Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 288, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1912 — Page 3

DEATH RATE of THOSE OVER FORTY INCREASING

AVE THE BABIES!” is a cry that has been ringing through the land with increasing earnestness and with increasing attention, but what of the middleaged American? U Everybody knows that in recent years the death

rate in the United States has been reduced to a remarkable extent, and the knowledge has been received not only with altruistic gratification but with a sense of personal gain by all, regardless of their own time of life. But now comes Elmer E. Rittenhouse with the facts and figures to show that the reduction in the death rate has been due chiefly to that very cry of “Save the babies!" and the fight on communicable diseases, fcnd that it is confined to those in early life. While there has been a reduction in the general death rate of 25 per cent, id the last thirty years, it has been accompanied by a steady increase, amounting to about 27 per cent in the same period, in the mor-

SHOWING THE DECREASE AND INCREASE IN DEATHS UNDER AND OVER FORTY.

tality of persons of forty years and over. “The average length of an American life,” he says, “has increased about fifteen years during the past century, and yet the span of life Is being shortened. During the last 30 years the general death rate has decreased approximately 25 per cent., and yet the chances of early death after passing the age of forty have steadily Increased.” This, Mr. Rittenhouse finds, is due to the fact that while great progress has been made in checking communicable diseases, other diseases, which afflict middle age and later life, have gone on almost unheeded in this country. Among them are apoplexy, Bright’s disease, heart disease, and arteriosclerosis. The intense life of Americans and Intemperance in eating. drinking, and working have contributed to their prevalence. Above all, our carelessness in regard to life Is blamed, and from this cause come increases in deaths from accident, sub cide, and homicide. ' "While we have every reason,” says Mr. Rittenhouse, “to felicitate ourselves upon the wonderful result of the spread of life-saving intelligence, we must not overlook the fact that we have increased the average length of human life -only by increasing the proportion of people living in the younger age periods, while the average duration of life of those who pass into middle and old age has been constantly shortened. \ "’With all its blessings modern civilization has introduced hazards, habits, and conditions of life which not only Invite but whiqji have increased in many xays physical, 'mental, and moral degeneracy. Insanity and Idiocy are increasing. Disease# ypf, vice, the most insidious enemy of this and future generations, are spreading rapidly, according to medical mjsn. So far we have lacked the "moral courage to openly recognize and fight this scourge. The alcohol and drug habits are constantly adding new victims to the degenerate list and to the death roll. Suicides are Increasing, and now reach the enormous total of 15,000 annually. Lynchlngs and burnings at the stake continue, and are common only to our country. Attempts upon human life by individuals and mobs under trifling provocation, or none at all, are obviously increasing. ' v 7 ' v “In the United States the death rate above the age of forty has steadily increased, while it has remained stationary in England and Wales. The Important organs of the body are wearing out too soon. The diseases of old age are reaching down into the younger age periods. The death rate from the degenerative diseases of the heart, blood vessels, and kidneys, including apoplexy, have increased more

Dickens and Defoe as Editors

Writing about the kind of literary talent that would be moet valuable In editorial work todays we mentioned Voltaire, Macaulay and Bwift Among the suggestions that the mail has brought in, the most interesting are Dickens and Defoe. Defoe, however, with his marvelous Impression of actuality, would be greater as a special writer than as an editorial niitic. Dickens, if he could adapt

than 100 per cent since 1880. In New Jersey the increase is 119 per cent. In Chicago 159 per cent., in New Orleans 169 per cent These diseases claim over 150,000 lives annually. The doctors tell us that fully 60 per cent, of these deaths are preventable or postponable if the disease is discovered in time. “All of our money, all of our energy. seem to be directed against diseases that can be communicated. Is not a life lost from Bright’s disease as valuable as one lost by typhoid fever? The annual toss from pneumonia aggregates 135,000 lives, a large portion of i which is due to weakened bodily resistance resulting from these degenerative affections. Cancer, a baffling disease of the degenerative class, to which our people in their present physical condition are highly susceptible, claims 75,000 lives annually andp iqcreasing very fast. Deaths from external cancer alone have increased 62 per cent. In ten years." ' This table shows the decrease in the death rate per thousand brought

about by the successful campaign against the diseases of childhood and early life and the increase in those of later life: DECREASE. Per Cent Under age 20 4..... 17-9 Age 20 to 30...,,.»«m,..,.,.*4 11.8 Age 30 to 40. 2.8 INCREASE. Per Cent. Age 40 to 50 13.2 Age 60 to 60. 29i2 60 and over 26.4 “The change in the age constitution of the older groups,” says Mr. Rittenhouse, “has been very slight and does not account for the increase. Nos Is it safe to say that it is due to the early breaking-down of the weakened lives surviving from the attacks of communicable diseases in the younger age periods, for in England and Wales, where they have had virtually the same decrease in the mortality of the early ages as we have, there has been little or no increase above age forty. "One thing is clear —the cause is local to our country- Evidently we have not adapted ourselves to the sudden Increase in the life-strain due to our complex and intense modern existence. Whether or not It is due to the strenuous life or to excessive working, eating, drinking, playing.

