There is great excitement over the tobacco war, but its practical interest is confined to manufacturers and dealers in the weed. Smokers have very little hope of obtaining any advantage from the thousands, which are being offered as bonus to the trade, The warfare began with a great American "combine" to control the English market. This combine, with Mr. Duke at ts head, began by buying up Ogdens but it was met by an opposing combination of tobacco manufacturers and retailers, with Wills &Co., of Bristol, at its head, and Salmon and Gluckstein, the great cheap retailers, among its other members. Under the name of the Imperial Tobacco Company, it offered a bonus of £50,000, together with ashore of profits, to all retailers who contracted not to coal with the American Drust. Now Ogdens, or in other words the American "Trust, offer the enormous bonus of £800,000' and the entire; profits of the trust fr four years} for division among those retailers "who Company and who deal with them. They refuse to bind themselves to the Imperial do not boycott the Imperial Company; they claim that they are fighting for Free Trade. So far the advantage is on their side. It is felt that the British combine have made a serious mistake in extracting from their clients an undertaking not 0 deal with their American rivals." At the same time the profession of the American Company to be fighting for Free Trade is a transparent sham. Their object is plainly differences in the printing are hard! discernible without a magnifying glass. Another scare has been created by the news of a chemical discovery by which a burglar can in a few minutes render the steel or iron of a " burglar-proof " safe so soft as to be easily cut with @ chisel. This story has, apparently, some real foundation, but it has been greatly exaggerated. The chemical process is neither so easy nor so effective as has been represented.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.