ITEMS OF INTEREST
National.
Vigorous recommendations for changes in the present law regulating transportation companies are contained in the twenty-third annual report of the interstate commerce commission, just transmitted to Congress. The proposed amendments provide that a physical valuation be made of the interstate railroads of the country; that the commission be given power to prevent advances in rates or changes in regulations or practices to the disadvantage of the shipper, pending an investigation into the reasonableness of the proposed change; that the commission be authorized to establish a joint rate and through route wherever, upon investigation, it is found that the public necessity and convenience require such action; that in certain instances the shipper be permitted to direct the intermediate routing of his traffic; that the law be so amended as to give the commission undoubted authority to enter a corrective order as the result of an investigation instituted by the commission upon its own motion.
The United States supreme court, reversing the decision of a lower court, has found for a plaintiff who sued a whisky concern for libel in using her photograph for advertising purposes, although used under another name. The court says: "If the advertisement obviously would hurt the plaintiff in the estimation of an important and respectable part of the community, liability is not a question of a majority vote. . . . No conduct is hated by all. That it will be known by a large number and will lead an appreciable fraction of that number to regard plaintiff with contempt, is enough to do her practical harm."
Acting as an arbitrator, Judge Tayler of the United States court has fixed a value of $21,127,149 upon the property of the Cleveland Railway Company. Upon this sum the company will be allowed an earning of six percent under a proposed twenty-five-year franchise. All excess earnings are to go toward betterments of the service. At a special meeting of the council recently the franchise ordinance was passed. It will provide for a rate of fare not to exceed three cents at first, and never to exceed four cents cash and one cent for a transfer.
A million-dollar present has been voted by the finance committee of the United States
Steel Corporation to its employees. It is the annual bonus for efficiency. The gift will not be in cash, but in the corporation's common or preferred stock. There are one hundred and ninety thousand employees of the corporation, of whom more than forty thousand are stockholders. They hold 208,811 shares, and with those offered they will control over 250,000 shares with a par value of $25,000,000.
The national waterways commission has not reached a unanimous agreement on the questions which it will report to Congress early in January, as differences have arisen in the commission as to several questions, among them the following: The relations between the railroads and the rivers; the remedies for the decadence of river traffic; the right to construct dams across navigable streams.
The secretary of war has transmitted to the House, with his comments, the recommendations of the committee appointed January, 1907, to report on preserving the scenic beauty of Niagara Falls. Both he and the committee recommend the establishment of a national park on the American side of the falls, in order that no encroachments may be made in the future on the natural features of the great cascade.
Director Durand has set Saturday, Feb. 5, as the date for the test for applicants for the position of census enumerators. He says any one with good judgment and an ordinary school education can pass it. At least sixty-eight thousand places are to be filled by the middle of March and all applications, for examination must be filed with the supervisors not later than Jan. 25.
The jury in the trial at New York city of the six former employees of the American Sugar Refining Company, on charges of conspiracy to defraud the Government out of customs duties, announced a disagreement as to one, an ex-cashier, and guilty as charged, with recommendations to mercy, as to the former dock superintendent and the four former checkers.
Fifteen bills, providing for an increase in the pay of rural free delivery carriers, have already been introduced in the House of Representatives. The postoffice department is unfriendly to this proposed legislation, as it is trying to keep appropriations down, in harmony with the President's economy program, and is moving slowly in the matter of establishing new routes and increasing pay.
American warships probably will soon be fitted with the largest and most powerful naval gun in the world. The new fourteeninch rifle has been tested at Indian Head, Md., and, according to experts, did all that was expected of it. The projectiles, weighing fourteen hundred pounds, traveled about nine miles down the Potomac with the gun elevated seven degrees.
The attorney general of Illinois has appeared before the judges of the supreme court in a suit to compel the Illinois Central Railroad to account for seven per cent of its gross receipts from charter lines, through which the state of Illinois seeks to recover an amount approximately estimated at twenty million dollars from the railroad company.
An anti-trust bill, giving United States circuit courts authority to dissolve combinations convicted of monopolizing, or attempting to monopolize, any part of trade or commerce between the states and with foreign countries, and to appoint receivers for them, has been introduced in the House.
The Pilgrim monument on Town Hill, Provincetown, Mass., where, at the laying of the corner-stone on Aug. 20, 1907, President Roosevelt made a speech, awaits its dedication at the hands of President Taft next August. It is planned to have President Eliot deliver the historical address.
The Governor of Kansas has been cast out of the Topeka Club, because he insisted that the club should obey the prohibition law of the state, and had ordered suit to be brought against the directors for allowing liquor to be kept on the premises.
The Illinois state law, which landlords and their attorneys had laughed at, declaring it unconstitutional and class legislation to prohibit their turning away tenants with children, has been upheld as constitutional by Municipal Judge Himes of Chicago.
Industrial education, what it has accomplished and its present condition, in all probability will be made the subject of a general investigation under the supervision of the bureau of labor.
Counsel for the Government and the Standard Oil Company have agreed on the date to be fixed for the hearing of its appeal from the district court, which, it is said unofficially, is for early in March.
The United States Agricultural and Industrial Exposition Company has been incorporated under the laws of Delaware with a capital of one million dollars.
Springfield, Mass., is now receiving water from its new Little river system. The work, which was begun about two years ago, cost two million dollars.
The incoming Legislature of Rhode Island will be asked to pass a law authorizing cities and towns to regulate outdoor advertising.
A United States geological survey of one of the principal islands of the Hawaiian group has been ordered.
International.
It is announced that the government of Transvaal, influenced by the excellent record of progress recounted in the report of the Central African railways, will immediately proceed with the construction of an additional five hundred miles of railway, of which four hundred and forty miles are to be built in the Transvaal and sixty in the Orange River Colony. The total amount to be expended upon these works is £1,230,000.
As a result of the encroachments made by the Russian government on the independence of the Finnish people, it is expected that the emigration of farmers and laborers to Canada and the western United States will assume large proportions in the spring. Three hundred have already sailed from the port of Hango.
The Japanese budget estimate for 1910-1911, as given out, inaugurates a readjustment of taxation, thereby decreasing the estimated receipts five million dollars. The estimated expenditures are announced as two hundred and sixty-seven million dollars. The receipts are estimated at an equal amount.
The government statistician of New South Wales estimates a wheat yield of 25,500,000 bushels for the year, which exceeds last year's production by 10,000,000. This leaves between 13,000,000 and 14,000,000 bushels available for export.
The consistory of the University of Copenhagen has formally declared that Dr. Frederick A. Cook, whom it was first to honor as the discoverer of the north pole, fails to prove his claim by the data submitted.
A representative of a group of British, French, and American telephone companies has completed arrangements for establishing a telephone system in Constantinople and its suburbs.
Prince Albert has been enthroned as King of Belgium, to succeed his late uncle, King Leopold.
Industrial and Commercial.
The gross operating revenues of all railroads in the United States for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1909, was $2,494,115,589, and the operating income $742,987,191. The average number of miles operated in 1909 was 233,002.