SHOWING PERCENTAGE OF DEATHS AT VARIOUS AGES.

and intemperate habits generally, the important fact is that the excessive waste of human life from degenerative causes continues and no general campaign of education or other organized effort has been made to check it. “The remedy appears to be temperate, healthful habits of life, the upbuilding of bodily resistance to disease. But in the meantime, while we

himself to brief units, would In American journalism today be indeed a mighty power to reach and move the hearts of men. The same genius that went into'his fiction has overflowed into some of his critical work, and always there is the great ability to entertain, mixed with a need of using that power for the betterment of life, which is exactly the combination that the ideal editor ought to

are being educated to apply this remedy, a sane and practical way to secure a measure of immediate relief 16 to urge upon our people the practice of going to their physicians at reasonable intervale, for health examinations to detect these preventable or postponable diseases in time to check them Many of these afflictions develop without notice. The cost of discovering and of overcoming them in their inciplency would be trifling and would be the means of prolonging thousands of lives.” Mr Rittenhouse believes that if the present thirst for knowledge of health and life conservatiop continues to increase it is not only possible but reasonably certain that during the next 30 years the present death- rate of 15 per thousand in the 30 states that keep mortality statistics will be reduced to 10, but this cannot be accomplished without a .hange from the carelessness of human life which he finds characteristic of Americans and a great extension in the public health service. The real race suicide, he maintains, is not in the insufficiency

of births, but in the needless loss of life through preventable diseases. Speaking of the decrease in the birth rate, he says: “We are not only ’•educing the fertility of our race and also shortening the span of life, but we are permitting at least 650,000 lives to bo destroyed annually which we could save by the application of simple and well-known precautions. If we would save these lives, they, together with their natural offspring, would solve the problem of maintaining an adequate surplus of births over deaths. What we need is not necessarily larger families, but more families. . A larger number of small families is surely preferable to a smaller mgnber of large families."

Princess's Books.

The princess royal of England, the only daughter of George V. is said to be the object of the same maternal solicitude as her brother, the prince of Wales. The princess, it is said, shows no interest in art as do most of the family, cares nothing for needlework, as do her cousins and her aunts, but she is fond of books and knows all the good authors, English and French. But her prudent nother only permits

her to read those books after a carefid scrutiny. “The library of the princess,” say* a Paris paper, “unique of its kind, contains only masterpiecse, but in these masterpieces certain pages have been carefully blackened with ink following the fashion of the Russian censorship. The queen is not of the opinion of Ruskin; she does not believe that It is neo> .essary to tell youngs girls everything.”

have, particularly in America, but more in all countries as they become more democratic. —Collier’s Weekly.

Warning to Dreamers.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in a recant address in New York, couched in a neat aphorism a warning that dreamers would do well to heed. “We judge ourselves,” said Mr. Rockefeller, “by the deeds which w« dream we are capable of doing; but the world judges us only by tht deeds we have already dona.”

MOCK SALAD EASILY MADE

Cook Enthusiastic Over Dish That Should Be Good and Is by No Moans Costly. Any kind of meat may be used. I used roast beef. The recipe makes fodr large cups: One pint of lean meat, chopped or cut in very small pieces. Season with a level teaspoon of salt, a saltspoon of pepper and a scant teaspoon of sage. Mix thoroughly. Put half a cup of milk in a saucepan; add two tablespoons of dried bread crumbs- and cook until smooth. Remove from fire. Add two tablespoons butter and two well beaten eggs. Then add the meat to the bread mixture. When well mixed fill greased custard cups, stand, them in a shallow pan of boiling water, covered with greased paper and bake about half an hour in a moderate oven. Earlier in the day make some tomato sauce: one can pf tomatoes, two or three onions (if you care for onions), salt and pepper. Cook slowly until the onions are soft. When ready to serve place a generous amount of the sauce upon each- plate and turn one of the cups upside down in the center of the sauce. Have the sauce cold and the cup mixture hot This may sound troublesome, but it is quickly and easily made. — Boston Globe.

