ITEMS OF INTEREST April 5, 1913 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The bill providing for the incorporation of stock exchanges, and placing them under the supervision of the banking department, was passed in the New York Assembly, after a long debate, by a vote of 85 to 34. It was expected that the Assembly would pass the bill, but it has a much harder road to travel in the Senate, many of the senators being on record as opposed to it. Five other Wall street bills, for which Governor Sulzer is sponsor, also passed the Assembly. They were amendments to the penal law as follows: in relation to transactions by brokers after insolvency and in the hypothecation of customers' securities; in relation to trading by brokers against customers' orders; in relation to bucket-shops; in relation to the manipulation of prices of securities and conspiring movements to deceive the public; and in relation to the discriminations by exchanges or the members thereof. The Goldberg "blue sky" bill, relating to the regulation and supervision of investment companies, a bill patterned after a similar law on the statute books of Kansas, also passed the Assembly by a vote of 93 to 22. It has not been introduced in the Senate, and it is not expected that it will pass at this session.

Radical changes in the methods of the state government for the purpose of placing it on a business basis, are recommended in the final report of the committee of inquiry. This report was submitted to the New York Legislature with a special message from Governor Sulzer in which he praises the work of the committee and urges that its recommendations be enacted into law. "The old methods of waste, extravagance, or worse, must be discarded," says the Governor in his message. "The people demand an honest and efficient administration of their affairs. They are entitled to nothing less. If the recommendations herewith submitted shall find place in the body of the state's law, New York will take the place which rightfully belongs to it, at the head of its sister states, furnishing to its people a wise, honest, efficient, and economical administration of government. The people of the state so demand. It is our duty, as representatives of the people, to enact this demand into law." The committee declares that the business of the state is conducted without any system, each department being operated separately.

All business now before the interstate commerce commission is being cleared away for beginning, on May 4, the task of ascertaining the physical valuation of all the railroads in the United States, the two hundred and fifty thousand miles of which have a book valuation of more than fourteen billion dollars and a stock and bond value of over eighteen billion dollars. It is roughly estimated that there will be needed a bureau of experts, auditors, investigators, and clerks doing nothing else for from three to five years. The cost to the government is expected to run from two million five hundred thousand to five million dollars, and the cost to the railroads to be over that figure.

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