ITEMS OF INTEREST March 11, 1911 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

A resolve of the Massachusetts Senate provides that the Governor, with the advice and consent of the council, shall appoint a commission of seven citizens of the commonwealth, to consider in what manner Massachusetts may best cooperate with the federal government in the construction of a ship canal—free and open to the commerce of the world and without toll for the passage of freight across the state, as now being surveyed by the engineers of the war department. The canal would be a link of the proposed intracoastal waterway between Boston and Rio Grande in Texas, and in harmony with the plan advocated by the Atlantic Deeper Waterways Association. The commission shall consider how best the commonwealth may cooperate with other states along the Atlantic seaboard in the development of inland waterways, and shall consider the value of such a canal to the state in the development of industries, the reduction in the cost of handling raw material and manufactured products, and the benefit to transportation generally along the Atlantic coast.

The number of federal office-holders amounts to 411,322. Of this number the President appoints, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, only 9,846. There are under civil service rules 262,608, of which the post-office department has 147,727. The treasury department has 27,093, the war department, exclusive of officers and enlisted men of the army, 28,102; the department of justice, 5,700; the department of agriculture, 12,519; the department of the interior, 14,262; the department of commerce and labor, 14,797; the government printing office, 3,925; the interstate commerce commission, 614, and the Smithsonian Institution, 424. The President has 993 appointments which do not require the consent of the Senate, and 846 of them are in the department of justice.

The Senate committee on foreign relations reported favorably the Honduran financial treaty, which in brief throws the protection of the United States over a contract made between the Honduran government and the J. P. Morgan interests for the refunding of the enormous outstanding foreign debt of Honduras, on a basis of one to fifteen. This will be the opening wedge for a series of similar treaties between the United States and countries of Central and South America, and will remove any pretext for interference by European governments in the affairs of the American republics.

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