ITEMS OF INTEREST March 2, 1912 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

It is proposed to bond the state of Pennsylvania for fifty million dollars to be used in constructing highways connecting county seats and other important points. General T. Coleman du Pont, president of the Du Pont Powder Company of Delaware, asks permission of the Legislature to construct and give to that state a two-million-dollar boulevard. It is estimated that work on improved roads and bridges in Wisconsin next year will reach about one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in value, and that at least five hundred and thirty towns in the state will be benefited. Governor Plaisted of Maine has practically endorsed a two-million-dollar bond issue by the state to build roads, the receipts from automobile taxes to take care of the interest and provide a sinking fund.

The supreme court of the United States, in a unanimous refused to declare contrary to the federal constitution the initiative and referendum provisions in the state constitution of Oregon. The court does not go into the merits of the question raised, that the Oregon provisions establish not a republican form of government, as guaranteed by the federal constitution, but a pure democracy. It simply denies its own jurisdiction, asserting the question to be political and therefore within the reach of action by Congress, and not by the courts.

President Taft has submitted to Congress the report of the employers' liability commission and the commission's proposed employers' liability and workmen's compensation bill, accompanied by a message urging the enactment of the measure. The President sets forth that the proposed law not only would insure to employees of railroads engaged in interstate commerce quick adjustment of their claims for damages, but also would relieve the courts of a vast amount of work and enable them to administer judicial affairs with greater dispatch.

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