John F. Wallace, formerly chief engineer of the Panama Canal Commission, becomes an employee of the George Westinghouse Company at a salary of $50,000 per year. Mr. Wallace is to assist in building electric railways paralleling steam railways in many parts of the country. It is reported from Washington that our Government takes a very serious and gloomy view of the situation at Algeciras, and would not be surprised to see the Moroccan conference end in a rupture. The existence of a Mutual Life policy-holders’ movement of world-wide scope, at the head of which will undoubtedly be Stuyvesant Fish, became known yesterday through the exchange of telegrams between Lord Northcliffe, formerly Sir Alfred Harmsworth, and Mr. Fish. Lord Northcliffe is chairman of the British protection committee of the Mutual Life policy holders. March 3.—John R. Walsh, president of the Chicago National Bank, which failed December 18, 1905, was arrested yesterday on a Federal warrant charging him with violation of the national banking laws in making false reports to the Controller of Currency and with conversion to his own use of bank funds amounting to $3,000,000. He was released after giving a bond of $50,000. At Meridian, Miss., a tornado swept through the business centre of the town, destroying $5,000,000 of property and about thirteen lives. Springfield, Ohio, is quiet after two nights of rioting and incendiary fires. The state militia is still on duty. At Chicago, executives of all the Eastern railways in session failed to settle the differential rate controversy. On account of the attitude of the Erie Railroad it seems impossible to avert a rate war. Every line except the Erie voted for the arbitration of the question. The Senate Committee of the Philippines voted to smother the Philippine tariff bill yesterday. It is said that efforts will be made to have the measure reconsidered or called before the Senate. Commissioner of Public Works, J. M. Patterson, of Chicago, yesterday gave his resignation to Mayor Dunne. Mr. Patterson says he has become a convert to Socialism. March 4.—A delegation representing practically all life insurance companies doing business in the United States will go to Albany on March 9, the day set for the hearing of the bills that the insurance investigation has presented, to state the case of the companies before the Legislature. Ex-Governor James Stephen Hogg died yesterday at Houston, Tex. at the age of 55. March 5.—It is reported that on the evening before his death the late Ex-Governor Hogg said: “I want no monument of stone, but let my children plant at the head of my grave a pecan tree, and at the foot a walnut tree, and when these trees shall bear, let the pecans and walnuts be given out among the plain people of Texas that they may plant them and make Texas a land of trees.”