Bear atc,
Bellefonte, Pa., September 21, 1923.
ee —
AND LET US SLEEP.
By Virna Sheard.
Turn Thou the key upon our thoughts,
dear Lord,
And let us sleep;
Give us our portion of forgetfulness,
Silent and deep.
Lay Thou Thy quiet hand upon our eyes,
To close their sight;
Shut out the shining of the moon and
stars,
And candlelight.
Keep back the phantoms and the visions
sad—
The shades of gray—
The fancies that so haunt the little hours
Before the day.
Quiet the time-worn questions that are all
Unanswered yet;
Take from the spent and troubled souls
of us
Their vain regret;
And lead us far into Thy silent land,
That we may go,
Like children out across
dreams,
‘Where poppies blow.
the field o’
So all Thy saints—and all Thy sinners,
too—
Wilt Thou not keep,
Since not alone unto Thy well-beloved
Thou givest sleep? '
—London (Ontario) Free Press.
AGRICULTURE MUST BE SAVED
TO AVERT NATIONAL DISAS-
TER.
The greatest menace to the nation-
prosperity and general welfare of the
United States is not bolshevism. It is
not socialism. It is not capitalism. It
is not imperialism.
It is the alarming decline of Ameri-
can agriculture and the astonishing
migration from the farms to the
cities.
Official figures of the Department
of Agriculture disclose the fact that
two million persons moved from
American farms to American cities
during the year 1922.
This is greater than the total pop-
ulations of the six States—Arizona,
New Mexico, Montana, Nevada, Utah
and Wyoming.
It is twice as great as the flood of
immigration which used to pour into
the United States annually from Eu-
rope before the bars were put up.
It is probably the greatest move-
ment of population in the history of
the world.
SMALL COMFORT IN FIGURES.
The Department of Agriculture
says that it was in part offset by a
movement of 880,000 from the cities
to the farms, so that the net loss to
agriculture was only 1,200,000. But
this is in part an illusion, because all
experience has shown that only a
small proportion of those who go
from the cities to the country remain
there permanently, while it is -notor-
ious that the rural population when
once engulfed in the city’s maelstrom
seldom returns to the farm.
Moreover this enormous movement
from the cities to the farms merely
emphasizes the condition of unrest
and dissatisfaction which exists in all
parts of the United States among the
producing population.
The farmers are going to the cities
because they have been bankrupted
and rendered destitute by the defla-
tion of agriculture, and because they
imagine they can improve their lot in
the industrial centers. For the past
five years they have been fed on false
propaganda about the huge wages
paid to railroad and industrial work-
ers. They have not been told these
high wages, so far as they are true,
apply only to a handful of exception-
ally skilled or unusually situated
workmen, and that the vast majority
have not earned enough in the past
two years to pay for the subsistence
of their families on even the misera-
ble standards to which they are ac-
customed.
AIRPLANE STORY EXPLODED.
A fair sample of this lying propa-
ganda appeared in the newspapers
recently. Big headlines announced:
“Coke Workers Use Airplanes to Go
to Work.” The small type underneath
told how one alleged coke worker had
bought an airplane, but intimated that
it was likely to become a habit among
the coke workers because they were
earning such big money. Lowell Mel-
lett, one of the most experienced and
reliable reporters in the United
States, went to the coke regions to
investigate. He discovered the truth.
The general superintendent of one of
the coke companies, an Englishman
formerly in the air service, had bought
an airplane. But, according to Mel-
lett’s story, the real coke workers,
the poor devils who pull the flaming
coke from the ovens 10 to 12 hours a
day, are almost in destitutiorf because
they lost their strike for better con-
ditions last year.
There are today probably a million
farmers and white-collar workers who
read the original story and did not
read Millett’s exposure, who believe
that if they could just get a job in the
coke industry they would soon be on
Easy street and own an airplane or
at least a Rolls-Royce.
Poor dupes of a perverted press!
