Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1907 — WASHNGTON GOSSIP [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WASHNGTON GOSSIP

It is stated the coming report of Frank P. Sargent, Commissioner General of Immigration, will show that the total number of immigrants admitted during the year ending June 80, 1907, was over 1,400,000, or 200,000 in excess of the number that came during the preceding year. Mr. Sargent does not agree with some membra of ths CouOMM LuuuigratUm 'Geaumlssion that undesirable immigrants cojne from particular localities, such as Italy, Syria and Asia Minor. He says that our need of laborers necessitates our taking such nationalities as come, and it is impossible to exclude all the Hunchaklsts and Black Hand people who come in with the others, but we must have laws which will as far as possible exclude such persons from the country. Regarding the diversion of the tide of immigration, Mr. Sargent says that it is impossible to divert the growing influx into such a place as New York in a day or a year, although gradually the tide is turning to the South, the Southwest and the Northwest, and it is only a -question of time when foreigners will learn that they can do better in smaller places than in the big cities. The poetoflice profits slightly by the destruction of stamps which have been paid for, and the Treasury gets the benefit of bills which are lost and never found. A larger source of irregular profit lies in the failure of bondholders to proeeot their boade far aederaHtoa. Unclaimed money in the Treasury due •to bondholders amounted to .nearly a million dollars in 1861, and the sum is much* greater now. Of a loan which fell due in 1900, the sum of thirty-two thousand dollars remains unclaimed. Nearly a hundred thousand dollars are still unpaid of the five per cent bonds which were due in 1904. This year over a hundred-million thirty-year f our .per cent bonds came due on July 1. Special inducements were offered to secure early redemption. Yet at the Mid of the month thirteen million dollars still stood in the Treasury on this account, although interest has ceased.

Railroads* of the middle west are charged with conspiring to ruin the large creamery interests in seven states and territories in a complaint Sled before the Interstate Commerce Commission. It is held that business aggregat- ■ Ing $14,000,000 annually, besides millions’ worth of equipment, will be ruined because of conspiracy. The complainants are dairy companies of lowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Kansas and South Dakota, collectively producing 60,000,000 pounds of butter annually. The complaint charges that the railroads agreed ou an iiMTMUM of nates tor tnMMpMto ing cream amounting from 66 to 140 per cent. The increase was announced to go into effect Sept. 1, but the creameries were granted an Injunction in the federal circuit court until the commission investigates the charges. The Navy Department is reported t< have made successful experiments a. Newport with the Invention of a Frenchman designed to protect warships from submarine mines. The mechanism depends upon magnetic power, but its precise nature Is kept secret Mines such as would be laid by an enemy were blown up long before the ship carrying the apparatus crossed the explosive field. At last the order to test the horsemanship of all officers on duty at the War Department has been issued. It requires that these officers shall report to a board of surgeons before their ride Is undertaken, and if any are found not fit they mrfy be excused. The test ride will be fifteen miles, the first five at a walk, the second five at a trot and the finish at a gallop. ■ Chief Chemist Wiley of the Department of Agriculture has organized a new class of young men upon whom he vrtll axperi—t wfth the «MMtoi wwnflly sold at soda fountains, this being the result of a request from the War ' Department for information regarding the different kinds of aerated drinks ■old at army canteens. ' Surgeon General Wyman of the Public Health Service, under instructions from the President, is taking steps to uncover alleged crookedness in several large cities, where physicians are said to be concealing the facts about epidemics caused by Impure milk. The War Department has ordered the Twenty-fourth (colored) Infantry, now on duty in the Philippines, to be ’ brought home and stationed at Fort Ontario, Oswego, N. Y., and at Madison Barracks, neai> Watertown, N. Y. The Navy Department has received bids from two concerns for the old warship Saratoga, one of Perry’s famous fleet which visited Japan in 1854. and which is now to be consigned to the Junk heap. • • •" The Signal Corps of the United States army has organised a balloon corps of nine men under Oapt. Charles De F. Chandler, who has been detailed tor some time on this work.