ficial use of the park by the public. The defendant Commissioner, then, had no authority, either by the express terms of any statute or by any reasonable implication, to grant a license for the exhibition of the advertisements, and his attempt to do so was illegal and void. If the city authorities have no legal right to grant a permit to advertising agents to use the highways for advertising purposes, and that seems a legitimate deduction from this decision, it would seem to follow that they have a right to prevent their use without authority. This would not, however, imply that owners of property abutting on the highway might not use their property for advertising purposes. The remedy for such use would lie in an act of Legislature either requiring a license for all such exhibition of signs, or imposing a tax proportioned to the size of the sign or poster when exhibited anywhere except upon the store where the advertised goods are sold or the factory where they are made, and possibly imposing a tax even in such cases on signs exceeding a definitely prescribed size. We hope that this case may be appealed. It is the decision of a single judge, and it is desirable to obtain a more authoritative judgment upon the general principle involved. Subway Advertising To residents of New York this decision is of special interest on account of its bearing on the Subway advertising. The Rapid Transit Commission in their contract gave by implication the right to the Interborough Company to put up advertising signs in the Subway stations, provided they did not interfere with the easy identification of stations. Some question has been raised as to the proper interpretation of this contract, but The Outlook does not question that this right is conveyed by the contract, provided that (1) the Rapid Transit Commission had authority to grant such permit; and (2) the Interborough Company had a right to use the stations for advertising purposes if such permit were given. The decision of Judge Scott that the Park Commissioner had no authority to allow advertising on a park fence at least rows doubt on the authority of the Rapid Transit Commission to allow advertising in Subway stations. The authority to grant "the right, privilege, and franchise to construct, maintain, and operate [such] railway or railways," conferred upon the Rapid Transit Commission, does not seem to carry by necessary implication authority to grant a privilege to carry on a general advertising business; and, to apply the language of the Court quoted above, it is too obvious to require demonstration that business advertisements covering the walls of a Subway station contribute nothing to the beneficial use of the station by the public. But even if the Rapid Transit Commission has authority to grant permission to use the station walls for advertising, it is doubtful whether the Interborough Company has authority to do an advertising business, or to lease its station walls for that purpose. In general, a chartered corporation has authority to do only those things for which it is chartered. The Interborough Company is chartered for a specific purpose; namely, to build and operate a rapid transit railway in the city of New York; and express authority is conferred upon it to own such real estate and construct such stations or other accommodations as are "necessary to accomplish the objects of its incorporation." It can hardly be claimed that covering the walls of its stations is "necessary to accomplish the objects of its incorporation," which are to build and operate a rapid transit railway. The courts, however, have held that a charter to build and operate a railroad carries with it, by necessary implication, authority to engage in other transactions incidental to its main business and advantageous to its passengers—as, for example, to lease and maintain a summer hotel at the terminus of the road, it appearing that such hotel would add to the business of the company and the comfort of the passengers. It is difficult to see how entering into a general advertising business is, properly speaking, incidental to the main business of the Interborough Company; certainly it does nothing to promote the comfort of its passengers. The authority of the Interborough Company is still further limited by the following express terms of the Rapid Transit Act: "Every corporation formed under this act shall have power: To take and hold such voluntary grants of real estate and other property as shall be made to it, to aid in the construction, maintenance, and accommodation of its railway or railways, but the real estate received by voluntary grant shall be held and used for the purposes of such grant only." As we understand the facts, the Subway stations are built on property belonging to the city and voluntarily granted to the Interborough Company; and if such is the case, its use of that property for any other purpose than the maintenance and accommodation of its railway or railways appears to be expressly prohibited by the Legislature. We hope that, if the city authorities cannot be induced to take action to compel the removal of the advertisements which deface the walls of the Subway stations, the Municipal Art Society will see its way clear to bring this question before the courts for their decision. versus The United States The United States Government has again taken a Paper Trust legal action against a so-called trust, in a suit brought against the General Paper Company of Wisconsin by Attorney-General Moody. The General Paper Company is a small corporation of one hundred thousand dollars capital, organized, under the laws of Wisconsin, to act as selling agent for twenty-five great paper-manufacturing concerns of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The enormous product of the separate mills whose owners have formed the General Paper Company is controlled, as to prices, output, and shipment, by the latter organization. The profit made upon the paper sold in this way is distributed among the constituent companies pro rata. Thus the General Paper Company is not, like the United States Steel Corporation or the Standard Oil Company, a great amalgamation of smaller concerns owning outright the real estate, plants, and other assets of the original establishments; it is a holding and operating company like the Northern Securities Company. The paper-mills which have combined in the General Paper Company preserve their own corporate existence, presumably control their own local self-government, and simply pool their product through one agent personified in the General Paper Company. The claim is made, largely by newspapers which buy their paper from the mills in the combination, that this is a method of restraining trade in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. It is alleged that the General Paper Company, acting in its capacity as