Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1893 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The rapid growth of the League for Good Roads since it was formed by General Roy Stone and his associates, in the opinion of the New York Sun, “is the best proof that there was need for its formation, and that there is a widespread and deep public interest in the beneficent reform which it has undertaken to promote. There are already branches of it in a majority of the States and in hundreds of countries; it has already prompted several of these branches to begin the work of road improvement; it has secured the co-operation of sundry influential agencies which have never before acted together; piles of letters of inquiry are received at the office of its secretary, and its expenses have been covered by voluntary subscriptions. It is’the purpose of the League to influence the State and county authorities in the matter of road reform, so that desirable laws upon the subject may be adopted by the legislatures of the several States. Its method of procedure is yet to be drawn up. It must, after all, strive to secure the adoption of systematic and economical measures of legislation. The expenditures, including the cost of labor, in roadmaking by local bodies are enormous, running up to at least a hundred millions of dollars annually forthewhole country; yet there is hardly a State of the Union in which there is any methodical road-making, or in which there is any-large stretch of decent country road. With good country roads the marketing of farm produce would be facilitated; the waste of horse-power and of vehicles would be reduced; the attractions of rural life would be increased; the business of railroaders and shippers would be benefited, and hundreds of others desirable public objects would be subserved.” Wool.- sorting in California has been done largely by Chinese in the past. The California Wool depot has now set the fashion of employing girls only to do this work. The concern has hitherto had white men on its pay rolls, but could not continue its regular rate of wages in the face of Chinese competition. Announcing a reduction, it lost the services of the white laborers, and advertised for girls to take their places. There was no trouble about filling them. The girls are succeeding very creditably as sorters and grinders, and they promise in course of time to be more nimble-fingered than the Chinese, if not quite as industrious. “Of course,” says the manager, “I notice the loss of the men when it comes to the work of bailing and trucking the wool to different parts of the warehouse, and it will require the employment of assistants to the girls to do this work. However, it is not a difficult matter. While I would much prefer the men to do this work, I am better pleased that the girls haVe been given the opportunity to go to work instead of Chinese.” A company has been formed in Tacoma, Wash., to extract gold by a secret process from the sands of the Pacific Ocean. Gold has been found in the sand of the ocean beach at many places along the Pacific coast from the Straits of Juan de Fuca to Southern California, but only in small and widely separated stretches does it exist in sufficient quantities to pay for working it by processes so far known. It is believed the gold so found does not come from the land, but is washed in from some hidden reef in the ocean bed. The company has secured exclusive right to work many stretches of the beach in Washington, Oregon, and Southern California. At one of these places, Beard’s Hollow, there are believed to be two gold-bearing stratas, one thirteen inches below the surface and nine inches thick, and the other thirty inches below and thirteen inches thick. Platinum and rhodium have also been found in jwying quantities in the ocean sand at this point. “If you could stand on the moon,” says an astronomer, “the earth would appear to you sof o be sixty-four times larger than the sun appears to the residents of this mundane sphere; this because the earth has eight times the diameter of the moon, therefore she must necessarily show the moonites sixty-four times as much surface as the moon shows us. The sun, on the other hand, would appear no larger to you from your observatory on the moon than it does from our globe. The earth’s atmosphere being blue it has been decided that the earth must appear as a blue ball to all outside onlookers. What a glorious sight it must be to our lunarian neighbors to look upon a bright blue swift-revolving ball sixtyfour times larger than the sun!” Only twenty-two miles of the Panama Canal remain to be dug, if faith may be put in the statement made by officers of the original company. Intelligent Americans wno have been employed on the canal say that there are forty-seven miles to be completed, the whole distance from ocean to ocean, not a mile of the canal having been t actually finished. The dredges threw up the dirt on either side, and when the pile reached a certain height it fell into the ditch. This was the case all along the canal as far as the work progressed. One of the workmen says that not twenty-five feet can be called finished work.

A monument of coal, fifty feet high, ten feet square at the base, and four feet square at the top, and of unique con strustion, is to be exhibited at the Chicago Fair, by a leading coal company of Pennsylvania. It will be constructed in sections sixteen feet long, and put together at Chicago. Pieces of coal will he selected that will show, when placed in position, all the connecting minerals tljat arc found in the mining of coal. Some parts of the coal will be left in the rough state and others will be highly polished. One single piece of coal already prepared weighs almost two tons. Among the many measures inaugurated by Mr. Gladstone's administration is a scheme for teaching the elements of politics in all scholastic institutions controlled or supervised by the Government. Hitherto this branch of education, to -which so .much attention is paid in this country, as well as in Switzerland and France, has been entirely neglected in primary schools of Great Britain, and the children have been allowed to grow up in comparative ignorance ‘of their duties and responsibilities as citizens. The town of Okanagon, Ore., would seem to be a good place for the sportsman. The Okanagon River is full of trout and it is the home of thou.sands of canvasback and teal duck, and wild geese. Within an hour’s walk from the town the mountains are overrun with deer and other game, while a few mi lei further back are large numbers of mountain lions and bears.

The average housewife takes pride in having a big kitchen. She should see the one connected with the big restauraut at the World’s Fair. It will be an immense affair and in it enough food will be cooked daily to supply 100,000 persons. Sih Edwahd Sullivan estimates that 50,000,000 persons, an actual majority of the whole people, depend upon agriculture for a livelihood in the United Kingdom.