Article October 2, 1909 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The Postmaster General, with the object in view of securing greater economy and equal efficiency in handling the postal business, has ordered a complete examination of the methods in vogue in every branch of the service. Forty odd experts are now making a thorough examination of the registry department, which has been showing a growing deficit year after year, and has far outgrown the methods that were first employed in it. It is his intention to bring it down to a more businesslike institution. Later a commission of money order experts will make a similar examination of the money order division, which also has been showing a growing deficiency. After the money order division has received an overhauling, work probably will be begun on the rural free delivery system to ascertain if there is any waste of efforts or funds, and to conserve both. The subject of the "franking" privilege, or the sending of matter through the mails free by Government officials and members of Congress, will also come in for a share of consideration in the effort to maintain the efficiency of the service, are at the same time save money wherever a saving can be effected. This system has been very expensive, and is in part responsible for the heavy deficit of $3,000,000 in the registry division.

The General Federation of Women's Clubs announces a scholarship of $1,500 at either Oxford, Cambridge, or London university for the year beginning October, 1910, to be awarded to an American woman. College graduates whose age does not exceed twenty-seven years may take the qualifying examinations, which are the same as provided for men who are competing for the Cecil Rhodes scholarships. These examinations are to be held in every state in the Union Oct. 19 and 20, and are in mathematics, Latin, and Greek. Admission will be allowed only upon the written certification of a candidate by the national chairman of education of the General Federation, and will be issued only upon the request of a state federation president or chairman of education. The applicant must file credentials regarding her good health, her mental and moral qualities, her literary and scholastic attainments, and her promise of distinction.

An inventory of the forest resources shows that we are taking every year three and a half times as much wood as is added by the new growth; less than one third of the growing tree felled by the lumberman is ever used at all, so that two thirds of all the timber cut is simply destroyed; that one eleventh of all the forests are swept by fires every year, and that on the average since 1870 forest fires have yearly cost $50,000,000 in timber; that over ninety-nine per cent of the forests in private hands—which comprise three fourths of all the forest land and four fifths of all the wood—is thus devastated by destructive use and the scourge of unchecked fires, while less than one per cent is properly handled for successive crops or effectively protected from fire.

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