ITEMS OF INTEREST January 21, 1911 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

In an unusual address delivered before the New York County Lawyers' Association at the Hotel Astor recently, Samuel Untermyer advocated the absolute abolition of what he described as "the financial device known as 'the holding company,' " describing it as a "recent financial abomination" and one of the most prolific means of oppression of the investing public. He cited in detail what he called the "throttling" of the Kanawha & Michigan railroad by the six great trunk lines, the American Tobacco Company case, the Lehigh Valley case, and the cases of the New York Central in Vermont and the Union Pacific in Kansas and Missouri, as instances of holding company abuses, which, as he says, "have come under my observation during the last six months."

Restitution to the amount of one million three hundred thousand dollars and the surrender of warrants aggregating two hundred thousand dollars, upon which payment had been stopped, have been made by the men convicted or otherwise implicated by the state of Pennsylvania in the capitol frauds. In return the commonwealth agreed to drop all further criminal action against the defendants indicted. The new state capitol, a magnificent structure, with its rich furnishings, cost approximately thirteen million dollars. Of this sum the state alleged that it had been defrauded out of about five million dollars.

Activities of the geological survey in the classification and valuation of the Government's western coal lands, which were begun in 1908, have resulted in an increase of the price set upon the lands of more than four hundred million dollars, according to a statement issued by that bureau. Since the survey began its work it has appraised I4,682,839 acres, with values in some tracts ranging upward of four hundred dollars an acre. The work has been done on the basis of the actual tonnage under each forty-acre tract. The total price set upon the lands by the survey is $685,944,839.

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