ITEMS OF INTEREST September 14, 1907 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Secretary Wilson has just returned to Washington from a tour through the intermountain States and the Central Western States. He paid particular attention to the matter of the forest reserve question, and made personal investigation in several of the reserves. "The Government has, roughly, about one hundred and fifty million acres of forest reserve," he said. "With regard to them I found two chief problems: First, to insure protection from fire, and second, to reforest the land where continual fires have destroyed the young trees. There are millions of acres growing nothing except a little grass. The question of reforestation is pressing. The price of lumber indicates that we are up against a wood famine. Lumber is being shipped from the Northwest all over the world. A great deal of it is even coming here to the East. Common lumber costs thirty dollars a thousand when it gets to the Mississippi Valley. In the forest regions the homesteader or the man who gets a patent under the timber and stone act often sells to private 'Corporations,' some of which have as many as thirty million acres and are still buying. Considerable pressure comes from persons who want to get title merely to sell to such companies and put the money in their pockets."

All records for excavation on the line of the Panama Canal were broken during July, despite a reduction in the force of employes. The excavation in the Culebra division amounted to 770,570 cubic yards, nearly five times as much as for the same month in 1906. There were 9.8 miles of new track laid and 5.8 miles of old track removed. One hundred and sixty-two locomotives were in the service of this division, and an average daily number of 6,104 laborers were employed. The total force in all departments, exclusive of the Panama Railroad, on July 31, was 24,161 men. Police Department records show four hundred and thirty-one arrests for the month, against five hundred and forty-five in June, in the whole zone. On the Fourth of July there were but nine arrests.

The taking of testimony in New York City in the suit brought by the Federal Government at St. Louis last December to dissolve the Standard Oil Company under the provisions of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, before Former Judge Franklin Ferriss of St. Louis, the special examiner appointed by the Federal Court, has been further postponed to Sept. 17 at the request of counsel for the defendant company, in order to permit them to prepare statements from the company's books. The Government demands information as to trade agreements, contracts of limited partnership, total assets and liabilities, and names of holders of stocks.

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