ITEMS OF INTEREST May 24, 1913 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Convinced that there are thousands of acres of waste land in the commonwealth of Massachusetts which can be employed best in growing timber, the state forester, and other experts, are meditating the question of securing state forests. Statistics show that the amount of tax raised in Massachusetts for state, county, and city or town purposes, including overlayings, amounted in 1912 to $74,552,306. Of this sum it is said that $56,830,166 was contributed by the cities and one town, Brookline. The remainder, or $17,722,140, comes from towns in which one million acres of waste land is found. The income from this area, if actually owned by the towns and covered with forests, would be $4,430,000 annually. It is asserted, if this amount were distributed among the towns in proportion to the amount of tax raised, it would reduce the $17,722,140 by 25 per cent, or the tax rate by a similar amount.

Oil experts of the United States bureau of mines, who have been investigating the natural gas industry, have reported that millions of dollars' worth of this perfect fuel is being wasted each year in the United States. In Oklahoma one hundred million cubic feet of gas is escaping into the air every twenty-four hours. This has a value of $20,000 a day, or $7,300,000 a year. This waste is also equal to one million two hundred and fifty thousand tons of the best bituminous coal. The waste in Louisiana is estimated at seventy-five million cubic feet of gas daily, valued at $15,000 for each day, or $5,475,000 for the year. This waste of gas is equivalent to nearly one million tons of coal. In the southern California fields it is estimated that there is an annual waste amounting to about three or four million dollars.

The international opium conference will reassemble at The Hague next month, the exact date to be announced as soon as responses to the invitation have been received from the governments of Peru, Turkey, Greece, and Switzerland. Working in conjunction with the government of the Netherlands, the state department at Washington has secured assent to the conference, not only from the twelve signatory powers, participants in the original conference, but from a majority of the other thirty-four nations of the world, regarded as essential to a successful covenant finally to abolish the opium traffic in all but medicinal preparations.

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