ITEMS OF INTEREST August 17, 1907 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

In a public report, Herbert Knox Smith. Commissioner of Corporations, concerning the operations of the Standard Oil Company, says: "The total dividends paid by the Standard from 1882 to 1906 were $551, 922, 904, averaging 24.15 per cent per year. The dividends, however, were much less than the total earnings. It is substantially certain that the entire net earnings of the Standard from 1882 to 1906 were at least $790,000,000, and possibly much more. These enormous profits have been based on an investment worth at the time of its original acquisition not more than $75,000,000.

The Cunard Steamship Company, owing to the size and draught of the big Lusitania, about to cross the Atlantic on her maiden trip to New York, has been authorized by the War Department to use the uncompleted Ambrose Channel, which has been dredged to a depth of thirty-five feet and to varying widths. When completed the channel will have a depth of forty feet and a width of two thousand feet. The use of the channel is restricted for the present to vessels of twenty-nine feet draught and over. This will limit its use to probably a dozen vessels a week.

Charing unreasonable freight rates and discrimination in shipments of flour and wheat products, the great milling interests of western New York, with headquarters at Buffalo, have filed complaints against the railroads running from Buffalo to the Atlantic seaboard. It is alleged that higher rates are charged the western New York milling concerns than the big milling interests of the central West and Northwest.

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