t forth to discover and punish the authors of this atrocious
crime. The dependent families of some of the unfortunate victims invite
by their deplorable condition gracious provision for their needs.

These manifestations against helpless aliens may be traced through
successive stages to the vicious _padroni_ system, which, unchecked
by our immigration and contract-labor statutes, controls these workers
from the moment of landing on our shores and farms them out in distant
and often rude regions, where their cheapening competition in the fields
of bread-winning toil brings them into collision with other labor
interests. While welcoming, as we should, those who seek our shores to
merge themselves in our body politic and win personal competence by
honest effort, we can not regard such assemblages of distinctively alien
laborers, hired out in the mass to the profit of alien speculators and
shipped hither and thither as the prospect of gain may dictate, as
otherwise than repugnant to the spirit of our civilization, deterrent
to individual advancement, and hindrances to the building up of stable
communities resting upon the wholesome ambitions of the citizen and
constituting the prime factor in the prosperity and progress of our
nation. If legislation can reach this growing evil, it certainly should
be attempted.

Japan has furnished abundant evidence of her vast gain in every trait
and characteristic that constitutes a nation's greatness. We have reason
for congratulation in the fact that the Government of the United States,
by the exchange of liberal treaty stipulations with the new Japan, was
the first to recognize her wonderful advance and to extend to her the
consideration and confidence due to her national enlightenment and
progressive character.

The boundary dispute which lately threatened to embroil Guatemala and
Mexico has happily yielded to pacific counsels, and its determination
has, by the joint agreement of the parties, been submitted to the sole
arbitration of the United States minister to Mexico.

The commission appointed under the convention of February 18, 1889, to
set new monuments along the boundary between the United States and
Mexico has completed its task.

As a sequel to the failure of a scheme for the colonization in Mexico
of negroes, mostly immigrants from Alabama under contract, a great
number of these helpless and suffering people, starving and smitten
with contagious disease, made their way