THE MONUMENT OF ALPHONSE DAUDET, RECENTLY UNVEILED IN PARIS. miral's testimony. Now that Aguinaldo is free to come to the United States whenever he chooses to do so very likely when the senate committee resumes its meetings next winter it will get that celebrated Filipino's version of the relations existing between himself and the American admiral in the early summer of 1898. Since there is no desire on the rigation part of the people that food New Ir Law. shall become dear in this country or that the landless man shall remain in that condition, one finds it difficult to think that those who have objected in the past to systematic irrigation of the great arid regions of the far west under government direction have had right on their side. The new irrigation law, which provides for the establishment with money obtained from the sale of public lands of a fund to be used in the reclamation of arid tracts, has prepared the way for a great work that will provide homes for millions of people and food for millions more. That irrigation companies and individuals have done much already in the direction of reclaiming the western desert is well known. About 35,000,000 acres of arid land thus far have been reclaimed by private enterprise, adding enormously to the wealth of the nation. It is believed that the national government, by the wise use of all sources of water supply-streams, wells and mountain rainfall-can reclaim at least 74,000,000 acres more. When it is considered that an area as large as the state of New York has been brought from barren. drought to high productiveness by irrigation and that a further area nearly as large as New England and Pennsylvania combined may still be reclaimed by the operations authorized by the new irrigation law, one begins to realize the magnitude of this splendid annexation movement within the nation's own borders. The irrigated lands of the west offer a magnificent opportunity to the landless man. Under the new law the sale of these lands is strictly limited to actual settlers and no individual may purchase from the government more than 160 acres. The rapid growth of population in all civilized lands is bound to make the farmer a monopolist sooner or later unless the science of food production shall outrun the operations of the law of increase in the human family. To open new lands in Arizona or in the Philippines is to postpone the day when there shall be more people to feed than can be fed at a reasonable cost. A Great Forest Reserve. Some of the vast forest reserves in the far west have an important bearing on the control and distribution of the water supply which is turning wide tracts of arid lands into fertile regions of farms and orchards. While the 40,719,474 acres of forests in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and elsewhere which are given government protection are of great value to the public, it is a pity that the need of forest reserves in various eastern states has not appealed to congress in the past. A very important beginning in the direction of making good this omission was the recent passage of the Morris bill, by which 231,400 acres of forest land in Minnesota, about the headwaters of the Mississippi, becomes a national reserve. under the control of the secretary of agriculture. This land is a part of the Chippewa reservations in that region, four in number, containing in all 830,000 acres. movement was begun a few years ago by Colonel John S. Cooper of Chicago for the preservation of this whole tract as a national park. The committee of fifty public spirited gentlemen formed at that time through the efforts of Colonel Cooper to promote this plan was headed by Theodore Roosevelt, then governor of New York. It is a pleas A ing coincidence that the signature of that Choice of the Panama Route. law should make it possible for him to carry By a surprising change in sentiment, after the choice of the Nicaragua route for an in On teroceanic canal seemed practically assured, the Spooner amendment to the Hepburn bill has become a law and under its provisions the canal presumably will be constructed by the Panama route. June 19 the senate adopted the bill by a vote of 67 to 6. In conference it was accepted by the representatives of the house, which had voted for the Nicaragua route early in the session, and was passed without change June 26 by a vote of 255 to 8. Thus the great controversy that has gone on for nearly a hundred years has been settled. The free hand given to the president by the THE TEMPORARY WHITE HOUSE AT WASHINGTON. Courtesy The Chicago Daily News. of distress to the successive presidents and their families, but none of the various plans for adding extensive wings to it and other wise changing its outlines has been received with enough favor to warrant the taking of such liberties with the historic structure. At last the difficulty has been solved by the authorization of separate office building on the White House grounds, to be connected with the White House by a covered walk. That will leave the fine old mansion in which President John Adams first resided to be used solely as a residence and for social purposes. The departure from it forever of the force of secretaries and clerks, of the heavy footed office seekers and all the other aids or hindrances which the president encounters during business hours, has been delayed many years beyond the time when it should have taken place. Doubtless Dolly Madison would have been glad if there had been a little more privacy and elbow room at the White House before the British came and burned her out; at least many of her successors have found the quarters cramped. President Roosevelt's large and active family was particularly short of space. Now there will be plenty of room after the extensive remodeling of the mansion's interior shall have been completed. In the meantime the president and his family are at Oyster Bay and the office of the president at the capital is established in a roomy mansion in Lafayette square, where it will remain until the new structure is ready to receive it. When the Tilden club of New Cleveland, York City, on June 19, drew Hill and speeches from Grover Cleveland Bryan. and David B. Hill on the future course of the democratic party it started an avalanche of discussion. The recrudescence of the former president was regarded as a personal affront by the followers of Mr. Bryan. Mr. Bryan had been invited to the meeting also, but had not been given an invitation to speak, so he stayed away. His published comments on the speech of Mr. Cleveland were particularly severe and the radical democrats very generally joined in the denunciation of the former president's utterances. It must be confessed that Mr. Cleveland gloated over the later discomfiture of those who had driven him