been removed for a period of ten years, beginning September 12, 1900, and inducements are being offered to planters desiring to engage in this industry, or to increase the extent of already existing plantations. The In 1900 Costa Rica had three merchant steamers of 783 tons, and two sailing vessels of 541 tons. port of Limon is visited regularly by five lines of steamers, not including banana steamers, and is in close connection with the ports of Europe and America. The railway system extends from Limon on the Atlantic coast, inland to Alajula, with branches, 137 miles. From San Jose to Tivives a line 59 miles in length has recently been finished, to open communication between the east and west coasts. Still another road, to be 69 miles in length, is to be built by capitalists of the United States to cover the plantations of the United Fruit Company. In San Jose there is an electric railway of 31⁄2 miles in length, and concessions have recently been granted for an extension. If the United States should decide to build a canal over the Nicaraguan route, the Costa Rica railway, with terminal at Limon, will have to be used for the conveying of material, and its directors are looking forward to the constructing of extensions that will be necessary if the canal project is carried out. An American-German company has recently received concessions to about 50,000 acres of coal and agricultural lands. The only stipulation in the agreement whereby the concessions were granted and privileges of tax exemption given, was that the company must dispose of one-fifth of its capital stock in Costa Rica. Following the election of the new President, in February, 1902, a small revolt broke out among the soldiers in the barracks, who repudiated the vote of the people for President. The revolt was nipped in the bud by the outgoing President, Rafael Yglesias. The mutineers were captured in their barracks and their ringleader killed in the skirmish which ensued. The candidates for President were Don Ascencion Esquival and Don Maximo Fernandez, the latter the candidate of the Republican party. The Costa Rican Congress, which declared the result of the popular election, met at San Jose, and by a vote of 27 to 4, declared Esquival elected President. The inauguration ceremony took place May 8, 1902. In his inaugural address President Esquival defined the policy which he intended to pursue during his administration, and called attention to many changes which he deemed necessary. He said that it seemed to be of great urgency that the municipal regimen should be amplified and greater independence given in corporations, even though a constitutional amendment should be necessary to carry out his plans. Th e situation of the public treasury would oblige the Government to simplify the service of the administration, to reduce the personnel of employes and curtail all expenses other than those of an absolutely indispensable character. Touching international affairs the President announced himself ready to follow the traditions observed by the Republic, and to fulfil all obligations imposed upon it by existing treaties. Senor Don Ascencion Esquival is one of the most eminent statesmen of that progressive commonwealth. He is a celebrated lawyer and has taken part in the introduction of salutary legislative reforms which have been a credit to the country. He was candidate for the Presidency in 1889, resigning the office of Vice-President to accept the nomination, but was not elected. The new minsitry is as follows: Minister of Foreign Relations, Justice, Worship, Charities and Public Instruction, Don Leonidas Cacheco; Minister of Government, Police and Improvement, Don Manuel J. Jiminez; Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, Don Cleto Gonzalez Viquez; Minister of War and Navy, Don Tobias Zuniga. Cremation in the LOUIS LANGE, President of the United States Cremation Co. There is only one crematory for human bodies in operation in New York City, established 1885, and located at Fresh Pond, Queens Borough, but there are several cremation societies here, with thousands of members. The United States Cremation Company has recently reduced the charge for cremation of This adults to $25, and of children to $15. does not include transportation to the crematory or undertaker's services. Clothing and preparation of the body may be the same as for earth burial. The body is always incinerated in the clothing as received, and nothing can be taken from it. The coffin or any part thereof is never allowed to be removed from the building, but is burned after the incineration. In case of death from contagious disease, the coffin will not be opened, but will be burned with the body. The ashes will be deliverable at the office of the company the day after the incineration. Urns and niches for the final disposition of the ashes may be selected at the columbarium or at the office of the company. Incineration is held every day in the year. United States. Italy The United States had, in 1901, twenty-six crematories, of which the one in Middletown, Conn., is not in use, with 2,595 cremations, as per table below; Germany had seven