Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 February 1894 — Page 2

TOPICS OF THESE TIMES.

~ n THE RURAL EXODUS. - A noticeable characteristic of the alleged progress of our day and age Is the comparative ratio at which the population of the rural districts and of large cities throughout the world increase. It is a disportionate growth that has resu’ted in an actual decrease in the rural population in many parts of Europe which has been accompanied by a phenomenal increase of the population in the already overgrown cities of the continent and of England. This peculiar phase of modern life first became apparent in Wales in 1851. It did not attract attention in England till ten years later. In this country it has become a vital question within the past ten years, while iu the newest of all civilized countries, Australia, it is already giving economists much food for speculation. During the last twenty years eight counties in England and three in Wales have lost Jten per cent. of their rural population—that is the population of those counties 13 today ten per cent, less than it was twenty years ago. In some districts the decrease is as much as twenty percent. In Scotland the movement toward the towns began sixty years ago and the per centage of rural decrease has been greater in that country than elsewhere. The formation of deer forests, which dispossessed and drove away families by wholesale, is held to be responsible for the Scottish exodus, but this course has not operated in other parts of the world to produce similar results. The apparently inborn aversion of people born in rural communities to spend their lives amid the homely scenes of their early life must be held largely responsible for a condition that is more directly productive of the distress, suffering and privations today existing among the starving thousands in our overcrowded cities than any other cause. The only possible remedy for this unsatisfactory condition is in the hands of our farmers, and lies in the direction of making farm life progressive, attractive and pleasant—and if possible profitable —to the rising generation in whom should be instilled from early childhood a sentiment of love and admiration for the safe and peaceful paths of rural life and a thorough conception of the dangers, pitfalls and unceasing struggles that are the portion of the poor whose strange infatuation them to the streets and the great and wicked cities whose alluring charms are real only to the fortunate possessor of a well filled purse.

A MORAL QUESTION.

The war between Nicaragua and Honduras continues to furnish a market for gunpowder and the product of our gun factories and lead mines. This is an encouragement to our industries that is seldom thought of. We deprecate war, yet our inventors are constantly devising engines of destruction, and our factories manufacture them, and our workingmen get good wages for building them, and our “home market” is benefitted by the wealth thus drawn from semi-civilized nations who fight very much on the same principle that two bellicose roosters in a barn lot do —because it is their nature to. America leads the world in the manufacture of arms and all the munitions of war, and our pi*oducts find a ready sale for good, hard gold in Central America, Morocco, Turkey, Afghanistan, South Africa, Brazil, and other remote regions of the globe. Our scientific men make holiday excursions to the scene of hostilities to see how their new-fangled guns work. The millionaire proprietors of the factories endow colleges, build churches and found hospitals and great public libraries that will hand down their names to future generations as benefactors to the human race. It lia3 even been asserted that the Central American wars are constantly planned, fomented and encouraged by New York syndicates, who act on information furnished by • exiles from those' countries, and who are ever ready to furnish the “sinews of war" to a cause that seems to promise even a temporary success without any regard whatever to the principles that may be at stake, or the nltimate right or wrong that may be accomplished- Such a travesty on the inherent quality of right can be justified, of course, by the statement that if we don’t do it somebody else will. This is no doubt true, yet the many sides and numerous phases and ultimate results of a departure from the code of right as here set forth is certainly a question that ul-tra-moralists might well consider. Missionary efforts need not be confined to raising money to send a few Bibias to the heathen of far-off India

who have lived and died in ignorance and an assured faith for ages, while accessible countries are daily coming to our shores for the means wherewith to kill and slay their brethren on the land and sea.

THE BUSINESS OUTLOOK.

The weekly trade review issued by Henry Clews, a 1 New York, Jan. 15, states that speculative transactions are likely to be indefinitely postponed, but that holders of securities are not on that account disposed to part with their holdings at a sacrifice. The opinion is generally prevalent that a revival of buying is an early probability. Money is abundant at low rates of interest. The extreme fright of the silver panic, strengthened by a prospective change in our national commercial policy has induced a collapse of business in which other considerations, that ordinarily would be conclusive evidence of an assured condition of prosperity, have not been given their due weight. Sober second thought must soon produce a favorable reaction. It cannot be otherwise. The paralysis of production of the past six months is incompatible with the current wants of consumption. The contraction of sales by manufacturers has been much more than double that of merchants in the most important branches of trade. This process of contraction at the source of supply can not fail to have produced a depletion of stocks that is virtually unprecedented. Merchants in leadI ing branches of trade are not carry- ! ing more than a three weeks’ supply *at the present curtailed rate. This puts a hopeful aspect upon the prospects of labor. Careful inquiry throughout the country has developed the fact that estimates of the unemployed have been exaggerated. Wall street observers have an eye upon this correction of estimates and an early revival of confidence and activity upon the Stock Exchange is predicted by this standard authority.

