Items of Interest January 6, 1906 Issue

Items of Interest

After attempts covering a period of ten years the consent of the Government for the building of a lighthouse and fog signal on the dreaded Diamond Shoals off Cape Hatteras was secured last week, when Secretary Metcalf signed the plans and specifications of the civil and consulting engineers, finally granting the bill to Captain Albert E. Eells and his associates. The act, passed two years ago and amended last year, specifies that the engineers shall build the light station at their own cost, maintain the structure and operate the light in accordance with the regulations of the Lighthouse Board for one year, also at their own cost, after which it shall be placed under the control of the Lighthouse Board, who shall operate it for four years more at the cost of the United States, when Eells and his associates shall be authorized to demand from the United States the sum of $750,000, provided the structure is in a substantial and satisfactory condition. The promoters of the project are absolutely confident of its success. The process by which the new lighthouse will be built is new. Its foundations will be a massive steel caisson in the form of the lower portion of a cone with a cylindrical base. This caisson will be built on shore and towed to its location off the shoal. Upon this foundation will be erected the lighthouse proper, with plate steel cylinder, with a slight batter from base to top, supporting a light of the first order at one hundred and fifty feet above tide level. The caisson will be one hundred and eight feet in diameter at the bottom, eighty feet high, and fifty feet in diameter at the top. This foundation, on reaching its location, will be scuttled by pumping water into the interior compartments. The work is of greater magnitude than any that has ever been undertaken in the construction of lighthouses.

The representatives of sixty-eight institutions of learning met in New York last week to take concerted action that should result in eliminating the objectionable features from football as now played. The conference perfected a permanent organization and appointed a rules committee of seven which will communicate with the representatives of Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Cornell, Annapolis, and Chicago University, constituting the existing committee on rules, asking for an amalgamation with that body. None of the above mentioned universities was represented at the conference. If they refuse to join with the committee appointed the latter will act independently and formulate rules for their own guidance.

In the report of the Isthmian Canal Commission, just made public, is the declaration that the Panama Canal will be greatly and needlessly increased in cost, probably by twenty-five per cent, unless the procuring of unskilled labor is left entirely unhampered by Chinese exclusion, contract labor, and other laws passed for the protection of labor within the United States.

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