Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

with foreign countries. It rescues fishes from lands temporarily overflowed, conducts experimental sponge farms in which sponges of special shapes are grown to meet the demands of the market, and experiments with the fattening of oysters much as the agricultural experiment stations do with the fattening of cattle. It also investigates the effects upon fishes of river pollution, especially by industrial wastes. Wastes from gas-works have been found to be especially fatal to fishes.

The aquarium of the Bureau of Fisheries is one of the interesting sights of Washington, although in its present building it cannot be developed so as to represent adequately the work of the bureau. The establishment of a national aquarium on a scale commensurate with the importance of the work done is a cherished ambition of the officers of the bureau.

The Bureau of Fisheries conducts investigations regarding the fur-seal herds of the Pribilof Islands and the Bering Sea, and has established a salmon hatchery on the coast of Alaska; but the administrative work in connection with both the fur-seal fisheries and the salmon fisheries of Alaska is under the direct supervision of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, who, in his efforts to check the indiscriminate slaughter of seals by foreign sealers, last year sent the solicitor of the department to Alaska to make a special investigation. The fur-seal herd has been greatly reduced in numbers, and it appears that the present laws for the protection of the seals are inadequate. The exclusive franchise of the North American Commercial Company for taking fur seals on the Pribilof Islands will expire three years hence. The salmon fisheries are so well under control that illegal fishing has become quite exceptional.

A SCATTERED DEPARTMENT.

The Bureau of Standards and the Bureau of Fisheries are the only portions of the Department of Commerce and Labor which occupy Government buildings at Washington; the other bureaus are scattered about in rented quarters all the way from Capitol Hill to the Treasury. Including stables and storage rooms, no less than ten buildings and

parts of buildings are rented for the use of the department, at a cost of about $60,000 a year. In the endeavor to crowd the growing bureaus into their present quarters the department library has been abolished, and hallways are utilized for file cases and even for desks. Secretary Metcalf estimated that the scattered condition of the department cost more in messenger service and other wasted effort than the amount paid for rent. is very evident that the department needs a permanent home in which all the bureaus now occupying rented quarters can be brought under one roof.

It

This last addition to the Government ministries has made the most of its advantage as a new department in the selection of employees. Appointments have been made solely for fitness, political considerations being so far ignored that no one can tell whether Republicans or Democrats are in the majority. It is noticeably a department of young, energetic, and efficient men, with a large proportion of college, law-school, and university graduates, but also with as many as possible of the right kind of men drawn from the practical business world.

The appointment of the Hon. Oscar S. Straus as Secretary of Commerce and Labor has been universally commended as a most appropriate selection. Himself a merchant, a lawyer, and a scholar, twice Minister to Turkey, a member of the Court of Arbitration at the Hague, and president of the New York Board of Trade and Transportation, he combines in a marked degree the experience, ability, and wide sympathies needed in his difficult office. His aim is to conduct the department for the best interests of the industrial classes, employers and employees alike, doing for labor everything that the law permits and giving to manufacturers all the knowledge the department can secure, but without doing any of the business which individuals should transact for themselves. He has definite ideas about the proper limits of governmental activity, and will not allow the foreign agents of the department to be used as drummers by particular firms; American manufacturers must send their own representatives abroad if they would compete successfully with Europe.

[graphic]
[ocr errors]

THE GOD OF WAR LAUGHS AT THE THOUGHT OF INTERNATIONAL DISARMAMENT.
From the Ohio State Journal (Columbus).

[subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][subsumed]
[graphic]
[graphic]

HARRY PRATT JUDSON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.

Dr. Judson was unanimously appointed February 20 by the trustees of the University of Chicago to succeed the late President Harper, since whose death he had been acting in the presidential capacity. Dr. Judson was born in the State of New York, is a graduate of Williams College, was a successful educator at Troy, N. Y., until 1885, and was professor of history in the University of Minnesota from that year until 1892, when he joined the original forces that have created the present University of Chicago. He had made his mark as a classical and historical scholar, with a keen grasp of questions in theoretical and practical politics, a decided literary gift, and an unusual capacity for executive work.

