Items of Interest September 15, 1906 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

More than one thousand delegates, representing half of the States of the Union, were present when the National Irrigation Congress assembled for its fourteenth annual session in Boise, Idaho, Sept. 3. Vice President Fairbanks received a hearty welcome, the audience standing and applauding for fully a minute. The convention was roused to applause when Governor Gooding referred to President Roosevelt, saying that it was in St. Anthony, in the State of Idaho, that President Roosevelt, six years ago, made his first promise to the West to give his support to the movement for the enactment of a national reclamation law. The great irrigation works in Idaho, now nearing completion, he said, were the fruition of the promise made by President Roosevelt. Gifford H. Pinchot of Washington, chief of the forestry division of the Department of Agriculture, read a letter of greeting to the congress from President Roosevelt which ran in part as follows: "Operations under the Reclamation Act, which I signed on June 17, 1992, have been carried on energetically during the four years since that date. Construction is already well advanced on twenty-three great enterprises in the arid States and Territories. Over one million acres of land have been laid out for irrigation, and of this two hundred thousand acres are now under ditch; eight hundred miles of canals and ditches and thirty thousand feet of tunnel have been completed. Over ten thousand men and about five thousand horses are at present employed. The period of general surveys and examinations for projects is past. Effort is now concentrated in getting the water upon a sufficient area of irrigable land in each project to put it on a revenue-producing basis. To bring all the projects to this point will require upwards of $40,000,000, which amount, it is estimated, will be available from the receipts from the disposal of public lands for the years 1901-8."

Upon the anniversary of the formal signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended last year the war between Russia and Japan, the disposition of the first year's in come from the funds left to charity by the Russian and Japanese peace envoys in remembrance of their stay in New Hampshire, was announced Sept. 5. Baron Rosen, the Russian envoy, and Baron Komura, the Japanese envoy, each gave to Governor John McLane a check for $10,000, to be distributed among the charities of the State. At the request of Governor McLane, Secretary of State Pearson and State Treasurer Carter invested the gifts in the securities of the two Governments, and it was decided to distribute the income to such charities as might be designated, annually on Sept. 5, the anniversary of the formal signing of the peace treaty. The total income this year amounted to $809.93 and was distributed in equal shares among the New Hampshire Centennial Home for the Aged, Concord; New Hampshire Orphans' Home, Franklin; Sacred Heart Hospital, Manchester, and Cottage Hospital, Portsmouth.

The monthly statement of the public debt issued Sept. 4, shows that at the close of business Sept. 1, 1906, the debt, less cash in the treasury, amounted to $970,360,383, which is a decrease for the month of $3,488,418. On account of the issue of Panama bonds, the interest-bearing debt was increased during the month by $26,974,290; the amount of cash on hand, however, was increased by $30,722,933. The following is the classification of the cash in the treasury: Gold reserve fund, $150,000,000; trust funds, $1,058,260,869; general fund, $196,664,238; in national bank depositories, $106,355,219; in Philippine treasury, $4,898,672; total, $1,516,178,999, against which there are demand liabilities outstanding amounting to $1,165,492,123, which leaves a cash balance on hand of $350,686,875.

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