Items of Interest April 18, 1901 Issue

Items of Interest

According to the press dispatches, Tom L. Johnson, the new mayor of Cleveland, O., who is the leading single taxer of the country, is losing no time in carrying his promises of reform into effect. One dispatch says: "The first thing he did was to set a local reformer to work with a force of one hundred clerks and nearly one thousand maps to make a tax valuation of every piece of land in Cleveland. Johnson proposes a complete readjustment of taxation here. Then the mayor started out in earnest to tear down all old and shaky buildings in the city. He also says no more frame buildings shall be erected in the fire limits. He sent a fire department truck with a building inspector to 121 Erie Street, where a frame structure, owned by County Examiner Black, has just been completed. This was torn down. Another building, on Vermont Street, was also torn down. Notices to tear down their buildings were served on hundreds of land-owners yesterday. If, at the expiration of twenty-four hours the buildings are not removed, the fire department has orders to pull them down. All the enormous signboards on vacant lots—signs that are eyesores—are being removed by order of the mayor."

The Cuban constitutional convention reassembled on April 12, and voted to reject the terms of self-government offered by the United States as embodied in the Platt amendment to the army bill. Governor-General Wood has all along predicted that the Convention would accept the Platt amendment and the cortrar action was a surprise to President McKinley. Some of the President's advisers urge him to withdraw the troops from Cuba anyhow, as they believe this action would ' ring about an understanding satisfactory to both nations much sooner than would be possible while the United States backs its claims by force.

Felipe Janer, the Porto Rican who sought to take a civil service examination and thereby raised the question whether a native of that island is a United States citizen, has been notified that he does not come within the requirements of eligibles for examination, probably on account of the citizenship question. It is expected he will lay the whole matter before the President.

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