Boston

Feb. 10., - The Boston Mill Company Board of Directors held their annual meeting late last week at the Grand Hotel, Cincinnati.  Their proceedings are yet a secret, and the employees haven't received even an intimation on which they can find a conjecture.  Secretary Hagemeyer is yet absent, probably attending the meeting.  This enterprise, once a gigantic one it its conception and its practical working, has dwindled to slender proportions, not doing probably one-third of the work of former years.  Some of the reasons for the decline are large salaries heretofore paid the officers; disasters by the Licking's rampages, which have made terrible inroads on their piers and boons, and which carry of annually many thousands of their logs; and probably the creation of smaller mills throughout the country.  It has been alleged, though with how much justice it is impossible to state, that a feature of the decline has been distant management; that is, a direction of affairs by those remote renders them incompetent to judge of the Licking's waywardness and uncertainty, as well as of other matters pertaining to the successful operation of affairs.  Certain it is that good men have been in charge, and it is equally certain that were they ten times as good, they could not combat our river's "sudden uprising" unless they were empowered to rebuild fallen piers, and strengthen booms, and even then, the chances would be against them.

from the Daily Commonwealth, February 12, 1879