Items of Interest March 26, 1904 Issue

Items of Interest

The Supreme Court of the United States handed down an option last week in the ease of the Northern Securities Company in favor of the Government. Justices Harlan, Brown, Brewer, McKenna, and Day rendered the decision for the the Government, while Chief Justice Fuller and Justices White, Peckham, and Holmes dissented, The opinion was read by Justice Harian. He declares in his opinion, that Congress has complete power to control inter-state commerce; that the Sherman Anti-Trust Law is constitutional; that this law forbids all combinations in restraint of trade or commerce; that the union of the two great parallel transcontinental lines operating in the same territory is a manifest curtalling of competition and is in restraint of trade. With the question of the economic wisdom of the law, Congress, not the Supreme Court, has to do. The opinion firmly establishes and confirms the right of the National Congress to control and regulate corporations.

Between seven hundred and one thousand miles of railroad is Secretary Taft's estimate of the needs of Luzon, made before the House Committee on Insular Affairs. The annual charge of four per cent on the cost of this would be only about one million dollars, which, he thinks, the islands could handle easily with the increased business that would result and the increased value of the property to be taxed.

Favorable reports were made from the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the following nominations: John Barrett, Minister to Panama: Arthur M. Beaupré, Minister to Argentine Republic: William W. Russell, Minister to Colombia: Nelson O'Shaughnessy, secretary of the Legation at Copenhagen, and Henry W. Schoemaker, secretary of the Legation at Lisbon.

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