There are still some of the departments of the government of the Commonwealth which are, to a certain extent, supported by the fees collected and these are received, in whole or in part, by the incumbents. The fee system was convenient at a time when the Commonwealth was impoverished and officials had difficulty in finding sufficient employment and needed an incentive. This condition. of affairs no longer prevails and the system which was its outgrowth should be abolished. All officials should be paid proper compensation for their services and all collections made by them should be paid into the Treasury for the use of the Commonwealth. Everything possible ought to be done to encourage the creation of a single municipality which shall include all of the extensive population at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, now under the authority of several different municipal governments. Such a course would result in a saving of expense, an improvement in official tone, with increase of responsibility, and an advancement in prestige and influence. Not only the people of the locality, but those of the whole Commonwealth are interested, and they should be aided by all necessary legislation. At the other end of the State, the great industrial interests and the vast population along the Delaware at Philadelphia, Chester and other places are in a sense hide-bound. The way to the sea has been, to a considerable extent, closed to trade, because of distance and imperfect channels. Few natural obstacles are so great that energy will not overcome them. By opening the Erie canal De Witt Clinton brought the trade of the lake region to New York harbor and enabled the city there to become the chief port of the country. Philadelphia in the days of our fathers sought to regain her lost supremacy by building a railroad across the mountains, of which she should be the eastern terminus and whose directors should be all "citizens and residents of this Commonwealth." Failure should only be a stimulus to greater exertions. The engineering feats of the people of Manchester, Glasgow and Holland can be repeated in America. All the great power and influence of the Commonwealth and her representatives in national affairs, financial and political, should be exerted to secure the deepening of the channel of the Delaware and if need be in addition to dig a ship canal across New Jersey direct to the ocean.

It is high time that attention be given to the preservation of our streams, gifts of God to humanity, which are essential to happiness and comfort and even to life. In western Asia are vast lands where once were teeming civilizations now barren wastes, because the people did not understand how to take care of their water supplies Our streams are losing both beauty and utility, and are being en

croached upon by filling along their banks and using them as dumps for the refuse and pollution which come from mills, factories and habitations. They are also being seized upon by those who hope to make them commercially profitable, and in some instances the waters are being diverted from their channels. There was a time in the history of the world when a man could not be born or married and could not die without sharing his substance with ecclesiastics. If we are not careful, another time will come when we cannot drink or breathe without paying tribute to those who have secured control of the natural supplies of water and air. Probably nine-tenths of the charters for water companies which have come before me in the last two years have been instances in which the parties securing the grants had no intention of supplying water to consumers, but sought to get privileges which would be available in the market. It is a subject of difficulty and ought to be studied.

Section VII, Article 8, of the Constitution, adopted November 5, 1901, at an election by the people, provides: "All laws regulating the holding of elections by the citizens or for the registration of electors shall be uniform throughout the State, but laws regulating and requiring the registration of electors may be enacted to apply to cities only: Provided, That such laws be uniform for cities of the same class." The adoption of this amendment indicates that some changes in the present system of registration were deemed to be necessary. I recommend that proper legislation to comply with this provision of the Constitution receive your attention.

At the last session of the General Assembly, an act was passed requiring newspapers to exercise reasonable care with respect to what they published, and further requiring them to print upon the editorial page the names of those responsible for the publication. Although, as was natural, it caused some adverse criticism upon the part of many of those affected by it, the requirement of the publication of the names of the editors and business managers was at once obeyed by the press of the State, and the act has resulted in a marked improvement in the amenities of journalism in so far as they concern persons in private life. It is also evident that the act met with the grateful approval of the people. At the recent election, of those members of the Senate and House who voted for this bill, seventy-six were re-elected and two were defeated. Of those who voted against the bill, twenty-eight were re-elected and ten were defeated. Of those who voted against the bill 26.3 per cent., and of those who supported it 2.5 per cent. were defeated. Further legislation is required for the protection of the Commonwealth from the injury to her reputation and the disadvantage to the administration of her affairs which arise from the prevalent dissemination of scandalous inventions concerning her officials and

their efforts in her behalf. It is not only an unseemly spectacle, but it is a crime which the State ought to punish when day after day the mayor of one of her cities is depicted in communion with a monster compounded from the illustrations of Cope's Palaeontology, and Dore's Dante. The enforcement of the municipal law is impeded, and, therefore, the State is concerned. We are compelled to recognize that since the cry of the liberty of the press became a Shibboleth, the relation of the newspaper to the government and the people has been very much modified. No ruler now sits by divine right in his palace and writes lettres de cachet to confine his subjects in some Bastile at his own will, and on the other hand the newspaper will sometimes become, not the representative of the people seeking information for their good, but a commercial venture, the adjunct of a business house, the main object of whose existence is to aid its patron in selling his wares, as anxious to attract attention to them by startling postures as a circus poster. This means that the attitude of the statesman with respect to them must be changed with the change in conditions. In this Commonwealth, in the main, the country press endeavors to ascertain and further the interests of the people surrounding them. In the large cities, what is popularly called "Yellow Journalism," with its gross headlines, its vulgar and perverted art, its relish for salacious events and horrible crimes, and all the other symptoms of newspaper disease, is gaining a foothold. There is a daily newspaper of wide circulation, published in the city of Philadelphia, ostensibly by a Pennsylvania corporation. This corporation was chartered May 18, 1899, with an authorized capital stock of $25,000, of which the amount actually paid into the treasury of the corporation was $2,500. So far as the records in the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth show this amount has never been increased. A twenty story building on the main street in the heart of the city, largely rented out for offices and other business purposes, bears its name. Since its incorporation, it has paid to the Commonwealth in taxes five dollars and seventy-three cents. Since its control of what had been a useful and venerable newspaper began, every mayor of Philadelphia, every Governor, every United States Senator, save one who has only been in office four weeks, and every Legislature of the Commonwealth, has been subjected to a daily flood in its columns not of adverse comment, but of invented untruths. The State expended a considerable sum of money upon the celebration of Pennsylvania Day, August 20, 1904, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in an effort to impress upon the nation the importance of her participation in the settlement of the west. Her building and much of what she put on exhibition were exceptionally meritorious. But the gentleman put in charge of the agricultural exhibit at the out