the controlling representative of the various mills, not only dictates prices and quantity of output, but determines from what mill the purchasing newspapers shall buy their paper. That is to say, if The Outlook were published in Grand Rapids, Wisconsin, and wished to buy its paper of the Itaska Paper Company of that place, the General Paper Company might say to it, No, you shall take your paper from the Grand Rapids Paper and Pulp Company. The petition to the court, which constitutes the first move in the action of the United States, alleges that, owing to this combination or trust, all competition in the manufacture and sale of news print paper has been restricted and the price greatly increased. Regulation the Remedy The Outlook has frequently expressed the opinion that legislation cannot prevent great industrial combinations and ought not to prevent them; that processes of manufacture have been improved and the efficiency of labor increased, and, on the whole, the quality of goods raised and prices lowered, by proper combination. But if combinations are to be permitted, their advantages will be lost to the public and their dangers enhanced if they are not strictly regulated by the Government. It is doubtful whether the manufacture of a staple article can ever become a monopoly in the strict definition of that term. There is nothing, so far as we can see, in a great combination of paper manufacturers to prevent any other person from entering into the making and selling of paper. We doubt if even under the Sherman This Telegraph Company against it. Any telegraph company now organized, or which may hereafter be organized, under the laws of any State, shall have the right to lines . . . over and along any of the military construct, maintain, and operate telegraph or post roads of the United States. Section 3,764 in Volume II. of the Com as follows: The following are established post roads: All the waters of the United States, during the time the mail is carried thereon. Anti-Trust Law a real amalgamation of the twenty-five mills acting through the General Paper Company into one corporate entity like the Steel Trust could be proceeded against. We therefore do not attach very much importance to the present case, except in so far as it is a step in the direction of defining the powers of the Federal Government in regulating or controlling corporations. The public, in all these cases of outcry against trusts-which often spring, no doubt, from real suffering and injusticeshould remember the distinction pointed piled Statutes of the United States reads out by Mr. Garfield between the legislation which attempts to prohibit monopoly and the legislation which prohibits rebates, discriminations, and unfair competition. It is far more important that a combination like the General Paper Company should be prevented from selling paper to one publisher at a lower price than that exacted from his competitors, than that all the paper-mills of the country should be stopped from forming one gigantic corporation. It is also wise to remember that certain industrial activities cannot well be carried on in combination. A staple or uniform product may be made advantageously not only by machinery, but in a machine fashion. Industrial products, however, which depend for their value, in a large part, upon individual taste and individual initiative, can never be well made in combination. The entire public, for example, would severely suffer if all the architects of the United States should enter into a great combination the executive officers of which determined all designs and working plans, even if the cost of building houses was greatly reduced thereby. There is every indication that in the future industrial staples will be produced and sold by great combinations under Government regulation, but the time will never come when there will not be a demand for individual labor, intelligence, and design in those products into which artistic taste or refinement enters. All railroads or parts of railroads which are now or hereafter may be in operation . . . The Western Union Company rented the right of way from the Pennsylvania Company under a twenty-year contract. On its expiration, and in conformity with its terms, the Pennsylvania Company asked the Western Union Company to vacate the premises, making meanwhile a contract with the Postal Telegraph Company to place other lines there. The Western Union Company declined to do so, although it had agreed that its right of way should cease with the expiration of the contract. Nevertheless it still contended that the necessary implications from the Act of 1866, permitting telegraph companies to use post roads, were that such companies might appropriate for their poles and lines a part of the rights of way of railroads upon paying just compensation, thus claiming the power of eminent domain. The Pennsylvania Company contended that while the Act gave the Government's consent to telegraph companies to construct lines along post roads which were not the property of private corporations, it gave no right to appropriate private property; in other words, it gave no sweeping rights of eminent domain. When the case came before the Federal Courts in New Jersey and Pennsylvania a year ago, conflicting decisions, which were reported at the time by The Outlook, were rendered. The judgment of the Federal Court in Pennsylvania has now been affirmed by the Supreme Court. In the opinion read by Justice McKenna, Justice Harlan dissenting, the Supreme Court declined to go to the extreme of making a railroad right of way public property. While the right of way of a railroad is property devoted to public use, while it has often been called a highway and as such is subject to a certain extent to State and Federal control, it has always been recognized that a railroad right of way is so far private property as to be entitled to the benefit of that provision of the Constitution which forbids its taking except under the power of eminent domain and upon payment of compensation. The Act of 1866, added Justice McKenna, does not grant the right to telegraph companies to enter upon and occupy the rights of way of railroad companies, except with the consent of the latter, or grant the power of eminent domain. Justice Harlan's dissent is based upon his interpretation of the Act as being intended to give to a telegraph company accepting its provisions the absolute right to put its wires and poles upon any post road-a public highway established primarily for the public convenience-if the ordinary travel on such road be not thereby interfered with. As The Outlook has already pointed out, the Federal legislation under which the Western Union Company claims to have been delegated the right of eminent domain includes the following provision: The United States may, for postal, military, or other purposes, purchase