The Inter-State Commerce Commission at Washington yesterday announced its decision in the cases of the Fred G. Clark Company against the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway Company and the Waverley Oil Works against the Pennsylvania Company and others. In these cases the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company was the principal defendant. The commission holds that the combination rates on petroleum and its product from Cleveland and Pittsburg to points reached by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad result in unreasonable and unjust rates, and that the refusal of the railroad company to consent to participate in through rates is unjust and the situation is such as to favor greatly the Standard Oil. In its final conclusion the commission holds that the act to regulate commerce does not authorize it to compel the establishment of joint rates or the conditions of interchange in case the connecting carriers fail to agree in respect thereto; and it therefore concludes that notwithstanding that the combination rates are unjust and the general shipping situation is such as to work a practical monopoly in favor of the Standard Oil Company, the Commission is without authority to grant relief in these cases and the petitions are therefore dismissed. Yesterday at Washington the House Committee of Agriculture decided by a vote of 8 to 7 not to recommend any appropriation to buy seeds for free distribution by the Department of Agriculture. Special counsel for the State of Missouri will make application before the New York courts to compel Henry H. Rogers to answer questions in the inquiry the State of Missouri has been making into Standard Oil methods. In the United States Circuit Court at Chicago yesterday, Judge Landis gave a decision that the Interstate Commerce Committee has the power to compel witnesses to answer questions in the hearing of Street’s Western Stable Car Line before the commission. At Oklahoma City, Okla., yesterday, the assistant attorney-general began to take testimony in the ouster case against the Standard and other oil companies. A wholesale oil dealer testified that he had been instructed to get samples of oil shipped if he had to steal them; and also that there had never been any competition between the Standard Oil and the Waters-Pierce Company in Oklahoma. At Albany yesterday, Senator Saxe’s bill to impose a tax on personal property wherever found, a measure designed to wipe out tax dodging by rich New Yorkers who establish their legal residence elsewhere, was passed in the Senate and goes to the Governor. At Aiken, S. C., yesterday, Professor S. P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, died of paralysis.