Items of Interest November 6, 1915 Issue

Items of Interest

Uruguay has a good public school system, which was established some twenty-five or thirty years ago. It is copied after the educational system of the United States, and corresponds to the primary and grammar school grades only. The high school exists in the form of the National University, as it is called. In an enrolment of some fifteen hundred students only forty or fifty are girls. A campaign was started four or five years ago for the establishment by Congress of a women's university. There were many opponents of higher education for women and the measure was fought hard, but the President of the republic was in favor of such action and eventually a law was passed. In 1913 the women's section of the National University opened its doors. It was predicted that there would not be sufficient enrolment to warrant the continuance of the open door, but in the first year the enrolment reached close to the hundred mark.

The sale of public lands in the rural sections of Porto Rico to laborers for dwelling and farming purposes, provided for by an act at the last session of the Insular Legislature, gives some hope of providing better opportunities for the extremely dense population. Under the same act public lands in or near towns are to be sold for dwelling purposes only. There are approximately eight hundred thousand people, representing more than one hundred and fifty thousand families, who belong to the landless class, two thirds of the whole population. There are two classes of land that it is held can and should be placed within the reach of deserving laborers who now belong to the landless class. The first is the unused lane, mostly in the interior, which is owned largely by non-residents, and the second is that portion of the land owned by the Government which is not needed for Government purposes.

By proclamation of its mayor, Newark, N. J., took a holiday a few days ago to celebrate the first public inspection of the great municipal work which is being done to reclaim thousands of acres of the Newark meadows. The day was celebrated as Port Newark Terminal day, for the city authorities, the members of the Board of Trade, the Traffic Club, and other business organizations plan to make the one time meadows one of the busiest shipping marts in the world, as well as a manufacturing and industrial center. The section now being developed includes nearly four thousand acres. Over three hundred acres have been filled in, and a channel 200 feet wide and 20 feet deep at low water has been dredged from the Government channel. The work has been in progress a little over a year, and the cost to date has been nearly two million five hundred thousand dollars.

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