sion also claiming title and have the controversy settled. The "actual damages" which may be recovered against a newspaper publisher, who has published a libel in good faith, and on notice has retracted it, are damages which the plaintiff has suffered "in respect to his property, business, trade, profession, or occupation, and none other."

Lands devised to a person for life with power of appointment by will, or lands devised in trust without power of sale, may be sold by decree of court; and the proceeds thereof invested under the order of the court, are treated as real property and are subject to the dispositions of the will as if no sale had been made.

In case of the insolvency of any person or corporation all debts for labor have precedence over all debts which had not become a lien on the property of the debtor prior to the performance of the labor.

The employment of males under fourteen years of age and of females under sixteen years of age for more than nine hours a day is prohibited.

To protect children from being educated in immorality, the courts are authorized, after due inquiry, to remove them from the custody of the persons having them in charge and place them in some State institution or in the custody of some suitable person. The act applies only to children under fourteen years of age who are bound out, apprenticed, or given away by their parents or either of them.

Any girl between the age of ten and seventeen years, and any boy between ten and sixteen years of age, who runs away from school, or from the office, shop, farm, or other place where he or she is employed, and is found lounging about saloons, bar-rooms, or in the public streets, or attending, without permission, any public dance, skating-rink, or show, may be arrested as a truant upon complaint made by the parents, or by a town or city officer, and sentenced to confinement in the reform school, the boy until he is seventeen years old and the girl until she attains the age of twenty-one years.

The well-known oleomargarine law has been passed, also a law to prohibit the sale of unwholesome milk and of adulterated liquor.

All establishments where emery wheels or belts are used are required to be provided with blowers, so arranged as to carry away the dust from the emery wheels while in operation.

Prohibition of the sale of intoxicating liquors depends on local option.

A very severe act has been passed to protect from fraud primary elections and political conventions.

No railroad company, whose road has been constructed in whole or in part by public aid or local subscription, is allowed to abandon any portion of its road, except upon the order of the Circuit Court of the county wherein lies the portion of the track proposed to be abandoned.

After the 1st of November, 1888, passenger-cars can be heated by no method or device which is not approved by the Railroad Commissioner.

Corporations may be organized in Michigan to carry on every imaginable business, mercantile, mechanical, or agricultural, including the buying and selling of brood animals and the growing of mint.

The sparrow is proscribed—a reward of one cent is offered for every scalp. New York, with less mercy, makes it a duty to starve the sparrow, because it punishes him who gives the poor bird food or shelter. Before long this pitiless legislation will render it impossible to answer the query, so familiar to our youth, "Who killed Cock Robin ?"

MINNESOTA.

Following in the footsteps of other States, Minnesota has enacted that woman shall retain the same legal existence and legal personality after marriage as before marriage, and shall receive the same protection of all her rights as a woman which her husband does as a man, and for any injury to her

reputation, person, or property or character, or any natural rights, she shall have the same right to appeal in her own name to the courts of law or equity for redress and protection that her husband had to appeal in his name alone; provided, the wife shall not have the right to vote or hold office, but women may be appointed notaries public.

The garnishment of the wages of a laborer is prohibited, and a first lien is given to the laborer, and a second lien to the furnisher of material, on all property to which either has contributed, and it is made a penal offense for a contractor or sub-contractor to receive the full amount due on his contract without paying the laborer and the material man. Receivers of corporations are required after payment of taxes to pay all laborers and all sums owing to clerks and servants of the corporation for personal services rendered for the three months preceding their appointment.

Actions for libel are regulated by a provision that the aggrieved party shall, at least three days before commencing suit, serve notice on the publisher, specifying the alleged defamatory matter, and demanding a retraction; and if retraction be made, actual damages only can be recovered. The mortgage of crops before the seed thereof shall have been planted for more than one year in advance is prohibited; suits for the foreclosure of mortgages must be commenced within fifteen years after the cause of action accrues. The validity of a will admitted to probate cannot be attacked after the lapse of ten years; minors and other persons under disability at the time the will was probated are allowed ten years from the removal of the disability to question it.

The stipulation in a contract that a debt shall have a greater rate of interest after maturity than before works a forfeiture of the entire interest.

Contractors of prison labor are prohibited from making contracts in advance for the manufacture of articles in competition with artisan labor.

Railroad corporations are made liable for all damages sus

tained in the State by their employees from the negligence of co-employees, unless there be contributory negligence on the part of the injured employees, and such corporations are not allowed by contract, rule, or regulation to diminish or impair their liability. An act has been passed to regulate common carriers which creates a railroad and warehouse commission, and defines the duties of such commission; also an act to regulate elections, which is substantially a re-enactment of the law of New York on that subject; also an act to establish a bureau of labor statistics, whose duty it is to see that all laws regulating the employment of women, children, and minors, and for the protection of operatives, are enforced. Licenses to sell intoxicating liquors are fixed at a high rate, and instruction in the public schools as to the effect of stimulants and narcotics on the human system is commanded.

The Sunday law has been so relaxed that you can now do in Minnesota during Sunday "whatever is needful for the health, good order, or comfort of the community," but the shaving of beards and hair cutting are not considered necessary to comfort, inasmuch as the statute expressly excludes the practice of the tonsorial art on the Lord's Day.

MISSOURI.

It has been enacted in Missouri that any provision in a contract or agreement which limits the time in which suit may be instituted shall be null and void; that the surviving parent only can appoint a testamentary guardian to a minor child; that only one new trial shall be granted except where the triers of fact shall have erred in matter of law, or when the jury shall have been guilty of misbehavior, and that every order allowing a new trial shall specify of record the grounds on which it was rendered; that in civil actions, where one of the original parties to the contract or cause of action is dead or insane, the other party shall not be admitted to testify either in his own favor or in favor of any party to the action claiming under him; that every railroad company

shall be responsible in damages to the person whose property may be injured or destroyed by fire, communicated directly or indirectly by locomotive engines in use on the railroad operated by such company, and that the railroad company shall have an insurable interest in the property upon the line of its road, and may procure insurance thereon for its own protection against such damages.

The public execution of criminals sentenced to death has been abolished. If a minor under eighteen years of age is sentenced to death, the Governor, is authorized to commute the sentence to imprisonment in the penitentiary for a term not less than ten years.

Bucket-shops are forbidden, and dealing in futures without any intention of receiving and paying for the property bought, or of delivering the property sold, is declared to be gambling, and is punished by a fine of not less than one nor more than five hundred dollars for each offense.

The granting of a free pass by any railroad or transportation company, or by any officer, agent, or employee thereof, to any member of the General Assembly, or to any State, county, or municipal officer, is made a penal offense; the giver as well as the receiver is liable to prosecution. The consolidation of competing or parallel lines of railroad is prohibited. The use of any substitute for hops or the pure extract of hops in the manufacture of beer is unlawful. The social agitation concerning the traffic of spirituous liquors has been settled by the passage of a local option law. All owners of mines and of manufacturing establishments are required to report annually to the Bureau of Statistics, among other things, the cost of building and grounds, the cost of machinery and repairs, the amount paid yearly for rent, taxes, and insurance, the value of raw material used, the total amount of wages paid, the number of employees, male and female, distinguishing between the skilled and the unskilled, and the lowest wages paid to each class, giving the age of females under fourteen years; failure or neglect to furnish this report is punishable by fine.