Items of Interest December 31, 1904 Issue

Items of Interest

The Senate last week passed the Philippine Bill. The chief interest centered in the guarantee by the Philippine Government of interest on bonds to be issued to aid in railroad construction. The rate of guaranteed interest was changed from live to four per cent; the guarantee was changed to apply only to the actual construction of twenty-mile sections and proportioned to the estimated total cost; the guarantee limited to $1,500,000 and to thirty years in time; the Government to be given a first lien on the property as security.

Other provisions of the bill are: to exempt from taxation all bonds issued by the Philipine and Porto Rican Governments: to authorize municipalities in the Philippine to incur a bonded indebtedness amounting to five per cent of the assessed valuation of their property, at five per cent interest; to authorize the Philippine Government to incur a bonded indebtedness of $5,000,000 for improvements, at 4½ per cent interest; to allow administration of the immigration laws by the Philippine authorities; to establish a system for the location and patenting of mineral, coal, and saline lands; to fix the metric system for the slands, and to give the Civil Governor the title of Governor-General.

In a decision handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States last week touching the title of State ownership of some bottom lands along the Missouri River between Missouri and Nebraska, a general principle was laid down which will affect in the future similar disputes and destroy some old traditions respecting water boundaries changed by the vagaries of rivers. The Supreme Court has decided that there is a distinct difference between the gradual and almost imperceptible change in a water boundary and one which comes as the result of sudden and violet alteration in the ceurse of running water which divides states and estates. This decision restores to Nebraska land which was torn away by a wild lunge of the Missouri River in 1867, a short time after the State of Nebraska had been admitted to the Union.

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