Although the farmers have been
thus grossly deceived regarding city
conditions, this is not the fundamen-
tal cause of their migration. They
had to move. Millions were utterly
ruined by the crash of agricultural
prices in 1920 and 1921. In county
after county, in the Northwest and
South particularly, more than half of
the farms were sold for tages. Page
after page of the county weeklies dur-
ing the past year have been filled with
tax sale notices of once prosperous
farms.
Think of it! Men and women past
middle age, thrifty and industrious,
who counted themselves worth ten,
twenty, thirty thousand dollars in
1919, sold out for taxes in 1922 and
--evicted from their old homes, Where
could they go? To the Joor-bouse,
to the imsecure life of a farm labor-
er, or to the city. So hundreds of
thousands, facing this = miserable
choice, have sold their little furniture
and the few personal effects they
were able to save from the wreck of
bankruptcy and have come to the city.
WHAT OF THE FUTURE?
For the prese=. at least, in the high
tide of an industrial boom, the city
may absorb them. But what of the
future? What will happen when the
factories, responding to the dwindling
demand from the country for manu-
factured products, begin to bank their
fires and cut millions from their pay-
rolls without a day’s notice ?
Then there will be unemployment
and distress, far worse than we knew
in 1920, when 5,000,000 men and wom-
en were out of work. It will be worse
even than the dark days of the “hun-
gry nineties” when the jobless roam-
ed the streets, hunting work at any
price, and there were soup kitchens in
every city. It will be worse for this
reason: In the nineties, though fac-
tories were closed down, food was
cheap and a few pennies would feed
a family. Now, when the full effects
of this agricultural migration are
felt, food will be scarce and dear.
What a tragedy that will be! Millions
of men out of work and food selling
at famine prices, because the country-
side has been deserted by farmers
seeking to better their lives in the
cities.
Ask the people of Moscow and Vi-
enna what this means. They know.
This movement from the farms to
the cities is, therefore, particularly a
menace to the workers in the city fac-
tories and on railroads. The indus-
trial workers have succeeded in check-
ing the deluge of foreign immigra-
tion, but what of this greater tide that
is moving from the country to the
cities? It cannot be checked by put-
ting up the bars, by passing immigra-
tion laws, establishing “quotas” and
“selective tests.”
THE ONLY REAL SOLUTION.
It can be checked in only one way.
That is by restoring agricultural pros-
perity, by stabilizing prices at a de-
cent level, by making the farm a place
where a man can settle down to a life
of industry with the assurance that if
he produces the crops which the na-
tion needs, he will receive enough for
them to enable him to buy enough of
the city’s products to support his fam-
ily in health and reasonable comfort
and give the children an education.
Only radical measures will be effec-
tive. We must go down to the roots
of the trouble. That is what “rad-
ical” means.
What are the roots of this trouble ?
They lie in the monstrous system of
distribution, which we have allowed
to grow up in America, where the far-
mer gets only 37 cents out of every
dollar that the city worker pays for
farm products, while the city worker
gets only 30 cents out of every dol-
lar that the farmer pays for factory
goods.
Thus the farmer and the city work-
er haye one common enemy. That en-
emy is the monopolistic group which
owns, controls and operates this mon-
strous system of distribution. By
combinations, by consolidations, by
manipulation of markets, by restric-
tion of production, by stock watering,
by multiplication of middlemen, by
every device through which an addi-
tional dollar or penny of] prose can be
squeezed out between { e producer
and the consumer, they have created
this frightful condition. They are de-
stroying the American nation by
draining off its substance in the form
of profits to be squandered in waste-
fully luxurious living or in the pro-
motion of imperialistic exploitation in
other countries. :
PROBLEM CAN BE SOLVED.
This system must be destroyed and
a new system of co-operative distri-
bution, for service and not for profit,
must be builded in its place. This is
a huge undertaking, but it is far less
difficalt in its essential elements than
the organization of this nation for the
Great War. .
_ The farmers alone cannot accimplish
it. They do not have the power either
politically or economically. They must
have the help of the industrial work-
ers. By this I mean the workers not
only in the factories, but also in the
railroads and in the mines, wherever
men earn their living by performin
useful service. I mean not only £1
manual workers, but also the so-call-
ed “brain workers,” whose supineness
in the face of their continued exploit-
ation raises a serious question as to
whether they have any brains. I
mean, in fact, all those Americans who
do not share in the gains of this mon-
strous system which converts two-
thirds of every producer's dollar eith-
er into profits or into waste.
