Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 66, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 November 1918 — SCRAPS [ARTICLE]

SCRAPS

Japan has a glycerin manufacturing plant which has a capacity of about 300 tons a month. The great majority of all buildings in Uruguay are constructed of brick with a cement plaster finish. Wireless messages from the Brooklyn navy yard are picked up by balloon crews at Arcadia, Cal. Girls employed in the British munition works in some districts cultivate the waste ground around the hotels. Sea water will be pumped by electricity and evaporated by the sun at a new plant that is expect- j

ed to supply New Zealand with almost its entire requirement of salt. Operated by water power, an elevator has been invented for moving heavy objects up and downstairs in residences. It takes the continuous labor of 150,000 American farmers to feed the rats in the United States. This is the startling estimate of experts in Washington, who figure a normal adult rat gets away with from forty to fifty pounds of foodstuffs a year. Besides this, they destroy property which it takes some 50,000 men to reproduce. The war department doesn’t want any more linguists or army chaplains, but mule experts—ah, that’s another matter. They’re very |

much in demand for the engineer corps pack trains. To date 6,000 more linguists have applied for positions than can be used, and the job of army chaplain has proved a big hit. To provide pure drinking water for American soldiers in the trenches and at other places where perj manent water works have not been established, mobile watlr trails have been constructed and are operating in France under the jurisdiction of the army medical department. A statement by the surgeon- general says each train is a water filtration plant, and carries an expert chemist, bacteriologist and pumpman. A cub bear, about ten months

old, caused much excitement at Moose Lake, Minn., recently, when it walked into town and scratched the back door of a restaurant. The cook thought it was the owner's dog. Her discovery that it was not began a series of activities in the kitchen which could have been equaled only by the bursting of a high explosive shell. When the cause of the disturbance was learned, the men of the town formed an escort and drove the cub back to its haunts. Bears are protected by law, and for that reason it wasnot killed.