Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1917 — SCRAPS [ARTICLE]

SCRAPS

Legs of mutton are selling In Paris at a dollar a pound. More than 8,000 British soldiers have been supplied wish artificial limbs. For years the United States government has sought to protect the Indian race from liquor. According to an estimate, made February 1 of this year the great war had, up to that time, cost the world $71,740,000,000. Prisoners at the Maryland penitentiary have bought $2,150 worth of Liberty loan bonds with savings from their small wage allowances. In 1916 the United States exported drugs, phemicals and dyes amounting to $124,000,000, approximately $97,000,000 in excess of the previous year’s exports. Booker T. Washington, the great leader of the negro race, put his ban on the liquor traffic. He said: “Strong drink is one of the worst evils that beset the negro.” Mortality among lambs in Scotland is greater than for fifty years past; lambs are being fed with whisky and hot milk, and many titled landowners are acting as shepherds. Upword of 120,000 women in England and Wales are working in agriculture. It is officially estimated one-third of the labor usually employed on the land has been taken for war work. Baltimore, Maryland, has a new police officer called the anti-noise policeman. The Society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noises was founded in 1905 by Mrs. Isaac 11. Rice; since that time, public opinion has been in favor of compulsory noise elimination, although all cities have not been so progressive as Baltimore. The Somme battlefield is described as “a veritable junkman’s 'paradise.’’ Mountains of wine bottles are piled high along the roads and in the billets formerly occupied by German officers. These bottles are worth 25 to 30 cents each. Old

iron, steel and lead are being permitted to rust, with no attempt to salvage it, because the advancing allies can not spare the time and men. Thousands of miles of barbed wire are intact, not even rusted. Those who have made careful study of the nutritive properties of various grains and foods, agree that white corn is the most satisfactory. It is also the cheapest. Figures quoted by the Literary Digest, show that one pound of cornmeal, hominy, or grits is equal in food value to one pound of rice, one and onehalf pounds of cheese, two and three-quarter pounds of round steak, two dozen eggstone half peck of potatoes, six pints of milk. “The South knows and appreciates thQa value of white corn for table use; why not the North, the East, and the West?” A train of barges driven by motor traction recently reached the Regent’s canal with loads of coal from the Midlands in England. These were the first motor barges to navigate the English canals for any distance, and the beginning of a development which the Board of Trade is watching with interest. In their journey of 150 miles from Cannock Chase to St. George’* wharf, King’s Cross, the motor barges navigated seven different canals, and managed all the locks with ease, leaving the 7 horses on the towpath panting after them In vain. The motive power is a small motor driven by a mixture of pargffin and petrol. This is fixed to the stern, and can be transferred from one barge to another in a few minutes.