Postal Figures Worth Noting
Postal Figures Worth Noting.—The following from Wilmer Atkinson's Farm Journal is worth considering just now when there is talk of raising the postage on second-class matter: In 1906 there was a gain in weight of second-class matter of 41,674,086 pounds; in that year the deficit was $10,516,999. In 1907 there was a gain in weight of 52,616,336 pounds,—11,000,000 pounds more than in 1906; the deficit was reduced to $6,653,283. In 1908 there was a loss instead of gain in weight of second-class matter of 18,079,292 pounds; the deficit went up to $16,873,223, an increase over the year before of more than $10,000,000. In 1909 there was only a slight gain in weight of 28,367,298 pounds; the deficit went up to $17,441,719. In 1910 there was a gain in weight of 94,865,884 pounds, the largest ever known; and the deficit dropped to $5,848,566.88. From 1906 to 1910 there were 198,863,387 pounds increase in the weight of second-class matter; the deficit was $4,668,432.12 less in 1910 than in 1906. Newspaper despatches say that George J. Gould is to relinquish the presidency of the Missouri Pacific Railroad, and that Rockefeller and Kuhn, Loeb & Company interests will enter the board and appoint his successor. This bankers' syndicate will control, in addition to the Southern and Union Pacific systems and one half of the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake road, commonly known as the Harriman system, the Missouri Pacific, or Gould system, which consists of the Missouri Pacific proper, St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern, Denver and Rio Grande, one half of the Colorado Midland, and the new Western Pacific. It is reported that friendly relations will cease between Russia and China, and that war will follow the latter's failure to comply with six demands made by Russia in regard to a treaty made in 1881. The vital questions involved are free trade in Mongolia, the extraterritorial rights of Russians in China, and the establishment of a Russian consulate at Kobdo, Mongolia. The powers have been notified that Russia will make an armed demonstration on the frontier if China's attitude is persisted in. United States may offer to mediate, or suggest the reference of the questions at issue to The Hague peace tribunal. Some scientists believe that the day will come when enormous wireless generating stations will be erected that will supply electric power and light for the whole world. At the present time too much electrical energy is lost in lighting by wireless to make such a system practicable. But according to a wireless expert, Thorne Baker, "recent experiments on the neon light suggest enormous possibilities in the future lighting of the world. The neon light is simply a long vacuum into which is passed a little neon, a very rare, colorless gas. When an electric current of sufficiently high voltage is passed through the tube it becomes luminous, emitting a rich light." Another scientist states: "When the secret of transmitting electrical energy by wireless is discovered the neon lamp will probably be used for lighting. A neon tube will glow quite brightly when placed within several yards of a wireless mast when messages are being sent." Among the things not easy to understand, says the Independent, is this,—why none of our religious teachers who are so much pleased that in this country Church and State are separated, should grieve when separation is decreed on the continent of Europe. Thus The Catholic World in its December issue, describing very fairly the changes in Portugal, says: "Other measures are proposed which in no way deserve the name of reforms: Church and State are to be separated," etc. We would like to be told why what is so much valued here would not be a reform there. "The Western Watchman" of January 19 uses half a page of space to list the prominent converts of the Catholic Church in 1910. In one month in Philadelphia more than 300 converts were confirmed. One writer estimates 3,000 in the entire country. England leads the United States. In one church there were the pastor and 100 converts. St. Paul's is spoken of as a "nursing mother of converts." The cause of this defection from Protestantism—if these converts ever were Protestants—is lack of instruction in the Word. Consolidations.