ITEMS OF INTEREST June 1, 1907 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Herbert Knox, Commissioner of Corporations, has reported to the President regarding the Standard Oil investigation, and appears to make out a serious case. He alleges, in substance, that the history and present operation of the Standard interests show throughout the past thirty-five years a substantial monopolization of the petroleum industry of the country, a deliberate destruction of competition, and a consequent control of that industry by less than a dozen men, who have reaped enormous profits therefrom. The commercial efficiency of the Standard, while very great, has been consistently directed, not at reducing prices to the public, and thus maintaining its predominant position through sperior service, but rather at crippling existing rivals and preventing the rise of new ones by vexatious and oppressive attacks upon them, and by securing for itself most unfair and wide-reaching discriminations in transportation facilities and rates, both by railroad and by pipe line, while refusing such facilities so far as possible to all competitors. Indictments exceeding cight thousand have been found against the Standard. At Chicago a conviction has been secured on 1,462 counts. None of the other cases has yet come to argument.

The Secretary of the Interior has approved the recommendation of the Commissioner of the General Land Office for the improvement of the efficiency of his office by the dismissal of old and inefficient clerks and the employment in their places of clerks who are able to meet the demands of the office. The first dismissals will be made in the division of the office in which land patents are proposed. The law provides for the typewriting there of the patents and the recorded copies of them. Many of the employes are elderly persons who have been on the rolls for a long time ans who cannot use the typewriter. The lowest salary paid in the division is $900 per annum. Where possible, places paying less will be provided.

A definite effort is being made before the Interstate Commerce Commission to secure to the public a reduction in the rate of fare charged by the Pullman Company for its sleeping car accommodations. Three complaints have been filed against the company and various northwestern railroad lines, and it is prayed not only that the rates be materially reduced, but that the company be allowed to charge only half as much for an upper berth as for a lower berth. The complaints will open up the whole question of sleeping car rates, not only on the lines of roads mentioned specifically in the complaints, but throughout the country.

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