For 1893 the total assessed valuation of property in the State was $260,172,590.16, on which a tax of 5 mills was levied, yielding a revenue of $1,302,473.96. The valuation for 1892 was $260,926,127.23, on which a 4-mill tax was levied, yielding $1,048,899.36.

Education. "The public schools are at a standstill. The State does not increase its appropriations as fast as the population increases, and there is no prospect that it will." This statement is found in a circular issued this year in behalf of the adoption of a proposed constitutional amendment, giving to local school districts the right to levy a special tax for schools in addition to the State appropriation. This amendment failed to secure the approval of the people, and the schools in the rural districts must still remain weak and inefficient, as the State can not well afford to do more for public education than it is now doing.

Penitentiary.-A gradual reformation in the methods of prison management is in progress in the State. Under the operation of the act of 1892 the State convicts are being gradually withdrawn from the coal mines and placed under the direct control and supervision of State officials. In order to effect this change it was necessary for the State to secure larger prison accommodations, and for this purpose the board of convict managers in 1893 purchased 4,000 acres of fine woodland on Coosa river, at Speigner, in Elmore County. The land lies on both sides of a creek, and is only nine miles from the old prison at Wetumpka. In October, 1893, a party of 15 convicts from the mines at Birmingham was brought to this wilderness. They camped out in tents and began to fell trees and clear up a place upon which the first temporary stockade could be built. The work rapidly progressed, and in a short time two houses were completed, and these were followed by others, until more convicts could safely be brought down from the mines. The buildings were called Prison No. 2, in contradistinction from "The Walls" at Wetumpka, which is termed Prison No. 1. Work was also begun at clearing up a plat across the creek for what is called Prison No. 3. As soon as a stockade was built more prisoners were brought down, and the building operations were pushed with greater rapidity.

Before April of this year a kitchen, dormitory, stable, and 3 other small buildings had been erected at Prison No. 2, where 120 convicts were quartered. Three hundred acres of land adjacent had been cleared and planted with cotton. At Prison No. 3 6 buildings had been erected, and 209 convicts were brought thither from the mines. Here also 300 acres had been cleared and planted. These buildings, which, with the aid of convict labor, were erected at a cost of only about $5,000, are intended merely for temporary use. Substantial brick structures are to be erected forthwith. Good clay for brick is found on the premises, and as early as June of this year preparations had been completed so that a portion of the convicts could be employed in making brick.

African Migration.-A State convention of representative colored men met at Birmingham, on March 21, for the purpose of considering and promoting the migration of the race to Africa. Addresses in favor of the movement were delivered by Bishop Turner and by various colored

orators. The sentiment of the convention was strongly expressed in favor of this solution of the negro problem.

Pensions.-The special State tax levied for the relief of Confederate soldiers and their widows yielded a fund in 1893 amounting to $125,326.95. This was distributed among 5,655 needy soldiers and widows, each receiving $21.95, and among 45 blind soldiers, each of whom received $26.66. The fund for distribution in 1894 was $117,484.78, and the beneficiaries numbered 6,506, of whom 46 were blind soldiers.

Labor Troubles.-In April of this year a strike was inaugurated among the coal miners of northern Alabama, which at length attained such serious proportions as to lead Gov. Jones to call upon the militia. The First Regiment of State troops was ordered into camp at Ensley City late in May, whence it was several times called out to prevent threatened trouble. Not until late in June did the Governor deem it safe to dismiss the troops; and his order, dated June 29, directing their dismissal, had scarcely been executed when the railroads at Birmingham and vicinity were tied up by a strike inaugurated as a part of the great Chicago strike. Gov. Jones at once ordered the troops to Birmingham, where the railroad companies were protected in hiring new men and opening their lines to traffic. On July 16 he was compelled to order the troops to Pratt mines, where the striking miners had attacked a company of negroes hired to supply their places, and had killed several. The presence of the militia restored order. They were kept under arms for several weeks and were then dismissed gradually.

Negro Persecution.-In certain portions of Pike and Crenshaw Counties an organized effort appears to have been made early in the year to rid the locality of its colored people by making it unsafe for them to remain. All sorts of outrages were heaped upon them, and matters had reached such a state in March that Gov. Jones issued his proclamation invoking the aid of the good citizens in those counties in enforcing the law. The local courts had been unable to reach the offenders, owing to the fear of the negroes to testify. This action of the Governor seems to have had the desired effect.

