ITEMS OF INTEREST November 25, 1911 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The Elizabeth tunnel, the most important factor in the construction of the Los Angeles aqueduct, which has recently been completed a year in advance of the time required for the work, is 26,870 feet long, and is the second longest water tunnel in the United States, the Gunnison tunnel, which has a length of thirty thousand feet, ranking first. The Elizabeth tunnel, which is situated sixty miles northwest of Los Angeles, Cal., was driven through the crest of the Sierra Madre mountains in twelve hundred and forty working days. The new tunnel has a capacity of six hundred million gallons per day and a grade of one foot to the thousand. When the concrete is placed in position the tunnel will be nine feet six inches wide and ten feet ten inches high. The excavation was made from two directions, and so great was the precision of the engineering operations that when the two sections came together it was found that they met within one and one eighth inches.

Martin A. Knapp, presiding judge of the United States court of commerce and formerly chairman of the interstate commerce commission, told a large audience in the Houston Club of the University of Pennsylvania that a crisis is coming which will test the policy of the government's rate regulation system, and that if it fails governmental ownership will be the only alternative. This crisis will come within a generation, he said. He asserted also that there must be a general wage increase for all railroad men and for other workers, that the present system of railroad competition is ill-advised, and that the railroads should be permitted to make uniformly profitable rates and thus destroy competition.

The supreme court of Missouri sustains the decision of a lower court in finding for the ouster of the International Harvester Company of America. The court not only ousted the company from its right to do business in Missouri, but imposed a fine of fifty thousand dollars, conditioned that if the company paid the fine, separated itself from the International Harvester Company of New Jersey, filed a statement of its business and showed to the court that it would obey the laws in the future, it would be permitted to continue to do business in the state.

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