Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1915 — Kerosene An Extinguisher. [ARTICLE]

Kerosene An Extinguisher.

What would you think if you got a hurry-up call for kerosene to put out a fire? Probably yen would request a repetition of the order, thinking you had not heard aright, and when it was repeated without change you would feel justified in concluding, that some one was mentally off balance or attempting a practical joke. But that would be because you never lived in Calexico,!

Cali., the metropolis of Imperial i Valley, and by the same token knew nothing about cotton in the bale. Exaactly such a rush order as this under discussion recently went out fiom the cotton yard at Calexico to Hi > Standard Oil Company staticn at. the same place. NoW, the Standard man in charge knew a lot about kerosene, and something about cotton, so he saw to it that the order was filled with all possible speed Due to a poor market the Calexico cotton yard at the time of the fire contained a big part of the season’s crop, which had been stacked there in the form of 500-pound bales, so the extinguishing of the fire was a vital matter to many of the valley growers.

Now a cotton bale has been subjected to a very heavy pressure; water will penetrate it but an inch or so, whereas kerosene will go clear to the center; a fire in a cotton bale does not blaze, simply smolders and eats its way into the bale. At the comparatively low temperature at which cotton burns, and where there is no flame, kerosene does not ignite, and that’s the explanation. After the fire is extinguished the bands arp removed from the bale and the burned portions of the cotton stripped off. It is said that the use of kerosene has practically no deterimental effect on .thecotton, and after it has been spread out and aired for a few days all odor of the oil disappears.—Scientific American.

Honduras last year exported products valued at $3,421,331.

Our Schooling Inexpensive. Twenty-two million persons were enrolled in educational institutions in the United States last year. And they required 700,000 teachers, of whom 566,000 were in public schools, to guide them in the paths of learning.

About $34 apiece was what it cost to give them a year of schooling. Compared with some of our other expenses as a nation public schools seem to be a decidedly inexpensive hobby. They cost less than onehalf of the nation’s expenditure for alcoholic liquors, and the expense is $300,000,000 less than that of running the federal government. Even for admission to the “movies” we spend a third of what the schools require.

Measured in terms of products of the soil, the United States spent a little more for education than the value of its wfheat crop and less than half the value of the annual harvest of |porn. What the ultimate value of the educational harvest will be is another question.—New York Independent.