring classes, other than peasants, have, during the past lean years, been pressed almost beyond Their wages-the first-class artisans excepted-have been lower than those of English agricultural laborers. Their hours have been excessively long,—the full twelve represents nearly the average truth over the whole year; better and better work-which means more sedulous work-has been demanded of them under pressure of competition; their rent, which is the one outlay that can never be postponed or paid in part, has decidedly risen; and the cost of bread has been run up by protective duties quite twenty-five per cent. All this has happened, too, at a time of awakening consciousness, and in an era when physical comfort has become all-in-all, and when, moreover, the general notion as to the irreducible minimum of that comfort has been raised by the general diffusion of a thin kind of popular education. We believe, too, that the almost universal substitution of companies for individual

endurance. are lying in the hospital, dangerously wounded, and others have been stoned and otherwise attacked.

The strike of the pork-packers of East Cambridge, Mass., has, unfortunately, also been attended by violence and bloodshed. A group of Italians who had taken the places of some of the strikers, were attacked while on their way home and savagely beaten, one of them being clubbed until he became unconscious. No arrests have been made. In connection with this strike, it is reported that the strikers intend to invoke the aid of the boycott.

From Bradstreet's we find that during April 160 strikes were reported, involving 33,030 men; nearly three times as many as during the same time last year. Between January 1st and May 1st

employers, which has been going on for years, has greatly increased the severity of workmen's treatment, the Continental company having no "heart," and being compelled to treat all employees exactly alike, and insisting, therefore, on a machine-like regularity often as distressing as work on a treadmill. The economic position has, in fact, for all but the picked work. men-who gain materially by every rise in the quality of labor demanded-been exceedingly bad. It is not unnatural, therefore, that Continental artisans should feel ill-used by fate; that they should dream dreams of a new "society," or that, pending the Millennium, they should venture on the risks involved in striking. These risks are great enough to prove the men's sincerity. They have no claim when on strike on any poor funds; they have very small savings, which they are much more unwilling than Englishmen to exhaust; and they encounter bitter opposition not only from employers, but from the omnipresent officials and police. Their method of carrying on the fight is, therefore, to reduce themselves and their families at once to starvation rations, often not more than a quarter of a decent dietary, and they become under the privation quite savage-a deterioration shared also by the women dependent on them. They are, moreover, tempted to riot by the feeling that they cannot struggle long, and in some places, Austria more particularly, by the reluctance of the small shopkeepers to give any credit at all—a sharp aggravation of the incidents of a strike rarely seen in this country. That under such circumstances so many classes should strike at once-there are said to be nearly twenty trades "out" in different places in Austria-points to real distress, and even to a kind of despair such as tempts men on the Continent to suicide. As a rule, so far as we have observed, they generally get something,though not what they have asked-before they give in. The highest authorities, in their fear of disorder, always press for compromise; opinion among the bourgeoisie is turning against the excessive hours, and a shilling or so a week is yielded in the matter of actual wages. Then the men return to work, much embittered, not much benefited, but with the feeling that combination does do something for them, however little, and that if they could but strike for a longer time they would permanently improve their pecuniary condition.

Now, is that impression bad or good? The general feeling among the English cultivated is that it is utterly bad, and they read long accounts of the "striking mania" with a feeling almost of dismay; but we cannot profess ourselves quite so fully confident. The waste of