I do not believe that this can be ac-
complished at one great stroke. The
world cannot be made over in a day.
But I do believe that it can be accom-
plished within a relatively short per-
iod of years by a series of carefully
planned and wisely administered
measures, that will move forward step
by Step tonund the ultimate goal.—By
Basil M. Manly, Director, People’s
Legislative Service.
——A——————
State Professor Asks Retirement.
Professor J. M. Willard, who has
taught mathematics to thousaands of
students at Pennsylvanit State Col
lege in his thirty years of service, has
been forced through prolonged illness
to retire as head of the mathematics
department. His health had been
failing for some time and early in the
summer he was taken to the John’s
Hopkins hospital in Baltimore where
he is still under special treatment.
His retirement comes at his own re-
quest. His successor has not yet been
announced.
Professor Willard is one of the three
oldest members of the faculty in point
of service, men who have been in the
continuous service of the college for
thirty years or more. Dr. H. F.
Stecker, also of the mathematics de-
partment, is confined to his home at
State College, seriously ill.
mE — A ———————
Seek Student Playwright.
In order to secure a play which they
may present at the college and on the
road in Pennsylvania towns, the Penn-
sylvania State College Thespian club
has offered a $150 prize to the stu-
dent who writes the best acceptable
script for a musical comedy. The
Thespian club is the. oldest organiza-
tion of its kind at Ienn State, and
great competition ig expected in the
flay writing and for positions in the
cast,
SELECTION OF SEED CORN SOON
UNDER WAY IN COUNTY.
Selecting seed corn will soon be in
full swing in Centre county. “A good |.
crop of corn in 1924 will depend in no
small measure upon the selection and
curing of the seed this fall,” declares
E. J. Walters, corn specialist, of The
Pennsylvania State College. After
touring the State inspecting many
fields of corn Mr. Walters believes
that due to the late, cold spring, corn
is rather backward in maturing in
many sections of the State. For this
reason, we urge the careful selection
of seed corn at the earliest possible
date.
Farmers are realizing that the field
selection of corn is far superior to the
old method of picking ears out of the
wagon box at husking time. The big,
sound ears found in the wagon box is
not necessarily the best type of seed
corn because the record of perform-
ance of that ear in the field is un-
known.
Look for these things in field selec-
tion of seed corn:
“See that the stalk is growing in
regular competition with other plants
and that it is producing a good ear of
corn” is Walter's first principle in
field selection. “Then choose plants
of medium height with the ear a little
more than half way up. Tall stalks
with high hanging ears are likely to
blow over and have a tendency to pro-
duce late maturing corn. The plant
should have a short-jointed, thick,
gradually tapering stalk and a broad
leaf. Low hanging ears are an indi-
cation of early maturity.”
The time to select seed corn, accord-
ing to best authorities, is when the
stalk is still green but the ear is ripe.
By going into the field at odd times
and marking the stalks that have the
desired characteristics with a string
or cutting the tassel, the good seed
ears can be saved at husking time
with little extra work. When the
corn is rather late in maturing, it is
advisable to pick the seed corn before !
husking time,
“Place your seed corn in a good,
dry place, where there is plenty of
good air circulation, is Walter's final
caution. “Hang the ears up so that
they do not touch any others until
they are thoroughly dried.”
Mr. Walters gave several interest-
ing corn talks in different sections of
the county last winter. Field meet-
ings have been arranged for today
and tomorrow in those same sections
so Mr. Walters can point out to the
corn growers, under field conditions,
the things that he emphasized last
winter when the corn is safely in the
crib. The schedule for the meetings
are:
Friday, September 21st, 10 a. m., at
ve T. J. Bechdel farm near Blanch-
ard.
Friday, September 21st, 2:30 p. m.,
at M. T. Zubler’s, near Spring Mills.
