Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/363

Rh strengthened and improved as a result. The county clerks are no longer designated sealers of weights and measures for their respective counties, but instead the state sealer is authorized to create weights and measures districts and appoint inspectors therein. The state sealer is given specific jurisdiction over the track scales of the state; a net-contents-of container section was added to the law, as well as a general net weight provision; and the penalty section has been greatly strengthened. Another very important and excellent change is the abolition of the fees formerly required to be collected by the state sealer of weights and measures and his deputies for the work performed by them.

Nebraska passed, at the last session of its legislature, a weights and measures statute which is general in its terms but which fails to provide a mandatory inspection of all weights and measures in commercial use although it appears that it is possible to obtain this object under the terms of the law. The deputy food, drug and dairy commissioner is the deputy state sealer and to him and his assistants is entrusted the state supervision provided for under the act. These officials may test weights and measures but it does not seem that they are required to do so. Fees are to be collected for the work done by them, these fees to be used in the proper enforcement of the law. No other money is appropriated for this purpose. In the counties the county clerks are designated sealers of weights and measures. They are required to test apparatus only upon request although they may do testing work at other times if they so desire. Cities or municipalities are empowered to establish inspection services but are not required to do so. On the whole it does not appear that the act is a very satisfactory one, although it may be considered as a forward step in legislation in this state.

Up until 1911 Nevada was distinguished by the fact that it was the only state having no laws whatever on the subject of weights and measures. In that year a very satisfactory law providing for a state inspection of apparatus under the supervision of the director of the Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station was passed, and very wide powers were given to the state officials. No local inspectors were provided for, and rightly we believe, on account of the small population of the state and its large territory. To make up for its neglect in the past, perhaps, the legislation included in its provisions that original packages must be labeled "in plain intelligible English words and figures with a correct statement of the net weight, measure or numerical count of its contents." By a subsequent amendment to section 23 of this act, the commissioner appointed by the board of control of the Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station was made sealer of weights and measures and charged with the duties which formerly developed upon the director of the said station.

New Hampshire amended the penalty clause of the law in force, making it much broader in its scope. They also increased the powers