ITEMS OF INTEREST May 22, 1909 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

President Eliot of Harvard was invested last week with the decoration of the first class of the Order of the Rising Sun of Japan, by Baron Takahira, Japanese ambassador, acting for the Mikado. In making the presentation, the ambassador said: "The Emperor, my august sovereign, fully appreciative of the great services you have rendered for the welfare of human life as one of the foremost educators of the age, and for the making of many useful men of Japan who have come here to study at Harvard University during the forty years of your presidency over that institution, thus largely contributing to the advancement of our country, has been graciously pleased to confer upon you the grand cordon of the Imperial Order of the Rising Sun, as a mark of his Majesty's good will toward you."

In view of the inefficiency and practical insubordination among the Spanish, Italian, and Grecian laborers on the Isthmian Canal, Chairman Goethals has given notice to the consuls from these countries that he intends to place the laborers from their respective countries on the same footing as that upon which Americans must labor on the Canal. On account of the contractual obligations recognized by the Canal Commission in importing European laborers, they have been permitted hitherto to retain their special checks, which entitled them to receive twenty cents an hour, American currency, even though their services were unsatisfactory. This, and freedom from fear of dismissal, have resulted in the European laborers deliberately reducing the output of their work.

A permanent injunction, restraining from operation the Fiber and Manila Association, under which name it was charged that twenty-five paper manufacturing concerns had formed a combination in restraint of trade, was ordered in a decree handed down in the United States Circuit Court at New York last week. The companies composing this association were fined $2,000 each in June, 1908, for membership in the combination, which is now ordered to be enjoined.

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