Lumber. The following is a summary of the lumber and timber business done in the port of Mobile for the fiscal year 1893-'94, compared with that of 1892-'93, the timber being reduced to superficial feet:

Coal.-The receipts of Alabama coal were 111,660 tons, against 86,293 tons last season. Of this amount, 23,539 tons were exported.

Political. This year, like 1892, was one of unusual political excitement in the State. The old contest for supremacy between the Kolb faction of the Democratic party and the regular Democratic organization was prosecuted with increased zeal and bitterness. The followers of Mr. Kolb, who styled themselves Jeffersonian Democrats, met in convention at Birmingham on Feb. 8, and nominated a ticket for State of ficers headed by their leader, Reuben F. Kolb, for Governor, which included the following nominees: J. C. Fonville for Secretary of State, Thomas K. Jones for Treasurer, W. T. B. Lynch for Auditor, Warren S. Reese, Jr., for AttorneyGeneral, J. P. Oliver for Superintendent of Education, and S. M. Adams for Commissioner of Agriculture. This ticket was adopted by the State Convention of the Populist party, which met at Birmingham at the same time. The platform of the Jeffersonian Democrats contained the following declarations:

We demand a free vote and an honest count. We demand the passage of a contest law for State officers.

We demand the free coinage of gold and silver on the basis of 16 to 1.

We demand the expansion of the circulating medium by corporate enterprises.

We demand a tariff for revenue, and that the revenue necessary to meet the expenses of the Govern ment be raised so far as possible by a tariff on importations, and that this tariff be so levied as to protect the laborer in the mines, the mills, the shops, and on the farms and their products, against the labor of foreign countries.

We demand a national graduated tax on salaries or incomes in excess of reasonable expenditures for the comforts and necessities of life.

We favor more liberal educational facilities for the masses, and a better and more efficient administration of the school laws.

We demand that the convicts shall be removed from the mines.

We demand that the present lien laws be so amended as to give miners the same benefits accorded to other laborers, and the enactment of such laws as

will secure to them payments of wages in lawful money semimonthly.

The platform of the Populists ratified the national platform of the party, demanded a free ballot and a fair count, opposed State banks, and embraced the following declarations:

We denounce the Sayre election law as partisan, and open to the commission of frauds, for which no remedy is provided and no penalty affixed, and we pledge ourselves to repeal or amend it so as to secure fair and honest elections, as soon as we obtain control of the State government.

We denounce the extravagant methods of the present de facto State administration by which taxes have been increased and large sums of money borrowed at high rates of interest to defray expenses of the current year.

the colored people, and encourage them to be honest We would discourage the spirit of emigration among and industrious, by dealing fairly with them and according to them their rights under the law. We are in favor, however, of having the General Government set apart sufficient territory to constitute a State, given exclusively to the colored race, to which they entitled to suffrage and citizenship. may voluntarily go, and in which they alone shall be

The State Convention of the regular Democratic party met at Montgomery on May 22. There had been an ante-convention contest for the gubernatorial nomination between William C. Oates and Hon. Joseph F. Johnston, which resulted in the success of the former at the primaries. When the convention met, Oates was nominated on the first ballot, receiving 272 votes to 232 for Johnston. The remainder of the ticket was completed as follows: For Secretary of State. James Kirkman Jackson; for Treasurer, J. Craig Smith; for Auditor, John Purifoy; for AttorneyGeneral, William C. Fitts; for Superintendent of Education, John O. Turner; for Commissioner of Agriculture, Hector D. Lane.

A platform was adopted which is noteworthy for its approval of the national Administration. The convention took this action in spite of the well-known hostility of Senator Morgan to the Administration, and in spite of the fact that he had just entered upon a campaign for re-election by severely attacking the President. Other declarations of the platform were as follow:

We pledge to the people of Alabama a continuance of the good governnient of our State affairs inaugurated by the election of George S. Houston in 1874.

The election law enacted at the last session of our General Assembly is in accordance with the principles upon which are based the laws regulating elections in a large majority of the States of this Union, without regard to party, and intend to obtain at the ballot box a full and free expression of the popular will. We believe in giving it a fair trial, and should it fail to accomplish the end which it was intended to effect, we pledge ourselves to make such changes and alterations therein as may be necessary to effect that

end.

