ITEMS OF INTEREST September 22, 1906 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The Navy Department is arranging to establish coastwise stations of wireless telegraphy in the Philippines, similar to the chain of stations reaching from Portland, Me., to Galveston, Tex., on the Atlantic seaboard. A naval officer has been enegaged on this work for a year or more, having been sent to the Asiatic station by the Bureau of Equipment to install wireless apparatus on the ships of the Far Eastern fleet. The sites for the new stations on land have been selected, and the islands have been fully covered by the system of communication. In the arrangement of this system special pains have been taken to establish communication with ships bound for Hong Kong. The system will connect with the army stations, which are situated in the southern part of the islands. It is hoped eventually to install stations of sufficient power to send messages from the Philippines to Guam, thence to Hawaii, and so on to the Pacific coast.

The Western Union Telegraph Company has received a communication from the director of the Imperial Chinese Telegraphs, dated Shanghai, Aug. 1. It says: "The development of telegraphs and posts in the Empire of China has necessitated that a uniform system of Romanization of Chinese city names should be adopted, and for this purpose a special committee was appointed." As a result of the work of the committee, it is stated, a uniform spelling system has been adopted, and will in future be applied to all Chinese names. The Chinese Government adopted the telegraph system before it allowed the building of railroads because the officials recognized in it an important factor for the maintenance of order in the interior of the country. To-day there are about 4,000 miles of railroad and 15,000 miles of telegraphs in the 4,277,170 square miles of territory which comprises the Chinese Empire.

The Isthmian Canal Commission advertised recently for five thousand tons of steel rails for use on the Isthmus, and the United States Steel Products Export Company of New York, a subsidiary of the Steel trust, was the only bidder. The price asked for the rails was $29.45 a ton f. o. b. Baltimore, or $45.70 laid down in Colon. These prices are regarded as extortionate. When Congress passed the Aldrich resolution, providing that materials for the canal should be purchased in the United States, it expressly stipulated that this should be done unless an attempt at extortion was made by American bidders. The Commission also advertised at the same time for forty mogul locomotives, and the Baldwin Locomotive Works proved the successful bidder, its price being $458,600.

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