"The world's product in 1897 was $237,504,800. In 1898 it will probably not be less than $289,699,800. My opinion is that it will be somewhere between $290,000,000 and $300,000,000. "If any further information reaches me within a week or two, I shall be glad to communicate it to you. "Respectfully yours, "GEORGE E. ROBERTS, _Director of the Mint_." _Agents' Estimate, January 1st, of the Production of Gold in the United States for 1898._ States and Territories. Gold. Alaska $2,039,930 Arizona 3,185,490 California 14,883,721 Colorado 24,500,000 Idaho 2,273,902 Michigan 65,000 Montana 5,209,302 Nevada 2,959,731 New Mexico 360,000 Oregon 1,343,669 South Dakota 5,841,406 Texas 7,500 Utah 2,170,543 Washington 599,483 Wyoming 5,168 South Appalachian States 337,832 ----------- Total $65,782,677 THE CALIFORNIA PENAL SYSTEM. BY CHARLES HOWARD SHINN. Theoretically every new commonwealth in organizing its institutions can measurably avoid the errors of older communities, and can venture upon promising experiments elsewhere untried. In practice, however, new States are usually compelled to face unforeseen difficulties, and although their various departments gain something in flexibility, they lose in systematic organization. They have the faults as well as the virtues of the pioneer. Penology, like every other department of human thought, is a battlefield of opposing principles. But I know of nothing in print more inspiring to the officers of the State engaged in prison and reform work than Herbert Spencer's Essay on Prison Ethics. It is likely that many of the people who should read it are not aware of its value and interest to themselves. Beginning at the foundations, Mr. Spencer makes a lucid exposition of the necessity of "a perpetual readjustment of the compromise between the ideal and the practicable in social arrangements." As he points out, gigantic errors are always made when abstract ethics are ignored.