ITEMS OF INTEREST July 24, 1909 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Lack of practical and commercial unity in the entire inland water system of the United States is the text of part one of the reports on transportation by water submitted to the President by Herbert Knox Smith, commissioner of corporations of the Department of Commerce and Labor. In his letter of transmission he says: "Waterways themselves and their conditions must be so improved that they shall carry a share of the nation's traffic proportioned to their real possibilities, and shall so supplement the rail system as to prevent the recurrence of disastrous traffic congestions. Our coast line is over 5,700 miles, or, with the navigable indentations of the coast, over 26,400 miles. The Great Lakes shore line of the United States is 2,760 miles, or, with the indentations, 4,329. These lakes are connected with each other, and by canals with the Atlantic ocean, St. Lawrence river, and the Mississippi river, there being however a channel of but fourteen feet depth to the St. Lawrence and this through Canadian territory, seven feet to the Atlantic through the Erie canal, and a still lesser depth to the Mississippi. There are over 290 streams in the country used to a substantial degree for navigation, with an approximate navigable mileage of 26,400, but with very little direct connection with each other except the Mississippi system. About 4,500 miles of canals have been constructed. More than one half—2,444 miles, costing over $80,000,000—has been abandoned. Transportation by water now suffers from one far-reaching disadvantage which we can largely remedy, namely, the lack of organization of our waterway system as a whole."

Electric power was used to operate a transcontinental passenger train on the Great Northern Railway through the Cascade tunnel west of Spokane, Wash., the evening of July 1. The test was satisfactory to the company's engineers and those of the General Electric Company, who had charge of the technical part of the work. There is a 2.2 per cent grade east bound in the Cascade tunnel, where passenger and freight trains frequently encountered serious difficulty in negotiating the climb through the bore. The engineering department of the Great Northern Railway has been at work since 1907 in building the 20,000 horse-power electric plant on the upper Wenatchee river, twelve miles above Leavenworth, on the main line of the Hill road, where the power for this test was generated.

In the supreme court in California, East San Jose and Los Angeles have lost tactical victories in their endeavors to regulate the bill-board nuisance by city ordinances. The general principle, however, underlying these attempts has been upheld. During the last six months proposed enactments designed to restric the growing offense have been introduced in the Legislatures of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, and Minnesota. Vigorous efforts to control the nuisance have within a few months been instituted in Chattanooga, Cleveland, St. Louis, Seattle, Pittsburg, Buffalo, Hartford, Cincinnati, Albany, Haverhill, Providence, Newark, and a score or more smaller communities.

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