crematories, at Gotha, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Offenbach, Jena, Mannheim and Eisenach, this last one opened in 1902, with 693 cremations; England, with six crematories, at Woking, London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Hull and Darlington, shows 445 cremations for 1901; France, with one crematory, at Paris, had 306 voluntary cremations. operates twenty-two crematories, with fewer cremations than Fresh Pond alone has had; Switzerland has three, at Zurich, Basle and Geneva, and one in prospect for St. Gall: Sweden has two, at Stockholm and Gothenburg: Denmark, one, at Copenhagen. The increase of 1901 over 1900 in the number of cremations in this country is about 8 per cent. The United States, by annexing the Hawaiian Islands, became the owner of a crematory in Honolulu, and operates it occasionally. The Government had the remains of Lieutenant Thomas M. Cobb. Thirty-ninth Infantry, U. S. V., who died of smallpox at Honolulu, cremated there last year. In the Mount Royal Cemetery at Montreal, Canada, a handsome new crematory has been erected and put in use quite recently. It owes its existence to the munificence of the late Mr. Molson, the Canadian banker. Concerning munificence, it may be here mentioned that not long ago a Mr. Gallen of Paris left his fortune of about $2.000,000 to the French Government, and at the same time $6,000 to the Incineration Society of France. So did Mr. Louis Reckers, of Brooklyn, donate $1,000, an unnamed friend $50, and Mrs. Marietta P. Hay, of Tarrytown, N. Y., by will, $2,000, to the United States Cremation Company. The value of fire or great heat as a sanitary agent is becoming increasingly evident through their enforced use as remedies in emergencies. The American health boards in a dozen cities recommend the cre mation of pauper and contagious dead, and 3,000 physicians in Germany signed a petition for compulsory cremation in infectious and contagious diseases. Like the French, the Cubans, and lately the Central Americans, who cremated many of their dead on the battlefields, so the Boers in South Africa last year burned hundreds of dead horses, and this year many of the victims of the Martinique volcanoes were cremated, after Catholic priests had walked among the dead in the devastated city of St. Pierre reading burial services and prayers. In the methods of cremation nothing new has developed. The liquid air fake is exploded for good, electricity is much too expensive, so coal, wood, oil and gas remain the fuels used. Benares and Calcutta burn their dead in the open air on a wood pile and throw the ashes into the holy river, as they did a thousand years ago; Japan cremates them in sitting posture; the modern retorts are all level, when beyond doubt an upright body would cremate quickest. Our Government mail carries human ashes, in packages of suitable weight, at the usual postage rates for merchandise, without reference to any laws on transportation of human bodies. Our postal and revenue authorities do not consider or treat human ashes as a human body, as those of some European countries do. Among the more prominent friends of cremation, dead within a year in the United States, are J. Sterling Morton (of Mr. Cleveland's Cabinet), who incorporated a cremation company in Nebraska City; Judge Andrews, of the New York Supreme Court, who decreed that opposition to his cremation should invalidate his last will; Rutherford Platt Hayes, a grandson of ex-President Hayes of the United States, cremated last January at Cincinnati; Rear Admiral Kimberley, U. S. N., and finally Mrs. Delphine Holland, a colored woman, from New Orleans, well educated, a spiritualist and independent thinker, cremated recently at Milwaukee. Regular cremations of colored persons are very rare, only four having taken place at Fresh Pond among 5,000. When Judge Lynch, however, holds court south of Mason and Dixon's line, negroes are occasionally burned at the stake alive. Only recently negroes in Southampton County, Virginia, afraid to touch and inter their brother negro, Thomas Douglass, who lay dead of smallpox in an outhouse, set fire to and burned the house down, at the same time cremating the contagious body. One of the needs of the times seems to be a crematory for animal pets. There are a number of cemeteries for dogs in different countries, all of them nicely laid out and adorned with expensive monuments. In that one at Hyde Park, London, some 400 dogs have been buried; Queen Victoria had her dead dogs interred in a private plot at Windsor; at Clichy, near Paris, dead dogs are buried, being often brought there by the undertakers in small coffins on bicycles, and New York quadruped pets find graves at Hartsdale, near Tarrytown. But a crematory for their especial use does not yet exist. Occasional requests to the United States Cremation Company to cremate a dog elicit the invariable answer: "We cremate human bodies only," which is proper. CREMATIONS AND CREMATORIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1876 TO 1901. Totals... 