Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 February 1902 — NEWS FROM OUR COLONIES. [ARTICLE]

NEWS FROM OUR COLONIES.

Pedro Blaza. an enterprising Filipino in Manila, has just learned of the downfall of the Southern confederacy. Blaza was ambitious to relieve the financial situation in the Philippines. He had heard of the efforts of the Philippine commission to secure the passage by Congress of a currency law for the Philippines, and he felt the lack of funds. When he came into possession of several large packages of confederate notes hj> concluded that he held the solution of the money problem. He took no one into his confidence, and the officials in Manila continued to clamor for a currency law, ignorant for a time that Blaza was working diligently to increase the amount of money in circulation. Then came a complaint from one of the banks that they had received n great many conferedate SIOO bills from native and Chinese merchants. According to a report received at the War Department, the complaints became more numerous, and suddenly it was realized -that the city h..d been flooded with notes of the conferedncy. The detectives went to work, but for a time were unable to find the source of supply. The secret service was called upon and captured Blaza. He protested it was good money, but the wily Filipino failed to convince the Manila authorities. The flood of counterfeit money has subsided. The Governor of Hawaii, in his annual report to the Secretary of the Interior, declares that the Hawaiian* are steadily decreasing, though those of mixed blood are increasing. Statistics show that many Hawaiian* die before majority and large families are rarely found. The death rate for the city of Honolulu per 1,000 for 1900 was as follows: Hawaiian*. 42.81; Chinese, 10.16; Portuguese, 19.00; Japanese, 28,93; all other nationalities, 13.75. Copjier is mined by the Igorrotes of northern Luzon. In recent years a few iron tools have been introduced, but tho old Tagalog gold miners still use wooden crowbars. Instead of blasting fire is used to soften masses of earth and ore. Nowadays many Tagalog* make and use a crude gunpowder, but the old shafts and galleries were constructed without the aid of powder. The Filipino miners have no pumps, but carry off the ground water in buckets made of leaves passed from hand to hand along a chain of mon.