Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1888 — The Big Railway Debt. [ARTICLE]

The Big Railway Debt.

Tmt Prince of Wales is on a bearhuntimg expedition in Austria. If he wants to know what real sport is in that line, he ought to come over to Chicago and track **old Hutch” to his lair. . Evkopkan courts used to soberly try animals guilty of the death of a human being. China still tries its idols when they are supposed to be negligent of the public Welfare. The Viceroy at Foochow has just put on trial fifteen wooden fellows for coinpassing the death of a noted military commander. They were condemned, then beheaded, and then, after a Hibernian climax, were drowned, Jo make sure of the beheading. It must be understood that in China idols represent actual bodies of deceased ancestors. They are, supposed to be occupiedby spirits, and so to be capable of doing harm or benefit. ' . * . .

Thk fact is not generally known that doing work in iron mills and in manufactories of wire. Three years ago the men in a Pittsburg bolt manufactory gave so much trouble that they were displaced by women. The venture proved to be a marked success, so that ♦he wmployera nnnld pot be inducedto go back to men and boys. The wire mill, which was established about that time, took up with the idea, and again everything worked satisfactorily. Then a hinge factory was opened to them, and once more the women proved better workers, more reliable and less troublesome than their male rivals. How far the innovation will go can not be estimated. Evidently the end is not yet seen. Meanwhile girls as accountants and office helps are winning their way.,, By and by the boys will have to agitate for equal rights. ___

Sir J a msa dji Jijibhai, a Persian banker, has sent a model of a “Jo <er of Silence” to the Anthropological Museum at Berlin. The Parsees, or Fire Worshipers, hold it a sin to polute air, water Or earth with dead bodies. They therefore build high towers on hills, 3.10 feet in circumference. At the top is a platform sloping toward the center, where a cistern, 150 feet in circumference, is placed. This platform is divided into three sections, one each for men, women and children. Corpses placed here are at once pounced on by vultures, which soon only leave clean bones. These are swept into the cistern, and the water, after the bones .are dissolved, is carried through a series of canals, and disinfected. The Parsees have never yet been surpassed as a race of clean, pure, manly, energetic people. They reside now mostly in Bombay, but are few in numbers. ;

Milwaukee Sentinel. The railway indebtedness of the United States is the subject of a noteworthy article in the October Forum. The writer says that since 1876 over JOO 'Amencan railway companies, operating more than 35,i 00 miles of road, have become insolvent, and over $2,000,000,000 of capital stock and indebtednes have beea readjusted by Of 234 representative railroad stocks, 164 are below par, ninety-seven are below 50, and some as low as 1 or 2 per Cent, of their nominal value. The aggregate indebtedness of pur railroad rivals in magnitude the national debt of Great Britain. At the close of 1886 it amounted to $4,337,000,000, and the annual interest charges to $187,000,000. The rates of interest average over 6 per cent, and in some cases are as high as 9 and 10 per cent, while the bonds, in many instances, have been sold much below par, some as low as 50 per cent. This debt is growing as new roads are built It trill mature at different periods, part of it in each year for a century or more. The largest sum that becomes due in any one year matures in 1921, and will amount to $210,000,000. The writer of the article suggests that, in order to reduce the charges on thepublic necessitated by thio great debt, the Government should establish some upervision of railway finances, restricting the power of the companies to issue bonds, and providing just rules concerning rates of interest He would’also have railway bonds issued in small denominations so that they may be within the reach of small capitalists.