Decatur Democrat, Volume 35, Number 16, Decatur, Adams County, 10 July 1891 — Page 6

democrat dkoaturTind. BIiACKBTTRIC* • • • PuBZiEBinER* People who have to work for their living should stop being gay. The day before a party a man is of no account for thinking of it, and the day after, he is worthless in getting over its effects. Cleveland has for years had a deaf mute on its police force. He has the record of having been a thoroughly efficient officer, and as he -can not hear * sound he is obliged to be more than usually watchful. Special cars for invalids will be placed on the railroad lines which run to St. Petersburg. They will be fitted out with easy berths and surgical instruments that may be required in cases of accident on the road. The United States steamer Omaha, which lately arrived at San CErancisco, bad only forty Americans among her crew of 215 men. The rest comprised English, Irish, French, German, Scandinavian, Dutch, Japanese, and Chinese. * It would be interesting if some philosopher would tell us why a railtoad will turn a tolerably decent man into a cunning schemer and collossal • liar pretty nearly as soon as he touches it officially. There is a story of an ocean steamship catching up a piece of cable in the North Biver, and towing it all the way from New York to Liverpool and back without discovering to what mysterious cause the strange reduction of speed on the round trip could be attributed. A physican who kept a nightly record / of his pulse for five years reports that > every year it falls through the spring until about midsummer, and then rises through the autumn to November or December® Then comes a second fall and a second rise, culminating in February. It is said of a magistrate at Biddeford, who is a great believer in muscle, that it wa common thing to find him at his law office, with his book on a high shelf level with his eyes, busily reading law and swinging five-pound Indian ( clubs, or taking some other exercise, without interference with his studies. GooDVOiCE.a prophet of some notoriety -among the Sisux, near Camberlain, S. D., predicts that for three seasons, beginning with the present one, we shall have abundant moisture, and he backs up his faith by putting in 100 acres of crop —seed being furnished by the government. - Insanity among Jews is increasing. Tn the lunatic asylums of Prussia the ■number of Jews is said to have nearly quadrupled in sixteen years. According to the statistics of the German empire there are 389 insane Jews in every 100,000 of their number, against 241 insane protestants and 237 insane Boman Catholics in 100,000. ‘ An Illinois Central conductor says that female tramps are on the increase. They are not as daring as the men in jumping on or off trains, but they are found hanging all over a freight car, on i the trucks or clinging to the truss'fods by hands and feet, in fact in a good many dangerous places that a male tramp would never think of getting in. -Not content with allusions to sin in a general way, a preacher in Blanco, Ark., became so personal in his sermon as to name several of the congregation and mention their individual errors and failings. The congregation became so indignant that they showered him with* stones, and thus drove him from the pulpit. There has been a diminution of 52,000 in the population of Liverpool proper since 1881, but including the divisions of Texteth and West Derby the town shows an increase of 41,000 in the number of inhabitants. A decrease was anticipated, but the recent census was a surprise, and especial pains were taken to establish its accuracy, with the above result. How is this for a matrimonial advertisement: “A stamp collector, the possessor of a collection of 12,544 stamps, wishes to marry a lady who is ( an ardent collector and the possessor of the blue penny stamp, of Mauritius, issued in 1847.” 'lt appears in the Montteur of the Island of Mauritius, and the stamp which the young lady , must possess is valued at about SI,OOO on account of its rarity. Some of the messenger boys of the Brooklyn District Telegraph Company have been supplied with bicycles, and they go flying through the Brooklyn streets at a speed not heretofore believed possible for weary and deliberate messenger boys. The experiment has so far been so successful that more * wheels” are to be bought, and the 1 boys are delighted. The great falling off in the consumption of chewing tobacco is mainly owing to the growth of refinement in cities, and therefore it is the tinfoil and fineout trade that has suffered most In the country at large the amount of chewing tobacco consumed is still enormous, but countrymen are fondest of plug tobacco, either sweet plug or • the dry kind that can be used both to ■chew and to smoke in pipes. A polyglot barber is a curiosity in Atchison, Ran. He can talk fluently in four languages. Recently he tried to open a conversation with a silent gentleman whom he was shaving. He addressed him successively in English, ■German, and French, with a two-min-ute pause after each trial, pleasantly ■remarking that "It is a fine day.” There was no answer from the victim until the earn* phrase was fired at him in Ital-

