p. 12 | Needless Expenditure

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 21, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 46.

Needless Expenditure.

As indicative of growing extravagance, according to Government statistics, the importation of ostrich feathers during the month of July amounted to "$225,000, suggesting that the amount of money sent out of the country in the purchase of ostrich feathers," says the report, "approximates three million dollars a year, while the price the consumer pays for them is of course greatly in excess of that sum." Imports of laces, edgings, embroideries, amount to between forty and fifty million dollars a year, aggregating more than four hundred million dollars in the past dozen years. It is safe to say that very little of this was necessary.

The despatches of recent date contain the account of a very unique meeting held by the Socialists in the neighborhood of Riga, Russia. They had tried in vain to hold meetings, but the police just as promptly broke them up. They finally advertised a swimming match, and each of the swimmers was an orator who addressed the crowd on the bank while swimming. Asking and answering questions was also a part of the feats of these swimming orators.

President Taft holds a great record in traveling for the Government; up to date he has traversed 298,728 miles at Government expense since entering the service in 1900.

"Runaway Matches"

STATISTICS compiled from the records of the district supreme court at Washington, D. C., show that forty per cent of all divorces in that city are the result of runaway matches, and that thirty per cent result from marriages where one of the contracting parties was under twenty-one years of age. Eighty per cent of the divorce suits have been filed by women, and less than ten per cent of the couples who seek the courts are parents. There is one divorce suit in the district to every four marriage licenses. It is also a most remarkable fact that less than ten per cent of the couples who seek the courts are parents. There is a warning in these statistics to young people who run away to be married, and a caution to persons to consider well when inclined to marry in haste.—N. Y. Christian Advocate.