ITEMS OF INTEREST October 31, 1908 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The gates forming the temporary dam of the Charles River in the Back Bay, Boston, were dropped in place last week. The permanent structure will be steel and concrete. This dam will hold the water of the river at a level for a distance of about ten miles upstream, the distance affected by tide-water. The ship-locks have been in place a number of weeks. The main lock is forty-five feet wide, three hundred and fifty feet long in the clear, and twenty-one feet deep. The piling used in the dam and about the basin would, if put end to end, reach a distance of about one hundred miles. The concrete used and to be used would be sufficient to make a wall two feet thick, four and a half feet high, and about eight miles long.

The full bench of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, in a case recently brought before it to secure a definition of the rights of owners of automobiles, holds that statutory laws regulating the speed of automobiles on highways and their exclusion from some are reasonable and proper for the promotion of the safety of the public.

It is said to be not improbable that a prohibition law for the District of Columbia already been passed in the near future. A law has already been passed forbidding the sale of liquors in any Government building there. The District has an area of sixty-seven square miles and a population of about three hundred thousand.

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