all the telegraph lines, property, and effects of any or all companies acting under the provision of the Act of July 24, 1866 ... at an appraised value to be ascertained by five competent, disinterested persons, two of whom shall be selected by the Postmaster-General of the United States, two by the company interested, and one by the four so previously selected. (U. S. Revised Statutes, 5,267.) Thus the public has a right to take over by purchase and manage the telegraph as it manages the post-office. Why should it not avail itself of this right? burning of a million bales, so as to keep up the price, and it is reported that a few bales were actually burned. This year's crop runs about a million bales ahead of the largest ever known before. It is declared by a Southern paper “a more deplorable circumstance to the South than the defeat of the Democratic party," for "it means a loss to this section of twenty million dollars, or, at least, it cuts short what seemed a promise at the opening of the season of that sum." This news is certainly different from what we heard not very long ago— that the Southern soil was becoming impoverished, that the negroes were getting too lazy to pick the crop, that the boll-weevil's ravages would amount to millions of dollars' damages. These forebodings had a decided influence abroad, but not so great an influence as the tremendous cotton speculation by which such a "corner" was obtained as to frighten England, France, and Germany into the immediate consideration of an increase of cotton-growing territory. A British Empire Cotton-Growing Association was at once formed and received a royal charter. Much has been hoped from its endeavors to make use of the Sudanese fields. France quickly followed this example in the French Sudan; in Cambodia, too, the already successful cotton cultivation is being extended. Nor has Germany lagged behind. The Government has offered a price in advance for colonial crops raised, and premiums have been The Colonial given for the best crops. Office has furnished gins and balepresses free of charge, and a steamship line has offered free transport. The Reichstag has voted funds necessary to construct railways in the cotton countries; the German statesmen are right in their conviction that nothing tends to develop cotton-growing so much as the establishment of railways. The increase, then, in the world's supply bids fair to be an important factor in determining the relative advantages to planters, manufacturers, and consumers. However the first two classes may be affected, the last will not object to be clothed as cheaply as possible even if low prices come from large production. Japanese Gains at Port Arthur The capture by the Japanese last week of Rihlung Fort, together with the occupation during the previous week of one or more of the Kikwan forts, gives the besiegers a strong foothold in the inner or eastern line of defenses at Port Arthur. It does not follow, however, that the central positions will be taken immediately. The mutually supporting and mutually defensive forts outlying from the citadel and town of Port Arthur are so numerous and so skillfully connected that it has been truthfully said that taken together they really form the equivalent of seven Sevastopols. The Russian engineer, General Kondratchenko, who planned these stubborn defenses, was killed, it is reported, in one of the recent assaults. Military critics will unite in according him an equal place as a military engineer with Todleben, the man who earned fame and honor by constructing the Sevastopol fortifications. The capture of Fort Rihlung, on the mountain of the same name, was effected only after the loss of a thousand men, killed or wounded, by the Japanese. It followed months of sap ping and mining, and was begun by the explosion of seven dynamite mines, followed by the charge of Japanese infantry under cover of a terrible bombardment. It is thought that the possession of Fort Rihlung and Fort Kikwan will partly at least isolate the ridge forming the western defenses on which are situated the great forts called Antseshan and Itseshan, which have so far balked all attacks. The newly captured forts stand at the east of this ridge, and 203 Meter Hill, now firmly held by the Japanese, is to the south. Thus, while in a measure the Japanese have penetrated beyond the outer circle, the strongest part of this circle still remains intact. Fort Rihlung is only two miles from the outskirts of the town of Port Arthur, and this proximity may indicate that this tremendous siege, which has hardly any historical parallel, is approaching its crisis; on the other hand, it is not at all improbable that the Russians, under General Stoessel's indomitable leadership, may hold out for weeks and possibly months to come. Admiral Togo has made his formal re port on the operations at Port Arthur, and has returned to Tokyo, where he has been received with tremendous enthusiasm. His report details the facts regarding the destruction or disablement of practically the whole of the Russian fleet, with the exception of some destroyers. Even the battle-ship Sevastopol is now reported aground and very seriously damaged. Admiral Togo for the first time reports the Japanese naval loss in these operations; it consists of one battle-ship (the Hatsuse), three cruisers, and two gunboats. The naval interest now centers about the Baltic Fleet, the two divisions of which are supposed to be approaching a rendezvous northeast of Africa, possibly the Chagos Islands. There are repeated rumors that Japanese cruisers have been seen in the neighborhood of Singapore, and even that a Japanese squadron of some size is in that neighborhood. The last hardly seems probable, and is not confirmed positively; but it is not unlikely that Japanese cruisers have gone even this distance (more than twenty-five hundred miles) from home in order to watch and report on the course taken by Admiral Rojesvensky's naval force. Greek in the English Universities A hotly contested fight over Greek has been going on for some weeks at both the great English universities, and there has been a great outpouring of opinion, wise and unwise, temperate and intemperate, on the subject at the universities and in the newspapers. The question of the compulsory study of Greek is the question of the old education; that is to say, the education which used as its material largely what are called the humanities, and which endeavored to infuse into its teaching a large cultural element. The question has come up before the two universities in different forms. At Oxford it is proposed to so change the present requirements as to permit candidates for honors in science and mathematics to secure their degrees without a knowledge of Greek, a proposal which was voted down in congregation by a vote of 200 to 164, a majority ominously small when the |