ITEMS OF INTEREST May 11, 1912 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The United States representatives to the international radio-telegraphic conference in London, next June, have been announced at the state department. The United States delegates will advance a proposition to lengthen the radio wave in distress communications, This is to be urged as a means of avoiding the confusion the marked the wireless work during the last hours of the Titanic disaster. Austria some months ago urged that it was indispensable in the interests of the public use of telegraphy at sea that every ship should be bound by the treaty stipulations to communicate with every other ship without distinction as to the system employed and to accept communications originating from any other ship or transmitted by it from other ships. Austria also urged that each ship, in addition to its dynamo equipment, shall also possess an installation, for cases of distress, of small storage batteries with a capacity sufficient to assure communication at full power for six hours, so that communication may be maintained independently of the power of the ship.

The "tap line" question which has been under consideration by the interstate commerce commission for more than a year, has been disposed of in a report handed down by Commissioner Harlan, in which all members of the commission concurred. The commission for the last four years has been making an investigation of the relations between the railroad companies and small industrial lines that are owned by manufacturing or other plants and which receive allowances or divisions from the carriers sufficient in many cases not only to pay their operating expenses but to return handsome dividends on the investment. In the course of the investigation more than two thousand industrial railroads were looked into upon complaint of industries in the Southwest that were not receiving such allowance.

Authorizing the appointment of a joint committee of the two houses, which shall report a general parcels post bill at the beginning of the next session of Congress, the House, after a long debate last week, agreed upon an experimental parcels post for strictly rural routes and a general parcels post, which extends to domestic shipments of fourth-class mail matter at the International Postal Union rate of twelve cents a pound for packages weighing not more than eleven pounds. The rural route parcels post will handle packages of the same weight limit at a rate of five cents for the first pound and one cent for each additional pound. The action of the House is a compromise between the different advocates of various schemes of parcels post legislation.

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