Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1874 — FACTS AND FIGURES. [ARTICLE]

FACTS AND FIGURES.

—Forestville, Conn., turns out 1,000 clocks daily. —Michigan has gained 130,000 in population since 1870. —The school population of Kansas has doubled in live years. —One Massachusetts firm converts two tons of paper into envelopes daily, —There are over 24,000 idiots in this country who are acknowledged as such. T-Eiglit hundred new buildings have been erected in Pittsburgh Pa., this year. —lt is believed that California wilt gain during the year which will end with Dec. 31 fully 50,000 population. —Notwithstanding its almost univqr- . sal use in kindling fires, there are now on hand 4,000,000 barrels of surplus petroleum. —Nine million horses in the United States: value $660,000,000. France has 3,663,000. Austria 3,100,000, England 2,666,200, Germany 2,500,000, Prussia 1,800,000, Turkey 1,100,000. —One-sixth of America’s population of over 30,000,000 cannot read or write; 5,000,000 out of a total school population ot almost 13,000,000 receive instruction. —The value of musical instruments exported from this country last year was $550,227, Of this amount reed organs absorbed $292,151, the balance being for pianofortes. —We have now of all classes of pensioners in this country 236,241 persons, and the expenditure for them is about $26,250,000 per year. Among this list are found the names 410 widows of soldiers of the Revolutionary w ar. —low T a has $4,519,688 raised to instruct a school population numbering 491,344, of whom 347,572 are enrolled in public schools and 12,132 in private ones. The sum of $1,163,953 has been expended in this State in the erection of new' schoolhouses and supply of libraries and apparatus. This makes the amount devoted to educational purposes upward of $3 for each inhabitant, and upward of $lO for each child enrolled in school. The number of buildings has been increased by 1,246 in two years past; the value of them, allowing for deteriorations, by $1,391,308; and the value of school apparatus by $122,337. The average attendance on public schools is 83 per cent, greater than ten years ago, exceedmg considerably the increase of school population.