Article October 21, 1911 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The United States supreme court convened at noon, Oct 9. The government moved to advance its case under the Sherman antitrust law against the Union Pacific, the Oregon Short Line, and others intended to prevent the ownership of stock in competing roads, which was decided against the government by the United States circuit court of appeals for the eighth district. The court will remain in session until the last of next May and will consider as many of the eight hundred cases now on the docket as time will permit. An estimate has it that the court will dispose of about four hundred cases during the term, but that about two hundred additional cases will be docketed before next June. The antitrust suits are those against the principal anthracite coal-carrying railroads and coal-owning companies; against the railroads operating the bridges over the Missisippi at St. Louis, and against James A. Patten and other business men, who are charged with obtaining a corner on the cotton market. The court will be called upon to decide also the Minnesota rate cases, which involve the power of the states to regulate railroad fares within their borders.

The German balloon, Berlin II, has been unofficially announced at the Aero Club of America as winner of the James Gordon Bennett trophy. In winning the trophy Lieut. Hans Gericke landed at Ladysmith, Wis., having traveled four hundred and sixty-eight miles. Lieutenant Gericke was given up as lost last year in the international race, which started from St. Louis. He was in the air forty-two hours, traveling eleven hundred miles and landing in the wilderness of Canada, from which he and his aide emerged four days later after enduring many hardships. Gericke also was given up for lost last summer when he went up from Berlin in the Germany elimination race and drifted out over the North sea. He was sighted in England, but was again lost from view over the North sea, finally landing in France. The nearest rival of the German balloon in this year's race was the Buckeye, piloted by Lieut. Frank Lahm of the United States army. It landed near La Crosse, Wis., three hundred and seventy miles from Kansas City.

The treasury department has an opportunity to save the government almost four hundred thousand dollars a year if its officials act according to a recent ruling of the comptroller of the treasury and order power presses installed for the printing of currency. A saving of about eight hundred thousand dollars a year has been estimated if all currency and bonds, notes and checks could be printed on power presses, as all internal revenue stamps now are, but the unions have insisted on hand work. The treasury department several months ago virtually made a proposition guaranteeing that no one should lose his place through the change and that wages would be increased, but the unions remained obdurate. They allege—what the director of the bureau and treasury officials deny — that the character of the work would suffer if power presses were used.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

ITEMS OF INTEREST

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access