Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1896 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The timber wealth of the United States gives a yearly product of over a billion dollars, or more than twice the value of the entire output of all the mines. Yet nowhere on earth is the wealth of the forests wasted more wantonly than in this country. In a recent address in New Y’ork, E. Francis Hyde declared that the 318 square miles of area of Greater New York wassufSclent toac -ommo latewith standing room all the inhabitants of the earth, 1,450,000,(100 in number, and allow six square feet to each individual. French authors will henceforth have power to have the iwoks of their publishers examined in order to ascertain whether they have been paid their royalty in full. A decision has just been rendered in the ease of Paul Bourget versus Leinerre. Lemerre objected to an inspection of his books, and this was the cause of the suit. Electric railways have displaced in the United States no less than 275,000 horses, says the Pittsburg Dispatch. So many horses would require about 125,000 bushels of grain a day to feed them, amounting to 45,000.000 bushels a year. The loss of the commercial demand for this grain in the cities where these railways run mean an enormous loss of transportation tonnage for the railways—some 62,500 carloads. Here is a question of domestic economy that is serious.

Hair-splitting on a legal technicality this time in Minnesota. The crime althis time in Minnesota. The crime was leged was forgery, and the Indictment charged the defendant with having fraudulently and feloniously uttered and disposed of a forged instrument then knowing the same to be forged. That would appear to the lay mind to be sufficiently definite. But it happens that the statute, in defining forgery, makes the crime to be the uttering of a forged document “as true.” The words “as true” were omitted from the indictment, and this, in the opinion of the Supreme Court, was a fatal defect. Dr. Toner, the venerable historian, who knows more than any one else about the private life of Washington, for he has made it a special study for half a century, says that the recentlypublished story about a woman at Williamsburg, Va., being jilted by the Father of His Country is untrue. Washington had many love affairs, but he never jilted any woman. He was sentimental and susceptible, fell in love witli a number of girls, and offered himself to several before he captured the pretty Widow Custis. But he was not a heart-breaker, and in all his relations with woman was sincere and honorable.

The importation of American horses into France is becoming a success that is not only stimulating to the national love for the honest penny, but to patriotic pride as well. The French will not yet acknowledge that our product equals their finest breeds, the Percherons, for instance, but as carriage horses, draught animals and perhaps for cavalry use they regard them as far superior to the corresponding class of horses bred in France. The French breeders are taking fright, and we may perhaps expect to see some sort of a contract-labor-alien-horse law passed by the French Parliament. Lepers are not so uncommon in Europe as is generally thought. Gne was picked up in the Paris streets recently and sent to the St. Louis Hospital, where there were already six other patients with the same disease. There are isolated cases dotted all over France, while the lepers’ hospital at San Remo and iu Spain and Portugal are never without patients. They are gaining ground in Turkey and the lonian Islands. Crete has 500 of them. They are most numerous, however, in Norway, where there are 800, and are rapidly increasing in Sweden, which has already 462. In British India there are 100,000 lepers. The disease infests Indo-China, Tonquin, China, and Japan, as well as Hayti, Trinidad, Guiana, Venezuela, Brazil and Paraguay.

“One of the most remarkable new departures in the freight business,” said Mr. Omar 11. Bartlett, general freight agent of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, “is the idea of icing vegetables for shipping long distances. It has been tried spasmodically in other years, but never until this year was the plan carried out to any extent. Now the New Orleans shippers are icing their vegetables right along. We have already this season hauled twenty-five cars to New York city alone that contained iced vegetables, and the shipments to Boston, Buffalo, Pittsburg, Baltimore, Philadelphia and, in fact, to all the Northern cities, have followed out this new idea. You know, the shipment of cucumbers, cabbages, beans and all kinds of garden stuff have grown very rapidly in the past few years, and now the producers have found it necessary to ice them. The process of packing is quite interesting.”—New Orleans Times-Democrat. The Railrdad Gazette says: “The records of the new railroad building in the United States in 1896, which have been gathered, show that 717 miles of road has been built in the first half of the year. The total is not very different from the amount of railroad which has been constructed in the first ha If of any year, since the conditions in 1893 called a sharp halt in railroad building. Last year 622 miles of new road was built up to July 1, and the record in 1894, only 495 miles between January 1 and July 1, showed how decisively extension work had been stopped. It will be seen how greatly railroad extension has been checked by the conditions of the last few years, and there are no substantial signs that any large relative increase is to be expected in the near future. Much the largest mileage credited to any one company, of the total given for the six months, is that built by the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf —nearly 140 miles—in Arkansas, Texas and the Indian Territory. The second longest line was built by the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley road—ss miles —in California.” “The story of a small town in this State, twelve miles from Philadelphia,” says the Long Branch Record, “forms a fitting object lesson on good roads. In consequence of the bad roads the wagon-makers thereabouts built 4horse wagons to carry fifty-five bushel

(basket* as a maximum load, whien was regarded as a heavy one. Real | estate has gone begging for years; there was no market for it It has been impossible to settle up estates, because no buyers could be found for the land. A few years ago the people of the community woke up. The town ! issued $40,000 worth of bonds and ap- ! plied the proceeds to building good ' roads. As a result the wagon-makers lin the vicinity are making 2-horee wagons to carry, not fifty-five bushel baskets, but loads made up of ninety . to 125 bushel baskets, and still the , loads are not regarded as heavy. Two I horses are able to do more work than ' four horses formerly could do, and i with greater ease. On the old roads | two men and four horses with a wagon weighing 1.900 pounds could take 1 two and a half tons of produce to market and bring back an equal weight of fertilizer, making one trip a day. Now, ; on the good roads, one man with two ' horses and a wagon weighing 2,300 pounds takes four tons to market, bringing back an equal weight, making four trips a day.” One of the most discouraging items shown by the recent official census is the rapid increase in the amount of child labor in the United States. Hundreds of children who are barely old enough to leave the nursery, and who are scarcely able to distinguish between right and wrong, are brought face to face with the hard world and compelled to grapple with men in the fierce competition of life. This statement suggests a train of sad reflections. Without the power to resist evil and possessing none of these educational incentives which kindle a yearning for higher and better things, the consequences of this infantile exposure to the vice of the age are direful to contemplate. Some may escape uninjured and grow up into useful and vigorous men, but the great majority of these young toilers are in danger of drifting into the straits of error. In Chicago, where attendance on the public schools is compulsory, the report shows that a large number of children are employed in the stockyards, factories and business houses, devoting all the time which they can give after the expiration of school hours. One of the saddest phases of the stern necessity which compels these children to earn their daily bread is the fact that many of them are engaged in occupations which are not conducive to good morals. Even in Boston there are hundreds of children under twelve years old who sell papers, black boots, deliver messages and serve as cash and errand boys in large retail establishments.