Items of Interest November 11, 1905 Issue

Items of Interest

Preparations are already being made by the contractors for building the large irrigation dam at Roosevelt, Ariz., for the United States Government under the reclamation act. The dam will, when completed, be one of the highest in the world. The Chessman dam, which supplies Denver, Col., with pure mountain water, now holds that distinction, but this one will be higher by at least twenty five or thirty feet. Its height will be 236 feet. Its length across the top will be 800 feet, with a width on top of 16 feet. The length at the bottom will be only 20 feet, with a width of 160 feet. The reservoir that will be created will have a capacity of 1,000,000 cubic feet, and will hold sufficient water to irrigate 250,000 acres of land. After the first year, when the ground has become thoroughly saturated, it is expected that the water supply will be sufficient to irrigate considerable in excess of the 250,000 acres.

Duties amounting to $194,606 were levied and paid upon the works of art imported for the Boston "Fenway Court" by Mrs. John L. Gardner. This payment was made because the Secretary of the Treasury ruled that the exhibition at the "Court," for which at stated intervals a limited number of admissions at one dollar each are issued, did not allow the art treasures to come in free of duty as is the case when intended for a public museum. Pertinent to this is the remark of Sir Caspar Purdon Clark, who was recently elected Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has just arrived from Liverpool. "The American," he said, "is artistic as the Englishman. The greatest mistake and discouragement over here is the heavy duty imposed on art objects. I cannot see the reason for putting a duty on an object two thousand years old. There can be no competition."

Secretary Taft has transmitted to the Treasury Department his estimates of the appropriations required for the War Department for the fiscal year 1907. These estimates aggregate $104,988,267.75, being $9,717,922.52 less than the total appropriations made by Congress for the use of the War

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