We pledge our party to the maintenance of a system of free public schools, and to increase the approdition of the State will permit. priations for that purpose whenever the financial con

On May 31 the Republican State Convention met at Birmingham and adopted the Kolb ticket. All the other political factions in the State were therefore united in opposition to the regular Democracy. An exciting campaign followed, in which money from the North was sent into the State for the purpose of aiding in the overthrow of Democracy; but the result was again in favor of the existing régime. At the August election the entire regular ticket was elected, Oates receiving 110,830 votes for Governor and Kolb 83,309. Two amendments to the State Constitution were submitted to the people at this time, and both were defeated, neither receiving

a majority of all the votes cast in the election. One of these was in the interest of public education, permitting school districts to levy and collect special taxes for support of schools. It received 47,732 affirmative and 46,274 negative votes. The other amendment related to the city of Birmingham. Members of the Legislature were chosen at the same time. After the election, as in 1892, Kolb and his followers claimed that the result had been secured by fraud; that he had actually received a majority of the votes cast, but that the regular Democrats, holding control of the election machinery, had falsified the returns. An address was at once issued by his campaign committee, indignantly protesting against these frauds, and calling upon all people who believed in fair elections to meet at their respective county seats on Aug. 23 and organize honest - election leagues, whose duty it should be to see that such violations of law were punished and made odious. Meetings were held in many of the counties, resolutions were adopted, and in some cases leagues were

formed.

66

Another election was held on Nov. 6 in the several congressional districts of the State, at which 8 Democrats and 1 Populist were chosen, the latter being elected in the seventh district.

ALEXANDER III, Emperor of Russia, born March 10, 1845; died at Livadia, in the Crimea, Nov. 1, 1894. He was the second son of the Emperor Alexander II, whose great achievement of giving freedom to the serfs in 1861 placed him historically beside President Lin

coln and Dom Pedro II, of Brazil. All three acts of emancipation took place within a period of ten years. The Russian emancipator's eldest son, Nicholas, heir apparent to the throne, died in 1865, and on his deathbed requested his fiancée, Princess Dagmar, of Denmark, to marry his brother Alexander. This marriage took place Nov. 9, 1866, and is said to have been very happy. Five children were born of it, the eldest of whom, born May 18, 1868, has succeeded to the throne. (See NICHOLAS II.)

At the time when he became heir to the throne Alexander III was noted for nothing but his immense physical strength. But he had received a military education, and could speak French, and he at once set about fitting himself for the duties that were to devolve upon him some day. He learned to speak English and German, and diligently read history, political economy, and works on civil government, and manifested a deep interest in religious questions and the history of the Greek Church. In the Russo-Turkish war of 1877 he took the field as a general of infantry, and in the Danube campaign commanded the two corps on the left of the army. He is said to have been a courageous soldier, going under fire with his troops, so that in one

battle a bullet grazed his head. After the war he was made general-in-chief of the forces in the St. Petersburg district.

The Nihilists had persistently plotted to murder Alexander II, and the sternest and most thorough measures of repression had been executed against them, while at the same time steps

ALEXANDER III.

were taken for a commission of the nobility and magistrates to work out a scheme that should grant the people representative government and redress some of their grievances. But the conspirators were embittered by the punishment given to many of their number, and determined to compass the death of the Emperor at all hazards. Their final plot was a scheme by which half a dozen of their number were provided with thick glass bombs filled with dynamite, and stationed at intervals along the route by which the imperial carriage was to return from a review of the Marine Corps. A woman was to give the signal by raising her handkerchief to her face, and if one bomb failed the next was to be thrown. The first struck the ground behind the carriage and wounded two of the guards, and when the Emperor alighted to look after the injured men the second bomb was thrown at his feet. Its explosion mangled him frightfully and killed the Nihilist who threw it. The Emperor was taken to his palace, and died within two hours. Alexander III then became Emperor, March 13, 1881, but his coronation was postponed more than a year. (See "Annual Cyclopædia" for 1881, page 795 et seq.)

On ascending the throne, Alexander III set

licensed and 2,274 unlicensed lay readers, 151 paid and 107 unpaid deaconesses, 72 paid and 416 unpaid sisters, 806 paid and 165 unpaid mission women, and 1,127 paid and 123 unpaid nurses. The tithe-rent charge as commuted is given at £2,339,643, and its present value as £1,777,524. The average income of the parochial clergy is a little more than £240. The stipends of assistant clergy are returned as £275,468. Of the voluntary contributions, £636,708 were for day and Sunday schools and £235,905 for foreign missions. An advance, in some instances considerable, on the returns of the previous year is shown in every department.