ANARCHY AND LIBERTY.

The insane attempt of the the Anarchist Vaillant to destroy the lives of the French Deputies, thus endangering the safety of hundreds of spectators who could by no process of reasoning be held in the remotest degree responsible for the alleged evils under which the poor of that country are struggling, has produced a reaction in France that will make the struggle harder than ever. Repressive laws have been enacted that in their very nature must faork further harm, if they do not actually throttle the .progress pf free institutions. Socialism and Anarchy are the product of exalted ideas of personal liberty taking hold upon improperly balanced minds with a natural tendency to radical views on all subjects. Conservatism is an unknown and probably an impossible quantity with such people. It is certainly a matter to be regretted that the modern idea of liberty has so largely taken this form, or has been influenced by rabid and impracticable malcontents who seize upon every trivial or irremedial wrong as food to feed the flames of fierce desire, and seek to lead the hosts of liberty to impossible and unknown heights only to land them in the quicksands of defeat and dire disgrace.

A Forcible Address.

Detroit Free Press. On one occasion in a Western State Legislature a vote on a measj ure was being taken with privilege to explain votes. Every member, of course, wanted to have his say, and nearly every one began his remarks with the stereotyped: “Mr. Speaker, I have but one word to sav,” and rambled off into several hundred. At last one old Solon’s name halfway down the alphabet was called, and he arose to speak: “Mr. Speaker,” he said, “I have but one word tc say, and that is no,” and down he sat. Nobody made a speech after that.

The Silver Scare is Over.

New York Press. Ex-Senator Stephen W. Dorsey, whose home is in Denver now, told me, yesterday, that he has seen enough of hard times in New York and Chicago to convince him that Denver, all things considered, is enjoying remarkable prosperity. “I have just come from home,” he said, “and I assure you that there are very few idle men in Denver. Everybody seems to be prospering and contented. Gold mining in Colorado is all the rage, and several new mines are being rapidly developed in the Cripple Creek region.

A Haven of Rest.

One of the few places in this country where the curfew bell is yet rung is Fayetteville, N. 0. The village has been settled more than twe centuries and the practice has never lapsed. Indeed, so quiet and uudisturbed by the outside world has this community remained that the curse% has there almost its original significance, and it is considered time for ali good people to be indoors when its summons is beard.

FARMS AND FARMERS.

Winter Shoeing:. Shoes at this season are required to discharge a double duty—to afford foothold as well as to guard against due wear Mr, William DiekJbb, in the - United States Government report on the horse, says on this subject: Various patterus of shoes have from time to time been invented to meet this dual ment, but the commonest of all, fashioned with toe and heel calks or calkins, is, faulty though it be, probably, all things considered, the one which best suits the requirements of the case. It should, however, never be lost sight of that the shorter, the smaller, the sharper the calkins are, so long as they answer the purpose, which called them into existence, so much the better for the foot that wears them. High while they confer no firmer foothold, are potent means of inflicting injury on the foot itself and the superincumbent limb at large. It is only from that portion of the catch which enters the ground surface that the horse derives any benefit in the shape of foothold, and it must be apparent to the meanest capacity that long calkins, which do not penetrate the hard, uneven ground, are so many levers put into the animal’s possession to enab’e if not compel him to wring his feet, rack his limbs and inflict untold torture on himself. I have laid particular stress on this subject, so I am of the opinion that the presence of the navincular disease, a dire malady from which horses used for agricultural labor should enjoy a practical immunity, is traceable largely to the habitual use during our long winter months of needlessly large calkins, only fractional parts of which find lodgment in the earth or ice during progression. I will explain what I mean. When a horse is shod with the exaggerated calkers to which I have alluded, the toe and heel calks are, or ought to be, the same height, to start with, at all events. Very often, however, they are not, and even when they are the. toe calk wears down on animals used for draught purposes far more rapidly than its fellows on the heel. The result is that the toe is depressed while the heel is unnaturally raised. The relative position of the bony structures within the foot is altered, and the navicular bone, which is not one of the weight-bearing bones, is brought within the angle of incidence of both weight and concussion, influences which it was never contemplated it should withstand and which its structure precludes its sustaining without injury. The bone becomes bruised and then diseased, the tendon to which it was intended it should act as a pulley, which passes over and is in contact with it, before long also becomes implicated, and what is technically known as navicular arthritis is thus engendered and developed.