Saturday, September 22nd, at 10 a.
m., at H. B. Waite’s, near Storms-
town.
Saturday, September 22nd, at 2:30
AMAZED AT YANKEE TEETH
French Farmers Marveied at the Sight
of Doughboys Seemingly En-
Joying Cow Fodder.
The French lockkeeper is sometim
an old soldier, but oftener is some
blaek-clad woman who took up her hus-
band’s duties when he was called to the
front, and who (for he never came
back) will continue them until her
little Francois is grown up—or, as she
sometimes sadly puts it, “Until he
comes back safe, as I hope, from the
next war, m'sieu.”
For five more days we paddled along
the 100-kilometer stretch of stream
that unfurls itself ribbonlike among
rolling, windmill-topped slopes be-
tween Redon and Nantes, writes Mel-
ville Chater in the National Geographic
Magazine,
We found that the countryside still
fondly recalled the passage of Ameri-
can troops in 1918—how they had
swum in the canal and had given the
children little packets of chewing gum
and had strangely delighted in con-
suming cow fodder.
This last detail was related to us
by a farmer, who added: “Most vig-
orous young men those, m’sieu. Won-
derful teeth, wonderful stomachs. How
they could even digest that stuff was
the wonder of the countryside.” And
he pointed to one of those fine fields
of Indian corn which ii France are
cultivated exclusively as cattle food.
“Why, that’s easy,” we confided; “all
Americans eat that” And we de-
scribed the manner of preparing and
dispatching an ear of corn. Suddenly
a light broke on the listener’s face:
“Ah,” he exclaimed, “I understand.
Then one doesn’t eat it, cob and all,
like the cow ; one just picks at i§ as if
it were an artichoke, n'est-ce pas?”
FREEZE OUT INSECT PESTS
Method Is More Economical Than Gas,
Says an Expert on the
Subject. »
The usual procedure, when flour
mills become infested with the Mediter-
ranean moth, the larvae of which get
into the flour, is to close the mill tight-
ly and “gas” the insects. Last winter
a mill at Williston, N. D., however, re-
quested the local weather bureau office
to notify the company whenever a tem-
perature of 20 degrees or lower for at
least several hours could be anticl-
pated. As soon as weather sufficiently
cold, was forecast, the company put out
all fires and opened doors and win-
dows. That night the temperature
reached 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and did
' not go above 17 degrees Fahrenheit the
p. m,. at J. H. McCracken’s, two miles |
west of Pine Grove Mills.
FARM RECORDS SHOW COST OF
OPERATING TRACTOR.
What does it cost to run a tractor?
The 5,000 or more Pennsylvania far- |
mers owning tractors and those con-
templating the purchase of an “iron
horse” will be interested in the cost
records of operating a tractor kept by
a Lancaster county farmer during the
past year under the supervision of
the extension farm accountant of The
Pennsylvania State College.
The total expense, including repairs,
fuel, interest on investment and de-
preciation, amounted to $340.70 for
the twelve months. The largest sin-
gle item of expense was a charge of
$150 for depreciation; fuel totaled
$120.14; repairs cost $50.56, and inter-
est on the investment was charged at
$25.00.
The tractor, which was the usual
type of small machine found on many
farms, performed 346 hours of work
at the draw-bar and 56 hours of work
in the belt. Using these figures as a
basis, the farm accountant figures
that it cost 86 cents an hour to op-
erate this tractor.
Different local conditions on farms
of various types might cause certain
variations in these figures, according
to the accountant, but they indicate
the approximate cost of operating a
tractor on the ordinary farm under
average conditions.
Club Members May Win Scholarship
Awards.
Two scholarghips for the short
course in agriculture held at The
Pennsylvania State College next win-
ter will be awarded to club members
who best meet the requirements stip-
ulated by the donors of the scholar-
ships.
The American Agriculturist, a farm
paper published in New York, offers
a $150 scholarship for dairy calf or
junior cow club work. This money
will cover all expenses including rail-
road fare for the eight week’s short
course in dairy husbandry given at
State College. Only boys between the
ages of 16 and 21 are eligible. The
quality of the work dene by the club
member, his attendance at club meet-
ings and local round-ups, ang a writ-
ten story of his year’s wonk will be
the points considered in awarding the
prize.
