Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 March 1877 — FACTS AND FIGURES. [ARTICLE]

FACTS AND FIGURES.

Some one has estimated that each person on the flpbt wquld receive two dollars If all the gold was parceled out, .: i t The amount Of gold coined la the Sen 857 400* Tun Banker and TrdAeoman gives It u its opinion that it wiH be imposeible to resume specie payments by Jan. I, 1879. Calling the present atoek of gold in the oountry $150,000,000, it thinks there will lie required a further accumulation of $250,000,000, $400,000,000 in ail, before specie payments can be resumed. TMn latent official statistics spow that France baa a population of more than 36,000,000. Of these 87,927 are Mind, ahd 29*512 are deaf and dumb—making an average of one blind person in every 900, ana oqe deaf and dumb person fir every 1,220. In Paris alone there she 7,sss lunatics, while in all France there are i7,128 insane men and 14,964 insafie wdmen. The Railway Age makes the startling statement that, during the year 1876, thirty railroads, operating 8,846 miles of railway, and having $217,848,000 of securities, were sold under foreclosure. Fiftysix other roads, operating 10,883 miles, and having stock and bonds of the nominal value of $094,061,000, Were ordered into charge of receivers, or subjected to proceedings for foreclosure on default made prior to 1870 v or default daring that year. And even these enormous figures are supposed to fall below the truth. A thousand million dollars lost in financial disaster to railways in a single year! The import trade of .England' has remained stationary for four years, as far as values are concerned. .It »waa in ,1876 £374,003,771. Her export trade has fallen off one-fifth in the same time, being in 1876 £200,575,856. The quantity of goods handled was, however, a little larger than usual, showing that the principal trouble was the fall of prices all over the world. The Pall MaU Gazette finds encouragement in the state of England’s trade, Us follows: “If, however, our export trade is doomed to fall off, it ought surely to be a consoling and not a discouraging reflection that our import trade shows no falling. The,export trade Is, after all, a test of the condition of our foreign customers. The import trade indicates the condition of our own fellow-countrymen. ’ ’ A rapid penman can write thirty words in a minute. To do this he must draw bis quill through the space of a rod—sixteen feet and a half. In forty minutes his pen travels a furlong, and in live hours And a third, a-mile. We make on akaverage sixteen curves or turns of the pen in writing each word. Writing thirty words Aminute, we must make 480 curves to each minute; in an hoar, 28,800; in a day of only fiYe hours, 144,000, and in a year of 800 days, 43,200,000. The - man who-makes 4,000,000 strokes with a pen It? a month is not at all remarkable. Many men,' newspaper men, for instance, make 4,000,000. Here we have, in the aggregate, a mark 300 miles long, to be traced on paper by each writer in a year. In making each letter of the ordinary alphabet, we most make from three to seven strokes of "the pen—on an average, three and a half to four. How much better, therefore, would it be to dispense with tbe present unwieldly and tedious form of writing, and tbe phonographic system, in which lines and curves represent consonants and dots vowels; and by which a skilled Writer Can write as high as 200 words a miqute. —Exchange.