ian. Then the customer curtly said fn English: “Go on with your work, and and shut up. Can’t you see that I’m deaf and dumb.?” A citizen of Palmyra. Mo., accumulates considerable money and makes a business of dividing among his children at intervals. Recently he divided $15,000. With previous divisions this makes SIIB,OOO he has distributed among his six children. He does not think it best for a man to get too rich, and has adopted this means to keep his fortune down to a modest level. The plan is satisfretory to him and the children do not complain. Some ingenious person has patented and put on sale a flatiron which especially commends itself to women who board or any who employ dressmakers in their homes. It is made with an opening in the upper part and is hollow inside. Within are placed blocks of a new sort of fuel which comes in little cakes, and when these are lighted they will burn for six hours and keep the iron well heated all the time. In an old geography printed in 1812 appears the following: “California is a wild and almost unknown land. Throughout the year it is covered with dense fogs, as damp as unhealthful. In the interior are volcanoes and vast plains of shifting snow, which sometimes shoot columns to great heights. This would seem nearly incredible were it not for the well-authenticated accounts of travelers.” A well-known physician, who is deemed a specialist in rheumatic complaints, owes his success in treating the disease'to his 'experiments with monkeys. “I used to have a collection of monkeys to practice upon,” says he, “and they cost me a great deal of money.- A monkey has rheumatism just like a human being, and can be cured in the same way. I used to give a monkey a good attack of it by wrapping him warmly in a flannel, all but one leg, and then tying him over night on the roof of a shed. In the morning he had a hard case of rheumatism in the exposed leg, and then I experimented to find out what would best cure him. It took a long time and a great many monkeys, but I found out at last, and that’s the way I discovered the remedy which I give to my patients.” The recent report of the committe eof treasury experts appointed to recommend a change in the currency will, if acted upon, do away with the timehonored greenback. “We will come down in the near future to plain black and white.” Superintendent Meredith, of the engraving bureau said, in sneaking of 'the report. “There is also too much scroll work and filagre business on our notes, and the tendency is toward plainer effects. Investigation has proved that notes with so much scroll work and engraving are easier to counterfeit than those with plainer faces. The English notes are, to all appearances, simple promises to pay, printed on white paper in black ink, with plain type letter and figures. The English Government bank note appears at a glance to be easy to imitate, and ordinarily a first-class American job printer would say he could reproduce it without any preparation. But it is one of if not the most difficult to counterfeit of any paper money in existence. The texture, the very finish and first touch of the paper convinces one that it is genuine and none can be made to imitate. •

A madder set of clerks was never known in Washington than those in the departments of War and Justice. For generations it has been the custom when anybody died jvho had ever been in the Cabinet to close the department over which he had presided on the day of the funeral. It made no difference who it was (except in the case of Jeff Davis) or how long his name had been forgotten, the department had to be draped and the clerks given a holiday. The custom has been suddenly abolished by the common sense action of Secretary Proctor and Attorney General Miller. When Alphonso Tafft died the other day the departments of War and Justice of course saw a holiday ahead and prepared for it. Mr. Tafft had been both Secretary of War and Attorney General. Mr. Proctor and Mr. Miller both thought that as to follow the old costum would stop the public business in two departments it would be a good time to burst a tradition, and they did it. Except among the clerks the action of the two is universally approved. The ice thus broken, there will be no more funeral holidays except when Cabinet officials die in office or when the diseased shall have had attained such distinction in public life as to make his death a cause of sorrow to the whole people. Relief from Rheumatism. “This information,” said a well-known physician to a New York Herald man, “may save many lives; at any rate it will prove an invaluable boon to people suffering from rheumatism in any shape or form. Rheumatism, as nearly everybody knows, is caused by acidity of the blood. It should never be neglected. This remedy, as I know by long practice, is very efficacious, and it is as simple as it is powerful. “Here it is,” he added. “When a rheumatic twinge is experienced the patient should proceed to a drug store and buy 15 or 25 cents’ worth of oil of gaulteria (oil of Wintergreen), put ten drops on a lump of sugar, place it in the mouth, permit it to dissolve slowly, and swallow it. This should be repeated at intervals of two hours until the last vestige of the malady has disappeared. In the fneantime take a dose or two of Rochelle salts. |.j“That,” -said the physician, “is all there is to it, but if taken as I have prescribed it will save suffering humanity many dollars in doctors’ bills, to say pothing of pains, aches, and swellings. No. I charge nothing for this advice. It is simply given for the benefit of man* kind.”

