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manufacturing establishments reporting to the census enumerators was $55,719,938; the gross value of manufactured products for the year was $74,177,681, and their net value, deducting the value of products re-used in the process of manufacture, was $47,697,646. The manufactures are largely located in the northern part of the State, along the Ohio River. Twelve counties along this river produce 59.3 per cent. of the total for the State, and four of them, situated within the narrow strip of territory between the Ohio River and Pennsylvania, produce 44 per cent. of the State's total industrial products. This extreme localization is partly due to abundant supplies of coal and gas, partly to the transportation facilities afforded by the Ohio River, and partly to the close proximity of the region to the Pennsylvania steel district. The iron and steel industry of West Virginia, confined to Wheeling and its vicinity, is the most important of the State. The output of this industry in 1900 was valued at $16,574,212, an increase of 120.5 per cent. The manufacture of lumber and timber products, chiefly in the eastern part of the State, with Charleston as a shipping port, is the second important industry of the State, the product in 1900 being valued at $10,612,837, as against $5,097,772 in 1890. In the production of coke West Virginia was by 1899 second only to Pennsylvania, having increased the value of its product 300 per cent. in ten years, owing to the special suitability of its coal for coking purposes. Flour and grist milling produced $5,541,353 in 1900; the tanning and currying of leather, $3,210,753; car construction and railroad repair, $2,943.557; glass manufactures, $1,871,795, and planing-mill products, $1,820,463. Wheeling, the principal manufacturing city, though producing in 1900 22.6 per cent. of the total value of the State's products, has not within the decade increased its manufacturing interests nearly so rapidly as the State at large, the rates of increase being respectively, as measured in values, 28.6 and 91.7 per cent.

Legislation. Among the more important acts passed by the legislature in 1901 were the following: Street railway companies were directed to provide vestibules on all cars from November 1 to April 1, to protect their employees. The commissioner of labor was directed to establish, in connection with the bureau of labor, a free employment bureau for the purpose of receiving applications from persons seeking employment and from persons seeking to employ labor. Mercantile and manufacturing establishments were required to use all possible precautions against accidents and unsanitary conditions, and to provide seats for women employees which they might be permitted to use when not actively engaged in their duties. The license tax fee for domestic corporations, which had been previously fixed at the uniform rate of $10, was placed upon a sliding scale, as follows: Domestic corporations with a capital of not more than $10,000 were required to pay a tax of $10, and corporations with larger capital were required to pay proportionately larger fees until the capital reached $1,000,000, when the fee was to be $70, with $10 more for every added million of capital stock. Foreign corporations and corporations whose principal business was conducted outside of the State were to pay a license fee varying from $20 on a capital stock of $25,000 to $410 for a capital stock of $1,000,000, and an additional amount for every added million of capital stock. Constitutional amendments were directed to be submitted to the voters at the general election of 1902 as follows: (1) Providing that the secretary of state should thereafter be an elective officer instead of, as at present, an appointee of the governor; (2) providing that the legislature might increase the salaries of the principal executive officers over the present low rates provided in the constitution; (3) that the Supreme Court of Appeals should consist of five, instead of four, judges; (4) that the following clause in the constitution, "The legislature shall enact proper laws for the registration of all qualified voters in the State," should be excised, and in lieu thereof there should be inserted: "No citizen shall ever be denied or refused the right or privilege of voting at an election because his name is not or has not been registered or listed as a qualified voter." This proposed amendment is virtually identical with a clause in the Pennsylvania constitution respecting the registration of voters, which was annulled at the general election of 1901. (See PENNSYLVANIA.) Notwithstanding Virginia's many requests that West Virginia take up that part of the old Virginia debt which had been incurred before the organization of West Virginia as a separate State, the West Virginia legislature in 1901 passed resolutions on the subject as follows: "Resolved, That this legislature declines and refuses to take any action in regard to what is known as the Virginia debt, or Virginia deferred certificates, either by considering any proposition of adjustment for settlement, so-called, or by authorizing the appointment of any committee or committees having for their purpose the consideration of the same." "It is the sense of the legislature that the State of West Virginia is in no way obligated for the payment of any portion of the said debt, or certificates."

State Officers.-Governor, A. B. White, Republican, term four years, ending March 4, 1905; secretary of state, appointed, W. M. O. Dawson; treasurer, Peter Sillman; auditor, Arnold C. Scherr; attorney-general, B. H. Freer; superintendent of schools, T. C. Miller; commissioner of agriculture, J. O. Thompson; labor commis

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