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black in the face every day over the injustice and oppression of a bourgeois society. However, Rochefort will have more reason than ever to think badly of a bourgeois society since a bour geois tribunal has condemned him to pay a good round sum to the employees whom he was pro posing to cheat. — The Nation.
appointed a commission of local scientists to fix a site. The commission has selected a plateau four thousand feet above the sea-level somewhat north of the present capital. The temperature of the plateau resembles that of middle France. There is plenty of water and no yellow fever. The journey by rail from the coast will take eighteen hours. This is believed to be the first occasion on record in which science has been called in to choose the site of a capital.
CURRENT EVENTS.
THE anti-trust law just enacted in Georgia is a very comprehensive and thorough one. It prohibits and declares void all contracts, agreements or arrange ments made with a view to preventing or obstructing free competition in the importation or sale of foreign articles, or the sale of articles of domestic growth or domestic raw material. It declares unlawful and void all trusts or combinations between persons or corporations which are designed to have a tendency to advance, reduce, or control the prices of such products to producers or consumers. It provides for the forfeiture of the charter and franchise of any domestic corporation violating any of its provisions, and prohibits offending foreign corporations from doing business in the State. The attorney-general is required to institute legal proceed ings against any corporation that violates the law in any way, and to enforce the prescribed penalties. Any person or corporation damaged by a trust is authorized to sue for the recovery of such damage, and for other purposes. There are several additional provisions intended to facilitate prosecution and to prevent the defeat of the law by the technical means to which corporation lawyers habitually resort in the interests of their clients. The law is based upon the theory that free competi tion in all forms of business is a personal .right and a public advantage, and that a wrong is done whenever it is suppressed or obstructed. There seems to be no room left for the escape of any combination designed to control prices or to interfere with the general laws of trade. It remains to be proved, if a law so stringent and far reaching can be enforced, and its power and usefulness will depend very largely upon the ability and integrity of the officers and the friendly disposition of the courts. However, the legislature has done its part in a determined manner, and there does not seem to be any reason to doubt that the law can be made effective.
THE Paris tribunals have decided that the habit of gambling in the wife is valid ground for divorce.
Two-thirds of the mail that passes through all the post-offices of the world is sent by and directed to English-speaking people.
THE Japanese government, instead of presenting medals to the soldiers who took part in the war against China, is to give them excellent Swiss watches. IT would be difficult to know just what we would do with Cuba if we had it. Its population is mongrel in character, and its climate does not invite the hardy independent white man. It might be well for annexationists to halt a little before "taking in" Cuba and Hawaii, and ask if we might not be taken in ourselves. A bill is now pending in Congress providing for the establishment at Washington of a permanent census office to undertake the work of making the twelfth and succeeding censuses and the collection of other essential information. There is a great waste in organizing a new office for every census, and there can be no doubt that the service would be greatly improved by placing it in the hands of a permanent bureau. A permanent bureau with a force of trained men in control could do much better work, and with the same expenditure of money, or at most a small increase, could largely increase the scope of inves tigation. Much of the material collected would be of incalculably more value for being collected yearly rather than decennially. THE capital of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, has a notoriously bad climate. It is a fastness of yellow fever and other tropical ailments, and the death-rate is high enough to seriously affect the commercial prosperity of the city. Recently the Brazilian government decided to remove the capital, and
LITERARY NOTES. IN the April number of CURRENT LITERATURE, Mr. George W. Cable, who has recently assumed editorial charge of that, excellent magazine, gives us a new
