Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 November 1894 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

According to a recent report of the Belgian ministry of finance, the consumption of alcohol per inhabitant in the various countries of the world is as follows: Germany, 11 quarts per inhabitant; Great Britain 5.42; J: Austria-Hungary, 6.39; Belgium, 8.66; United btates, 5; France, 8.07; Holland, 9; Russia, 6.3; Switzerland, 6; Italy, 1.97.

Pauperism has greatly declined in England since 1871. The proportion of child paupers has changed from 5 to 2.3 per cent., that of able-bodied from 1.4 to .5 percent., and that of old paupers (above 60) from 25.5 to 13.7 per cent, of the population of the several ages. Since 1858 the paupers who are not able-bodied have decreased not only relatively but absolutely, by 30,000. People who are disposed to grumble about high prices should be thankful that they do not live in the town of Forty Mile Creek, on the Yukon River, Alaska. The town is the largest in the placer gold mining district, and flour sells for 17 cents a pound, while bacon brings 40 cents, beans are firm at 20 cents, butter is strong at 75 cents, and dried fruit is worth 25 cents a pound. Startling as the statement*maj* appear, the hay crop of the past year was double the value of either the cotton or the wheat crop. The astonishing increase in the yield of hay is shown by the fact lhat the crop of 1870 of 24,525,000 tons had grown to 31,925,000 in 1880, and last fe&r reached the tremendous total of 65,766,000, valued at $570,882,812. This is only $20,000,000 behind the corn crop of the country, to which every section and almost every State contributes its quota. The British Medical Journal says, that the part which alcohol lias played in the genesis of insanity in Ireland, has been brought out in a special report recently issued by the Inspectors of Lunatics in that country. Of the Medical Superintendents of twenty-two district asylums,twenty agree that in their experience the most prevalent cause of insanity, after heredity, was alcoholism. The proportion of cases of lunacy due to alcohol vary from ten to thirty-five per cent, of the whole admissions. Chicago property often increases rapidly in value, but the Chicago and Northern Pacific terminals show a dazzling rapidity of development in valuation that resembles the lightning acts of a prestidigitateur. According to Master in Chancery Cary’s report, the property, real estate and construction, cost between $9,000,000 4ind $10,000,000, and was leased to the Wisconsin Central Company at a valuation of $25,000,000 or $30,000,1)00. Master Cary says that the lease “was not exorbitant or improvident.”

The uncertainty of the publishing business has been shown in the failure of the fine work on the World’s Fair, entitled, ‘‘The Book of the Builders,” which ivas projected by Frank D. Millet, the famous artist who superintended the color decoration of the fair. Millet, who writes as well as he paints, was to write the story of the fair, and the ablest artists who contributed to the decoration of the various buildings were to furnish the drawings for the illustrations. The price of the book was high, the selection of matter was not popular, and the season was bad for all works of luxury. The result was disastrous failure which swept away all the private fortune of Millet, as he has insisted on paying out of his own pocket all of the artists who worked for him. What is a‘‘team?” asks Harper’s Weekly. Is it an animal hitched to a wagon, or two or more animals and a wagon, or simply two animals which are harnessed up together? Does tlie word include the vehicle? An exiled Bostonian, writing from Nebraska to a Boston paper, confesses his humiliation when, upon remarking that a “team” had been left in the street, he was told by a cowboy that he meant a wagon. He admits that the cowboy was right, and so it seems here. In the State of New York, where a high standard of language prevails, “team” properly includes the animals, if more than one, which haul a vehicle, but not the vehicle itself; but improperly it is used to designate any animal or animals hitched to any vehicle. It is not used, however, to designate the vehicle without the animals, as seems sometimes to be the case in New England. A synonym for team in its degenerate sense in New York State is “rig.” In the more objectionable phases of newspaper English a horse and a buggy are invariably a “rig,” and livery-stablemen and farmers’ boys employ the same brief and comprehensive term to almost any vehicle drawn by anything on four legs.

A quarter of a cent is a very small sum in itself, bub when multiplied enough times the product is considerable, a fact which railway managers thoroughly understand. A saving of only one mill a day in the running of a locomotive amounts to cents in a year, and with several thousand locomotives the saving is considerable. The good superintendent to-day is the man who makes these little savings, and the number of ways in which they are done is astonishing. Take the matter of starting a fire, for example. Most locomotives are fired up with wood, and about an eighth of a cord is necessary to start a good blaze. Wood is pretty expensive fuel to use for such purposes, and several railways have begun to substitute oil for it. This oil is stored in a reservoir outside the found house, and is forced by compressed air through a series of fixed pipes to flexible pipes near each locomotive stall. When it is necessary to start a fire a bed of coal is spread over the grate, some old waste thrown on top of it and lighted, and then the oil is sprayed into the firebox- through the flexible pipes by the compressed ai!r. It takes just about as long to start a fire with this apparatus as with wood, but with the former the cost is onW ‘ls cents, while with .-wood it ranges from 11 to ceints according to the p rieu-oi wood. An official list of women who are

| light house-keepers, which the gt>T- ' ernment has furnished the New ' York Marine Journal, shows that there are twenty of them in all. Some of the lighthouses which they take care of are at Robin's Reef, ! New York harbor; Stony Point, on the Hudson River, Elk Neck, Md; Biloxi, Miss. ; Port Pontchartrain, New Orleans; Pass Manehac, Ponti chatoula, La. ; Harbor Springs, Mich.; Point Pinos, Cal.; and Santa Cruz, Cal. The most famous of all the sturdy women is Ida Wilson (nee Lewis)* who is in charge of the lighthouse at Lime Rock, Newport, R. 1., but Ida Lewis is not the only heroine of the lighthouse service, as the following report of an inspector shows : “At about midnight yesterday, August 21, 1888, while blowing a gale from the southwest in Charlestown harbor, with a heavy sea, a boat containing three men and a boy was swamped some distance from the wharf at Castle Pickney. The boy, being a good swimmer, struck out for the beach which he finally reached in safety. Meanwhile one of the men clung to the boat and the other two managed to reach the piles of the wharf, where, owing to the heavy sea and strong tide, they were barely able to sustain themselves above water, and all were crying loudly for help. Mrs. Mary Whiteley, the sister-in-law of the keeper, J. W. Whiteley, and Maud King, aged thirteen, the granddaughter of Henry Brown, the master of the lighthous tender Wisteria, having seen the accident, lowered the boat belonging to the station, and at the imminent risk of their lives, proceeded to render them assistance. When they succeeded in reaching them, the men were so overcome that they were unable to help themselves, but after great exertion, attended by no little danger, this young woman and young girl, unaided, got them all into their boat and carried them safely ashore. ” Jb is from the households of such men as Whiteley that the women who hold positions as keeper tire drawn.