Missionary Societies.-The total income of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts for 1893 amounted to £113,079, an increase of £1,100 over the previous year. The society maintained 718 ordained missionaries, including 10 bishops and 2,300 lay teachers, and had 2,600 students in its colleges in different parts of the world, with about 38,000 children in its schools in Asia and Africa. The works of two brotherhoods or missionary communities, one of Cambridge men at Delhi, and the other of graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, at Hazaribagh, in Chota Nagpur, are cited as striking instances of the way in which the society has secured for its missionary work the services of highly educated men. Considerable space is given in the report to the mission in Mashonaland, which was planted by the society before the British South Africa Company was formed. In the new diocese of Lebombo the bishop was the only clergyman of the Church of England. The diocese of Quebec had made a voluntary offer to surrender its grant at the close of the present century. As these grants are surrendered the claims from the lands increase in much more rapid proportion. work of the society is carried on in 54 dioceses, and the clergy whom it maintains minister in 51 different languages.

The

The annual meeting of the Church Missionary Society was held in London, May 1. Sir John Kennaway, M. P., presided. The expenditure of the society, including a deficit of £3,713 brought forward, had been £265,836, or £12,610 more than the receipts. The expenditure was increasing at the rate of £12,000 a year. During the past twelve months 45 men and 48 women had been accepted for foreign service. The statistical reports showed that there were in all the missions 324 stations, 844 European missionaries (347 ordained, 74 lay, 255 wives, and 168 woman missionaries), 312 native and Eurasian clergy, 4,876 native lay teachers, 45,561 native communicants, 200,484 native Christian adherents, and 2,025 schools, with 81,648 pupils. The number of baptisms during the year had been 11,718. The annual report recorded distinct signs of progress. Twenty-three native evangelists had been ordained during the year, some of whom were chiefs of their race, as in Uganda, and one was a Tukuhd Indian-the first native clergyman ever ordained within the limits of the arctic circle. Six of the society's missionaries had been made missionary bishops. The general effects of mission work were visible in every field to all who were willing to see. The most conspicuous transformation was that wrought

in Uganda, although the world, seeing only what it called "religious rivalries," utterly failed to comprehend what had taken place. Several converts from Mohammedanism were mentioned. The most welcome news of the year was that of the improvement in the lives of the native Christians in India, China, Japan, and Africa. Contributions were made during the anniversary meetings sufficient to pay the debt of the society and to furnish it £4,000 or £5,000 with which to begin the new year.

The Cambridge mission to Delhi and the south Punjab in its sixteenth annual report speaks of the obstacles to missionary work in the stronghold of Mohammedan and Hindu feeling in which it labors as being very great, and can therefore return but few conversions. It sustains St. Stephen's College, an institution affiliated to the Punjab University, with about 600 students from six to twenty years of age, about 50 of whom are Christians, while all are receiving Christian instruction; a Christian boys' boarding house, containing about 40 boys, who attend the high school; an industrial boarding school; bazaar preaching; and itinerant work. A new station was contemplated at Rotak.

The Church Pastoral Aid Society in 1893 made grants to 652 incumbents in England and Wales, who had under their charge an aggregate population of 5,360,891, the average population of each aided parish being 8,222. The average amount of incomes of the aided incumbents was £501, and 156 of them were without parsonage houses. The total annual value of the grants made was £54,353. These grants had called forth considerable local effort. The sum of £37,496 had been raised in the various dioceses to supplement the society's aid, and a further sum of £9,055 had been contributed by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.

The Additional Curates' Society reported a decrease of nearly £13,000 in its income for 1893 as compared with that for 1892, the receipts from all sources having been £74,720, as against £87,476 in 1892. Having regard to the diminution in incomes, the society announced that it was necessary to reduce the grant list by 15 per cent. of the total liability for 1893.

The Convocations.-At the meeting of the Convocation of Canterbury, Nov. 2, 1893, a report was presented in the lower house criticising certain provisions of the Local Government (England and Wales) bill as not sufficiently guarding against secular interference with ecclesiastical matters, and resolutions were adopted suggesting amendments intended to remedy the defects pointed out. In the House of Laymen, also, amendments were suggested with a view to securing to the Church in rural parishes "her rightful control over Church schools, parish rooms, and other buildings vested in Church officers as trustees."

The Convocation of Canterbury met for the first time in 1894, Jan. 30. In the upper house the Parish Councils bill was discussed. A petition was presented calling attention to the increase of suicides, and protesting against the leniency with which such cases were treated by coroners' inquests returning verdicts of temporary insanity. In the lower house a number of amendments were suggested to the Parish Coun