Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 September 1894 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The number of millionaires in England is not as great as one might believe. According to the report of the income tax officials there are in England seventy-one persons with an annual income of $250,000, over 1,100 draw sso,oooannually, and only about 10,000 have an income of SIO,OOO.

Seaweed has not even in our wildest moments ever been dreamt of as an instrument of electoral corruption. Yet the Tokio newspapers just to hand contain an account of the trial of a member of the Japanese Parliament who was accused of bribery by corrupting his constituents with presents of edible seaweed. Bullet-proof vestments turn up everywhere. To be shot at by soldiers is really the latest fad. While the nations of the earth have been spending millions of money to create impregnable armor out of steel, subjected to every possible process, tailors, candle-stick makers and fakirs have known all the while of a common substance that would withstand any bullet.

Naturai. gas is gradually declining in pressure throughout the country. From a pressure of 210 pounds in 1887, it is now reduced to less than half that amount. The banner year was 1888, when the product reached a value of $22 000,000. Last year the product was worth less than $15,000,000. Indiana was the leading State, her product alone being valued at $5,718,000, and it was the only State showing an increase for 18911. The Rev. Dr. Griffith John, an American missionary at Shanghai, says that the opium habits of the Chinese will tell against them in time of war. A native writer, speaking of the enormous deportation of opium from India to China, says: “It is not only thus the foreigners abstract so many millions of our money, but the direful appearances seem to indicate A wish on their part to utterly root out and exterminate us as a people.” The Philadelphia Police Department has just made a contract for the purchase of an electric launch, to be used as a harbor patrol boat. The great speed which these little craft can be made to develop,together with their nolseleasness, makes them admirably adapted for such a purpose. It is held that they will prove successful in approaching vessels without alarming any thieves who might be at work on their decks. Should this experiment with the boat prove a success the electric launch service will be made an important adjunct to the Philadelphia Police Department. The gross , capital stock of all American railways exceeds $5,000,000,000,000. The average dividend since 1890 has been less than 2 per cent. In 1898 seventy-five American railroads, operating over 25,000 miles, went into the hands of receivers, with a bonded Indebtedness alone of $lB,000,000,000,000. It fs estimated that over five million of our population are dependent* for livelihood on the railroads of the United States. The comparison of the miles of railroad to each ten thousand of population, as stated by Senator Call recently in Florida is 68 miles; Georgia, 25; Alabama, 22; North Carolina and South Carolina each 20; Virginian, 21; Tennessee, 16, and Kentucky, 15.

According to the Lewiston Journal a Maine man says that the wild lands of Maine would make thirteen States as large as Rhode Island, two as large as New Hampshire and Vermont, and one twice as large as Massachusetts. These lahds are located in the following counties: Aroostook, 2,888,018 acres; Franklin, 589,962 acres; Hancock, 862,898 acres; Oxford, 558,654 acres; Penobscot, 827,604 acres; Piscataquis, 2,000,544 acres; Somerset, 1,785,888 acres; Washington, 624,128 acres. The spruce timber lands of Maine are worth more to-day than the pine fifty years ago. This statement is based on the opinion of lumbermen who have been engaged in the business for forty years, The value of these spruce lands has been greatly enhanced by the enormous demand for pulp wood.

Says a gosslper hi the St. Louis Globe Democrat: •“The town of Kilgenberg, in Bavaria, has some very valuable mines and pits which it works itself. The surplus revenue is more than sufficient to run the town, carry on all •frorks of Improvement and pay a small sum annually to every man who has occupied a residence for at least twelve months. There is a town in France which has an enormous amount of money invested at the bank, the result of a princely bequest, and the interest on this nearly repays all local expenses. While mentioning this fact in London on my way home, I was told that in a great part of Yorkshire no taxes of any kind were levied during 1898. This was not the result of any great windfall, but of a clerical error in preparing the estimates for 1892, which resulted in a surplus being left more than sufficient for the requirements of the following year.” It is said that while the fashion of writing one’s name with a middle initial, thus, John A. Smith, is rapidly djgtvppqaring from America, it is as rapidly becoming the fashion in England. This way of the writing the name was not long ago so widely recognized as distinctively American that foreigners, writing to an American who had no middle name, or one which the correspondent did not know, would always invariably supply one, thus, John X. Smith or William Z. Jones. Americans are dropping the fashion now, and writers sign their full names, as William Dean Howells, Ruth McEnery Stuart, while society men have come to use the initial first, “part their names in the middle,” thus, J. Alonzo Smith, W. Henry Jones. The old American habit is rapidly taking possession of England, and it is said that the fashion was set by Mr. Gladstone, who has invariably signed his name William B. Gladstone.

Senator iManperson, of Nebraska, in discussing, the, Indian appropriation bill bei'ore the Senate, caused to be printed in the Congressional Record the latest special study of the Indian question, “North American Id-

dians In the United State*,” fey Thomas Donaldson, expert special agent of the Census Bureau. It is a most exhaustive and comprehenshra review of the whole subject, * moot valuable work of reference to whida every student should have nrrer~ Mr. Donaldson’s conclusions as to tho best Indian policy for the future io stated in these words: “Finally, the changes necessary in the Indian policy to improve the Indian’s condition are: Enforced education under authority of the natfom or the States and Territories; enforced labor, by making the reservattaas Indians work for themselves, either as laborers, herders or farmers; enforced allotment on proper land, with allowance for houses, cattle and horses prior thereto from the proceeds (perhaps)of their surplus lands; in fact, a start in life, especially for the squaws and children, thus securing for them settled homes. Thia in the culmination of the success and failure of the entire Indian administration for the past one hundred years, and the earthly salvation of the remaining reservation Indians depends upon it.”