Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1895 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The seven leading civilized nations'keep Under arms almost three millions of soldiers, at an expense of over five hundred millions of dollars a year. The new battle ship, Maine, now approaching completion, is the forty-sixth man-of-war built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard since 1817, when the keel of the Ohio, the first, was laid. Not an insignificant showing for home talent. The war in the East does not appear to have daunted the industrious Japanese from preparing for the fourth exhibition at Kyoto, to judge from the number of articles and exhibitors, which amount to 208,000 and 86,000 respectively. A Welshman, with plenty of consonants in his name, proposes to build a ship that will have a speed of sixty miles an hour. The boat will be 550 feet long and 50 feet wide, with a flat bottom and wedgeshaped bow and stem, of 10,000 tons displacement, and with eight paddle-wheels on each side, each making seventeen revolutions a minute.

Sib William C. F. Robinson, Governor of Western Australia, says that colony presents a record of advancement during the last four years which few, if any, countries could equal; The population of the colony has increased very fast, and he knew of no country which has displayed a more promising field for enterprise and industry of almost every description. Miss Maey M. Haskell, of Minneapolis, has just been appointed census taker for Cass County, Minnesota. The undertaking is by no means an easy one. The population of the country is widely scattered, and the trip will have to be made on horseback. Much of it is an unbroken wilderness, and there are many Indians in the country, some of whom will have to be enumerated. The people of Roxbury, Mass., are debating whether they shall reconstruct the fort above the Norfolk House, planned by Gen, Knox during the siege of Boston, and approved by Washington. The priginal with its untransferable associations having been offered to the town in 1830 for $3,500, and rejected, the Roxbury citizens will now pay twenty times as much for a mere copy. Nabi, a bandit chief of the Caucasus, believes in thoroughness. The villagers of Khodshaan lately captured one of his men and hanged him offhand. Nabi loaded a train of pack horses with naphtha, swooped down on the village with his band, killed all the men, soaked the houses with naphtha and burned them to the ground, and carried off the women and children to his refuge across the Persian border. A bksidbnt of the State of Washington tells the Washington Post, that horses are the most worthless kind of property in the West. He says: “You can hardly give them away. A friend of mine, who used to bring ponies to the East, getting from $25 to SSO apiece for them in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, told me not long since that the business was completely played out, and he could buy all the ponies he wanted for $3 a head. If horseflesh were as much in use for food in this country as in Europe, the beef trust would meet with pretty lively competition about now.”

A dealeb in bicycles who has an extensive business in New York, predicts that in five years more the present style of bicycle will be out of date. The motor wheel will have taken its place. He points to the fact that in the 750-mile race from Paris to Bordeaux and return between horseless carriages, as the French style the new departure, the winner maintained an average speed of 15| miles per hour. The inevitable cheapening in. the cost of production and reduction in weight are bound to insure a general demand for this latest form of rapid and economical transportation. Mb. Kbupp, the famous cannon-maker of Germany, and proprietor of the Essen foundries, has been described as the man who paid the largest amount of taxes throughout the world. He paid annually about $200,000. But Mr. MarinescoBragodir, the most important manufacturer of alcohol in Rumania, who has recently established also a brewery at Bucharest, paid in 1894 $440,000 of divers taxes to the Government. This represents an immense fortune, which had a very modest origin, since Mr. MarinescoBragadir was an apprentice to a pastry cook only twenty years ago. Aooobding to a Chicago paper the use of bicycles by farmers in sections where the road supervisor supervises is growing quite common. City wheelmen who are given to cross-country runs frequently meet men pedaling home from town with a goodsized collection of groceries strapped to the handle bar. Sometimes a home made carrier, consisting mostly of rope, is used, and sometimes the wire and leather arrangements which are kept for sale among other bicycle accessories. The problem presented by punctures and other mishaps which the Wheel is heir to are not serious ones, as every well regulated farm has its own repair shop, and the farmer makes up in ingenuity what he lacks in tools. “Leaves of Healing,” issued in Chicago, is the organ of the “divine healing” cult. A recent number announces that 552 acres of land, just out of Chicago, near Blue Island, will soon be purchased, where various institutions connected with the movement are to be placed and homes for people provided. The plans include a Zion’s Temple, to hold 10,000 people; divine healing homes, arranged around an inner garden and park, to be called Beulah Gardens; Zion College, a series of schools from the kindergarten to the university preparatory school; Zion Printing and Publishing House; Zion Refectory; homes for young men, young women and orphans. The healing institutions are to be in the centre.