—According to a recent press despatch a recent meeting in Chicago of the book committee of the Methodist Episcopal Church has decided to incorporate under the name "The Methodist Book Concern" the publishing houses in New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago. This is in accordance with the instructions of the last general conference in Baltimore in 1908. Those who are dissatisfied with wages and hours may find a negative comfort in reading of the laundry workers, in McClure's for March. The wages run from $12 a week to $4.50; and the hours in some laundries from 7 in the morning till 2 the next morning, and much of this work is done standing, and in the operation of dangerous machines. It is an unequal world. More than 3000 men are engaged in boring a new nine-mile tunnel through the Alps. The temperature is appreciably affected by the hot rocks encountered in digging. In the two miles that have already been tunneled, fifty-five lives have been lost and many men have been injured. Several ambulances are always inside the tunnel waiting for calls. One of the most ingenious uses to which electricity was ever put was in the wrecking of a bridge over the Wabash River in Indiana, when it was desired that the piers remain uninjured, and that the spans be removed by a given time. The bridge was burned through in various places simultaneously. Five million persons are declared by the Rockefeller commission to be affected by the dread "hook worm." It is constantly spreading, and the miners who go from place to place are said to be chiefly instrumental in carrying the parasite. Proper sanitation and cleanliness are its greatest foes. Dr. George F. Reinhardt, president of the Berkeley, California, Board of Health, declares that the death of fifty-two infants in that city last year was due directly or indirectly to unclean milk. A more rigid ordinance is now under consideration. Ferry's "Seed Annual" for 1911 comes duly to hand. The firm of D. M. Ferry & Co., of Detroit, Michigan, is well known as among the old and always reliable seed houses of the country. Its one aim is to furnish "standard" flower and vegetable seeds, the very best that can be sown or planted. A Des Moines newspaper suggests that Andrew Carnegie, who seems hungry for world-wide peace, might well devote a few of his millions to the promotion of industrial peace at home. In the last eleven years the United Mine Workers of America have paid out in strike benefits over $8,000,000. The latest development in the typewriter is a machine that prints syllables of two and three letters by a single pressure of the key. The machine possesses a pawl and escapement wheel so arranged that when a syllable key is struck the carriage jumps the space equal to the letters in the syllable. The Senate has passed the army appropriation, which carries $93,678,582, and which provides for a corps of army dentists. Both houses have passed a bill appropriating $2,000,000 for the erection of a suitable monument in Washington to the memory of Abraham Lincoln. Mrs. Lucie Owens, a woman who was born, it is said, when the Revolutionary War broke out, and who at the age of three years saw George Washington, is dying at the remarkable age of 136 years at the home of her daughter, a centenarian, at Longview, Texas. Prince Ito and the Japanese prime minister assume a remarkably friendly attitude toward the evangelization of Korea. A revival has been in progress in Korea for some time. The natives seem to have a deep interest in the work, and spend hours in prayer. A New York paper informs us that the officials arrested as being responsible for the awful explosion we noted last week were promptly released on bail. Several who suffered from the explosion and were wanted as witnesses were imprisoned. Russian workmen on the Manchurian Railroad, numbering 8,000, have struck, and demand to be sent home on account of the plague. The plague at Harbin continues to spread, and Pekin is being deserted by its foreign population. Governor-elect Hoke Smith of Georgia gave out a letter he received exposing the details of a plan to project a plague by distributing boll weevils throughout the cotton-raising districts of Georgia and South Carolina. A Russian boat with twenty-four of her crew went down when the bark was wrecked on a reef off Cossack. One soldier who had been lashed to a spar for forty-eight hours was the sole survivor. It is announced that the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific railroads are to be double tracked through from the Missouri River to San Francisco at a cost of $75,000,000. The Danville (Illinois) Grand Jury, in Joseph G. Cannon's district, have found true bills of indictment to the number of 216 against fraud and perjury in political matters. In addition to the 4,600 delegates, it is expected that 30,000 visitors will attend the International Sunday School Convention at San Francisco, June 20 to 27, 1911. On February 13, Aviator Busson made a new record for speed in a monoplane with a passenger. At Reims, France, he flew nearly sixty-two miles in sixty-one minutes. Two hundred thousand miners in portions of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia threaten to strike unless there is an increase in wages. Nine bodies have been found of the fourteen presumably killed by a coal-mine explosion near Trinidad, Colorado. A new submarine cruiser for the United States navy has been launched.