Effect* of Salt. It is well known, says the “Journal of Chemistry,” that herbivorous animals are fond of common salt, and this is as true of wild animals as of those domesticated by man. Carniverous animals, on the other hand, either have no liking for salt or show a positive aversion to, it. Cats, for example, will rarely touch salt meat. This difference is not easily explained., The blood of both classes of animals contain a certain amount of soda salts, but the quantity of soda in a vegetable diet is not necessarily less than in one of the flesh. A German experimenter, Herr Bunge, has been the first to suggest a plausible solution of the enigma. A vegetable diet furnishes twice as much potash as a flesh diet does, and it occurred to him that the greater supply of potash must be attended with a greater waste of soda. To test this theory experimentally, he puts himself on a perfectly uniform diet of beef, bread, butter, sugar and a small quantity of salt. When by daily analysis of the urine he found that the quantity of soda and potash excreted had become constant, he proceeded to take such a dose of potash of salts during the day as would raise the amount of i potash in his diet to a level with that daily consumed by a herbivorous animal. The result was an immediate excretion of chloride of sodium in the uriue, the amount being at once increased three-fold. Much potash, was, of course, also passed. The experiment was repeated at various times, employing different salts of potash, but always with a similar result, a dose of potash in every case producing an immediate excretion of soda. Bunge believes that this tendency of potash to produce a greater waste of the soda jn the system is the cause of the desire shown by herbivorous animals for common salt. Their vegetable diet is generally very rich in potash, and they in-

NEW PUBLIC LIBRARY BUILDING, INDIANAPOLIS.

stinctively seek an additional supply of soda. Soda does not seem to be an essential ingredient of plants but it is certainly indispensable in the animal economy. In the muscle and in the blood corpuscles, potash is an essential constituent; but in the fluid portion* of blood potash is 1 injurious, and if injected even in small doses produces death. Soda salts, on the other hand, can be injected with safety, and its presence in the blood is essential to the continuation process. deeding Hogs for Market. I have learned why Canadian-fed pork takes higher rank abroad than does ours, says the New York World. Theirs-isuot a corn country likethe Mississippi valley. Corn is too high priced, and necessity forces them to And a substitute, and that substitute jis barley and pea meal. Upon this pigs grow rapidly and fatten nicely, making well-flavored and tpothsome j meat. Both of these, barley and peas, can be grown with much less ; labor than can corn, and where soil and climate are suitable they will yield as many bushels per acre as we get of corn. i Before the advent of the binder the barley beards deterred many from its cultivation, but that no longer matters, for we do all harvesting by machinery. Were we to ! feed our fattening pigs with equal , pacts of barley, pea and corn meal j mixdd the product of our pigpens would be appreciated more highly than it is now, and our hogs would continue in better health; cholera, I believe, would become a thing of the past, and each pig feeder would reap a larger harvest of profit than be now does. In seasons like the present, when wheat is low in price and hogs correspondingly high, the wheat farmer can secure a much better price for i his wheat if he’ll feed it to his pigs. If he will mix one part each of corn and wheat to two parts oats, and grind this mixture, he will have a cheaper and much bettter food than if either were fed separately, for it has been proved that all kinds of stock improve much faster when fed a variety of food. Where possible, Iqjrefer making all food fed-into a rich slop, but many who do this spoil all the good that should result from the soaking the food by leaving it in soak too long, until it sours. Sour, fermented slop will not make good, toothsome and wholesome meatj

VVlnter Dairying. This is the season when dairying pays best, for the simple reason that there is the least competition. In the summer, when all the farm work is done at high pressure, every farmer’s wife has butter to sell, and the price is low. But in the winter, when the. work is light and there is no bother about ice or flies and butter has doubled in price, she has none to sell. It is too late for a change this winter, but if thoughtful men and women will consider the matter carefully they may lav their plans for making a beginning next year, and after that—well, everyone who has once tried winter dairying :s likely to stick to it. A writer in the “Rural Canadian" gives the following simple rules to be observed: For winter dairying cows should come in in August or early September. The best calves should be raised, the others killed or disposed of shortly after birth. Feed green corn, sweet and fresh, in August and Septeml or, in anple quantity, and keep it up until feed corn comes to take its place. After field corn is exhausted silage takes its place, and this is fed until spring. Clover hay and bran make a finished ration. Make the one and buy the other in the summer, when it is cheap. The average per day is two to three pounds of bran and twenty to thirty pounds good clover hay. It is cheap and will make the milk flow. Give good warm shelter and fresh, cool (not ice cold) water. It pays to warm water if it is not available without. On warm days in winter turn the cows into a field or large yard for exercise.

