Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1888 — TRADE AND LABOR NOTES. [ARTICLE]

TRADE AND LABOR NOTES.

Electricity famishes employment for 5,000,000 people. A busy season is expected in the iron manufacturing industry. Bed* of excellent'"marble cover 120 acres in Larimer county, Colorado: An addition has been made to the flynet manufactoriee at Mechanicsburg, Pa. Akron (0.) brick-layers want 40 cento an hour for a nine-hour day after May 1. Georgia negroes are said to be leaving the farmslor the towns in large numbers. The Railroader believes that 2,000 miles of track will be laid in the Northwest this year. Maine is not the only spruce-gum field. A large quantity is obtained from the Adirondacks. The carpenters and masons of New Jersey will demand nine hours as a day’s work on and after May 1. Canadian cigar-makers average |4 per week. They are required to pay for gas out of that sum, whether they use it or not.

Seattle, W. T., is importing Chinesemade brick from British Columbia, paying the duty of from JI 20 to J 2 per thousand. ~ - ■ The salt trade in Cheshire and Worcestershire has become alarmingly slack, owing to the increased development of the German salt mines. An organization of over 530 Allegheny (Pa ) women has decided to boycott every store that keeps open alter S o’clock on Saturday evenings. The underground system of railways in London, England, has a length of over twenty miles, nearly three-quarters of which is absolutely tunneling. The capacity of a locomotive is seldom rated by the horse power, but rather by the number of pounds or tons load it will haul at a given speed on a level or on a given grade. The Canada Labor Commission, after a visit to the Convent of the Good Shepherd at Montreal, says that the work done there does not affect similar work done outside.

Sigismund Spitzer is at the head of a company that intends to manufacture starch by a new process. The first mill will be erected on the outskirts of San Francisco, and othens will be built in cities along the coast. InvestigaUon by the Canada Labor Commission shows that in some factories the bosses have whij pefi boys and girls and placed them in the “black hole” for hours without food. A girl of eighteen was spanked. Flouring-mills are becoming more numerous in East Tennessee., New mills of large capacity have recently been erected at Bristol and Home Depot, and others are to be built at Whitesburg and Newport. South Carolina has had a steady growth jeince 1889. The value of manufaetures has increased by fl >,200,000 and 1,193 manufactories have been established, employing nearly 19,000 persons. The value of the State’s products has increased from $72,000,000, in 1880, to nearly $102,000,000, in 1887. The longest railway tunnel in England is the Stand Edge Tunnel, on the London and Northwestern railway, from Liverpool and Manchester to Huddersfield and the north, its length being three miles and sixty yards. The next longest is at Woodford, on the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire railway, three miles'and sixty feet long. The Ch ace thread-mill, at Fall River, employs 149 bands, turns out 6,500 pounds of material every day—s,ooo pounds of twine and 1,500 pounds of baiting. A large storehouse is being built on the grounds in the mill yard It is 109 by 9) feet and 2 > feet liigh. It in to have a capacity of 18,000 feet of floor surface. There are thr .'C gro it anthracite coal mining regions in Pennsylvania—in the Schuylkill, Lehigh and Wyoming valleys. They cover 450 rquare miles of territory, give employment directly to 105,000 men, and produce annually about 35,000,000 tons of coal, though the product varies greatly even in these big figures. The consumption of grocers’ bogs in 1886 was over 2,000,000,000; the yearly increase is 10 per cent.; hands employed, 1,569; value of materials, $8,027,770; value of products, $9,726,000. The Bethlehem (Pa) Times sayt: “The first patent ever issued for paper bags was issued to a Batblehemite in ’52, and since then Bethlehem has led the world in this industry.” Electric lights are being plac ed in the Hoosic tunnel. The men have imperative orders to cease work as soon as a train is heard approaching and to seek safety in the manholes on the eide of the tunnel. They are also compelled to remain there until the smoke shall have partially cleared awav. About sixty miles of wire will be used for main cable and lamp connections. There will be 1,250 lamps of twenty-five candle-pow-er each. The head of the firm that manufactures postal cards for the government is C. C. Woolworth, of Albany. In January Mr. Wool worth’s concern, which is the Fort Orange Paper Company, made the largest delivery to the government that it has ever made in asingle month. It amounted to nearly 57,000,000 cards, or almost one for every man, woman and child in the United States. The weight of these cards was about 160 tons or three tons to tho million-eardth