Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1893 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The adaptability of American women to any position iu society is referred to in admiring phrases by a writer in the Popular Science Monthly. He says: “Wherever we meet the American woman —and we meet her everywhere, in the ranks of the English peerage and of the highest European aristocracy, as well as in more modest conditions—we are struck with that marvelous adaptability in which wise men the sign of the superiority of a race or of a species. It is revealed notably by that good humor with which she accepts the numerous petty annoyances that every change of medium implies and which put the best ciipraeters on trial. She submits to them without effort, and criticises them without bitterness; she is, further, prepared for them by her education, and does not «xpeet to find everything easy. Then the necessity of manual labor does not seem to her like a degrading condition; at most only one or two generations separate her from the time when lur grandmother kneaded the family bread in the primitive settlements. These stories are familiar to her, and the lessons deduced from them are not discouraging or humiliating. She is the daughter of a race of emigrants who have become a great people through work, energy, and determination. She has in this at her command a whole treasury of traditious from which she draws, not without pride. We might say, in listening to these stories, that we are hearing one of those grandes dames of the past century, emigrants and poor, telling with pride in their memoirs how, to supply their wants, they worked iu London or in Germany, utilizing their accomplishments and their correct taste, and making trimmings and embroidering robes with their own aristocratic hands.”

An investigation of the cost of producing wheat in Kansas, recently undertaken by the Kansas State Board of Agriculture, shows that the labor involved in preparing the ground, sowing, harvesting and threshing the wheat, costs, on the average, $3.86 per acre ns against $'5.07 on the non-irrigable lands of the Gangetic plains. In other words, the value of the labor involved in the production of a bushel of wheat in India is 53 cents as against 30 cents in Minnesota, the Dakotas, or Kansas, while the Indian, with his crude mode of sowing, plants a half more seed than the American with his drill. To this labor-cost must be added the value of the seed, either the land-tax of India or the interest on the investment in America, and the cost of hauling to the market, this last being greater in America than in India. Valuing the Indian ryot’s labor at five cents a day. the cost of merely cutting an acre of wheat is 60 cents, while it is done by contract throughout the West for 59 cents. So little does the ryot cut in a day that he usually carries the product of his labor home on his head. One of the richest cities in the United States is Tacoma, which is at the bead of navigation on Puget Sound, and which promises to be one of the greatest cities of the country. The town is only about ■six years old, but it has a population of about 50,000 and is assessed at $43,000.009. Its banks have a capital of $3,000,000 and its car shops pay out in wages $10,090 every month. It has fifty miles of electric car lines and it is building more. It is the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad and it has now a line of steamships to China and Japan. It is one of the great lumber centers as well as one of the great shipping ports of the northwest. And it sent out last year more than 0,000,003 bushels of wheat to foreign markets. It has a monthly pay roll of nearly $303,000. It has a large number of elevators and factories. Tacoma is one of the prettiest cities of the northwest. It has more millionaires to the block than any other town in the country, and its rich men have come to siay. They have built big houses, and it is a citv of homes.

When a man who has grasped fortune’s hand in business pursuits attempts late in life to shine as an orator the result is not always happy. This has been the experienceof M. Gervais, known all over France for his fine cheeses. M. Gervais, who is entirely a “self made” man, had an ambition to shine in politics, and at the* last election of members of the Chamber of Deputies lie made the canvass in a Norman town. In order to impress his constituency v. ith his eloquence he hired a journalist to dictate a convincing speech and learned the discourse by heart. When he mounted the rosstrum and began: “As a candidate for the Chamber comma knowing your needs comma I beg to solicit your suffrages full stop," there was such a roar of laughter at his proof-reader like diction "that he came to a full stop in fact. The most serious menace to churchgoing in England is said to be cycling. A few churches have tried to iuducqthe wheelmen to come iu for morning service, but the bicycles of a few who have done so have been stolen by local church members, and the wheelmen now say that they will not go to church unless the church insures their machines. Many of the clergymen have become enthusiastic wheelmen, and it is said that one country minister who was recently called on to officiate at a funeral wanted to ride to tho cemetery on a wheel, wearing his surplice. A Bavarian aeronaut named Koch has a scheme for a new guidable flying apparatus, and the Bavarian Ministers of the Interior and of Education think enough of him and of it to make him a grant erf S4OO to enable him to carry out his ideas. He has described his plans in a pamphlet entitled “Free Human Flying, as the Preliminary Condition of Dynamic Aeronautics.” He will first acquire the necessary skill himself, and will practice over the Lake of Coustance. The Prince Regent of Bavaria is muoh interested in the matter.

Denial is made in St. Petersburg to the unfavorable reports recently published in Great Britain and elsewhere regarding the prospects of the coming harvest in Russia, and to the statement that the Government would, in consequence, prohibit the export of rye. The present condition of the crops, although unsatisfactory in the governments of Podolia. Ivieff, and Cberson. is excellent in practically all other districts. Women have given an aggregate of $2,328,078.18 to institutions of learning in the State of Massachusetts, of which Harvard has received more than half. Public libraries in the State have received from women gifts amounting to SGBI,I9G; public and industrial schools have received $122,000, and kindergar tens, $344,579. As early as 1064, Bridget Wynds gave Harvard College £4: and iu 1718 Mine. Hutchinson gave £lO to the same institution. The Infanta Eulalie through the New York Heiald denied the story that she snubbed Mrs. Potter Palmer and that she was rude to the citizens of Chicago. To a lieiald representative the Princess explained that she tried everywhere to- • tow her gratitude for the kind treatment of the American people and that

had she been offended by anything she would have instantly quitted the United States. Mrs S. L. Obbrholster, National W. C. T. U. Superintendent, has, during the past year, established school savings banks in thirty-four public schools representing over 5,000 pupils, who have to their personal bank credit #3,174.74. Girird College and other institutions, not under the public school system, have also adopted this siinple method of teaching thrift. Fifty years ago Benjamin Potter, of Kent County, Dei., left an estate for the benefit of the poor whites of the county. An accumulation of some $G.00l) is now to be distributed by the Attorney for the State.