The collapse of the United Press will throw the whole work of gathering and sending out news into the hands of the Associated Press. It may also tend to concentrate the work of transmission with the Western Union Telegraph Company.

Formerly the United Press gave its business to the Postal Telegraph Company while the Associated Press patronized the Western Union for sending out its news, although it used the Postal lines to some extent in gathering news.

Then the United Press turned over its business to the Western Union and at once the papers had reason to complain of inferior service. With the Postal in competition the Western Union had some incentive to do good work. With the whole business in its own hands it could afford to do as it liked.

It not only became slack in transmitting regular press business, but it discriminated against the press. There was an instance in connection with the recent prize fight at Carson. The Associated Press filed accounts promptly round by round for transmission to the interior press. The Western Union held those dispatches in the office and burdened the wires with its own bulletins of the fight which it sold to pool rooms and gamblers and kept its regular press customers waiting till the last moment before going to press for any news of the event. Some of it was sent too late for publication just to permit the Western Union to make a few dollars at the expense of its regular customers.

Now that the Associated Press is to have the whole business of news gathering in its own hands it is to be hoped that it will arrange to divide its business between the Western Union and the Postal Telegraph companies, to curb the greed of the former company.

LAST year China Imported 13,000,000 feet of lumber from Oregon and Washington. If a tariff on lumber puts up the price at American mills this Chinese trade will go to British Columbia mills which furnish lumber of similiar character. If things can remain as they are under the Wilson bill there is reason to expect that the exports in China will be doubled this year. Improvements of a public nature going on there create a large demand for lumber and those who offer the best terms will get the trade.

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