Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 January 1910 — Topics of the Times [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Topics of the Times

Holland has over 10,000 acres devoted to the cultivation of bulbs. The thickness of a razor edge has been reckoned at about one-millionth of an Inch. The 12 principal crops of the United States alone show a value of over 15,000,000,000 at last reports. “Why not teach young men in the public schools,” says the Wichita (Kas.) Beacon, “how to button pve or six small buttons In a minute?*’' Children of the public schools : In the province of Ontario are to have much cheaper school books, to be sup-' piled by the provisional government under a five-year contract, from August 1, 1909. A Boston firm of building wreckers has brought out a circular saw that will cut through nails and bolts as well as through wood, enabling them to cut Into regular sizes of secondhand lumber that otherwise would be valueless. The natural resources of Formosa Include exceedingly valuable forests, gold, coal and sulphur mines. The most highly developed industries are. sugar, rice, tea, camphor, opium and salt, the last three being government monopolies.

To allow moving pictures to be seen without darkening the room In which they are shown, a French inventor frames the screen with dark curtains, hung a short distance in front of it, to cut off all light exoept that from the projecting machine. A negro hallboy in a big Brooklyn apartment house had been called In by the mistress to assist in unrolling a new rug in the parlor of the flat. When It was finally laid he looked at it a moment admiringly and remarked: “Dat do sut’n'ly look fine, ma’am. But it strikes me dat It ain’t ezactly compatible wld de paper.”— New York Tribune.

Elinor Glyn and Yvette Gullbert are announced as recent members of an-ti-suffrage associations. Mrs. Glyn has joined an English soolety and Mme. Gullbert has been proposed for membership in an association In this country. Both women are said to have declared their Inability to understand why any woman should wish to vote when she has health and a good husband.

Some fine fat jobs still exist under the fee system in Chicago’s scheme of municipal government. For Instance, there Is the oil inspectorship, which pays the Incumbent about $20,000 s year. The Record-Herald cannot see where the work and compensation agree, and asks: “Has Chicago ever had an oil inspector whose services were nearly as valuable as those of the secretary of state and the chief Justice of the United States combined?"

Dr. Ponza, director of the lunatic asylum at Alessandria. Italy, bas cured many of h)« insane patients by confining them in rooms of some uniform color. Patients suffering from acute melancholia have become cheerful after confinement in a red room. Bat eome forms of life are adversely

affected by certain colors. It has been observed, for instance, that flies and other insects do not flourish or are killed outright by the light which comes through blue glass or blue gauze. Cyrus Townsend Brady, naval acadf emy graduate, author and Episcopal priest, has had a new experience. His parish, St. George's, Kansas City, being without a church, the Jewish congregation of B’nai Jehudah offered Its edifice as a place o( worship for his parishioners. Dr. Brady, accepting the courtesy, now finds hhnself conducting Christian * services In a Jewieh synagogue. “The action of the Jews seeffis to 1 me a significant example of modern church comity,” said Dr. Brady. ‘Their generous offer la the first of the kind I have heard of.”

Atlantic Porta Loalng. For the year 1908 the exports from the ports on the Gulf of Mexico Increased 112 per cent as compared with 1899, while the gain from the ports on the Atlantic coast was only 12 per cent, Leslie’s Weekly says. In Imports the ocean gateways on the gulf do not figure so prominently as they do In exports, but their expansion In the decade was proportionately many times as great as that which the Atlantic seaboard scored. Nearness to the grain, meat and cotton producing regions and Improved terminal facilities are the chief reasons why the ports on the gulf are wmn«g such large gains in shipments as compared with those of the Atlantic coast. Several north-and-eouth lines of railway have been built In the Mississippi valley in the last ten years. From the wheat and corn fields of the upper tier of States between the Alleghanles and the Rocky Mountains to New Orleans and Galveston there are easy grades, while for the east and west lines reaching New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore there Is a mountain range to cross, except In the case of the New York Central, which skirts the northern end of that range. Galveston, which has made the largest growth of any of the gulf ports In the decade, is the world’s most important shipping point for cotton.