According to Professor Baird, there is now in the imperial aquarium of St. Petersburg a pike that first saw the light at the close of the fifteenth century. He still appears to be quite a young fellow, notwithstanding his centuries and his long captivity. The Professor says that there is nothing very extraordinary in this case, and he mentions several other fishes in the same aquanum that are more than 150 years old. Who knows but what the age of eels is still greater? Nobody can fix the date of their nativity, and the chances of their longevity, considering . their regular habits, are certainly as good as those of the pike. What a moral there is here for temperance lecturers! Eels and pike never drink whisky and never chew tobacco. There is nothing like cold water for making a fellow live long. Despite many predictions, the lengthening of the course in the principal medical schools of this country from three to four years has resulted in the increased growth in the number of students in these schools. When, a few years ago, Harvard took the lead and declared that the course of instruction should cover four years instead of three, many educators asserted that this action would simply drive ambitious and eager students to the schools where they could finish their medical education in a

shorter time. Just the contrary, however, has been the result. Columbia (the College of Physicians and Surgeons) followed Harvard’s lead in this matter after a year or two; then the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan adopted the same plan. And since these changes all four schools have grown ilyThebe will soon be established in Detroit the largest salt factory in the world. “The water of the Detroit Ki ver,” says one of the prime movers in the enterprise, “is especially adapted to our purposes, being chemically pure. The chemical elements which obtain in Lake Huron and the St. Clair River, and handicap the salt works of that district, are entirely eliminated by passing through Lake St. Clair. That body of water is an immense settling basin, and the water comes out pure. An inexhaustible supply of rock salt is found here at a depth of from six hundred to nine hundred feet. Our process is to pump water into wells and force the salt out in the form of brine. The brine is reduced to crystals by the direct heat process, and from the crystal form is manufactured into the finest table salt. The refuse is used for fertilizing purposes.” The facts as to certain colleges are illustrative. Cornell University has about $4,000,000 in bonds and about $2,000000 in mortages; the University of California has somewhat more than $2,000,000, equally divided between bonds and mortgages; Wesleyan University has sl,125,000, of which SBI,OOO are in real estate, $260,000 in bonds, $77,000 in stocks, $685,000 in mortgages. The property of the University of Pennsylvania, more than $2,500,000, is divided into $357,000 in buildings, $514,000 in bonds, $127,000 in stocks, $429,000 in mortgages, and the remaining million is, as the treasurer describes, “in other values.” Harvard’s immense property is changed in the forms of its investments more frequently than the property of many colleges; but of its eight or more millions, railroad bonds and real estate represent the larger share, the amount of bonds exceeding the value of real estate.

