ITEMS OF INTEREST September 17, 1910 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The membership of the commission authorized by Congress to make an investigation of control of stock and bond issues by concerns engaged in interstate commerce, as announced, is composed of President Arthur Hadley of Yale, chairman; Frederic N. Judson of St. Louis, Frederick Strauss of New York, Walter L. Fisher of Chicago, and Prof. B. H. Meyer, who occupies the chair of political economy in the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The commission will thus be composed of two members of college faculties, two lawyers, and one banker, Mr. Strauss, who is also an economist. Both President Hadley and Professor Meyer have written extensively on economic and railroad subjects. Professor Meyer is chairman of the Wisconsin railway commission and is familiar with the long struggle in that state for the regulation of railroad service. He has been in the employ of the interstate commerce commission at Washington in charge of such valuation of railroad properties as the commission has undertaken, and has also been a special agent of the census bureau recently to furnish statistics on railway valuation. Both the lawyer members of the commission are well-known men. Mr. Judson, a graduate of Yale, has written books on law taxation and interstate commerce. Mr. Fisher is an expert in traction matters. He represented Chicago in the settlement of the traction disputes a few years ago, and successfully brought about the arrangements by which several street railway companies exchanged their securities for a new issue, so that the roads could be consolidated and the profits of operation be shared with the city. He is a vice-president of the national conservation commission.

The cloakmakers' strike in New York city, one of the greatest industrial disturbances in the history of American labor, has been settled. Seventy thousand garment workers, who have been idle for nine weeks, will shortly return to work. The industrial loss to employers and employees has run high into the millions. In loss of wages alone the total has been estimated at more than ten million dollars, while the loss to manufacturers, jobbers, and retailers the country over has been computed at ten times that amount. Points won by strikers are an end of sweat-shops and "preferential union shop," wherein all union standards and requirements as to wages, time, etc., shall be maintained; the point won by employers is an open shop with freedom of selection of employees when necessary skilled union labor is not available.

The public service commission for the first district, New York state, is now advertising for bids for the construction of an entirely new subway system, which is to link together the three most important boroughs of Greater New York and is to cost in its entirety not less than one hundred and twenty million dollars. It is hoped that within five years the triborough system will be completed. The proposed system will include about forty-one miles of road and its capacity will be one million passengers per day. It will connect the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx by a continuous line, which if operated as one system will enable a passenger to ride from Pelham Bay Park at the northerly limits of the Bronx down through Manhattan, over the East river, through Brooklyn, and out to Coney Island.

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