3 36 14 25 13 |25|16|45|112|133|189|258 369 472|569|668182811,017|1,102|1,388|1,697|1,994 2,419|2,656|15,957 Of which number the State of New York, with five crematories, has 5,426. Crime and Criminology. In dealing with the criminal element in the community the aim of intelligent government is, primarily, the protection of society, and, incidentally. the reclamation of the criminal. if that is possible. The incidental feature of the punitive relation of the authorities toward lawbreakers is more marked under some governments than under others; and even in the United States there exist differences in this respect under the prison systems of the various States embraced in the Union. In this country, however, the interest in prison reform is general and steadily advancing, with the result that there is constant diminution of the probability that the casual offender will be turned loose upon society, a confirmed criminal, after expiating his first offence by a term in durance. Modern prison management presents to the prisoners of nearly every grade the possibility of eventual rehabilitation, and, in many of the States of the Union, the prison system is so arranged as to protect the more presumably reclaimable prisoners from the deleterious effects of constant association with those whose reformation is more problematical. The most effective agency in this direction is, it is needless to say, the reformatory, designed for persons convicted of minor crimes, and into which, in some of the States, the less incorrigible of the more serious offenders may be graduated from the State prisons, as a reward for extraordinary good conduct, or in recognition of evident improvement in character. Even where these institutions do not exist the incentive to good behavior and to better manhood, offered in the form of commutation of sentence and possibility of parole or pardon, tends to make the prison system remedial as well as punitive in its effects. The study of criminology is aiding materially in the movement for reclaiming those who, through either ignorance or wilfulness have been led so far into wrongdoing as to come under the retributive power of the law. Such reclamation is certainly necessary in order to insure that protection of society which is aimed at for the reason that the man who leaves prison with improved character may fill worthily some useful position in the community, while the one who comes out at the end of his term feeling that he owes society nothing but a grudge will be undeterred by any fear of punishment from paying it off at the first convenient opportunity. While the science of prison reform has accomplished much in repressing crime through the improvements it has secured in punitive administration much remains to be done in the future; and to this end the collation of prison statistics has large value. In the tables which follow an attempt has been made, the first of definite character since the census of 1890, to bring together the related prison statistics of the several States and Territories of the United States, an undertaking which has been rendered extremely difficult by the lack of uniformity in keeping prison records. Each of several States has an excellent system of its own for keeping its prison statistics, any one of which might be made a general system to be adopted by all the States and Territories. This would make possible such a collation of facts concerning prisons and their inmates in all parts of the country, as would be invaluable in the study of criminology in all its branches. The tables which follow present the most complete criminal statistics of the United States ever published. They have been prepared from information furnished The American Almanac chiefly by the wardens of the various prisons. Such tables are extremely valuable to any one interested in criminology, and especially so to those in public positions that call for a general knowledge of what the various States are doing for the protection of society. Statistics of executions for crime are given under a different head, PENAL STATISTICS OF THE UNITED STATES.-TABLE NO. 1.-INSTITUTIONS. Ala* 3 Chiefly contract.. No labor required. D. of Colt Florida No prison... 1 Contract and farming For State and on piece- No prisons.. Agriculture and can al Agriculture, brick making :: Phosphate mining and stores Ind Ter... ...... tracts Kansas 1 tools and butter tubs. For State and on con-Coal mining and brick and lime making. Making chairs, brooms, brushes, boots & shoes. 221 La 1 Lease system abolished; Building, agriculture and making of boots, shoes Making pasteboard boxes, Making shirts, wagons. chairs and garden and 1 Piece-price system and Making twine and boots For State and on share Agriculture and running 1 Contracts 1 For State. 1 No labor except for N. J..... 1 Contracts On State account. New York 3 On State account, with Okla limited market.. Making wooden and rat- 1 Piece-price and contracts Making hollow ware, ci Convicts boarded at 2 On State account, with 1 Contracts gais, farm tools, chairs In stove foundry and and making brooms and dusters.. 38,346.87 15,331.20 439,829.59 2,174 35411 ล 1 Making boots, shoes and cracking stone for roads 20,777.90 219,075.25 1,845 2 1 2 |