510 



MIND-READING. 



MINNESOTA. 



prevailing skepticism on the subject, concern- 

 ing which the society's committee on " thought- 

 reading" had the following to say: "The 

 present state of scientific opinion throughout 

 the world is not only hostile to any belief in 

 the possibility of transmitting a single mental 

 concept except through the ordinary channels 

 of sensation, but, generally speaking, it is hos- 

 tile to any inquiry upon the matter." With a 

 view, therefore, possibly, to creating a favora- 

 ble public opinion, most of the result of the 

 society's work has been the publication of the 

 usual kind of ghost-stories and narratives of 

 obsession and coincident phenomena of a 

 psychic or seemingly supernatural character. 

 These include " transferred impressions " and 

 telepathy, phantasms of the living, as well as 

 the dead, or spectral aura, the relations of 

 mind and matter, etc. Concerning the difficul- 

 ties under which the members of the society 

 labor in their investigations, one of them writes 

 as follows : " Such speculations as can now be 

 framed with regard to these obscure phenom- 

 ena, can hardly be said to differ from the 

 earliest psychical conceptions of Thales and 

 Heraclitus, except in the higher standard of 

 scientific proof which we can now propose to 

 ourselves as our ultimate goal. And the very 

 existence of that standard constitutes a diffi- 

 culty ; the twilight which has, in every de- 

 partment of the endless domain of physics, 

 preceded the illuminating dawn of day, is here 

 made doubly dark and dubious by the advanced 

 daylight of scientific conceptions from which 

 we peer into it. In the second place, like 

 natural history in its early stage, our inquiry 

 is concerned with a variety of sensible phe- 

 nomena, as such, with forms or sounds simply 

 as they strike the senses of those who come 

 across them ; and the isolation of the phe- 

 nomena, and the absence of any genuine classi- 

 fication, even of the most provisional kind, 

 have a most distinct influence on their prima- 

 facie credibility, as compared with the new 

 phenomena of the older sciences, which have 

 the advantage of falling at once under familiar 

 classes." 



From the English parent society the move- 

 ment has spread. In this country there are 

 the American Psychical Research Society, with 

 headquarters in Boston, and branches in Phila- 

 delphia and New York, the Anthropological 

 Society in Brooklyn, and the Western Psy- 

 chical Research Society in Chicago. The found- 

 ing of this latter society has resulted in the 

 publication of a periodical entitled " Mind and 

 Nature," in which the proceedings of the 

 society are published, and which is otherwise 

 filled with narratives, essays, and disquisitions 

 having relation to psychic subjects. The 

 American Society expressly declines to inves- 

 tigate the physical phenomena usually called 

 " Spiritual," though these are included in the 

 list of subjects covered by the English society. 

 But it does not reject evidence concerning 

 what is known as the "faith-cure." 



MINNESOTA. State Government. The follow- 

 ing were the State officers during the ye"ar: 

 Governor, Andrew R. McGill, Republican; 

 Lieutenant-Governor, Albert E. Rice; Secre- 

 tary of State, Hans Mattson ; Auditor, W. W. 

 Braden; Treasurer, Joseph Bobleter; Attor- 

 ney-General, Moses E. Clapp ; Superintendent 

 of Public Instruction, D. L. Kiehle ; Railroad 

 and Warehouse Commissioners, Horace Aus- 

 tin, John L. Gibbs, and George L. Becker; 

 Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court, James 

 Gilfillan ; Associate Justices, John M. Berry, 



D. A. Dickenson, William Mitchell, and Charles 



E. Vauderburgh. 



Legislative Session. The Legislature sat from 

 January 4 till March 4. It surpassed in indus- 

 try all of its predecessors by passing 265 gen- 

 eral laws, 399 special laws, and 15 joint reso- 

 lutions, a total of 679 measures. The choice 

 of a successor to United States Senator S. J. 

 R. McMillan fell upon Ex-Gov. Cushman K. 

 Davis, the Republican nominee. He received 

 103 votes to 47 for Michael Doran and Ara 

 Barton, the former being the Democratic can- 

 didate. Two important subjects of legislation 

 were the sale of liquors and the regulation of 

 railroads. In relation to the former, a system 

 of high license was adopted for those places 

 that do not prohibit liquor-selling under the 

 local-option law. The annual license-fee in 

 cities of 10,000 inhabitants or over was fixed 

 at $1,000, and for other places at half that sum. 

 Liquor-dealers were also required to give a bond 

 for the faithful observance of all liquor laws, 

 and severe penalties were imposed upon un- 

 licensed traffic and upon attempted evasions of 

 the statutes. The payment of a United States 

 revenue-tax is made prima-facie evidence of 

 unlicensed selling. 



The railroad legislation consisted of a repeal 

 of the railroad commission law and the adop- 

 tion of a new act embodying many of the feat- 

 ures of the old one and adding provisions to 

 prevent rebates and pooling, requiring charges 

 to be equal and reasonable, that facilities shall 

 be ample, that no hindrances to through trans- 

 portation shall be made, and no undue discrimi- 

 nation for longer or shorter hauls. Other acts 

 were passed requiring all railroads not subject 

 to special-tax laws to pay a percentage of their 

 gross earnings in lieu of taxes; forbidding the 

 sale of watered stock ; making companies liable 

 for the negligence of their servants in injuring 

 other servants of the same company ; requiring 

 them to build and keep in repair sufficient cross- 

 ings over their lines; compelling them to trans- 

 port car-loads of mixed stock without charging 

 a higher rate than for car-loads of any one kind 

 of stock ; regulating the heating of passenger- 

 cars ; and providing that lands granted to rail- 

 roads and exempted from taxation shall become 

 liable to assessment as soon as any transfer has 

 been made by the original company. 



Contract labor by convicts of the State or 

 any municipality is forbidden after the expira- 

 tion of existing contracts. It is provided that 



