Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 March 1899 — LASOR NOTES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LASOR NOTES

The United States contain 900,000 J*lepbones. A ton of steel will make 10.000 gross of pens. In Cuba 2,000,000 acres are under cultivation. The manufacture of jewelry in Birmingham gives constant employment to 14,000 persons. Coffee forms about 60 per cent, of Porto Rico's exports, sugar 20 per cent and tobacco 5 per cent. Peach stones find a ready market in New York City, where perfumes, flavoring extracts and prussic acid are distilled from the kernels. The success of raising flax in Mexico is justifying the establishing of mills. The factory of Willard & Co. at San Luis Potosi was started in 1892, and since that date several Other factories have begun operations. Heretofore flax from Belfast, Ireland, has been used, but Jalisco flax will be used from now on.

Cuba is in urgent need of American machinery. A great deal of the sugarmaking machinery on the inland, which was the finest in the world, has been destroyed by Spaniards and insurgents, and it will have to be replaced. Too coffee-growing industry, once prosperous, will be re-established, and it will also, require machinery. The Standard Oil enterprises give empteyment to upward of 25,000 men, or a number equdi to the Unit-.*d States army before the last war. The pipe lines controlled by the Rockefeller concerns amount to more than 20,090 miles. Placed end to end they would reach almost around the earth. In addition to the pipe lines 200 steamers and 3,500 tank cars are employed in transporting the product. The value of last year’s output of some of the principal minerals of the United States was as follows: Coai, $21<K2G3.953; iron. $111,858,254; gold, copper. $64,244,326; petroleum. silver, $37,321,356; coke, $314X30.000; lead. $16,410,265; zinc. SItk26TJJ97. Nearly three-fourths of the total are included in this enumeration. The total production for the year was $810,050,023, as against $750,in 1897. an increase of $59,737,765. A beet sugar factory is to be erected at Grand Junction, Cat The citizens of Grand Junction donated for the enterprise I*soo acres of land near the city, valued at $75,000. The fanners, 350 in number, signed pledges to cultivate XSOO acres in beets for a minimum period of three years, the beets to be delivered at the factory and the sugar company to pay $4.25 per ton for the same. Farmers at a long distance from the factory will pay freight at the rate of 50 cents a ton. These are remarkable figures given out by the American Iron and Steel Association relating to the production of pig iron last year in the United States—a total of 11.733,934 gross tons, compared with 9,612,680 tons in 1897. In other words, the production was 2,121,254 tons above the highest previous record, and consumption was even larger, for stocks of unsold iron in the hands of manufacturers amounted to only 2&1.253 tons at the end of the year, compired with 636,489 unsold tons at the end of 1897.