San Francisco's Bridges

Last week President Hoover announced with evident pride: "The fifth of the commissions that have been appointed to determine the facts and to advise upon or negotiate special problems has now completed its report and secured a very admirable result." He referred to the commission, chairmanned by his good California friend Mark Lawrence Requa, which had settled a dispute waged among the War and Navy Departments, San Francisco and the State of California, over the site for a proposed bridge to Oakland across San Francisco Bay.*

The fifth commission's "admirable" result: agreement of all concerned parties to a double-span bridge from Rincon Hill in San Francisco to Goat Island (Naval training station), thence to Emeryville on the Oakland side. To pacify the Navy it was agreed that battleships should be able to pass underneath. Chief points conceded in the compromise were: 1) by San Francisco, desire to have the bridge connect with Alameda; 2) by the Navy Department, fear that a possible enemy air force might bomb the bridge, bottle up a U. S. fleet in the Bay. Last week the War Department approved plans for another, 8,500 ft. bridge, with the longest single span in the world, to cross the famed Golden Gate from Fort Point in the Presidio of San Francisco to Lime Point on the Marin side.

*0ther Presidential commissions have: 1) consolidated veterans' relief; 2) arbitrated South western railroad strikes: 3) determined U. S. policy in Haiti; 4) negotiated the London Naval Treaty.

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