At Chicago he was made professor of political science and dean of the faculty of arts, literature, and science. He was also President Harper's understudy, so to speak, and his substitute in all cases of Dr. Harper's absence from Chicago. His appointment as president follows the example of Yale, Columbia, and Princeton, which, in promoting Drs. Hadley, Butler, and Wilson to the presidency, in each case selected a professor at once scholarly and practical. with a talent for public affairs. Dr. Judson has written a number of books, is an authority on military and political history, has a clear business head, and is eminently fitted to give the University of Chicago the steady, conservative régime needful after the creative and path-finding methods of the brilliant and lamented Dr. Harper.

THE NEWEST WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT.

BY AN OBSERVER AT THE CAPITAL.

THE Department of Commerce and Labor, the last of the nine great executive departments of the Government to be established, touches the every-day life of the people at many points, representing as it does the national Government's activity in those business fields which seem just now to be of even more absorbing interest than usual. It looks into our foreign and domestic trade, supervises our shipping industries, and stocks our waters with fish; it seeks means to promote the welfare of the workingmen and the commercial success of their employers. The special province of the department, according to the act by which it was created, is to foster, promote, and develop the foreign and domestic commerce, the mining, manufacturing, shipping, and fishery industries, the labor interests, and the transportation facilities of the United States. In addition to these duties, and partly as a means of carrying them out, it is the principal statistical agency of the Government. Indeed, it fosters industry primarily by collecting and disseminating information; but some of its bureaus have also important administrative functions to perform, as in the control of immigration and the safeguarding of water travel.

the Hon. Oscar S. Straus, of New York. The Bureau of Corporations was created at the same time as the department of which it forms a part, for the purpose of investigating the organization and conduct of corporations and corporate combinations engaged in interstate commerce, other than railroads, and to compile and publish useful information concerning such corporations. The head of the bureau has power to compel the attendance and testimony of witnesses and the production of documentary evidence. In a sense, the Bureau of Corporations is successor to the temporary Industrial Commission, which went out of existence in 1902, but its organization is very different and its methods of investigation are more thorough than was possible with a temporary board.

PUBLICITY REGARDING CORPORATIONS.

Under the administration of the Hon. James R. Garfield as Commissioner of Corporations reports specially ordered by Congressional resolutions were made on two industries: a partial report on the beef industry, in March, 1905, and the report on the transportation of petroleum, showing the existence of a great variety of ingenious railway discriminations in favor of the Standard The Department of Commerce and Labor Oil Company, in May, 1906. The beef reincludes several bureaus formerly under port presented only part of the information the Treasury Department, which thus per- which had been collected, because the Deformed to some extent the functions of a partment of Justice took up the case against department of commerce; but for many years the packing-house companies before the recommercial bodies urged the establishment port was finished. The report on the transof a separate department. A bill for that portation of petroleum was likewise a parpurpose, prepared by Senator Frye, was in- tial report on what appeared to be the most troduced in the Fifty-fifth Congress, and with important aspect of the oil situation. It was some elaboration was reintroduced by Senator presented while the Railroad-Rate bill was Nelson at the opening of the Fifty-seventh under consideration, and the discriminations Congress, in December, 1901. This was the disclosed may have had some influence in bill which, with some additions and amend- deciding Congress to enlarge the powers of ments, became the act of February 14, 1903, the Interstate Commerce Commission. The entitled "An Act to Establish the Department Bureau of Corporations has in preparation of Commerce and Labor." Under it the new reports on other phases of the oil industry department was organized by the Hon. and on the tobacco, steel, sugar, and coal George B. Cortelyou as the first Secretary industries, and water transportation. Invesof Commerce and Labor. On his appoint- tigations of the lumber industry, of the "Harment as Postmaster-General he was suc- vester Trust," and of the cotton exchanges ceeded by the Hon. Victor H. Metcalf, of were also called for at the recent session of California, who has now been succeeded by Congress. These investigations will be con

[graphic][merged small][merged small]

ducted under the direction of the Hon. Her- of Mr. Garfield, and upon his transfer to bert Knox Smith as Commissioner of Cor- the Interior Department were logically in porations, and Dr. Edward Dana Durand line for promotion. as Deputy Commissioner, both of whom have been connected with the bureau almost from its establishment, as the principal lieutenants

The Bureau of Corporations, with the evidence it has collected, has assisted the Department of Justice in preparing its cases

« AnteriorContinuar »