A Big “Gym.”

There is a strong movement on foot in New York among a number of prominent physicians to establish a gymnasium on such a large scale that it can be used by 5,000 people at the same time. The plan is to purchase one or two city blocks,two if ]>ossible, and put up an immense building, to be devoted exclusively to physical culture. It is proposed first to get the indorsement of the Board of Health, then secure an appropriation through the Legislature. For head instructor the proper man is thought to be Sandow, In New York 70,000 people die annually of consumption. Physicians think this rate can bo lowered if coming generations will take proper exercise. The possible chest development is seen in Sandow, who can expand from fourteen to sixteen inches.

LOVE AND THE CAT.

Chicago Hail. ~ Billings bad been unfortunate all his life, and when he expressed his sorrow in verse and published a volume at hisuwn expense called “Heart and Hand,” all the critics mobbed him. Then Kitty Lester, whom he fondly expected to marry, jilted him after writing this little note: “Good-bye. lam going to marry Eben White. I hope you will bo happy with Minerva Brown.” That was ail. but it was enough for Billings. He shut himself up like a recluse and lavished ali bis affections on a stray cat he had picked up and which he had called Lady Gay. It had been with him a year when one morning old Adam, the individual who attended to the cleaning of the windows and the lighting of the fires of his apartment, said to him, “Mr, Billings, you value that cat, don’t you?” “That cat —Ladv Gay—of course I do.” “Well, then, beware sir. There’s a lady trying to steal her.” “What!” cried Billings, “Yes, indeed, sir. She lies in wait at the door, aud once she put her hand through the grating—yes, indeed, sir, and had Lady Gay by the neck, but I called out ‘Who’s there?’ and she fled.” For several days Mr. Billings kept close watch and nothing happened. At last he bethought him of a plan. He went out in a cab, left it a few blocks away and returned, re-entered the building by a side door around the corner and hid in his room, leaving the door on a crack aud holding tight to a long ribbon around pussy's neck. For a time all was still. Then a faint rustle of skirts in the hall.

“Pussy!” cried a soft voice—“pussy!” The steps came nearer. A woman appeared at the uflor. “Pussy, pussy, pussy!” she called . and entered. “You dating,” she cried, “I have you at last.” Then suddenly a man s hand eame down on her arm and the gasligh ff glared over the room. “So I’ve caught you,” said Bachelor Billings. “You're trying to steal my cat.” The lady struggled and shrieked. Mr. Biliings looked at her. “What is your name?” he asked. *:I am Mrs. White,” she answered. “You were Kitty Lester?” “Yes,” she faltered “Do you know me?” “Yes, you are Benjamin Billings!” So they met again, he and the girl who hau jilted him. He was elderly, she was middle-aged; and the only friend either one possessed was a cat. “So, after owing you so much misery, madam, you have come at this late day to rob me of my only solace,” said Bachelor Billings, “Ah, indeed, it is the other way,” said the lady, “After breaking my heart in my youth you come in my old age and steal my faithful frieud, my dear cat.”

“Now that everything is over,” she said, “I should like to ask you why you wrote a love letter to Minerva Brown.” “I never wrote a love letter to Minerva Brown, You wrote to me that I might marry her; but I didn’t want her,” said Mr. Billing 3. “I saw the letter,” said Mrs. White plaintively. My Dear Miss Minerva: —I offer you my “Heart and Hand," which you will do me much pleasure by accepting. To aid you in your noble work will indeed be a pleasant task. Benjamin Billings. “I remember every word. She dropped it from her pocket in the Sunday school library. I knew your writing and picked it up and read it. Oh, how false you were." She looked up. Bachelor Billings stood staring at her wildly. “What!”- he gasped. “Has my life been wrecked by so absurd a mistake? Mrs. White, I thought you appreciated my poems?” “I did!”sobbed the widow. “They were charming. “You didn’t even know the name of the book," said Mr.Billing3. “You made a great mistake —yes, an idiotic mistake, ma’am! Miss Brown had written to me for a contribution for the fair. The object have forgotten what, but it was noble. I offered her the blue and gold edition of my poems, ‘Heart and Hand.’ The note referred to that. I don’t flatter myself that Miss Minerva would have me had I offered myself: but I did not want her either. Mrs. White gave a scream—not loud, but long. Mr. Billings thought that she was going to faint and caught her in his arms. Afterward they had a talk. When he escorted her home he carried Lady Gay under his left arm, while he "gave his right to the widow. Shortly after there was a wedding, and Lady Gay now runs around a cozy breakfast table set for two, rubbing hfcr nose affectionately against a soft dark cashmere morning gown.