r Ash creeT HOW A PROTECTION ORGAN INVENTS ARGUMENTS. The New York Press on the Bednetton in the Price of Cotton Cloth—Not a Case of Protection—True Canses of the Fall in Price — Cheaper Cotton and Changed Fashions—cheap American Labor. The New York Press is engaged in manufacturing some exceedingly cheap arguments for protection, and is printing them in large black letters at the head of its editorial columns. The Press is the paper of Census Superintendent Robert P. Porter, and was founded for the purpose of propagating high tariff ideas, the money for the purpose having been put ’tip by several wealthy beneficiaries of the tariff. The Press prints every morning its socalled “tariff picture. ” A sample of its cheap and easy methods for concocting “arguments” in support of protection may be seen from a recent “tariff picture” on the subject of printing cloth. This is the plain white cloth from which calico is made. The figures are printed upon the cloth, and hence the material used in making calico is called printing cloth. This cloth is nearly all woven with sixty-four threads to the inch each way, and hence it is generally designated in the trade “64x64 printing cloth. ” Nearly all of the calico printing cloth used in this country is made at Fall River, Mass., and in Providence, R. 1., there being sixty-five mills at these and neighboring points engaged in weaving these goods. The boast of the New York Press is that the price of printing cloth fell from 3 5-16 cents per yard last fall to 2 15-16 cents during the past few months, and that this larter price is the lowest price ever reached by these goods. The figures of the Press are correct, but its claim that this fall in price was due to protection.is “all off.” The lower price can be accounted for on perfectly natural grounds. Tim causes of the decline are two, the lower price of cotton and the change in the fashion. Last summer the mills had to pay about 4 cents and last fall about 2 cents per pound more for cotton than they have been paying recently. This alone is enough to account for the fall in prices; but a still more serious matter has been the encroachment of ginghams upon calicoes as a dress material. Every woman knows that during the past few months calicoes have almost ceased to be worn among those who keep up with the fashions. They have been driven out by ginghams. Any one who watches the wholesale markets of New York will find the effects of this change. Calicoes are uniformly reported as dull; and such orders as have been received come largely from distant points, where the new rage for ginghams has not yet taken full possession of the feminine mind. On the other hand, there has been a ready demand for ginghams. “Fall styles continue to be freely ordered,” “Agents report unusually good progress so far,” “Prices ruled very steady”—such are the terms in which the market for ginghams is reported. There are some further facts concerning the manufacture of printing cloth which will be of interest to the public at large. This industry, which is being held up to us as an illustration of the beautiful workings of protection, is even now debating the question whether it will close down or reduce wages, so unfavorable are the market conditions at present. The workmen a,re opposed to a reduction of wages, anerprefer instead to have the owners order a shut down in order to relieve the overcrowded market The same thing was done last August, when fully three-fourths of the mills closed their doors for a week or two, owing to overproduction. Besides the conditions already named, the present low price of printing cloth is due to the further fact that the Fall River “combine” fell to pieces early in last December. The price of the cloth during the latter part of last year was fixed by an which expired in December. Under this agreement not to sell below 3 5-16 cents a yard, the mills ran at white heat, and the stocks of cloth on hand during the summer and autumn were phenomenally large. When the “combine” broke up, there was a rush to realize on these enormous stocks, and prices were at once broken. And now these protected mills are once more in the same predicament, overproduction, and no remedy but shutting down or reducing wages. Why do they not go out and “capture the foreign market?” They have the advantage of cheaper labor than their competitors in Europe; they ought to bsat those competitors in neutral markets. They could do it if they would only content themselves with smaller dividends and would exert themselves to gain a footing in foreign countries. Some of the more prosperous of these mills earned from 15 to 20 per cent, on their capital last year, notwithstanding the high price of iotton and the complaints of overproduction. The operatives in these Fall River mills are paid considerably less by the piece than is paid in England and Switzerland. Their higher daily wages are earned by attending to a larger number of looms, thus producing more cloth than the English and Swiss weavers. Here is how the matter stands: Number of looms rjin bygone weaver in a cotton mill: In America 6 to 8 In England 3 to 4 In Switzerland. 