Items of Interest June 21, 1900 Issue

Items of Interest

The strike situation in St. Louis is hardly to be distinguished from civil war. The sheriff's posse of armed citizens, made up, to some extent, of well-to-do men, fired upon a crowd of five hundred strikers and their sympathizers on June 10, in which two men were killed and three fatally wounded. The public is reported to be very much in sympathy with the strikers, and the deputies are hooted on the streets. Many of the deputies resigned and others are said to be intending to follow them, because several prominent men of the posse are facing the charge of murder on account of the fight of June 10. The police are accused by the non-union street car employes of showing partiality for the strikers, and neither the mayor and the sheriff, nor the mayor and the governor are working together in harmony. Violent outbreaks attended by bloodshed were of daily occurrence last week.

The naval bill, as finally passed, authorized the building of two battleships, three armored cruisers, three protected cruisers, and five sub-marine torpedo boats. The bill also authorized the Navy Department to exceed the limit of $300 per ton for armor, which will cause work to proceed on the battleships Maine, Ohio, and Missouri, authorized May 4, 1898, and delayed because armor could not be purchased at the price fixed by Congress, and contracts will also be let for the vessels authorized under the act of 1899: namely, the battleships Georgia, Pennslyvania, and New Jersey, and armored cruisers, West Virginia, Nebraska, and California. The act of 1899 provided that no contracts should be made for the hulls of the vessels until the armor had been contracted for at an average rate not exceeding $300 a ton. Under the bill recently passed the way is opened to let the contracts for these vessels.

Secretary Root has instructed the army engineer in Chicago, Major Willard, to investigate the current created in the Chicago River by the opening of the drainage canal, and to report on all the conditions existing, with recommendations as to what velocity of current is safe for navigation of the river and the channel. Based on this report Secretary Root will make a ruling as to what current shall be allowed. If the drainage canal trustees do not accept the edict, it is within the power of the Secretary to close the canal altogether by withdrawing the permission for a premature opening.

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