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
offers a $100 scholarship for the short
course to the boy of girl who does the
best work in any branch of club work.
Only residents of counties traversed
by the B. and O. road are eligible for
this competition.
Deer Destroy the Crops.
Wpon petition of 200 registered
hunters in Quincy and Washington
townships, Franklin county, an order
will be issued by the State Game De-
partment, permitting the killing of
100 does in those townships this sea-
son. The deer have accumulated so
rapidly that they have become destruc-
tive to fruit. trees and crops of that
section. Only those who take out 2
special license, issued by the State
ame warden, at a cost of $5 per li-
cense, will be permitted to kill does.
Any one else Killing them will come
under the game lays and will be ar-
rested and fined accordingly.
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next day. According to the report of
the company to the United States De-
partment of Agriculture, through the
weather bureau, all moths and mest of
the eggs were frozen, and the process
will not have to be repeated for at
least two years. Many dollars’ worth
of chemical insecticides which would
have been necessary for “gassing”
were saved.
Once More Extended.
It is certain that the limits of Lake
Arie and Lake Michigan were once
more extended than now. It is reason-
ably probable, say students of the
subject, that some of the territory now
drained by the Wabash and Illinois
rivers was once covered by the waters
of Lake Michigan. The cisco of Lake
Tippecanoe, Lake Geneva, and the
lakes of the Oconcmowoc chain is
evidently a modified descendant of the
so-called lake herring. Its origin most
likely dates from the time when these
small deep lakes of Indiana and Wis-
consin were connected with Lake Mich-
fgan. Several of the larger fishes,
properly characteristic of the Great
Lakes region, are occasionally taken
tn the Ohio river.
Confirmed Bachelor Shad.
The shad in the Farmington river ir
Connecticut are all bachelors, in the
opinion of the fish and game commis-
slon of that state. Effort has been
.made for some time to obtain shad
eggs for expegmental purposes, and
the constant report from one of the
best fishing grounds was that only buck
shad were obtainable. Then the super-
intendent of fisheries decided oto do
some fishing himself. He had a force
of men spread nets and when they
were drawn in, all the shad were
bucks. Once more the net was spread
and drawn in, this time with but little
more success, one female, or roe shad,
being caught.
Papyrus Tree of Ancient Egypt.
The tree frem which the ancient
Sgyptians obtained their papyrus
flourished in the lowlands along the
Nile river. It grew to a height of
gbout ten feet, and seems to have been
known only in Egypt. The paper ob-
tained from it was formed from a sort
of inner bark, which consisted of thin
sheets growing around the wood.
Various colored liq were used
for ink; these were u y black, but
sometimes red or green. A species of
lamp-black, or ivory-hlack. similar to
that used in painting th modern”times,
was employed to make the black ink
sometimes.
Eskimos Have Stmongest Teeth.
Less than two Eskimos out of 100
aavé any signs of tooth decay. Chew-
ing coarse frozen food keeps their
glands active and their teeth safe. One
of the domesti¢ duties of the women
is the chewing of thick walrus hide to
make it pliable enough for the men to
work it into shoe soles.
Today thé soft-cooked foods of the
civilized nations have allowed the
glands to slow down. As a consequence
08 people out of 100 have decayed
teeth.
' TRANSFUSE OWN BLOOD TO 2.
Eastern Physiclans Save the Lives of
Two Patients by Novel
Operations.
Lives of two patients who would
otherwise have succumbed from inter-
nal hemorrhage were saved by drain-
Ing off their own blood and reinject-
Ing it, in a rare operation, made at
the New Haven hospital, according to
a dispatch to the New York World.
One of the remarkable transfusion
operations was performed on a wom-
an by the staff in obstetrics. The other
was by the surgical staff, upon a man
apparently mortally injured in an au-
tomobile accident.
The woman, according to the an-
nouncement, suffered from a severe
abdominal hemorrhage from which
patients rarely recover. Quick work
was required by the obstetrical staff.
