Article December 16, 1905 Issue

Items of Interest

The President, in his annual message, said to be the longest ever given to Congress, recommended: Governmental supervision and limited regulation of the railroads; making Washington a model city; Government investigation of labor conditions; Government supervision of insurance; flexibility in tariff rates; election reform; international peace founded on international righteousness; extension of the Monroe Doctrine; maintenance of the efficiency, but not increase in size, of the navy; improvement of naturalization laws; revision of the United States criminal law; regulation of immigration; complete revision of copyright laws; prohibition of inter-State commerce in adulterated foods; preservation and improvement of National parks, including Niagara; better schools for the Indians and their protection from the liquor traffic; reduction of tariff on Philippine products; special appropriation, but no special legislation, for Hawaii; admission of Porto Ricans to American citizenship, but no material change in present form of government; increased franchise privileges in our insular possessions; admission to Congress of a delegate from Alaska; the Joint Statehood Bill; emergency appropriation for present needs to Panama Commission; improvement of the consular service.

Secretary of the Navy Bonaparte in his annual report recommends the authorization of two battleships, two scout cruisers, four destroyers, two submarines or submersibles, one gunboat of the Helena type, two river gunboats; total cost, $23,300,000. He advocates the substitution of five new battleships and two new armored cruisers for the oldest vessels of these types on our register, and five more battleships for the ten coast defence vessels of the monitor type, and that these substitutions should be made within the next six years. He recommends that the old frigate Constitution, now lying at the Charlestown Navy Yard, by reason of her state of decay and disintegration be towed out to sea and used as a target by the North Atlantic Squadron and given a warrior's grave. This has aroused a storm of sentimental disapproval and the suggestion will not prevail.

At the opening of the present fiscal year the employes of the forest service numbered eight hundred and twenty-one, of whom one hundred and fifty-three were professional trained foresters. Field work was going on in twenty-seven States and Territories, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to Mexico. Over nine hundred thousand acres of private forests were under management recommended by the service, and applications on file for advice from owners contemplating management covered two million acres more. During the year nearly sixty-two thousand letters were sent out from the offices in Washington, the majority of them in reply to requests for information and advice from the public of a kind which could not be met by printed information.

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