Article August 28, 1909 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The interstate commerce commission will start west in about a month on one of the most important trips it has made since the passage of the Hepburn law. It will conduct hearings which will involve freight rates from New York and other eastern points through to many far western shipping centers and to the Pacific coast. Local rates also will be involved. The first hearing will be at Spokane Oct. 4. Other hearings will be at Reno, Salt Lake City, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Billings. So important are the controversies involved that the whole commission will make the trip and will be gone six weeks or more. One of the questions involved is whether the railroads shall be allowed to charge higher through rates to interior cities like Spokane, Salt Lake City, and Reno than to the Pacific coast cities. It is possible the whole structure of freight rates applicable to the Rocky Mountain region and the coast will have to be overhauled, both as to local rates and through rates from eastern points.

By requiring letter carriers to "double up" their routes during the dull season of July and August, instead of employing substitutes, Postmaster General Hitchcock expects to save the Government not less than $250,000 in the cost of carriers' vacations during the present fiscal year. Post office employees are allowed by law fifteen days' leave of absence with pay each year. It has been the general practice for many years to employ a substitute for every day a letter carrier was on leave of absence. As there are twenty-six thousand carriers in the service, and as the cost of sub-service for the fifteen days and two Sundays allowed the carrier for his vacation is about $40, the actual cost of the carriers' vacation is a little more than $1,000,000. During July and August the volume of mail, in the large cities especially, is considerably reduced, enabling carriers to "double up," so that in some instances during those months two carriers serve three routes.

To add to public safety in railway travel by raising the standard of steel rails now produced, a conference far-reaching in importance has just been held between the assistant secretary of commerce and labor, the chief of the Bureau of Standards, and a sub-committee of the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance of Ways Association. The conference worked out a cooperative plan by which a scientific inquiry will be commenced immediately to investigate the physical properties of the steel rail and to ascertain what is needed to bring it up to the highest possible standard of efficiency. The experiments will be conducted by the Government with a view of solving the scientific points involved.

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