ITEMS OF INTEREST April 13, 1912 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

In a special message sent to Congress by President Taft, advising more economy and better efficiency in conducting the affairs of the government, he says that ten million dollars is wasted every year by paying two persons for doing work which ought to be done by one. Mr. Taft finds that eighty million dollars is spent each year on first and second class postoffices and he proposes that four million five hundred thousand dollars be saved in salaries alone by abolishing the office of assistant postmaster and paying the postmaster twenty per cent more than the assistant received. He also proposes that the revenue cutters be no longer maintained as a separate organization, but that the vessels be distributed among the departments wherever required.

The governors of the states as a body have filed their solemn protest with the supreme court of the United States against the proposition to strike down state railroad rates as interfering with interstate commerce. They respectfully called upon the bench, having in especial charge the "covenant of the Union," to see that the boundaries of the states remain. The protest took the nature of a brief, filed as "friends of the court" by a committee of governors. The brief was submitted in connection with the "state rate cases," which had been set for oral argument. The brief was of interest, coming so soon after the recent decision of the interstate commerce commission that railroads submitting to low state rates must give similar rates on interstate business.

Three hundred and thirty-five thousand seedling pines were set out in the Blue Hill reservation near Boston last year by the metropolitan park commission. Next year the plans call for an even greater number. Year before last one hundred and ten thousand were set out, and the total up to the year 1911 was four hundred and sixty thousand. The total acreage of the reservation is, in round numbers, forty-seven thousand. The pines, two-year-old seedlings, are set six or eight feet apart in locations only which are especially favorable for their growth or where it is desirable, for landscape or forestry purposes, that they should replace inferior trees.

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