Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1895 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Th* European country where divorces arc most numerous is Switzerland. Since the Federal law of 1874the proportio* has reached 47 to the 1,000. These were but 11 bicycle factories in the United State* in* 1885 and they made but 11,000 wheels. This year there are 120 factories and it is estimated that not less than 500,000 wheels will be turned out. We have received no figures yet showing th» number of bloomer factories or the number of bloomers which will be worn this summer. New Zealand has invented a unique method for the prevention of intemperance. It Droposes to pass a law to the effect that any person convicted of being an habitual drunkard shall be photographed at his own expense and a copy be supplied to every saloon keeper in the district. The dealer supplying liquor to such a person is to be fined.

The divorce statistics of Europe show that marriage is a positive failure in England in one out of every 400 ventures, in France there are 11 divorces to every 400 marriages, in Switzerland one out of every 500. It is surprising to learn that in Germany the average is still higher. In Scandinavia, where a divorce was formerly a rara avis, there are now 200 annually. The Gold Dollar Saloon, of Buffalo, said to be one of the handsomest drinking places in the United States, is to be converted into a temperance saloon. The proprietor is tired of selling liquor and will bo put in charge of tho new enterprise. The floor of the place is laid with S2O gold pieces, the bar is studded with SSO gold pieces, the walls are hung with fine pictures, and it is furnished with 1,200 incandescent lights. Me. Dorsey Mohun, United States commercial agent to the Congo Free State, who has recently returned to Washington after two years in Africa, declares that 20,000,000 people in that region are eaters of human flesh. He tells a horrible story about surprising a village one day when a big cannibal feast was in progress, and also describes how he saw fourteen persons buried alive in a grave with the dead body of a great chief. France’s Chief Magistrate is seriously considering the policy of proclaiming a reward for the discovery of the whereabouts of the sardine. The latter, which constitutes the chief means of existence of most of the seaside population of France, has disappeared in a most mysterious manner, not only from the coasts of that country, but also from those of Spain and Portugal as well, and within a short space of time the entire sardine industry in these three countries will be at a standstill.

Cholera has already appeared this year on the Red Sea. At Camaran, through which 11,000 pilgrims for Mecca have passed so far, 2,000 are quarantined in the lazaretto, and the cases amount to thirty a day, many of them resulting in death. As the bulk of the pilgrims will come during the hext few wpeks and those returning home are likely to spread the plague, the Sultan has been asked to stop the pilgrimage from the Indies, but he does-not wish to interfere on religious grounds. The marine hospital surgeons who are manufacturing anti-toxine at New York say that a young girl who died eight minutes after the first injection of anti-toxine did not die from the medicine, which h*< been analyzed by government chemists and proved to be pure, new remedy for diphtheria is said to be doing Avonders. Among the lives it saved recently in New York was that of a colored child who had been carried about the streets for seven hours because no hospital applied to would admit a diphtheritic patient. The republic of France proposes to tax people who continue to use the titles of the old regime. The rate for a prince is to be S2OO a year, for a duke and for a marquis $l4O. The lowest tax is to be S2O for a man who uses a single prefix with his name. A contemporary facetiously asks: “Why not tax American girls who marry titles? If a heavy export duty on American wealth were levied it might deter the American girls from marrying the foreigners and would give the American bachelors a better chance.”

In spite of the repeated assurances on the part of the semi-official Russian press that the deportation of criminal and political convicts to Siberia had ceased, it appears from municipal returns now published at Moscow that exactly 11,530 convicts passed through that city on their way to the penal settlements of Siberia during the last year. This is in addition to the 2,000 criminals classed as dangerous who were embarked during 1894 at Odessa for the island of Saghalien, which lies to the north of Japan, and is used exclusively for offenders of the most desperate character. Mr. Morton, Secretary of Agriculture, makes a suggestion which ■should stimulate inventive genius. He says one of the great needs of the country is an agricultural implement which will take the place of the plow and do better work. It ought to be something that will break up the land and turn it over as a man does with a spade. Secretary- Morton thinks such an implement could be made. It might be constructed in the form of a rotary spader, or an implement consisting of a number of revolving knives which, in passing over the land, would chop up the soil and subsoil for two feet, so as to render the percolation of the rainfall easy and perfect to the depth to which the ground has been stirred. The advantages of such a machine would, of course, be great. The ordinary plow, by its downward draft, presses the bottom of a furrow into a sort of trough, ajd thus the water is drained off instead of being held for the coming crop. Secretary Morton has given this subject much study and is convinced that such a machine as he recommends can be worked successfully. The man who would invent it would confer a great benefit upon the world and would earn a fortune for himself.