set bought in Saint Louis two lots of seeds, one costing $17.60, and the other about $5.00, and put upon plates, without names, some breakfast foods manufactured in various states, the various prod ucts of corn wherever made, and added them to his display. H had been selected, overlooking political affiliations, because of his connection with the Pennsylvania State College, where agriculture is taught and his previous experience in a similar charge at Chicago. His explanation is that seeds are a marketable commodity, which, wherever bought, may have been grown in any other locality, that it was an important education for farmers to see all the ways in which corn could be utilized even if they had to step over state lines, and that no one could tell where the corn was grown from which its products were made. However forceful this reasoning may be, the management differed with him in judgment, his connection with the exhibit terminated May 31, 1904, and these articles were removed. If there had been any mistake, it had long been corrected. These few simple facts, at most of uncertain significance, this newspaper by the addition of falsehoods, innuendoes and extravagancies elaborated into nine columns and illustrated with seventeen pictures. The publication saved up until August 19th, was adroitly timed so as to have it do what could be done by scattering it over the country to soil the celebration and thwart the object of the State. It talked of "unparalleled fraud" and "graft," although such a suggestion in connection with the sum of $22.60 was a manifest absurdity. It gave what purported to be an interview with a member of the Commission. The written denial by the Commissioner of the facts alleged in the interview is on file among the papers of the Commission. He was made to say about tobacco that "I understand that not a leaf of this most important part of Pennsylvania's agricultural product is on exhibition." The tobacco then on display subsequently received in competition with the whole world the very highest prize. It said the sum expended upon the exhibit was $15,000. The sum actually expended was $8,999.26. It told the people over the country that this exhibit was "a fraud, a hypocritical sham, an insult to the farming interests and a disgrace." As a matter of fact, the exhibit was so creditable that the officials of the Exposition awarded to it three grand prizes, the highest possible award, twenty gold medals, twenty-one silver medals and thirty-two medals in bronze.

All of the people, proprietor and peasant, churchman and heathen, are concerned alike that a deliberate policy of false report to secure ill gotten gain should not succeed. What is the remedy? Sooner or later one must be provided. Recently in one of the States, an offended citizen shot and killed an editor, was tried for murder and acquitted. Lawlessness is the inevitable result of a failure of the law to correct existing evils. How can the right of a newspaper to

publish the facts concerning the government and its officials and to comment on them even mistakenly be preserved, and the continuance of intentional fabrication in the guise of news be prevented? The Constitution in the same section provides for freedom of speech, as well as freedom of the press. Under the English common law, when a woman habitually made outcries of scandals upon the public highways to the annoyance of the neighborhood, she was held to be a common scold, and a public nuisance. Anybody may abate a public nuisance, and she was punished by being ducked in a neighboring pond. Notwithstanding our constitutional provision concerning freedom of speech, in the case of Commonwealth versus Mohn, 2 P. F. Smith, page 243, it was held that the law of common scolds is retained in Pennsylvania, though the punishment is by fine and imprisonment. To punish an old woman, whose scandalous outcries are confined to the precincts of one alley, and to overlook the ululations which are daily dinned into the ears of an unwilling but helpless public by such journals, as have been described, is unjust to both her and them. suggest the application of this legal principle to the habitual publication of scandalous untruths. Let the persons harmed or annoyed present a petition to the Attorney General setting forth the facts and if, in his judgment, they show a case of habitual falsehood, defamation and scandal so as to constitute a public nuisance, let him file a bill in the Court of Common Pleas having jurisdiction, asking for an abatement of the nuisance, and let the court have authority, upon sufficient proof, to make such abatement by suppression of the journal so offending, in whole or in part, as may be necessary. Since this adaptation of existing law is only to be applied to the elimination of habitual falsehood in public expression, it will probably meet with no objection from reputable newspapers. Since both the Attorney General and the courts would have to concur, the rights of legiti mate journalism are sufficiently protected and it is only in an extreme case that the law could be invoked. For that case, it provides a remedy. I submit herewith, marked A, a draft of an act upon these lines.

The Commission to provide for the participation of the State in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition has performed its duties with fidelity, reasonable economy and success. The building erected for the State was commodious, impressive and artistic. It is believed that it was visited by more persons than all of the other state buildings combined. It cost with furniture and decoration of the grounds $96,145.64, which is $24,126.92 less than the cost of the structure devoted to like uses at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago. Among the decorations were forty-four portraits in oil of the leading personages in the history of Pennsylvania, and from among them portraits to the value of $2,500.00 have been retained for the new Capitol.