ITEMS OF INTEREST May 10, 1913 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Governor Tener of Pennsylvania has approved the bill recently passed by the Legislature providing for county systems of pensions for mothers under the administration of a commission of from five to seven women to be named by the Governor for each county availing itself of the provisions of the law. The trustees are to investigate all cases and may recommend payments to any abandoned mother or widow who is unable to maintain her children at home. Payments are to be made monthly, and the combined maximum payment shall not exceed twelve dollars a month for one child, twenty dollars a month for two children, twenty-five dollars a month for three children, and five dollars a month for each additional child. For the purposes of the law an appropriation of two hundred thousand dollars is made.The mothers' pension system has been put in operation in four states and has been advocated by many organizations of Pennsylvania men and women.

Land stipulated to be worth thirty million dollars, and estimated by experts to have a value of between forty and sixty million dollars, has been ordered by the United States district court to be taken form the Southern Pacific Railroad Company and returned to the federal government. The Oregon-California land grant case, involving more than two million three hundred thousand acres, will be carried to the circuit court of appeals sitting at San Francisco, and later to the United States Supreme Court for final adjudication. The case was instituted in 1908. Early in its history about sixty private suits were filed for men induced to locate the lands. The main case, demanding forfeiture of two million three hundred thousand acres remaining unsold, were then filed.

British Ambassador Bryce, on the 25th ult., laid down the office he has held at Washington more than six years, and left for New York to begin his trip home. In New York he said his farewell to the United States at a dinner of the Pilgrims Society. He and Mrs. Bryce will go overland to San Francisco to sail for Yokohama, touching at Honolulu. They will spend some time in China and Japan, where Mr. Bryce will study the evolution of the new Chinese republic, and then proceed to London by way of Siberia.

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