The Washington Post says that the only two Government seals are correct from the heraldic point of view, namely, the great seal of the United States and the seal of the Department of Agriculture. All the Executive departments have seals of their own, designed with more or less regard for the laws usually controlling such devices; but not one of them satifles the requirements of heraldry. For example, some of the eagles have their heads turned to the right, and the mounted courier on the seal of the Postoflice Department is galloping to the right. This is horribly wrong, inasmuch as the regulations of the heralds demand that all animals of whatever description shall face to the left. Then again, the parallel lines on some of the shields represented are traced in incorrect directions. In heraldry horizontal lines indicate blue, which is the proper color for the background of a shield, whereas, if they go other ways they mean other colors. Genebal Young, United States Minister to Guatemala, now in Washington, says: “Guatemala-offers greater inducements to an agriculturist than any other country on earth. At a time when corn is selling for 60 cents a bushel in the United States, it may be of interest to the American farmer to know that the same product in Guatemala frequently sells for as much as $6, and, at times, $8 a bushel. This, of course, is in silver, which is worth about one-half as much-as gold. All classes of live stock also command high prices in Central America. There is a great demand for pigs, and dealings in hog products are enormously profitable. There are about two hundred Americans at the capital, and others are scattered through the republic, but the number gt the best is small. There are more Germans in Guatemala than all other foreigners combined. Of all the foreign element, the Germans are the most popular with the natives. They engage mainly in agriculture, readily fall into the ways of the people, and marry among them. After the Germans the Americans stand next in popular favor.”

A pathetic incident of the recent breaking of the long drought in Kansas is told by a traveler who was in that region at the time the rain came. There had been insufficient rain in this particular part for several seasons, the crops had been failures or meager and unprofitable, and many of the farmers were utterly despondent and sick at heart through hope deferred. But the copious rains brought actual salvation to very many. The traveler was driving across a bridge over a creek that was running bank full after being dry for months, and noticed an old settler sitting on the bank with his feet hanging in the stream bailing up the water first in one hand and then the other and letting it trickle back into the creek. The traveler spoke to him, but the old man seemed not to hear at first, and continued to bail up the water as though in a dream. When he did finally hear and look up, his face was wreathed in a happy smile and tears were running down his cheeks. The traveler made some remark in the way of inquiry as to the old man’s actions. The old settler bailed up a double handful of water and in a voice that trembled with the intensity of his realization of all it meant he rapturously cried: “It’s water, friend! it’s water!”

From some recent life insurance statis tics it appears that the presidential office is a fatal one. At Washington’s inauguration his expectation of life, according to the insurance tables, was sixteen years, but be lived only ten years. The next seven presidents not only lived out their expectation of life, but the two Adamses, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Van Buren and Tyler exceeded it. But Harrison fell nine years short of bis expectatation of life, Polk seventeen, Taylor eleven, Pierce seven, Lincoln sixteen, Johnson seven, Lincoln sixteen, Grant seven, Hayes three. Garfield twenty-two and Arthur fifteen. It was true that Lincoln and Garfield were assassinated, but the assassination of a president should always be taken into account as a possibility. Our first eight presidents exceeded their expectation of life forty-five years in the aggregate, while their successors fell 110 years short. This may seem strange when it is recollected that the length of human life has steadily increased during the century. The compiler of these statistics suggests an explanation. He says: “The fact seems plain to me that the presidential office is becoming too heavy a burden for any man to assume without almost certain shortening of his life. The responsibility is so great, the tension so destructive, that I never again expect to see a president survive the full period of his natural expectation.” The report of the interstate commerce commission shows that the bonded debt of the railroads of the United States is over $5,350,000,000, at an average interest of 5 per cent, or carrying an interest charge of $267,500,000. Only one railroad in twenty has made any provision for the payment of its bonded indebtedness by a sinking fund, which shows what a narrow margin many of the railway companies are doing business upon. The fixed charges, current expenses and dividends, if any, are paid, leaving no balance to be set aside for the payment at maturity of bonded dabtv

It i* owing to this that so many or tne railroads are in the hands of receivers, a decline of business or a few months of mismanagement rendering a road unable to meet its obligations and forcing the creditors to seek the management of the courts through a receiver. These changes frequently result in reorganization, scaling of the bonded debt, or, in other words, in wiping the slate of enough of the obligations to bring down the expenses of the road to its earning capacity. This condition of affairs fills the stock markets with many speculative stocks—stocks wh’ch have little or no value of themselves, but are used by speculators for purely gambling purposes and often demoralize legitimate stock operations. It is said that about onehalf of the railway bonded debt is held in England, where the high rate of interest promised makes them popular investments.