Items of Interest December 25, 1915 Issue

Items of Interest

The Wisconsin-Minnesota Light & Power Company is putting in a great dam for hydroelectric purposes at Wissota, Wis., on the Chippewa River. There will be from six hundred to one thousand men employed for a year and a half, and a town has to be built to care for the working people. This gives the power company a chance to control the situation, and the first rules laid down are that Sunday shall be observed, that there shall be no liquor sold in the camp, and that no objectionable games shall be tolerated. The company provides a motion-picture show house in which the best educational films shown in the greater cities will be presented, and has taken other steps, beginning with the installation of complete water, sewer, and electric light systems, and strong regulations making for cleanliness. The company is undertaking the construction of a sixty foot dam for hydro-electric purposes that will develop 45,500 horse-power, will be sixty feet high and a mile long, and will cost $2,000,000. The waters held back by the dam will, by their sixty foot fall to the turbines, develop 7,500 horse-power each on the six electric generators, or an aggregate of 40,000 kilowatts of electric capacity. The electrical energy produced at this plant has already been marketed. Most of it will be conveyed over a transmission line to St. Paul, seventy-four miles distant.

Franklin K. Lane, secretary of the department of the interior, says in his annual report: "No one can survey the physical condition of the United States without being impressed and almost overwhelmed with the magnitude of the work that must be done in keeping our rivers within bounds and putting them to use. It is the largest task that the Government must undertake sooner or later. No one can take the yearly toll of our rivers without realizing that the people of this country cannot regard themselves as owning this land, really possess ing it, until they have brought these waters under subjection. And in doing this they will literally create new land by the millions of acres, land that will support millions of people as against the thousands which live upon it today. How these great works can be carried on calls for constructive thought, not merely on the engineering side but more immediately upon the financial side, as to those ways and means by which the lands reclaimed shall be made to bear in some degree the burden of the expense."

Telegraph operators all over the United States employed by the Western Union Telegraph Company are rejoicing over the news that after the first of next year all traffic employees will receive annual vacations with pay. The announcement reads: "All regularly assigned employees who have been in the service of the company for two years or more will receive two weeks' vacation, and those who have been in the service continuously for one year will receive one week's vacation." Operating employees who have not been regularly assigned, but who have worked for the company the equivalent of full time for each period, will also receive vacations. It is stipulated that the vacations shall be employed for rest and recreation and not used in other employment. The cost to the company is estimated at $2,000,000.

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