ITEMS OF INTEREST October 9, 1909 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The Governors of New York and New Jersey, officers of the Hudson-Fulton celebration commission, and the commission whose work made the event possible, participated on the 27th ult. in the dedication of the Palisades Interstate Park, which stretches for fourteen miles on the west side of the Hudson river opposite New York city and Yonkers. This marks the crowning event of fourteen years of unremitting efforts to save the beautiful Palisades from destruction by blasting. This strip of land and precipitous cliff constitutes one of the most picturesque bits of scenery in the state. It comprises seven hundred acres of level land, giving opportunity for a beautiful boulevard drive along the base of the cliff and for recreation to the millions of persons huddled in the tenements of New York and near-by cities. The cost of this park is about $627,000, of which $502,000 was paid by the states of New York and New Jersey, and $125,000 by contribution of J. Pierpont Morgan. The first tangible attempt to save the Palisades was made in 1895, when the United States Government was asked to take them for military purposes. This plan failed, but the New Jersey State Federation of Women's Clubs took up the matter with enthusiasm, and the result of their active campaigning was the appointment of committees by Governors Roosevelt of New York and Voorhees of New Jersey to investigate the opportunities of protecting the Palisades.

The announcement that the Interborough Rapid Transit Company of New York would bid on the construction of a four-track subway up Madison avenue from Forty-second street to the Harlem river, with branches in the Bronx, in connection with its projected Seventh avenue extension downtown, is the most important victory of the public service commission since last spring, when it secured the passage of the Travis-Robinson bill, enabling the construction of subways by private capital. In addition to being a clean-cut trimph for the commission over the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, it rounds out the achievement of the legislative session in proving that the Travis-Robinson bill is a workable statute under which subways can and will be built. This bill was a measure framed with the idea of freeing the city from the rapid transit embarrassment to which the excesses of the city's bond issues had subjected it. It allowed the construction of subways by private capital on the principle of profit sharing and the indeterminate franchise; the construction of subways by the assessment principle and, in connection with the pending constitutional amendment exempting self-supporting bonds from the debt limit computation, the construction by the city itself, should private offers not prove satisfactory.

Last week three thousand womens, part of the army of persons in Chicago who obtain their mail at the general delivery window in the Chicago post-office, revealed to the postal authorities, many under protest, their true names and addresses. They were requested to sign "cards of identification," and these were placed in card indexes for reference at each recurring application for mail. The requirement will end many a clandestine correspondence and will produce a reform for which urgent demand recently has gone up from ministers, reform leagues, and others working for the city's purification.

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