ITEMS OF INTEREST May 30, 1908 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

A plan has been proposed to stop the costly spring floods at Pittsburg and other places along the rivers which drain the Appalachian Mountains. All the efforts of the Government with dams, restraining walls, and other engineering works have proved inadequate to control the streams when they have been swollen with the melting winter snows, and to maintain depth great enough to permit navigation later on in the year when the flood waters have spent themselves, this latter trouble causing possibly a greater financial loss to the South than the floods. It is now proposed to go to the headwaters of the rivers and apply there two remedies: first, the maintenance of a forest cover which will keep the ground porous so that it will not shed all the water from its surface at once but will soak it up and release it gradually; second, to establish storage reservoirs at strategic points which will retain surplus flow and pay it out, little by little, later on, when it is needed to maintain navigation in the rivers. The United States has spent $30,000,000 to improve navigation on the rivers which have their upland sources in the Southern Appalachians and work already undertaken will cost at least $56,000,000 before it is finished.

Transatlantic records for average speed and for the shortest trip over the long course, were broken by the arrival of the Cunard liner Lusitania at New York on the 22d inst., 4 days, 20 hours, and 22 minutes after she passed Daunt's Rock. This beats the best previous time for the long course made by her sister ship, the Mauretania, by 3 hours and 37 minutes, and is only one hour and 42 minutes longer than the Lusitania's record of 4 days, 18 hours, and 40 minutes over the short course. Her average speed for the voyage was 24.83 knots and her daily runs were: Sunday, 19 knots; Monday, 622; Tuesday, 625; Wednesday, 632 (record); Thursday, 628; Friday, 363.

The Supreme Court of the United States holds to be unconstitutional the Texas law of 1905, fixing the tax on railroads equal to one per cent on their gross earnings when they lie wholly within the State, and a proportionate sum when they lie partly within the State. The opinion was delivered by Justice Holmes, who held that the law is an effort to regulate interstate commerce. A dissenting opinion was delivered by Justice Harlan. The Ohio law, though similar, would not, it is believed, be affected by the decision, as it does not place any tax on interstate commerce.

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