means, and energy, and happiness involved in such a method of haggling is almost horrible, and seems to men who are not hungry quite preposterous. But we are not sure that the practice of striking is not a prophylactic against Socialism. It is an act, and ends dreaming for the time. It really does test in a way intelligible to the men, the capacity of the masters to pay; and when checked, as it is on the Continent, by the positive hunger which in its later hours it always involves for the strikers, it is not likely to be resorted to without adequate reason. Our English strikers suffer, too, often most severely, but they do not go so near to death by hunger as their Continental comrades. And we are sure that while the lot of the best workmen on the Continent is quite endurable, the lot of the inferior grades is in bad years almost intolerable. All manner of half-skilled journeymen, laborers dependent on strength alone, and employees in trades which any one can follow, are wretchedly paid-paid, in fact, so little that they cannot, if married, purchase sufficient food. They need more wages to keep them at all, and may almost as well starve as live for years so close to the very verge of starvation. In trying to better their lot by a stolid endurance for a few weeks of increased misery, they can hardly be pronounced wrong, and certainly they are not injuring society. On the contrary, it is far better that society should not be undermined by entire classes gradually sinking below the level of civilization, and getting full of a despair which would welcome any revolution, however violent, as giving them, at all events, a chance of some substantial relief. There is speech in a strike, audible speech; and at a certain point of suffering, which is, we fear, more often reached in the great cities of the Continent than our comparatively comfortable countrymen imagine, audible speech becomes a necessity. The employers may be able to pay no more, the trade itself may be capable of yielding no more-there has been a remarkable instance of this among the Viennese beadmakers-but it is, nevertheless, better that the case of the workers should be made fully known. The public will often submit to a moderate increase of prices after a strike, and shareholders hold their directors irresponsible if they have such an excuse to offer. Moreover, if, as does sometimes happen, the men win in part without injuring their trade, positive good has been secured. So many thousand families who were miserable are comparatively contented, or, at all events, have a little more hopefulness put into them by their success. The strike has acted as a safety-valve, and they return to their labor less despairing than before; in other words, a less discontented and dangerous multitude.-Spectator.

The appropriations for post-office buildings, which have passed both Houses, amount to $1,665,000. The House has passed bills appropriating $4,000,000, while the amount of the Senate bills is already four times as great. The Republican party promised to reduce the surplus, and the promise is in a fair way to be redeemed.

Congress has not been restrained by moral scruples, nor will it probably be prevented by constitutional obstacles, as was the Massachusetts Legislature last year, from expropriating the money of individual citizens for a charitable purpose. On April 25th a bill was hurried through both Houses, and received the President's approval, appropriating $150,000 for the distribution of rations to sufferers by the flood in the Mississippi valley.

This action may be viewed in either of two different lights. It may be regarded as an act of tyranny on the part of the Government to divert the funds under its control to uses quite different from those essential to the conduct of government. And it is beyond question a task of supererogation for the Government to assume to place itself in the position of a dispenser of charity. Nor are either the tyrannical or the supererogatory qualities of the action in the least altered by the consideration that the expropriation meets with the approval of the majority of the voters. It is immaterial whether the action of the Government in this case be regarded from the personal side, as the unwarranted presumptuousness of the representatives of the voters, or as the mere interpretation of the will of the constituents. If the act is wrong, as it must be if it exceeds the proper limits of political action, the will of the "majority," however overwhelming, will not make the act right. But, of course, in a generation which does not recognize the existence of proper limits to political action, which ignores all tests of political right, this view will not find many adherents.

In the second place, this attempt at government charity may be regarded as another illustration of the meanness and incompetence which so often accompany political action. How else shall the appropriation of only $150,000 for the relief of the sufferers by this great catastrophe be esteemed, than as niggardly in the extreme? If it is the business of Congress to look after the welfare of the victims of natural calamities, why should the task be discharged with such lamentable inefficiency? If the Treasury were empty, some

thing might be urged in extenuation of the offering of the widow's mite; but we are given to understand that it bulges to bursting with a surplus of $50,000,000. A tenth of this sum, at least, would seem to be required of Congress in the discharge of its duty in this emergency. The remainder might then be hoarded against future unforeseen, but inevitable, calamities. How excellently chosen is the opportunity for Congressional parsimony! There will be need presently for this and many another "surplus" to supply the subsidies for the suffering producers of silk and sugar.