from party leadership. He demanded the rejection of issues that brought only defeat. With a certain elephantine felicity of phrase he delivered his rhetorical blows. "It is not in the search of new and gaudy issues," said Mr. Cleveland, "nor in the interpretation of strange visions, that a strong and healthy democracy displays its splendid power. Another party may thrive on the ever shifting treatment of the ever shifting moods of popular restlessness, or by an insincere play Roose- on the President Roosevelt does not intend to surrender the trust issue to the democrats, no matter how much they may covet it. Following his assault on the packers' combine, delivered through the attorney general, which apparently is to have the effect of uniting the various packing firms in one huge corporation, he gave expression in his Fourth of July speech at Pittsburg to his views on the necessity for trust regulation. "Much," he said, "can be done along the lines of supervision and regulation of the great industrial combinations." However, he dwelt upon the ruin that would be wrought by reckless interference with great enterprises on which entire communities depend for employment and support. Beyond doubt there must be national supervision of the great industrial combines which control the price of necessaries of life. Their suspension of the law of supply and demand by exercising rigid control over the sources of supply of necessary commodities has not proved uniformly beneficial to the people by any means. It is right that the utmost care should be exercised in establishing supervision, though it is not recorded that the great concerns that hold commanding positions in the ranks of the trusts have dis upon unreasoning prejudice and selfish anticipation, but the democratic party never." In rather obscure terms he pointed to the trusts and the tariff as affording issues for the party. He did not mention the republicans' Philippine policy. Mr. Hill followed with a clever speech in which Mr. Bryan was complimented and President Roosevelt was assailed; he named over the points of democratic doctrine on which he believed all members of the party could unite. Mr. Cleveland had announced his permanent retirement from party leadership, but Mr. Hill was careful to do nothing of the sort. Mr. Bryan in commenting on the former president's speech, declared that if revealed the programme of the "plutocratic elements" which were seeking to get control of the democratic party. Those elements, he said, had been served in many conspicuous ways by Mr. Cleveland during his second term as president. Such reorganization of the party as was favored by the Tilden club orators Mr. Bryan rejected with scorn. It is apparent, however, that the words of Mr. Cleveland have been hailed with satisfaction by a very large number of democrats. The opinion is growing that Mr. Hill will be the next party nominee for president, notwithstanding the distrust with which he is regarded by the radical element. played tender solicitude for the interests of the rival concerns which they have driven to the wall. Still, competition that brings business success through stern methods not forbidden by law will not be punished by the people; all they seek is protection for themselves. When a corporation or set of corporations dominate a great industry and pay their own price to the producer of the raw product while making prices arbitrarily to the consumer, they hold a position of power that is full of danger, if not cf positive harm, to the public. It is too much to expect corporations with excessive issues of capital stock on which they struggle to pay dividends voluntarily to conduct their affairs by the golden rule. The people must take wise measures for their own protection. In the At the beginning of July the Anthra- mine operators in the anthracite cite region of Pennsylvania anRegion. nounced that there was marked eagerness among the striking mine workers to return to the tasks abandoned by them early in May. The truth of this assertion was strongly denied by the spokesmen for the strikers. The mines remained idle. Some days earlier President Mitchell called a general convention to meet in Indianapolis July 17, at which delegates from the miners' unions in all the states where the United Mine Workers of America is organized were to consider the advisability of a sympathetic strike of mine workers throughout the bituminous region. It was felt that this desperate action, which could be taken only in violation of contracts, particularly in the states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, would cost the union dear in dishonor. As the officers of the coal roads which control the anthracite mines clung to their determination to break up the union so far as it related to their workmen, the miners felt that defeat in the present instance would end all hope of improving their condition in the anthracite field at any future time. President Mitchell on June 22 issued a statement replying to the assertions of the presidents of the coal roads on the points at issue between them and the 147.000 strikers. The miners, he says, are employed never to exceed 200 days in any year, compensation for their services averaging $1.42 for ten hours of very perilous labor. By quoting statistics of coal production he seeks to disprove the charge that the capacity of the mine workers has deteriorated since they were unionized. An increase of 39 cents a ton in the price of coal at the mines is pointed to as more than offsetting the increase of 13 cents a ton in the cost of mining which is claimed by the operators. Furthermore, the notorious practice of the coal roads in charging themselves exorbitant rates for the transportation of their own coal to market, where they control absolutely the price to the consumer, is dwelt upon as accounting for the alleged disappearance of profits. The injustice of paying a mine worker only for a "long ton" of coal, on the plea that impurities are contained in it and then docking him if impurities are actually found, though the consumer gets only the legal ton from the dealer, is pointed out. In closing his statement President Mitchell says: "We repeat our proposition to arbitrate all questions in dispute and if our premises are wrong, if our position is untenable, if our demands cannot be sustained by facts and figures, we will again return to the mines." A very strong sentiment to the effect that the operators should either open their mines or agree to arbitration has developed among those who at the beginning of the strike took sides with the coal roads. The report of Colonel Wright, United States commissioner of labor, was understood to recommend arbitration. Whether or not the president would take action either looking to the settlement of the |