ITEMS OF INTEREST November 4, 1911 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

A petition asking for the dissolution of the United States Steel Corporation and some of its subsidiaries has been filed in the United States court in Trenton, N. J. The petition was prepared by Jacob M. Dickinson, former secretary of war, who had been retained by the government as its special counsel in the case. The petition charges the steel corporation and those subsidiaries which are named as defendants with maintaining or attempting to maintain a monopoly in the steel business, and alleges that direct connection exists among the steel corporation and all the large railroads and steamship lines, the Standard Oil Company, the Pullman Palace Car Company, the International Harvester Company, and the Western Union Telegraph Company; that the stock of the Tennessee Coal & Iron Company was "hammered" in order to obtain control of the company and that the information given President Roosevelt at the time of gaining that control was misleading, with the intent to prevent governmental intervention; that by threatening a general financial calamity it forced out a rival of high potential possibilities and "unlawfully acquired a power which is a menace to the welfare of the country and should be destroyed"; and that through "interlocking directorates" the corporation held power in other vast corporations, this method being "more refined, more euphonious, but none the less effective than pools."

A comprehensive improvement in the administration of the customs service is planned. Beginning Nov. 1, 1911, all appraising offices throughout the country will submit to the appraiser at New York, either weekly, daily, or monthly, as the case may be, a sample label covering each article of merchandise appraised during the period in question, with certain exceptions. Each sample and label will be carefully compared by the appraising officers of New York with the returns of that port and with the returns of similar merchandise at the other ports of entry, and all discrepancies will be made the subject of correspondence between the appraisers at New York and the customs officers reporting on the same merchandise. The primary aim of the new plan is to bring about uniformity of classification and appraisement, thus at once minimizing the labor of the treasury department and so standardizing the methods at each port of entry that the business world will be saved much time, money, and litigation.

The attorney for the United States Packing Company of Chicago has announced that in behalf of his client he has obtained in the United States circuit court summons for twenty-nine commission merchants and jobbers, constituting a so-called poultry trust in New York, in a suit under the provisions of the Sherman law. The action is to recover actual damages of seventy-five thousand dollars and an additional sum of two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars as penalties for alleged interference with interstate commerce.

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