2 to 3 Number of yards, same quality and width, turned out by one weaver: In America 1,350 In England 875 In Switzerland 466 Rates of wages in 100 yards print cloth: In Fall River 40 cents In England 51 cents In Switzerland .60 cents When protectionist organs boast of what the tariff has donfi for our cotton cloth industry, do they include in that boast the cheapness of American labor at Fall River? The Great American Jackdaw, The way the protectionists boast of the workings of the high tariff and claim for it the progress which has been achieved through Invention, reminds one of the old story of the jackdaw stealing the canary’s feathers and strutting around proudly in borrowed plumage. They never weary of telling us that protection has brought down the price of steel rails from $166 a ton to S3O; but every man of intelligence knows that the reduction was caused by the great invention of Sir Henry Bessemer, an unprotected Englishman. This reduction, too, has gone to a much lower point in England than in the United States, the price in England being now from $21.90 to $22.50 per ton, against the trust price of S3O to s3l here. In the same way the invention of a remarkable machine for making wire nails, which requires little or no labor, has reduced the price of these nails from 8.33 cents a pound in 1883, when the duty of 4 cents was imposed, to 2.85 cents a pound in 1890. The protectionist organ grinders make no mention of the machine. They simply state that the duty was imposed, that the price was reduced, and that this was all owing to protection. And thus the jackdaw plucks the canary’s feathers. Our corn canning industry affords an excellent example of how industries may be developed and costs be lowered by inventions and improved methods, entirely apart from any outside, stimulus like

■am—lll Qrg*! l '. iff ■■ a protective tariff. Os course there is a duty on canned corn, but this duty has had absolutely no effect on the industry, being.simply one of those bogus duties put into the tariff to hoodwink farmers. “Thirty years ago,” says a leading corn packer, “corn was cut from the cob by hand at the rate of a bushel an hour, placed into hand-made cans, the labor cost of which was $1.25 per dozen, cooked six hours, and sold for $5.50 .per dozen. Non a machine, with the aid of one hand, will cut 125 bushels an hour. Another machine will fill the can at an equal gait The labor cost in cans will not exceed three cents per dozen, while improved cookers have run the time for processing down to a single hour, and the corn is sold at a profit for $1 per dozen. The revolution has been from a horde of unskilled laborers, doing all the work by hand, to fewer but better laborers, who are intelligent enough to use machinery; while increased facilities—the emanations from the brain of a Norton, Sprague, Chisholm, and ahost of other tireless inventors—have reduced the creative cost over 80 per cent” Protection’s Fruit in Germany. One touch of protection makes all the world kin. In Germany the effects of protection have been the same as in our own country, as is seen in an article by Prof. Geffcken in the July Forum. The protective measures inaugurated by Bismarck in 1878 were brought about through a compact between the great landed proprietors and the manufacturers, the latter consenting to duties on corn (wheat), meat, timber, etc., while the landed proprietors consented to reintroduce duties on iron, and to raise considerably those on manufactured goods. “The consequence,” says Professor Geffcken, “was the usual one of protectionism—an artificial impulse given to industry by excluding foreign competition. and overproduction resulting from increasing internal competition. A German workman had to pay more for his meat, bread and all the blessings of life than the Englishman or Belgian; and if this led to a rise of wages he did not profit by it, while the manufacturer, with higher Jwages to pay and the enhanced price of raw materials, had more difficulty in competing in foreign markets. Consequently there has been a considerable falling off in German exports, and in order not to lose the foreign market the manufacturers have offered their goods at lower prices, retrieving themselves for the ensuing loss toy organizing rings, and thus enforcing proportionately higher prices at home. ” That last remark especially reads like a description of American instead of German industries. The organization of trusts at home to put up and control prices at the same time that Americanmade goods are sold much cheaper in foreign markets, has become a familiar story. Thus the “beneficiaries” of protection are the same the world over, and in Germany we may see ourselves as in a looking-glass. The Tin-Plate “Infant” in Germany. The McKinleyites are making many rosy promises about the way the McKinley high tariff on tin-plates is going to establish the tin plate industry in this country, and how American factories will be supplying all the tin-plate we can use by July 1, 1892. They should not be too hasty with their promises. We are not the only nation which has tried to wrest from Wales her supremacy in tin-plate manufacturing. Germany has tried the experiment with very unsatisfactory results, despite the fact that wages in that country are admitted by protectionists to be only about half what they are in England. The effort of Germady to nurture her infant tin-plate industry from the protection pap bowl resulted in “advancing backward,” as the following figures will show: Tons pro- Tons im- Tons exduced. ported. ported, 1878 i 8,582 5,307 1,686 1885 4,892 5,798 lE6 Trusts and Inventions. One of the greatest evils of trusts is undoubtedly to be found in the fact that they tend to prevent those inventions and improvements which are constantly being made in freely competing industries. Protection is granted under the professed claim that it will cause competition and so reduce prices. Most of our industries are controlled by trusts in one form or another; and these defeat the introduction of new inventions, and thus prevent the cheapening of their product to the people. This view is expressed by that eminent high-tariff authority the Boston Commercial Bulletin. It has recently been discussing the proposed ‘combine’ of the several companies engaged in making automatic sprinklers for extinguishing fires in factories. The Bulletin, thus states its objection to this combine: “It is not for the interest of the community that the sprinkler ‘combine’ should come to pass. Automatic sprinklers have not reached perfection by any means, and any combination would surely retard the development and the improvement of this almost indispensable instrument of protection. ”