NOVELTY IN TABLE COVERS

Of Tapestry Edged With Metal Galloon They Are an Effective Ornament. Extremely effective are the covers for the table in the library or living room made of tapestry, edged with the metal galloon. The shops offer the wool, or wool and silk tapestry, in unusually handsome combinations of colors. Some tapestries the metal threads woven into the designs, this being the case especially with the changeable effects. The cover is cut to fit the top exactly or may be made in the form of a long runner hanging well over the ends or sides of the table; or, in some cases, it is made square, hanging down on all four sides. A,banding of the galloon finishes the edge and sometimes a second band, paralleling this a few inches from the edge, is used. A cover of this sort is not only artistic, but has remarkable wearing qualities. , It may be said in passing that short lengths of the tapestry are often to be found at much under regulation price. Agents’ samples are especially well adapted to covers of this sort.

Chocolate Fritters.

One-half cup flour, one teaspoon cream of tartar sifted with the flour, two teaspoons sugar, two tablespoons of milk, one egg, one large teaspoon of cocoa or chocolate, a pinch of salt. Cook in deep fat. Serve with vanilla sauce. Enough for family of three. Vanilla Sauce—One cup sugar, half teaspoon of cornstarch; mix In the sugar dry, then add half a cup of boiling water, a little at a time. Let it boll five minutes until it looks like sirup, then add the yolk of one egg, well beaten, and piece of butter size of walnut. Whip all together well, then Jdd half a teaspoonful of vanilla. Do ot boll after the egg is added.

Baked Apples With Icing.

Wash, pare and core as many large apples as are required. Fill the apples with two teaspoonfuls of dried currants, one-quarter teaspoonful of ground cinnamon, one level teaspoonful of butter. Bake them until they are cooked. Let the apples cool and remove them to another dish, ice the tops and sides with any kind of cake icing and put them back into the oven and brown them slightly. After taking them out of the oven place a candied cherry on top of each apple. Serve them with cream.

Good Stove Lining.

A good stove lining, one that will last two years or more, can be made from blue clay. Brick clay, or one that does not contain much sand, is good, also. Clay found in salt water marshes is one of the best for stove linings. The clay must be reduced to a paste, about like putty. The bed for lining should be brushed clean and moistened before the clay is applied. Put on with hands, smooth with a trowel or thin piece of board. —Home Department, National Magazine.

To Make an Asbestos Mat.

An asbestos pad for the table may be made in this way: Get enough asbestos paper to cover the table with double thickness. From a couple of old sheets cut two pieces the size of the table. Baste the> asbestos paper between them and quilt it on the sewing machine, using a long stitch. This is necessary, as the paper tears and pulls apart easily. Put this pad on the table under your silence cloth and there will be no marks made on the polished surface by hot dishes.

Celery Toast.

Cut tender stalks of celery Into chin slices and cook in salted water till tender. Use bat little water, letting it cook slowly so that there is but little left when the celery is done. Add sufficient cream or rich milk to almost cover, season with salt and a- dash of cayenne and add sufficient flour moistened in a little cold milk to make a thick, creamy sauce. Put over rounds of buttered toast and serve at once.

Lemon Juice.

It is surprising how much more juice you can get from the heated lemon. Place the lemon in a heated oven, and it will yield more juice than one that is squeezed when cold.

A Desert Garden

IT is proposed to set aside 72 square miles of the Painted Desert pf Arizona as a national monument, under the provisions of the Lacey act, that it may forever remain in its present condition for the enjoyment of the people. The locality it is desired to thus distinguish is in Apache county, beginning nine miles north of A recent railroad survey runs through the district. When this line is built it is believed that the locality, which is now little known and hot often visited, will become one of the famous scenic wonderlands of the southwest There is no more vague and indefinite term in American geography than “The Painted Desert.” The appellation was invented by the early Spanish explorers, who applied the tenp “El Pintado Desierto" to any stretch of multi-colored bad lands, but never attempted to confine it to any particular locality. On some maps the Painted Desert is Indicated as a narrow strip of territory bordering the Little Colorado river; but this is open to the objection that there are at least a score of desert stretches of equal or greater extent, with hues as gorgeous. George Wharton Jams 'defines the Painted Desert region as extending from the Rio Grande to the Salton sea, and from southern Utah to northern Mexico. By no means all of this vast region is desert in character, and much of its desert expanse consists of mere stretches of neutralcolored sands; but the essential conditions of color and barrenness eiist at intervals throughout the whole region, writes John L. Cowan in the Philadelphia Sunday Record. Transcontinental travelers obtain tantalizing hints of the greater glories that lie beyond the car window perspective in the fantastic red rock formations, with here and there a cliff of coal black lava, or an extinct volcanic cone, that are visible nearly the whole way from the Rio Grande to the Oolorado river. It includes the tawny cliffs of Pajarito park, the Mesa Emantada, the imposing rocks and cliffs of the Acoma country, the dazzling desolatioin of the white sands, the petrified forest, the haystacks, the Gila, Salt River and Hassayampa valleys, Canyon de Chelly, Canyon Diablo and the Grand canyon'of the Colorado, the green slopes of the San Francisco peaks, the purple Superstition mountains, the Mogollons and the Panamint, Funeral and Calico ranges, with the grisly depths of Death Valley. Where the Desert Blooms. Parts of this vast Painted Desert region are as fertile as any of the world’s garden spots. It is crossed or bordered by the Rio Grande, the Colorado, the Virgin, the Hassayampa and a score of other streams. It is crossed by the Continental Divide, and some of the noblest pine forests remaining in America are withip Its limits. It is creased, in places, by Irrigation canals, and dotted with ruined cities and cliff homes and isolated dwellings of peoples who lived, loved, suffered, fought and died so long ago that no legend or tradition so much as preserves their names. It is the home of the Pueblo, the Navajo, the Apache and the Mohave tribes of Indians; and the abiding place of the horned toad, thfe Gila monster, the tarantula, the centipede and the rattlesnake. Here and there are wastes of burning, dun-colored sand, that stretch away to the horizon’s rim; and yonder are the ruins of Paradise, or the battlefields of warring gods—chaotic bad lands, upon which the Master Painter of the universe has spread a divine harmony of color. In some of these painted desert sketches and coloring is as rich as that of the Grand canyon; and the prospect, if less sublimV is more varied and of softer aspect The "view is limited only by the power of human vision. The winds and storms and rushing waters of ages have chiseled basalt, sandstone and clay Into images, monuments, towers, spires, minarets, pagodas, temples. Dying buttresses and a thousand

