Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1910 — Topics of the Times [ARTICLE]

Topics of the Times

Marie Corelli Bays that she has met a great many American women, but never yet a dull one. The German empire consists of four kingdoms and some twenty grand duchies, duchies,, principalities and free cities. Santo Domingo, according to an English mineralogist who explored it, is a geological curiosity shop, containing scattered samples of nearly every wellknown mineral. France is buying many locomotives in Germany. The latest order i 3 for thirty for one line. For years French railroads have regularly ordered locomotives in Germany. China buys in San Francisco SIOO,000 of seaweed a year. The claim for Jeaweed lfltihat wheni IQs used in upholstering furniture is kept free of moths and other insects. A canal nine miles long, sixty-five feet wide, and fourteen feet deep, in Desha County, Arkansas, has been completed and is draining about 120,000 acres of land contiguous to Arkansas City. “Closing out sales” and the like are being placed under ban in many of the leading cities of Russia, where strict rules are established governing such sales to prevent an imposition upon the public. Oyster production in Canadian waters is steadily decreasing. The yield fell from 35,757 barrels in 1903 to 27,297 barrels in 1907. Canada imported $271,760 worth of American oysters in 1908 out of a total export of $653,832 worth. A Salvation Army officer in London says he asked a boy what work he did to provide him with food, etc., and the reply was: “I pick strawberries in the summer, I pick hops in the autumn, I pick pockets in the winter, and oakum for the rest of the year.” Of the $8,200,000,000 that the farms of the United States have yielded in 1909 the South’s share is $2,400,000,000, according to estimates by the Manufacturers’ Record. Of the South’s total between $900,000,000 and $1,000,000000 represents the crop of cotton, with its seed, an increase of betweqp $150,000,000 and $200,000,000 over 1908. Canadian reports show that the wheat cA>p in western Canada this year increased the tide of trade beyond all previous reports. The Winnipeg bank clearances for the week ending Oct. 31 were $24,365,858, an increase of $8,000,000, compared with the corresponding week last year, despite the fact that farmers generally are holding back grain in the hope of higher prices.

One of the most curious and Interesting undertakings In years has been completed in Denmark—the building of a vessel modeled upon the lines of Noah’s ark, as described in Genesis. The vessel as built is thirty feet long, five feet wide and three feet deep—these measurements being one-tenth of those given In the Bible. When launched the ship, to the surprise of the builder, proved seaworthy. Recently the Canadian government offered 1,116,000 acres of public land for sale at Fort Gray, adjoining Vancouver, and buyers from all parts of the Dominion flocked to the sale, with many persons from the United States and representatives of foreign capital. German Investors made a $400,000 investment, while Americans were free buyers, but it was noticeable that British capital was not so well represented as had been expected. At the present time, when so much Interest Is being taken in the proposed Bunyan memorial window In Westminster Abbey, the library committee of the Sunday School Union think that many Sunday school teachers will welcome the opportunity of seeing so Interesting a relic as the Bunyan pulpit, which for many years has been in the possession of the union. They have therefore decided to have the pulpit ,on exhibition in the library, at 56 Old Bailey.—Westminster Gazette. Dr. Waldo, of London,' holds that people should (jevelop a sixth sense to Inform them of the approach of danger in the streets. Lafcadio Hearn once said: “While In a crowd I seldom look at faces. My Intuition is almost infallible—like that blind faculty by which in absolute*,darkness one becomes aware of the proximity of bulky objects without touching them'. lf o I hesitate to obey it, a collision is the inevitable consequence. What pilots one quickly and safely through a thick press is not conscious observation at all, but unreasoning intuitive perception." Something of the drain which central and western Canada is making on American farm life, and American capital as well, is shown in a report by the Canadian inspector of immigration agencies, which says that in one year. American immigrants brought with them $60,000,000. What is more important, says the inspector, theSe American farmers brought with them the fanning methods learned by years of experience on -the prairies of the Western States; an experience inVSPF able to themselves, but which is passed to settlers from other lands. - A two thirds compositor is one who has served two-thirds of the time considered necessary to make a full fledged compositor. The basis of measurement is an era, the square of

the body of a type and the portion "SflT line formerly occupied by‘the letter M, then a square type. One thousand ems an hour on book work or 1,200 on newaprtjjwr work would be considered faster than the average, but George Arensberg and Joe McCann, two oldtime “swifts,” each set more than two thousand ems an hour in a typesetting contest In the early eighties.—New York Herald.