Is McKinley.a Free-Trader? McKinley cannot avoid showing that he does not believe his own words when he tells that “the tariff is not a tax. ” In order to develop the manufacture of beet-root sugar in this country, he put a provision into the tariff law that all machinery for manufacturing it should be admitted at the custom houses free of duty till July 1, 189§. This was Intended to encourage the new beet-root sugar Industry; but if the tariff is not a tax, how can this exemption from the duty help the sugar industry? McKinley is anxious to help a young and promising infant industry, and the first food he gives it is a large chunk of free trade in its machinery, After doing this, McKinley goes up and down the land trying to prove that this very free trade would ruin the country; that it is advocated only by “those who serve foreign interests” and are enemies to their country. It is singular that McKinley should give such a high indorsement ,to free trade as to hold it like a pap-bottle to the lips of, the new-born infant of beetsugar making. Beating the Tariff in South America. In South Ameiica & tariff tax is no more pleasant tb pay than in our own country. Hence the South Americans devise curious ways to avoid the tax, having never discovered, as Major McKinley has, that the foreigner pays the tax. An American traveling in the Argentine Republic and Paraguay reports the following curious method of evading the tariff tax: “Before reaching the boundaries of the Paraguay and Argentine Republics, jtist on the border line you see some manufactories of the native drink (Cana) erected here to escape the heavy duties imposed by the governments of these countries. The raw material from which they make the spirit enter in at the Paraguay side, while at the other end the manufactured spirit passes out.” The Copper Trust’s Monument, The exports of copper from this country have been very heavy since the beginning of the year, and already in four months amount to 44,612,688 pounds of fine copper, or about 80 per cent, of the total amount exported in 1890. Notwithstanding our ability to export copper in such enormous quantities, the McKinleyites did not venture to remove . ‘A'& M ' i

the whole of the duty on copper. They preserved a small part of it to stand as a monument to the fact that two years ago a copper combine existed to keep up prices in the home market, and American copper was being sold in London from two to seven cents a pound lower than in New York.. Etna’s Crater. At last we stood on a level, and the boiling vapor was seen seething up from a great yawning pit at our feet “Behold it!” cried Sebastian, with a salute, bareheaded, to the mountain, and I realized that I was 10,800 feet aboe the sea, and in as convenient a situation for a sensational ending as a man may find anywhere in the world. Etna responded to Sebastian’s civilities with a terrific bellow, and an out-throw of ashes and rocks that put me in much doubt of my ability to live through it The stench of the sulphur, too, was villainous, ■ and though I adopted Sebastian’s plan of binding a handkerchief over my mouth and nostrils, it was all I could do to draw one satisfactory breath in ten. Add to this fa t that the ground upon which we stood was composed of burning ashes and hot mud, and it will be apparent that Etna’s summit is not alto-, gether fit for the daintily shod tourists who climb Vesuvius by the funicolare, nor an easy spot for the Indulgence of 1 political rhapsodies. Some say that the crater of Etna is two mfies round; others ar a satisfied with half the estimate. The truth is that both reckonings may be justified. At one time the crater is two miles in circumference; at other times, more or less. The ■volcano is so terribly active that it is always revising and reshaping itself. The • utbreak of ash one week—most of which falls back into the crater obliquely, so as x to form an inclined bank—may be so prodigious that the crater itself seems curtailed of a third of Its previous area. But, perhaps, on the eighth day that part of the floor —to speak loosely—of the crater whicn has to support this growing weight of material suddenly gives way, and not only all of the newly formed boundaries, but part of the original environing rim of the crater fall in, and so the »circuit of the crater is enlarged. This process is always going on w th greater or less rapidity. And the fact that it occurs so constantly make-s the traveler’s measurements of so litUe permanent value that he may generally be counseled to spare himself all trouble in the matter. —Chambers' Journal Rubber Belting fur Germany. The undiscriminating and reckless manner in which the McKinleyites raised duties, even in eases where there was absolutely no need for an increase, is seen in India rubber belting. The duty on articles made of India rubber was raised by McKinleyfrom 25 per cent to 30 per cent, ad valorem. When a duty is raised it ought, even on protection grounds, to be done only when it has been found that a domestic industry is being hard pressed by foreign competition. But that such is not the case with the makers of rubber belting may be seen from the fact that the Boston Belting Company has recently shipped a large invoice of rubber belting to Germany. “Pick up a German paper and you will find, ” says the New York agent of this company, “that the manufacturer, if he advertises at all, puts it after this manner: ‘Belting made after the American mode.’ It is a compliment which pleases us, and the orders we get are substantial tokens of our merit in this line. ” Able to export, and yet McKinley increases the protection! She Is With Vs. The thin girl has come to stay. The thinner, the more meager and attennuated she is, the greater her charms. Thin as a match applies to her every time. She will never wear an ounce of superfluous flesh, and she eats her meals standing, because comfort superinduces fat. As she walks along the street she looks like the shadow of her brother, with her divided skirts, cloth gaiters and nobby jacket She is straight and athletic, may break but never bend. Do you know her?— Free Press. Hardships Teaching in Spain. The condition of the public teacher In Spain is not to be envied. The payment of their salaries is almost always far in arrears, and a case came up the other day of a man who had not received a cent of money from the Government in seventeen years. The total amount of back salary at present due to teachers is about $700,000. In some cases the sufferers are sustained by charity, and in others are compelled to send their children out as servants. Many schools have been closed altogether. The zeal of the political wool shepherds of Ohio, in urging the Government to apply the so-called “sorting clause” of the McKinley law to carpet wools, by which the duty on them will be doubled, is threatening to have disastrous consequences on the carpet manufacturing industry. From Philadelphia, the great center of carpet making, it is reported as follows: “The carpet trade is getting worse, as the decision on sorted imported carpet wools is jnpst harassing to tne trade. If this is upheld it must result in the stoppage of a great portion of the machinery engaged in the manufacture of carpets.” A London daily says that in consequence of a recent heavy increase of the Spanish import duties, famine prices are being paid for many kinds of food by? the Spaniards. Pork sells at 50 cents per pound; potatoes at 4% cents, flour at 7 cents and bread at 7 cents per pound. Will some wise McKinleyite explain how this can be, considering that it is always the foreigner who pays the tariff tax? Ouuht not that highly orthodox protectionist maxim to prove true in Spain, too? That benighted land evidently needs a McKinley* to teach it that its pork cannot sell at 50 cents a pound, owing to the high duty, since the American farmer pays the pork tax! The umbrella manufacturers of Philadelphia have been agitating the subject of forming a trust, but the result of their efforts has not yet been made public. McKinley put these men in a more favorable position to form a trust than they were under the old law. The old duty on silk and alpaca umbrellas was 50 per cent., but McKinley raised it to 55. Umbrellas of other materials were taxed 40 per cent, but this duty was raised to 45. If these manufacturers “get together, ” it will be simply to take advantage of protection so freely voted them by our McKinleyite solons. Although the iron industry of the South is young it has none of Pennsylvania’s dread of foreign competition, and it evidently cares little for protection. At a recent meeting of the Alabama Industrial and Scientific Society, Mr. B. F. Peacock, of the United States Rolling Stock Company, at Anniston, said that its natural resources made it “easy for Alabama to compete, even in the world’s markets, in pig-iron, bariron and steel products. ” Linen shirts and shirt fronts paid 45 per cent, duty under the old tariff; the McKinley duty is 55 per cent Embroidered shirt bosoms paid 30 per cent; the McKinley duty is 60 per cent In modern English the “prodigal son* was a chap who went away a dude and came back a tramp.

THE FLORIDA COAST. Tradition* of the Buccaneer® and FreeBooter*—Pirates Cowardly on Shore. A hundred years ago, according to tradition and the sea-novelists, the waters of Key West were full of long, low schooners that mounted “long toms,” carried the black flag and sailed like the wind. When steam came, as W. Clark Russell would say, the romance of piracy vanished. The certainty of a short shift and two fathoms of rope reduced “red rovers” to the level of ordinary cutthroats. S® many of these gentry broke their jeweled cutlasses, hauled down the skull and crossbones and slunk ashore in this State to live. Their manners at once changed curiously. Afloat, as every small boy knows, they were nautical Chesterfields, dressed like Beau Brummell and played the guitar. Ashore, as people in Florida remember them, they were ignorant, quarrelsome ruffians, lazy, dirty, drunken and cowardly. “I don’t remember any buccaneers,” says William Curry, an old Bahaman from Green Turtle, who had grown rich here as a wrecker and grocer. “When I came to Key West fifty-four years ago there were only 400 people here, and they were a mighty sight better than those we have now.” Nevertheless, old citizens recall at least one reputed buccaneer, a little, peering old man named Page, who was said to have known the excitement of edging artfully alongside a peaceful merchantman, with an armed crew behind his bulwarks, and then pouring them out with a whoop. On the mainland it is no wonder the pirates’ tempers were spoiled. Phosphates were npt dreamed of, and only the wild orange grew. In the southern part of the peninsula the land is “most too wet for folks and not wet enough for frogs.” Only a tenth of the State is fit for habitation. On the northern gulf coast they made a precarious living by chopping cedar. The Faber and