Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1895 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox says, in s recent poem: “Time’s finger on the dial of my life points to high noon." Now, can anybody guess how old Ella is? It is said that the largest diamond in the world was found a short time ago in the mines of Bahia de Pernagus, Brazil. The gem is reported to weigh 8,100 carats, which is 2,129 carats heavier than the largest existing diamond. The Duke of Orleans, head of the Royalist party in France and claimant to the throne, has come to the sensible conclusion that, even if a monarchy is desirable for himself and family, he cannot down the French Republic. He will quit subsidizing Royalist newspapers and give up the offices of the Royalist committee in Paris. According to one of the addresses before the Greenacre conference, in session in Maine, the central portion of the United States is destined to contain half its population, and this population is to amount to 700,000,000 people, all under one government. The interesting question of whether a government over 700,000,000 will be more than ten times as bad as one over 70,000,000 is left unanswered. According to the elaborate report just issued by the Labor Department of the English Government there has been a notable rise in the ratejof wages during the past year, the average increase for the entire laboring population being a little over a dollar a head per annum. This increase is all the more remarkable from the fact that the returns in question show an equally notable decline in the number of hours of labor. Ex-Consul General New reiterates the statement that there is no estate of any description amounting to as much as .$1,000,000 in England, either in the Bank of England or in the court of chancery, in which American heirs are interested. The same statement has been made by indubitable authority a hundred times. But whenever a smart lawyer gets out of another job or wishes to take a trip to England at somebody else’s expense the deathless “fake” of a vast English estate waiting for a number of guileless Americans to come over and get it is revived. Dr. Edward Everett Hale suggests that the United States shall renew its proposition, made to Spain in 1825, to lend her Government a large sum of money on condition that she shall allow this Government to organize Cuba, on a self-governing basis, with its autonomj' guaranteed jointly by Spain and the United States. He thinks that it would be just as well to allow the isUnd to remain nominally “the brightest jewel In the crown of Spain,” so long as it was actually independent, and for all practical purposes on the same footing as one of the territories of the American Union. One of the most interesting of the men made rich recently by the Cripple Creek mines is VV. S. Stratton, who owns the Independence mine outright aud has an interest in other mining properties. He is a carpenter, and three years ago he walked from Colorado Springs to the new camp, a distance of thirty miles, in order to save the fare, which amounted to $4. Success has not spoiled him, although lie now has an income of $4,200,000 a year. He is a modest, small-sized man, with iron-gray hair and mustache, dressed in a plain business suit, and wholly inconspicu--1 ous.

No fewer than sixty-six persons in Great Britain are shown by the income tax reports just published in London to enjoy annual incomes of over SBOO,OOO. There are nearly two thousand more whose incomes range all the way from that figure down to $50,000 a year, while those possessing from $25,000 to $50,000 a year exceed three thousand in number. Some five thousand people are taxed on SIO,OOO to $15,000 per annum, and nearly fifteen thousand citizens make return of incomes ranging from $5,000 to SIO,OOO. When it is borne in mind that the tendency to rate , one’s income for revenue purposes at the lowest possible figure is almost > universal, and that even the most j upright and patriotic of citizens think it fair game to “do” the tax J collector, it must be admitted that the showing of the report is eminently satisfactory to Great Britain. The aggregate number of employes of all the roads in the United States is as large as the standing army of Germany. This means that the 1.890 railroads in this country employ 900,000 persons, and that one person in every ninety of our population depends for a livelihood upon a railroad. From the general railroad statistics for last year, it will be learned that our 1,890 railroads carried about 600,000,000 passengers, which means that if every passenger had been a different person, our railroads would have carried about half the entire population of the globe. In addition to this, about eight hundred million tons of freight were carried. To transport these hosts of passengers and move these mountains of freight required 85,000 locomotives, 82,000 passenger cars and over 1,100,000 freight cars. Counting in all second tracks, sidings and yard tracks, there are something over 280,000 miles of railway tracks in this country. The actual distance covered, however, is 176,461 miles. Every hundred miles of railroad gives employment to 515 men. A while ago it was asserted that the investment in bicycles reduced that in diamonds, spreading a cold wave over the latter trade in contrast with the warm and fructifying one which descended upon the former. It is now proclaimed that the statistical average of marriages is threatened with diminution from the same cause. It will require better testimony than is yet offered to convince anybody of this, facetiously observes the New York Tribune. Bicycling is favorable to romance and promotes courtship; many a youth has proposed on his wheel, who would not have had the courage to do so on foot or skates or horseback. For the chicken-hearted there is the the leasurely up grade, favorable to

deliberation; for the impetuous the down hill scoot inviting precipitation. The progress in the former case is rather slow, bat in the latter more exciting than shooting a pigeon on the wing, and generally more sucoeesful. Dimmish marriage, forsooth I The wheel promotes it, and encourages the sentiment which leads up to It. But the previousness of some statisticians runs into subsequency. A turn on the bicycle now and then would symmetrize the personal and correct their arithmetical figures without reducing the matrimonial chances of any of them. Ax outbreak of smallpox that has assumed almost the proportions of a real epidemic is causing much anxiety in London. It began some months ago, and since then has been slowly spreading from one slum to another, until now the health officials find themselves confronted with a task of no little magnitude, for cold weather is approaching and the disease is one that in ordinary circumstances is much more easily handled in warm weather than in winter, when lack of ventilation in the rooms of its victims makes their chances of recovery smaller and also increases the danger of infecting others. The London Lancet, in discussing this matter, explains the prevalence of the malady by stating that at no time within the present generation has there been in England such gross and criminal carelessness in enforcing obedience to the vaccination laws us within the last six years. This, in turn, is due to the fact that a Royal Commission, appointed in 1881) to investigate the whole subject of vac cinatlon has done its work with such amazing deliberation that even now it is not ready to make a report. Meanwhile the Board of Guardians are constantly declaring that until the question is settled one way or another they do not feel called upon to enforce with vigor—at al), would be truer —the provisions of the vaccination acts.