Items of Interest January 1, 1916 Issue

Items of Interest

In his annual report for the fiscal year the secretary of agriculture indicates a number of important measures necessary for the betterment of agriculture in the United States. These involve: legislation designed to promote the better handling and storage of farm products and the trading on the basis of fixed grades and standards, including a permissive warehouse act, a cotton standards act, a grain grades act, and provision for a market-news service to obtain and disseminate accurate information regarding crop movements and prices; a land-mortgage banking act; assistance to communities near the national forests in road building and similar improvements; authority to grant water-power permits within the national forests for fixed periods; the classification of the remaining public grazing lands to determine their character and to secure information upon which to base plans for their future improvement and use; authority for the sale of lands needed for local enterprises in certain localities within the Alaskan forests after examination and classification by the department, with definite provision against alienation of those chiefly valuable for waterpower sites, for the handling of timber resources, or for other public purposes; provision for a well balanced enlarged program for agricultural research; the continuance of appropriations for the purchase of forest lands in the Appalachian and White Mountains until areas sufficient to be influential in protecting those regions are acquired.

In his annual report, Secretary Lane of the department of the interior calls attention to the national parks as a valuable and undeveloped asset of the country. He says: "The United States furnishes to the people of this country playgrounds which are, we may modestly state, without any rivals in the world. Thousands have this year for the first time crossed the continent and seen one or more of the national parks. It may reconcile those who think that money expended upon such luxuries is wasted, to be told that the sober-minded traffic men of the railroads estimate that this year more than a hundred million dollars usually spent in European travel was divided among the railroads, hotels, and their supporting enterprises in this country. During the year a new national park of distinction and unusual accessibility has come into existence. It crosses the Rockies in Colorado at a point of supreme magnificence; hence its title, the Rocky Mountain National Park. Through it, from north to south, winds the Continental Divide,—the Snowy Range in name and fact. Two hundred lakes grace this rocky paradise, and bear and bighorn inhabit its fastnesses. It has an area of three hundred and fifty square miles and lies only seventy miles from Denver. Many hotels lie at the foot of these mountains and three railroads skirt their sides."

The boring operations for the Roger Pass Tunnel of the Canadian Pacific Railway have been completed. This tunnel passes through Mount Macdonald, the dome of the great Selkirk Range, and is the longest railway tunnel on the continent and one of the longest in the world. More than two years was spent in preliminaries,—the selection of the proper place to drive the bore, also the surveying and the excavation work necessary before the real tunneling could be begun. The boring and the related improvements will cost more than $10,000,000. The Hoosac Tunnel at North Adams, Mass., is four and three quarters miles long, while the Roger Pass Tunnel is five miles long. The main shaft has room for double tracks. The tunnel is fully twenty-nine feet wide and twenty-three feet high, and follows a straight line under Mount Macdonald, emerging in the Beaver Valley at a point about one thousand feet below the present line of the railroad. The highest point reached by the tunnel will be 3,795 feet above sea-level. The passage through the mountain has a gradual rise of I per cent to the "interior summit."

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