Total Depravity.

Chicago Times. William Henderson, of Englewood, is under arrest for stealing toes. The toes he took were not from human beings, but from the staff figures along the Transportation Building. William is of a scientific turn of mind, and, it is said, contemplated writing a book on the big toe and its peculiarities among various nations. When arrested he had a chisel and was cheerfully chipping the pedal extremities of Robert Fulton. He had a sackful of toes, winch are now at the Woodlawn station.

SCIENTIFIC SPARKS.

Diamonds Becoming Cheap The “Geomagr etifller.”

T the recent meeting of the chemical section of the Brit-' ista Association for the Advancement of , Science, the artificial diamonds that have been made by

VI, Moissans, of Paris, were exhib.ted and awakened much interest. These, as yet, are hardly of suffi:ient size to be marketable, but there ippears to be no longer doubt that Jus and the co3t are only questions if technical detail, and that another lecade at most will suffice to reduce liamonds to the level of the ameyyst or the Rhinestone. Brother Paulin, one of the brothi of the Christian School near La v, France, has devised and ex* imented with a system which he ■ms “geomagnetics,” which has esulted in some surprising results n agriculture. What be calls the ‘georaagnetifier” is a resinous pole, •rom forty to sixty feet high, plan ted n the middle of a field, supporting through jnsulators a galvanized iron :od with five terminal branches of ;oppcr. This collector of the electricity in the atmosphere is connected with a system of underground vires, deep enough to be out of the reach of ordinary cultivation, aniT placed six feet apart. This system, tried in a potato field, under the supervision of the Monthrison Society if Agriculture, resulted in the fol.owlig facts, as »set forth in their -eport: “A geomagnetitier about twenty-eight feet in height made its influence felt over superficies of

THE GEOMAGNETIFIER.

[Dotted lines show underground wires.] sixty-five feet radius. ** * The stalks were measuerd and were found (September 23) to reach a hight of five feet and a diameter of threefourths inches. * * * One hundred and four square feet of the influenced portion furnished 186 pounds of tubers: 104 feet of the non-influ-enced portion furnished 138 pounds.” So, also, have grapes, spinach, celery, radishes and "turnips shown an increased productiveness under this utilization of atmospheric electricity equal to that obtained from the use of expensive chemical fertilizers. Professor Bailey, of Owens College, England, has recently written of the steady increase of what is known as “black fogs" in England. From statistics it is known that these menacing collections of the mineral impurities in the atmosphere are now about eight or ten times as prevalent as they were a century ago. He says; “In the earlier part’of this century Manchester, with a population at that time of about one hundred and twenty thousand, had on an average about four or five dense fogs during the winter, whilst at the present day (with a population of 500,000) we have dense fogs, lasting the whole day, on twenty days or more, and fogs of less density are experienced on forty or fifty days.” Eugene Murray Aaron, Ph. D.

Jaoquin and the Tramps.

Argonaut. The venerable Joaquin Miller used to hive a warm spot in his heart for tramDS. He went so far as to build a house on his California farm for the accommodation of tramp; and furnished it with plain but substan* tial comforts, free use of which was given any tramp who came that way. The outcome he relates in an article in a California magazine: “Results? In less than a year the last sheet, pillowslip, bedspread, frying-pan and coffee pot were gone. Not only that, but the windows were broken and the sashes burned. Too worthless to go out and carry wood, on* crowd broke up and burned my tables and chairs, and when I put in my head to protest they threatened to ‘cremate the old crank in his own fireplace.’"

Should Have Sworn Off.

Husband —Here’s a new wrinkle, ladies’ silk stockings have snake* on ’em. Wise —Yes, I know. I have jus! bought a pair of that kind of hose. “What, with snakes on 'em?’’ “Yes.’’ “Then we are all right. I can drink as much as I please now.” “What do you mean?” “Well, you see, if you nave snakes on your stockings you can't find fault with me if I should happen to havp a few in my bools.”