Items of Interest August 30, 1913 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The Hons. J. S. Williams and Clarence Ousley, members of the American commission to study rural cooperation in Europe, in their report to the Governor, the directors of the Agricultural and Mechanical College, and the officers of the Farmers' Union of Texas, advise the creation of a cotton warehouse system under state regulation and the establishment of a bureau of cotton information. In discussing the cotton problems they declare that preventable loss in the marketing amounts to from four to five dollars a bale, or from twenty to twenty-five million dollars a year, in the Texas crop alone. This can be saved, the report asserts, by a system of warehouses, which is described in detail. Briefly, they recommend: Local corporations, chartered under a general law, for the maintenance of warehouses for the storage, grading, and weighing of cotton and other farm products; provision by law for the sale of the bonds of local warehouse corporations by making the state the custodian of funds of stockholders and the trustee of the corporation's assets and earnings for the security of the bonds; creation of a state warehouse commission, consisting of three competent men empowered to prescribe rules for the sampling, grading, and weighing of the products, to the end that they may be graded and sold under scrupulous state regulation.

Deposits from the government fifty million-dollar treasury fund to aid crop movements will be made in two equal allotments in southern states in August and September. While all deposits may be recalled without notice, the department plans to recall 25 per cent on each of the following dates,—Dec. 15, Jan. 15, 1914, Fub. 15, and March 1. The banks will pay 2 per cent interest and all expenses. Deposits are to be made to national banks in principal cities, and are to be used in relieving stringency. The banks receiving the money are expected to lend to the smaller banks at a reasonable interest rate. Security is to be in government, state, municipal, and other bonds, and in commercial paper which is approved by a securities committee of district clearing-houses, the secretary of the treasury naming one member of each committee.

Col. George W. Goethals, chairman of the isthmian canal commission and chief engineer of the Panama canal, has accepted the honorary presidency of the International Engineering Congress, which will be held in connection with the Panama-Pacific exposition from Sept. 20 to 25, 1915. The exposition officials have communicated with some eighty thousand engineers in all parts of the world, with a view of having them visit San Francisco in 1915. The Congress will be conducted under the combined auspices of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Mechanical Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers.

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