Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1894 — Chinese Methods of Tillage, [ARTICLE]

Chinese Methods of Tillage,

"Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall be received of the Lord, whether be be bond or free.” - j. ■ * ■■■ A sugar trust would be valuable in any family where they do not keep a cow. Mr. Matthiesson, one of the principal promoters of that famous aggregation of capital, is quoted as saying that for a number of years his profits were 200 per cent, at least.on his investment.- — There is a “financial" depression” in Russia that appears cavernous in comparison with the financial difficulties with which the people of the United States are struggling. Corn is so abundant and the price so tow that many farmers are sending their cattle into the fields to save the expense of gathering. In the Caueasus barley and ■wheat are cut green and given to the cattle.

G. F. Swift & Co., of the Chicago Stock Yards, have begun the shipment of live cattle to England and other European countries. Mr. Swift made this experiment once before, but the success was not flattering. A Chicago cattle expert will now superintend the sales abroad, and other conditions being regarded as more favorable, this second venture, it is believed, will prove successful. St. Louis possesses the unique . distinction of being the only place in the world where horse racing can be seen at night. The track is a —regulation daylight course lighted by a bunch of incandescent electric lights every twenty-five feet. Twenty thousand candle power is expended on the coiirse. The venture has been a success from the start, and and the grand stand will not accommodate the crowds.

A remarkable phase of Western enterprise was exhibited at SequoyaErmU Aug. 8 the “city” consisted of a court house in the woods and a few isolated shanties. The population was of no consequence. Aug. 15 the Cherokee payment began. On that date Sequoyah was a thriving city of 2,003 inhabitants with every branch of business well represented. Tbe “city” consisted largely of tents, but was laid off in squares and boasted of nearly all the metropolitan attractions, including dance halls, gambling houses and two blacksmith shops. The payment of $700,000 continued for a week. . A correspondent of the New York Sun accuses Br’er Talmage with making a gross misstatement in a recent editorial article in the Christian Herald, in which he said that Nahor was seventy years older than Methusaleh, giving the age of Methusaleh at 969 years and crediting Nahor with 1,039 years. Genesis xi, 24, 25, very tablishes the age of Nahor at one hundred and forty-eight years. The Sun correspondent is disposed to be very merry at the blunder, —which might be pardoned in an ordinary couiitry parson, but in a minister of such great pretensions as the Brooklyn divin« is justly regarded as ridiculous.

The South Park Commissioners, at Chicago, are wrestling with the proposed improvement of the Midway Plaisance. According to the plans drawn by Frederick Law Olmstead there is to be a canal directly through that famous thoroughfare GOO feet wide and about one mile long. On either side at present is an unimproved street —fifty-ninth street on the north, Sixtieth street —on the south. —It is proposed to make boulevards of these streets, and the estimated cost of these road ways is $150,000. The total cost of thecanal and road ways is placed ati $530,000. Property owners propose to divide the cost with the commismissioners, and are urging immediate action. The Commissioners are disposed to go slow. Lord Rosebery, the English Prime Minister, is accused of downright hypocrisy in all his public utterances. Foreign correspondents state that but little importance is attached tohis speeches. He appears to be a sort Of mouthpiece for contending factions in the radical party. Careful students of his official acts and unofficial oratorical efforts, state that his first opinions may be safely set down as his owtj. Then follow sentiments often in direct contradiction of his effort to satisfy his own conscience, while ‘‘carrying a bucket” for people that he is known to de-

spise. English politics, from all accounts. are quite as ‘’tricky” as our own efforts in that line of human endeavor. There is a very practical “woman’s Tighter” in Stark county. The young lady don’t belong to Sorosis, don’t care to vote or make speeches, but believed she had a right to raise corn in addition to her usual duties of cooking and milking, and washing and ironing for four persons. Accordingly she “put in” fifteen acres on her own hook. She has “dun laid hy de corn" and is living in pleasant anticipation of—the extra luxuries that she will be able to purchase with her oqtput of that valuable staple,

Indiana, already lavishly endowed with educational advantages, has of late received an important addition to these facilities in the CuiveF|Mjjlitary Academy, recently located at Lake Muxinkuckee, in Marshal ■county. This institution has been established through the efforts of Mr. Harry Adams, of Indianapolis, and 11. 11. Culver, a retired St. Louis "business man, who has—been investing in real estate around the lake since 1883. The school has been in operation on a limited scale since 1888, and has gradually grown to be an institution of importance. At present the academy has three buildings. the main structure being a huge frame of three stories in height. Permanent buildings will be erected next year. The rules and regulations of. the school are based noon those of the United States Militate Academy at West Point. Rev. Dr. J. H. McKenzie is the principal of the academy. The Brooks Locomotive Works, of Dunkirk, N. Y., have an order for sixty locomotives from the government of Brazil for the Brazil Central Railway. The first was completed Aug. 21, and is a mastodon twelvewheeler of elaborate finish and design, and is built for a five-foot three inch gauge. As fast as completed and Tested the locomotives will be taken on flat-cars to New York, where they will be loaded into steamers chartered for the purpose and taken to Brazil in charge of old and experienced men of the Brooks Locomotive Works, who will put them together again and place them in service. An idea of the quantity of material may be gathered from the fact that it will take about three hundred flat-cars to -transport the sixty locomotives to New York after they are packed, each engine requiring from four to five cars. The Brazilian government has paid a handsome compliment to the United States Government by requesting that one of the locomotives be named “The Fourth of July.”

Messrs. Alien and Sachtleben, the American students who crossed Asia on bicycles, were close observers of native manners and customs. In the September number of the Century they say: Apart from the “Yellow Lands” of the Hoang-ho, which need no manure, the arable regions of - China seeril to have maintained their fecundity for over four thousand years, entirely through the thoughtful care of the peasantry in restoring to the soil, under another form, all'that the crops have taken from it. The plowing Of the Chinese is very poor. They scarcely do more than scratch the surface of the ground with their bent-stick plows, wooden-tooth drills, and wicker-work harrows; and instead of straight lines, so dear to the eye of a Western farmer, the ridges and furrows are as crooked as serpents. The real secret of their success seems to lie in the care they take to replenish the soil. All the sewage of the towns is carried out every morning at daybreak by special coolies, to be preserved for manure; while .the dried herbs, straw, roots, and other vegetable refuse, are economized with the greatest-care for fuel.—The Chinese peasant offsets the rudeness of his implements with manual skill. He weeds the ground so carefully that there is scarcely a leaf abo>re the ground that does not appertain to the crop. All kinds of pumps aud hydraulic wheels are worked, either by the hand, animals ar the wiud. The system of tillage, therefore, resembles market-gardening rather than the broad method of cultivation common in Europe and America. The land is too valuable to be devoted to pasture, and the forests nearly everywhere have been sacrificed to tillage to such an extent that the material for the enormously thick native coffins has now to be 'imported from abroad. ' 1 Rev. Dr. Griffith John, an American missionary at Shanghai, sayt that the opium habits of the Chinese will tell against them in case of war. A native writer, speaking of the enormous deportation of opium from IndU.to.China, says: “It is hot only thus the foreigners abstract so many millions of our money, but the direful appearances seem to indicate a wish on their part to utterly rool out and-extirpate us as p people."