the Tammany faction. It was expected that his examination would cause him considerable embarrassment, but it was feared that his testimony would not throw much light on matters the Committee wished to probe.

Those who expected him to be embarrassed reckoned without their Croker. With the most perfect unconcern he testified and admitted many of the wrongs of which the Tammany party had been accused. Without any attempt at concealment he stated that when the Tammany party was in power it tried to fill every office with its own adherents. He admitted that the men thus appointed were expected to favor the interests of the party in the administration of their offices. He conceded that all good Tammanyites were supposed to contribute liberally to the funds of the association.

Having in this way assured the Committee that its worst fears in regard to corruption were well founded, he calmly stated as his opinion that this mode of procedure was quite right; that the spoils belonged to the party, and that it was only right for the party to take care of its own.

Having made these statements, he suggested that the Committee should examine Mr. Thomas C. Platt, the leader of the Republican party in New York, and hinted that it would learn from him that the affairs of the Republicans were managed in precisely the same way that Tammany did its work.

In short, he confessed to the most outrageous system of using public interests for private ends, and defended his position by asserting that there were

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other men and other parties just as unscrupulous as his own.

.

The amazing part of the whole matter is that Mr. Croker treated it as if it were a perfectly natural state of affairs, and as if politics were invented for the sole purpose of providing the adherents of the different parties with fat offices.

The will and the welfare of the people were completely overlooked by him with a coolness that seemed incredible.

Mr. Croker may find himself in trouble before the Committee has finished its work. It was settled in Albany, when the Assembly appointed this Committee to investigate the affairs of New York, that all witnesses called before the Commissioners would be bound to appear, and they would also be bound to answer any questions that might be asked them. In default of appearing or answering they would be held in contempt of court and would be punished accordingly.

During last week Mr. Richard Croker, and Mr. John Carroll, who is regarded as his deputy, incurred the displeasure of the Committee by refusing to answer questions that were put to them in regard to their income and means of obtaining a living. The Committee decided to take no action for the present, but will probably have both persons declared in contempt before the end of the session: This examination caused honest citizens to blush for their fair city.

Governor Roosevelt has determined to take action in regard to the conduct of Elmira Reformatory. Five

Various State
Affairs.

years ago there were so many complaints against the brutal treatment of prisoners confined there that an investigation was ordered. Although there appeared to be proof of the truth of these accusations, Superintendent Brockway was not removed from office, but continued to rule the unfortunates committed to his charge.

A fresh batch of complaints and sworn statements of the cruelties practiced in the institution were placed in the Governor's hands. He thereupon

determined to remove certain members of the Board of Managers who upheld Mr. Brockway during all his term of office, and to replace them with other, less partial men, who will keep a close watch on the management of the Reformatory, and if the alleged abuses really exist, will expose them without mercy.

The Mayor has signed the bill preventing the four tracks from being used on Amsterdam Avenue, and April 19 the Governor's signature was attached and the bill became a law.

The attack on the Manhattan Elevated Railroad has been renewed. You may remember it was stated that Mr. Croker was determined to cause the "L" Road trouble because the directors had refused to allow him to run pipes for conveying compressed air along the pillars which support the tracks.

Be that as it may, the President of the Board of Health again called the attention of the District At

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torney to the condition of the road, but instead of confining himself to the question of the removal of its tracks from Battery Park, insisted that the condition of the road is so bad that it is a menace to travelers, and that the Ninth Avenue division in particular is absolutely unsafe. He appealed to the District Attorney to bring the matter before the Grand Jury, and ask that the Elevated Railroad Company be indicted for maintaining a public nuisance which endangers the life and health of the people.

The effect of such a charge, if proved, would be to drive the elevated roads from our streets. The most hopeful of Tammanyites do not, however, expect such a result; they merely hope to frighten the company into obeying their wishes, for the sake of peace; if this is accomplished, the life and health of the public will probably cease to be a matter of vital interest to the persons behind the agitation.

Governor Roosevelt has also determined to have a thorough investigation of the so-called Canal Frauds, and to see whether the public funds appropriated for the development and construction of canals in this State have been properly applied or not. The matter has already been investigated by a Committee, but the point now is to find out if the evidence given before the Commission proved that fraud had been committed, and if so, to discover the guilty persons and bring them to justice. For this object the Governor has asked that funds be immediately appropriated.

case.

Paris is once more agitated on account of the Dreyfus For some weeks the Figaro, a well-known Paris paper, has published extracts The Dreyfus Case. from the evidence given before the Court of Cassation at the time the case was appealed by the friends of Dreyfus in their effort to secure a new trial for him.

The government has been much disturbed by the publication of these extracts. Only eighty copies of the evidence were printed, and these were distributed among certain officers of the court, and persons who had a right to see them. Some days before the first extract appeared, a member of the Chamber of Deputies learned that one of the copies had fallen into improper hands. He gave information of this to the government. As Americans are frequently accused of being at the bottom of anything sensational in the newspaper line, it was at once given out that the paper had been secured for an American journal which intended to publish the whole evidence.

It was something of a thunderbolt when it was found that the newspaper which had done the publishing was one of the standard French papers, and the government immediately started to prosecute the Figaro for daring to print private papers which, it was asserted, belonged to the State.

In spite of the prosecution the paper has gone serenely on its way printing fresh evidence from day to day, and has succeeded in exposing the disgraceful measures adopted by the general staff of the army to screen its members from their wrongdoing.

It was shown that Colonel Picquart had been