hibits the issue to employees of tickets or tokens, or the use of any means to coerce them to purchase supplies or goods from any particular person, firm, or corporation.

LOUISIANA.

A Sunday law has been passed in Louisiana closing all places of business on Sunday, but the provisions of the act do not apply to newspapers or printing offices, book stores, drug stores, undertaker shops, public or private markets, bakeries, dairies, livery stables, railroads, hotels, boarding-houses, steamboats and other vessels, warehouses for receiving and forwarding freights, restaurants, telegraph offices, theatres, or any place of amusement, providing no intoxicating liquors are sold on the premises. The sale on Sunday of alcoholic, vinous, or malt liquors is absolutely prohibited, except wine for table use in hotels. The employment of women and children has been regulated; no boy under twelve and no girl under fourteen years of age can be employed in a factory, workshop, or workhouse; no child under fourteen years of age can be employed in certain enumerated occupations, unless the child has attended school at least four months next preceding the employment; a day's work for young persons under eighteen years of age, and for women in a factory, or workshop, or clothing, dressmaking, or millinery establishment, is ten hours, one of which is to be allowed for dinner. A day's labor on street railroads is fixed at twelve consecutive hours, with reasonable intervals for meals. Employers are required to furnish seats for their female employees, to be used by them when not necessarily engaged in active duty. The prospective obligation of a surety on official bonds terminates six months after his death, the officer being required to furnish a new surety, otherwise his office is vacated, as in case of resignation. Such surety may also, after the lapse of one year from the execution of the bond, withdraw therefrom on giving the principal thirty days' notice to furnish a new bond;

failure of the officer to give a new bond within the time specified operates as a resignation of the office.

Privileges or liens of creditors on crops are ranked as follows: first, the labor; second, the lessor; third, the manager; fourth, the pledgee; fifth, the furnisher of supplies or money and the physician.

In any civil suit wherein the writ of arrest, attachment, sequestration, provisional seizure or injunction may be issued, the defendant may by reconversion or counter-claim recover the damages he may have sustained by the illegal resort to such writ.

The defendant is made a competent witness in criminal cases, but he cannot be compelled to testify. The allowance of any rebate by insurance companies is probibited; the net premium must be expressed in the policy.

The sale of commercial fertilizers has been regulated; such fertilizers cannot be sold until the dealer has filed with the Commissioner of Agriculture a statement setting forth the name and brand of the fertilizer, the number of pounds contained in the package, the name of the manufacturer and the place of manufacture, and the character of the ingredients which he is willing to guarantee the fertilizer contains; this statement is declared to be a guaratee to every purchaser.

The sale of oleomargarine or of any other substance than the product of the cow as butter is prohibited.

It is made unlawful to introduce into the State any substance which, in the opinion of the Board of Health, may produce a liability to contagion or infection of any disease among the people, whether the same shall be in the form of bacteria germs, microbes, virus (vaccine virus excepted), or other substances claimed to contain the elements of any infectious or contagious disease, whether introduced for the purpose of inoculation or otherwise, without permission of the Board of Health.

By this act the Legislature intended to prevent an irruption from the tropics of a number of persons, some of them no

doubt charlatans, who proposed to inoculate the people with yellow fever or cholera germs. One man proposed to introduce into the city of New Orleans yellow fever microbes sufficient to inoculate ten thousand persons; it was apprehended he might in this way produce a yellow fever epidemic.

MAINE.

The status of children born out of marriage has been very much modified in the State of Maine. Sir William Blackstone's defense of the common-law doctrine no longer satisfies the legislators of Maine, who have lost all respect for the statute of Merton and for the barons and nobles of Henry III who refused to adapt the law of England to that of the Church. The people of Maine, it seems, do not fancy the idea of having a nullius filius in their midst; they have gone as far as they well could in providing every child with a father. The statute enacts that an illegitimate child is the heir of his parents who intermarry. Any such child is the heir of his mother; he is also the heir of his father if adopted into his family, or acknowledged in writing before a justice of the peace or notary public, and in either of the foregoing cases such child and its issue shall inherit from its parents respectively, and from their lineal and collateral kindred, and these from such child and its issue, the same as if legitimate. This statute is subject to criticism, inasmuch as it makes no distinction between adulterous bastards and natural children, the issue of parents who at the time of conception might have contracted marriage. The civil law does not tolerate the legitimation or acknowledgment of natural children born of an adulterous connection, nor does it so incorporate into the family a natural child not legitimated by marriage as to impart to it legitimate heritable blood, and thus entitle it to inherit from legitimate collaterals, and entitle legitimate collaterals to inherit from it.

An act has been passed to compel the attendance at school of children between the ages of eight and fifteen years

for at least sixteen weeks in each year; truant officers are appointed to enforce the law, and a boy between ten and fifteen years of age found wandering about the streets in school hours is to be committed to the State Reform School unless his parents or guardian give pledges satisfactory to the truant officer that he will attend school as required by law. A bureau of industrial and labor statistics has been established, and the employment of labor has been regulated. No woman, nor a female minor under eighteen, nor a male under sixteen years of age, can be employed to work in any manufacturing or mechanical establishment for more than ten hours a day. The parties may contract for the forfeiture of a week's wages in case the employer discharges the employee without a week's previous notice of his intention, or in case the employee quits work without similar notice; no child under fifteen years of age can be employed to work in such establishments, except during vacation of the public schools, unless during the year next preceding the employment it has attended for sixteen weeks some public or private school, eight weeks of which to be continuous.

An act has been passed which provides that any court may exclude minors as spectators from the court-room during the trial of any case, civil or criminal, when their presence is not necessary as witnesses or parties.

Another act provides that after twenty years from the death of any person, no probate of his will or administration of his estate shall be originally granted unless it appears there are moneys due to the estate from the United States or the State of Maine. The act does not apply to foreign wills previously probated in another State or county.

Political nominating conventions and primary meetings are protected from disturbance and fraud; the sale of commercial fertilizers has been regulated. Imprisonment for debt has been abolished, except in case of fraud, but the creditor is authorized on petition to a magistrate to examine the debtor and compel him to make disclosure of any prop

erty he may have which is liable to seizure; the machinery to accomplish this result is well devised.

The death penalty, which was incorporated into the penal law of the State in 1883, has been abolished, but a convict sentenced to imprisonment for life for an offense which was formerly capital, cannot obtain a pardon or commutation of sentence unless, after due inquiry and after hearing evidence, the Supreme Judicial Court shall certify to the Governor that in their opinion upon all the evidence the convict is innocent or was wrongly convicted.

An act has been passed to establish Boards of Health in each city and town, to protect the people from contagious diseases; it is very thorough and is especially aimed at scarlet fever, small-pox, diphtheria, and cholera; also an act to extirpate contagious diseases among cattle.

MASSACHUSETTS.

After next January all civil actions, whether at law or in equity, except replevin, may be brought in the same manner in which suits in equity now are, save that in such proceedings common law pleadings so far as practicable are to apply.

A change of venue in civil actions is permitted in the Supreme Judicial or Superior Court when there appears to the judge danger of an unfair trial from local prejudice or other cause. Superior Court judges over seventy who have served ten years may retire upon half salary.

When real estate is subject to conditions or restrictions unlimited as to time, such conditions or restrictions (except restrictions in a lease for a term of years certain) are in future to be limited to the term of thirty years from the date of the instrument or the probate of the will creating the same; the act does not apply to grants of the State, nor to gifts or devises for public, charitable, or religious purposes.

Warehousemen may sell property deposited with them to obtain charges for storage when the charges are overdue one year, and the statute notice of sale is given.