ITEMS OF INTEREST January 7, 1911 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The report of the board of army engineers appointed to consider, the advisability of the continuance or abandonment of reclamation projects in the semiarid regions of the West has been made public. Aside from its recommendations as to allotments of the loan, the board made several suggestions for the improvement of conditions of construction for the aid of settlers and on other points. The board examined twenty-five projects designed to irrigate three million two hundred thousand acres of arid or semiarid land at a cost of one hundred and forty-five million dollars. The general irrigation fund, the report shows, amounts to sixty-five million seven hundred thousand dollars and the amounts expended to date about sixty million dollars. Accretions to the fund in the next four years, from the sale of public lands and repayments, the board estimates at a total of twenty-eight million dollars. The board recommends that steps be taken as soon as possible to secure an adjudication of water rights where such adjudication has not been made. The water supply in most projects is under state control. The board heard complaints of the size of farm units, which varies in different projects from ten to forty and eighty acres, but suggests that further experience is necessary before a general change is made. It believes that the Government demonstration farms maintained by the reclamation service at the expense of the projects on which they are located, should be left to the department of agriculture.

Preparations to prosecute the electrical trust, which the department of justice characterizes as the "greatest trust in the world," have been completed by Attorney-General Wickersham. The electrical companies will be charged with a conspiracy to restrain trade under cover of the patent law. The department has not decided where the suit will be brought. For a year the Government investigators have been gathering evidence of the alleged manner in which the combination of electrical manufacturing companies operates to maintain extortionate prices on their products. They have reported that the trust is composed mainly of the General Electric and Westinghouse Electric companies, operating in agreement with seventeen associations of smaller manufacturers of almost every article employed in the use of electricity.

At the instance of the Government prosecutors the equity suit against the meat packers indicted with having formed in the National Packing Company a trust in restraint of trade, was dismissed in the United States district court by Judge Kohlsaat at Chicago. The move of the Government's attorneys in having the suit dismissed was not unexpected by those in close touch with the beef trust investigation. When the policy of indicting individuals instead of corporations was laid down by Attorney-General Wickersham and President Taft, it was believed that the civil suit against the National Packing Company would be dismissed if the directors were indicted by the federal grand jury.

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