Dixon and most other lead pencils are still made from wood grown about Cedar Keys. The companies own no timber land, as they can’t protect it, and the descendants of reformed pirates cut great rafts every year and swear they all come from one tiny holding of hummock-land in a hidden forest recess. An undoubted freebooter lived not many years ago at Lady Lake, near Ocala. He was a profane, bearded reprobate who liked to be known as a “bad man.” One reputable citizen wore out txto or three pairs of trousers “carrying a pistol for him.” But Birchfield, as he called himself, never met anybody in a fair fight He did one day attack with a long knife the engineer of a new railroad crossing his land. The engineer being unarmed, Birchfield deftly carved out his liver. A doctor, however, replaced it, sewed up the engineer, and told Birchfield he ought to be ashamed of himself. Some time after, Birchfield was out driving in a buggy with his son, when the two quarrelled. The son shot him in the head. Birchfield fell out of the buggy. Then he opened fire on his son. But his daughter, who hated mischief, brained him with an ax as he lay on the ground. Which shows that pirates are sometimes unfortunate in their domestic relations. x On some of these keys you can still see the rusting stanchions, fast in the rock, where the buccaneers hauled up their light vessels to scrape them. Old Tom Romer, an aged negro who dozes in the shade with a red handkerchief over his head, tells some thrilling yams of Blackbeard and his expeditions to the Havana. But Tom is known by family records to be 110 years old, and mixes the war of 1812 with his stories, as Mr. Dick mixed King Charles. The shallowness of the Bay of Florida gave the pirate a tremendous advantage over the deep-draught frigates and corvettes. The crescent line of keys is protected to the seaward by the far-reaching Florida ’beef. Many of them are mere clumps of green mangrove, growing out of the water. Others have sandy beaches, and in the sunshine seem to float in the air. By planting mangroves they could almost be united in a continuous line from Cape Florida to Key West The bay within the keys varies from five to fourteen feet in depth. It is like an incipient everglade. A thousand years from now the pensinsula will perhaps extend south to the reef.—New York Tribune. Cost of Great Steamships. The gross cost of carrying such a vessel as the Majestic across the Atlantic does not fall short of £4,000. As»any of the old-fashioned steamers of the petty measurement of 3,000 tons cost £5,000 for the voyage, or double passage out and home, lam probably not very wide off the mark in making this estimate for a vessel measuring more than three times as much, as the money needed will not increase in a direct ratio with the increased size. 'But if jve are tempted to believe that the profits made in this ocean trade are exceptionally large, we must remember the vast capitol embarked even in one vessel of 10,000 tons. A first-class merchant steamer of the ordinary trade type costs at least £2B per ton weight of the hull and £l3 per indicated horse power of engines. Thus the cost of the Teutonic’s engines should make a quarter of a million look very small. The Guion steamer Alaska, of about 7,000 tons, is worth about £350,000, Probably the Teutonic could not be bought for half a million. And it does not take a professional accountant to reckon that it needs a great deal of money to pay a reasonable devidend on so much. In this connection I can give some statistics about a first-class passenger steanfer, the length of which was 450 feet, whereas the Majestic measures 582. The displacement of this vessel at load-draught amounts to 9,550 tons, and the weight of her bull to 8,800. Each ton of this cost £32, thus the price given for her hull was £121,600. On the whole, lam inclined to think that these figures give a certain financial amplitude and magnificence to our notions concerning the steamship traffic to the West, without saying anything about our vessels which carry freight and passengers to all points of the compass.—Murray's Magazine. The Manufacture of Bra*®. The business of brass making is a most difficult one, says an exchange, and requires in its manipulation men of intelligence and scientific acumen. The process of manufacture is not in the least uninteresting, and may be briefly described here. After weighing out the proportions of metals, they are melted in crucibles, holding anywhere from twenty pounds up, in a furnace. The metal is then poured into cast-iron molds, made good and strong, and thus the brass ingots are formed, varying in size and are from three to fourteeen inches wide, from one to five feet long and from one to four inches thick. The ingots are then trimmed

by cutting off with a huge pair of shears weighing several tons, the rough pop* tions formed in casting by ths moui h of the mold, then passed to the rolls, which are of chilled iron, twenty inches or more in diameter, and three 'feet or overlong, and are reduced by degrees \ to the required thickness. It can only be reduced a little in thickness at each rolling. After passing through the roll once it becomes hard and brittle, and before it can be reduced further it must be annealed. The annealing is done in furnaces called mufflers, which are shaped something like ovens, from 5x30 feet and upwards in width and length. Each time after annealing the metal has to be cleared of the smoke ahd oxide, and this is done by immersing it for a time in a bath of sulphuric acid. The temper of brass depends mainly on the manner of rolling; the color, ductility, etc., upon the proportion of the ingredients. Lead, tin and antimony are sometimes added in