nameless fantastic forms. Irrespective of the colorings, these Painted Desert bad lands deserve to rank among the scenic wonders of the southwest. Tet the coloring is the greatest wonder of all. Here may be seen a red wall 500 feet high and 100 miles long. Facing it may be a coal black mess of hardened lava, rising from a valley floor of snowy alkali. From any vantage point one may survey a glowing landscape that shows a score of Bhades of pink, gray, green, red, cholocate, carmine, mauve, brown and yellow. In Deadrlver Canyon. If one drives north from Adamana to the Painted Desert district that it is proposed to set aside as a national monument, he obtains his first view from the rim of Deadrlver canyon. To describe the vista from this point is as hopeless an undertaking as for an enamored youth to describe the charms of his lady love. As far as the, eye can carry is a succession of buttes, terraces and castellated hills, painted with almost the glory of the rainbow. Pervading all is the mystic, purple southwestern haze (<&e to the Impalpable dust of the desert) that would blend ohaos Itself into a harmonious land of enchanted dreams. Off to the northwest is a black flattopped mesa, beyond which lies the land of the Hopi Indians. At one’s feet is the sandy, boulder-strewn er, whose healing flow ceased ages ago, perhaps when this gorgeous desolation was green with tropic vegetation and melodious with the songs of birds. From the parched wastes rise shimmering heat waves, invisible undulations, so that one involuntarily shrinks from the descent into the canyon, as into a fiery furnace. However, it really is not as hot as the Imagination leads one to pate. A circuitous path leads to the bottom of the canyon, over glittering beds of gypsum and thick deposits of mineral paint. Near the bottom the edge of a vast deposit of silicified wood is reached. This is not the famous Petrified Forest (which is about 15 miles south), but in many respects it is not less wonderful. Officially it is known as the North Sigillarla Forest. Here the petrified tree trunks are not agatized, as In the more famous deposits farther south, and the amazing coloring that distinguishes the petrified wood in the latter locality is wanting. Most of the petrlfications are a brilliant black, and nearly all are deeply marked with the “Sigillarla pitting*’’ characteristic of the species of tree. An inspection, of the treetops shows that they grew like palms, the foliage forming a crown at the top. For hours one may wander through a labyrinth of winding gorges, around titanic monuments and over distorted buttes and crazy hills, until the mind becomes puzzled and confused with the endless variety of form, and until the eye is surfeited and weary with the dazzling succession of tints and colors. Yet one may follow this little , strip of the Painted Desert for a hundred miles, seeing something new and wonderful with almost every rod. And this Is but a patch of the Painted Desert, no more wonderful in Its austere beauty and weird charm than a score of other patches of equal or greater extent.

Modern Morals.

Bishop Wilson of Nbw Yorkj remarking the other day that the morality of New York politics was sot all that could be desired, said: “In politics, as in some lines of business the remarks of the very cynical young; woman holds true. “‘So you are going to marry George at last.’ she satd to a friend. ‘What is he like?* " ‘He is the most upright, high-mind-ed, honorable feHow In the world,* was the enthusiastic reply. “‘Goodness, my tear,’ said the pretty cynic, ‘you'll starve to death.’ *

Course Wit.

"In what course does your son suspect to graduate?" "In the course of time." i