Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1894 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

After all, some of us are only a little ahead of the time. A French scientist says that in the near future whiskers will be universally worn. Farmers of Lincoln County, Neb., do not belong to the great army of the unemployed. They are kept busy fighting chicken thieves, and the Russian thistle simultaneously. They have their hands full. Australia has given up altogether the maintenance of foundling hospitals and orphan asylums and has substituted for this the system of placing children in private homes until such time as they are able to care for themselves. Nowhere else has economic forestry advanced so far as in Germany or France. Students of forestry in England finish their course of study by a visit of three months to the most suitable forests of Germany. These annual visits have developed into a system of apprenticeship, extending over five months, from the middle of April to the middle of September. British sea captains are trying to stir the sluggish British Government to take action with the United States Government in destroying the derelicts that threaten life and property in the North Atlantic. A petition urging such cooperation, signed by 830 captains, representing crews aggregating 30,000 men, and property worth £30,000,000, has just been presented to the First Lord of the Treasury.

Last year no less than 909 bodies were laid on the marble slabs of the Paris Deadhouse, and of this great number more than 200 were unknown men and women claimed and recognized by none. The greater number of the corpes were those of men, and the statistics go to prove what has been already amply demonstrated by scientific investigation—that those who commit suicide, oftener choose the summer than the winter for seeking the end. Eight years ago, says the New York Press, Cleveland’s wealth amounted perhaps to $50,000 —no more. Now he is a rich man—very rich—taking into account the short time which has elapsed, and to-day his property, as estimated by the assessors’ books of New York, will amount to over a quarter of a million. Up to within a couple of years he has lived in no luxurious way, but about two years ago he began an entirely new course of existence. A theory has been put forth by M. Rateau in the French Academy of Sciences that the crust of the earth beneath the continents does not touch the fluid globe, but is separated from it by a space filled with gaseous matter under pressure. The continents would, therefore, constitute a sort of blister, much flattened, inflated and sustained by gases, while the bottom of the oceans is supposed to rest directly on the fiery mass. By this hypothesis the author believes that many phenomena of the terrestrial crust may be explained, which are not clearly accounted for under the present theory. Australia is greatly perturbed over the emigration movement in Paraguay. The government of Paraguay has given nearly 500,000 acres of good land for settlement to Australian colonists, or others of suitable standing in means and character who join them, and there is an expectation that 10,000 persons may settle on the lands. All who go from old to new Australia are teetotalers and have a considerable amount saved, and the loss of a few thousand men of that stamp is a serious matter. South Australia has, therefore, passed a village settlement act, under which those who want to cultivate land are favorably dealt with. Then comes the question whether the Australian land is as [jood as that in Paraguay, and it is not. But there are disadvantages there as well. The rules of all railway companies recognize to some extent the fact that alcohol unfits their employes for their responsible duties. It is reported that on fifty-four North American lines total abstinence while on duty is insisted upon by the railway companies; on fifteen abstinence without restriction to time of duty; on thirteen the companies insist on abstinence as essential to promotion, and on one the employe’s signature of the abstinence pledge is required before engagement. The Rock Island Railway Company has been enforcing its anti-drink rules lately with great vigor. General Prince Kuropatkin recently issued an order to the official staff of the Trans-Caspian Railway, requiring all officials and employes guilty of indulging in intoxicating drinks to be reported to him.

The profit-sharing system,says the Baltimore Herald, appears to have its advantages, not only as a means of inspiring greater industry, care and closer application on the part of employes, but also as a preventive of strikes. There have been a number of labor disputes in New England during late years, but in all this time the Bourne mill at Fall River has been running uninterruptedly, because the operatives had an interest in keeping at work beyond the mere question of salary. Their prosperity increased proportionately with that of the owners. Recently the ninth-semi-annual dividend was paid. One family received S7O as its share of profits for six months over and above the wages drawn,and others from S3O to SSO So satisfactory have been the results that the experiment is to be continued.

The newspaper business in and from the capital of the German Empire is sometning stupendous, as appears from the following figures, which are furnished by the newspaper department of the Berlin post office. Last month there were published nearly forty political journals, and the total daily issues of these passing through the post office amounted in round numbers to 500,000 copies. There are 720 non-po-litical papers published in the city, and their total post office circulation amounted to more than 100,000 a day. Upward of 1,000 mail bags and 180 clerks are employed in the newspaper traffic alone. The number of news-

papers and other periodicals that were published in the German Empire at the beginning of the present year was 10,546. Of these 7,630 were printed in the German language and the other 2,916 in some thirty different languages. The whale industry was at one time an enormous industry in the United States. It reached its height in 1854, when 602 ships and barks, twenty-eight brigs and thirty-eight schooners, with a total tonage of 208,899, were engaged in it. By 1876 the fleet had dwindled down to 169 vessels, and it is doubtful if fifty are now at sea. The introduction of kerosene and the increasing scarcity of whales seem to be the cause of this decline. Some remarkable voyages were made in the old days. The Pioneer, of New London, sailed in June, 1864, for Davis Strait and Hudson’s Bay, returning in September, 1865, with 1,891 barrels of oil and 22,650 pounds of bone, valued at $150,000. In 1847 the Envoy, of New Bedford, was sold to be broken up, but her purchaser refitted her and she made a voyage worth $132,450. Ou the other hand a vessel made a five years’ voyage and on her return the captain’s lay was only SBS. But, as the Nantucket’s captain, whose vessel returned from a three years’ voyage as clean as she went out, remarked : “She ain’t got a bar’l o’ ile, but she had a mighty fine sail.”