Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 99, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1904 — CURRENT COMMENT [ARTICLE]

CURRENT COMMENT

According to census figures there are in the United States 6,180,000 persons 10 years old or more who cannot read or white. Of this number 3,200,000 are whites and 2,980,000 negroes. The majority of the white illiterates are foreign born, but New York State alone has 47,000 natives who cannot read or write. No branch of agriculture made the gains in the last decade that fruit growing did. There were over 3,700,000 acres in orchard fruits reported by the last census and at present there must be over 4,000,000 acres devoted to that purpose. In value the fruit crop now ranks eighth. In the year before the census the value of the corn crop was $828,258,326; hay, $484,256,846; cotton, including cotton seed oil, $370,708,746; wheat, $369,945,320; oats, $217,095,584; potatoes, sllß,263,814; vegetables, $113,871,842; fruit, $92,301,703. The apple is the most widely distributed fruit grown in the country and is found in every State, north and south. A special report of the census bureau shows that 1,750,178 children in The United States are compelled to work for their living. They form more than G per cent of the total number of workers, and the boys outnumber the girls almost three to one, the figures being 1,364,411 boys and 485,767 girls. That the American nation is not made up entirely of workers is shown by the total, 29,073,233, which is only one-half of the population of 10 years of age and over and about two-fifths of the entire population. Still, the proportion of workers has increased almost 3 per cent over the former statistics. The last place to which a man would be likely to go in search of a history of the growth of the electrical fire-alarm system in the United States would be to the reports of the Bureau of the Census. Yet there is where he would find an interesting and comprehensive discussion of the subject. The census reports are not mere tables of figures. They are a history of the progress of industry and invention in the United States. Take this bulletin on the fire-alarm system, for instance. One is told how, beginning -'Mt early as 1839, inventors tried to apply the principles of the electric telegraph to the transmission of fire-alarm signals,

but that It was not till 1850 that a successful system was found. The method at first used was crude, and from that time to this improvement after improvement has been adopted, until now it is practically impossible .for confusion to arise in Interpreting the signals sent in from the alarm boxes in any part of the town, and until even the most excited and Inexperienced person can give the alarm successfully. All he has to do Is so pull a lever and an automatic machine does the rest. Although one might not think it, the Census Bureau bulletins make interesting reading for summer afternoons. * In spite of the constantly Increasing immigration, the proportion of foreign born in the working population has not increased. The extent to which the wo.rld of business Is drawing people from the country is given emphasis. Manufacturing, trade and transportation and the professions show constantly increasing numbers of workers of both sexes, while the agricultural class represents n diminishing proportion, although 40 per cent of the workingmen is to be found on the fauns. ' x