small quantities ■> to produce brass of a quality suited to a peculiar work. The Dying Huanaco. It is well known that at the southern extremity of Patagonia the huanacos have a dying place, a spot to which all the individuals inhabiting the surrounding plains repair at the approach of death to deposit their bones. Darwin and Fitzroy first recorded this strange instinct in their personal narratives, ahd their observations have since been fully confirmed by others. The best known of these dying or burial places are on the banks of the Santa Cruz and Gallegos rivers, where the river valleys are covered with dense primeval thickets of bushes and trees of stunted growth; there the ground is covered with the bones of countless dead generations. “The animals,” says Darwin, “in most cases must have crawled, before dying, beneath and among the bushes.” A strange instinct in a creature so preeminently social in its habits, a dweller all its life long on the open, barren plateaus and mountain sides. What a subject for a painter! The gray wilderness of dwarf thorn trees, aged and grotesque and scanty-leaved, nourished for a thousand years on the bones that whiten the stony ground at their roots, the interior lit faintly with the rays of the departing sun, chill and gray, and silent and motionless—the huanacoes Golgotha. In the long centuries, stretching back into a dim immeasurable past, so many of this race have journeyed hither from the mountain and the plain to suffer the sharp pang of death, that, to the imagination, something of it all seems to have passed into that hushed and mournful nature. And now once more, the latest pilgrim has come, all his little strength spent in his struggles to penetrate the close thicket; looking old and gaunt and ghostly in the twilight; with long, ragged hair; staring into the gloom out of death-dimmed, sunken eyes. One artist we have who might show it to us on canvas, who would be able to catch the feeling of such a scene—of that mysterious, passionless tragedy of nature—the painter, I mean, of the “Prodigal!” and the “Lioness Defending her Cubs.” To his account of the animal’s dying place and instinct, Darwin adds: “I do not at all understand the reason of this, but I may observe that the wounded huanacos at the Santa Cruz invariably walked toward the river.— Longman's Magazine. e Flowers In England. The sale of flowers by auction is one of the sights of Covent Garden. The stands in the wholesale market are furnished over night, and the building is open for private buyers at four o’clock next morning, but all their business is over at nine o’clock. The visitor who attends these purely trade functions has the advantage of a very charming flower show, covering something like three-quarters of an acre of space, upon which are arranged tier above tier of blossoming plants, sometimes extending up and dowq, in and out, to a total frontage of 700 yards. The auctioneer, who takes his rostrum at 10 o’clock, addresses himself to the men, who are called “higglers,” a kind of middlemen, who purchase the flowers in lots and sell them to the small retailers. The flower girls cannot afford to trade until the general customers have had their pick of the choicest wares, but, taught by a sharp experience, they are able to drive very smart bargains, and know precisely what to purchase. The pale-faced children of the alleys and by-streets of this densely populated west central district diligently haunt the purlieus in the spring. They have heard of green fields and buttercups and daisies, perhaps have been told that the swallow and cuckoo hasten over sna to spend a merry summer in English meadows and copses; but the bunches and baskets of flowers which here fill them with delight and wonderment are the only evidence of such pleasant things hitherto vouchsafed to them. They are to them tokens of an unknown world. The daffodils, being brightly golden and of respectable size, strike them most, as they very likely strike all classes of visitors. When March goes out like a roaring lion, and the London streets are swept by hail and rain, it is pleasant to turn into Covent Garden and pass these flowers in review. The wonder is how such quantities of violets, primroses and daffodils can be collected. Flag* of th* Various Admiral*. When we read that the Hon. John Byng. Esq., admiral of the blue, was ■ shot on his own quarterdeck by sentence of a court martial, we think, after the first feeling of pity, that his rank was a queer one—admiral of the blue! What did it mean ? It was 130 years ago that he was executed; of course the rank doesn’t exist now, and, any wav, it was an English rank; history will explain it But the rank does exist now. and what is more, it exists in the United States Navy. The Senior Rear Admiral flies the blue flag with two stars, the next in rank the red, the third the white flag. Admiral Kimberly is rear admiral of the blue in our navy, Ad* miral Gherardi is admiral of the red, ■ and Admiral Braine, who retires so soon, and his juniors, are admirals of x the white. When only Junior admirals are together, Admiral Braine flies the blue; but let Admiral Gherardi’s ship appear, and down goes the blue to be succeeded by the red, while Admiral Gherardi’s vessel flaunts the blue. And then let Admiral Kimberly happen along. Down come the blue and the red to be succeeded by the red and the white; and behold, it u Admiral Kimberley’s craft that displays the white* starred blue ensign. Just this happened at the Washington Centennial two years ago, when the junior admiral was first on the ground, and had, unwillingly, it seemed, to go down one peg every time that a senior appeared and broke his e» sign at his ftoe»—New Fork Sun.