Morning journal and courier., 1885-09-29
EDIFORIAL N0FEs.


 The petition presented to the Committss on Retrsnehnsnt, Reform and Abuses last evening is a very reasonable one. We do not see why it cannot be granted. The way to retrench is to retrench, and ten mill tax is large enough.
 It is not always the druggist whs is re- spor sible for fatal errors In prescriptions A Philadelphia member of the craft has forty four prescriptions, received in six months, every one of which contains such mistakes as to seriously impsril life in case they had been filled as the physicians wrote them
 Chicago is waking up to the fact that it is supplied with impure milk. A chemist has analysed fifty samples of milk bought from as many different dealers or vendors, and he found that thirty-two of the samples had been skinned; thirteen were pure and good and the rest were either Clair" or watered All the samples but one were paid for as pure milk, unskimmed, and irst-class in all ways. If these samples fairly represent the whole supply about seventy five per cent. is poor.
 Some time before his renomination the
 
 Ca brilliant ass" Now that it has become necessary for the Avalanche to fall on itself it does so gracefully. "Ths ass, 2 it says, sis a most excellent, patient, hard-working ami nal that waits till he can get his work in and then gets in with both heels He will do to tie to. No man needs to be ashamed to re- ceive the plaudits of his eountrymen under the homely figure of an ass. It is an hon. orable figure, that let us tell you. It is do- mestic and @ democratic fiSure.n
 Judge Chipman, of Detroit, has just been called upon to decide the important question, Are pills nscessaries of lifea He has decided that 8 contract made by drug firm not to sell certain pills below a certain price is valid This decision is based on the view that pills, unlike wheat and coal and similar articles, are not necessaries of life. To assert that pills are Gin any sense indispensable to the human race" says Judge Chipman, tewou'd be a violent presumption not to be entertain ed iudieially, and only to be established by evidence which every sensible man. knows has no existence
 It seems that, from scientific point of view, perfectly clean hands are an impossibility In the Gazette Medica Italiana Dr. Forster says that after the most diigent washings and brushings with soap and water and rins- ings with carbolic acid and other disinfec- tants, the hands remained 90 impure that upon touching the fingers to sterilized gela- tine micro-organisms were rapidly devel- oped. The doctor found, indeed. that-sI rinsing the hsnds-w1td s solution of 1 to 1,0o91 Of corrosive sub1imate they became scientifically cleansedn for the time, but that in wiping them upon towel not pre- viously disinfected they returned to their sad condition of uncleanliness.
 An agent of the national bureau of labor, whose Investigations have extended over large area, finds remarkable uniformity of wages in all the trades wherein we'll organ. ized national union is formed. For instance, in the building trades. wages and hours are the same at Rochester, Albany and Utica, in New York; Baltimore, Maryland; Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia, and Raleigh, North Carolina, while at places in the two last named States, where carpenters and brick layers are unorganized, wages are for skilled work from 10 cents to $1 per day less, while unskilled laber gets from 25 to 35 per cent. less. A singular illustration of this is found, for example, at Petersburg, half way between Richmond and Norfolk. Carpenters and brickmasons' wages are from g to $2.50 at Petersburg and s and $3 50 in the other two cities. In one there is no local trades union and in the others labor is we'll organized
 It will be interesting to see how the new marriage law of Pennsylvania will work. It is very stringent First, license is re- quired authorizing the marriage. But in order to secure such license the intending