A protest was sent by a number of importers of worsteds to the Ways and Means Committee opposing the Dingley bill, which was so hastily reported to the House. The protest was sent as a telegraphic dispatch, and was immediately followed to Washington by a delegation of the New York importers themselves. The complaint of the importers was that they had already made contracts for the importation of fall goods, based upon the existing classification of worsteds, and that the passage of this bill would subject them to loss. But the importers will save money by staying at home and keeping silence, instead of incurring expenses for telegraphing and mileage. If they would only approach Congress with a concise proposition for permitting them to evade their contracts in the courts as their bills fall due, they might entertain a hope of success. Next to making the execution of contracts difficult and uncertain by constant changes in tariff, the most congenial occupation for Congress is to study out means of evading the payment of debts altogether. A new scheme for scaling down debts by a change of legal tender would engage the sympathy and earnest co-operation of Congress-on either side of the passage way. But the importers deserve no sympathy. The only safe interval to allow for a foreign contract while Congress is in session, is that between two days.

The endeavors of Congress to make all foreign business insecure, would be ineffectual without the co-operation of other causes. The owner of a Mexican mine recently found a car of his silver-lead ore arrested at El Paso, charged with over $300 duty. If the ore had arrived at El Paso a day or two sooner, it would not have been dutiable. But the quotation of silver changed in the meanwhile, and brought the ore under a different clause of the tariff. It is said that the owner has taken the cargo back to Mexico, and that he will ship it to Europe for smelting.

WAR.

The retirement of Prince Bismarck, his "dismissal," as the Prince himself calls it, has produced the practically universal impression that the chief stay of European peace has been removed. We shall now have an opportunity of witnessing the deferred, but inevitable result, of an "Armed Peace." Not that a reasonable person will entertain the hope that we shall learn anything to our advantage by becoming the witnesses of the folly of others. We are too evidently bound in the same direction ourselves, ready to tread the great highway along which our predecessors have journeyed to their sure destruction. But we may sit, as at the play, when the curtain is rung up, spectators of the drama which seems to move on the spur of the moment, but which has nevertheless been so cunningly contrived behind the scenes.

That Prince Bismarck's retirement should excite rumors of war is not astonishing, nor is it any evidence of the near approach of war. The rumors go for nothing. Under an "Armed Peace" every disturbance begets rumor, and all rumors are of war. But the rumors will not beget the war, nor greatly hasten it. So the rumor goes for nothing. It remains to reckon with the conditions.

cess.

One of these conditions was the presence of an overpowering personality at the head of a strong military state. Prince Bismarck was supported by the almost uninterrupted series of successes which he had placed behind him; and nothing succeeds like sucIt is no exaggeration to say that the foreign policy of continental Europe, so far as policies can be controlled consciously, was the policy of Prince Bismarck. To be sure, circumstances might have occurred to precipitate war in spite of Bismarck; but they did not occur. So the fact is, that the peace has been kept because everybody has been afraid of Prince Bismarck-that is, of Germany with him at the head.

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The case is just the same as when children are kept from quarreling by fear of punishment. In this condition, it seems quite likely that the personality of Bismarck has counted for so much as is implied in the statement that fear of Germany without his leadership would not have been sufficient, and hence will not now be sufficient, to keep the peace. Why should Austria and Russia fall to stealing from each other, while the prospect was clearly before them of finding, when the smoke cleared away, that Germany was in possession of the booty?

With Bismarck out of the way, and Germany preoccupied with internal affairs and new experiments in socialism, Austria and Russia may begin to feel more confident of retaining possession of any stolen goods they may get, and will put less check on their larcenous inclinations. For Germany will be preoccupied with internal affairs; the tendency of her politics is strongly that way, and would soon have become too strong for Bismarck himself. The truth is, that, leaving to one side local questions, such as federal relations, there is evidently going to be a conflict in Germany between king and parliament. All recent history predisposes us to regard the issue of such a conflict as not doubtful. And the more reasonable assumption, if it were necessary to make one or the other, would undoubtedly be that, by one means or another, the parliament will win. But it is necessary to remember that the German is not precisely the same political animal as the Englishman. While, then, Germany is taking her turn with the throes of democracy, Austria and Russia will be looking at each other over the Balkans. Nor are they apt to remain passive for very long. In a contest of diplomacy, Austria will too obviously have the best of the engagement. Already she has done as much meddling with the Balkan States as Russia has done, and manages to make it appear all the while that it is only Russia who foments the discords. Just when the German Emperor and the

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