The hospital blood expert was sum-
moned the blood drawn from the ab-
dominal cavity, the wounded vessels
tied and the blood almost immediately
filtered and reinjected into the dying
woman's veins. The effect was almost
instantaneous,
An hour afterward the male vic-
tim of the automobile accident was
brought to the hospital in an ambu-
lance with a punctured liver, result-
ing in abdominal hemorrhage. An op-
eration was decided upon. The wound
in the liver was mended by the use of
rubber, a familiar operation.
The blood was then drawn from the
abdominal cavity and reinjected to the
man’s veins after filtration. In both
cases the citrate method was used,
that is, citrate was added to the blood
to prevent coagulation.
DISEASE TERRORS PASSING
Theory Advanced That Germ Specier
May Die Out as Did Mammoths
and Dinosaurs.
Is it not likely, speaking as a lay-
man and without medical erudition,
that germ species originate, grow to
maturity, then pass on to senility and
die out, like so many families of crea-
tures have done on this earth? The
last Methuselahs of certain’ diseases
may now be moving on to oblivion. Did
not the mammoths and the dinosaurs
rise, flourish and disappear? Then why
not the microscopic terrors that men-
ace mankind?
Yellow fever is passing beyond the
horizon. It is waving its.last saffron
farewell to us. Soon it will be history
only, its battles with humanity, its mas- |
sacres, as remote as those of Semiram- |
is or the Babylonian kings. Finding no
place to lay its fatal finger, it will give
up the ghost.
Typhoid, dislodged from its last
country well and villagegdrains, has be-
come a fugitive, pursued by health
boards who bombard it with serums |
and germicides. It is in full flight. It
cannot pause anywhere to organize
the smallest epidemic. The seed of it
will perish from the earth.
Why Worry.
“Serenity of mind is the most val
aable asset of the present age,” de-
clared Senator Lodge of Massachu- |
setts recently. “It is the only way to '
keep young, the only way to preserve |
health and, while we laugh at the
maid Sarah, we really should envy
her.
“Sarah had just resigned her posi-
tion to get married and when her
mistress learned that she was shortly
to go to Canada and make her home
there, she asked:
“‘But Sarah, aren't you rather
nervous about going Into a strange
country like that?”
“ ‘No, madam,’” answered the girl.
‘That’s my husband's lookout.” I be-,
long to him, and if anything happens
to me it'll be his loss, not mine,’ ”
Radio Wave Fourteen Miles Long.
Long wave lengths are used to cover
great distance, such as transatlantic
communication, chiefly because absorp-
tion of energy is much less on long
wave lengths than on short ones,
The big station near Bordeaux, France,
sets a wave of ether in vibration that
is 23,000 meters in length, or approxi-
mately fourteen miles from erest to
crest. When Broadcast Central on
Long Island flashes a message 4,000
miles across the sea to Germany, the
wave length used is about twelve miles
long. Station NSS at Annapolis, broad:
casting time signals from 8:55 to 4 a.
m. daily, has a wave length equiva-
lent to about ten and a half miles.
Poz, Nauen, Germany, radiates a wave
approximately eight miles long.
Save His Money.
An Irishman boarded a car the other
day, but after a word with the con.
ductor made for the door again.
An inspector who happened to be
on the car said to him: “Surely you
don't want to get off again so soon,
and besides, you haven't paid your
fare.”
“Of want to go to Southern street,”
said the Irishman, “an’ the conductor
says there ain't no such place.”
“Well, there isn't,” answered the in.
spector.
“Then, faith,
of going there,
One More Look.
On our return to the locker room a
Joung woman with one shoe and stock-
ing on was distractedly going from
locker to locker and finally appealed
to us.
“Has any one an extra stocking in
her locker?”
“Not in mine” we answered after
searching our lockers in turn.
- Imagine my embarrassment when I
found the missing stocking in my bag.
—Chicdgo Tribune.
¥ pwhat’'s the good
en?”
AEE RR,
MADE TRACK-LAYING RECORD
Perfectly Ballasted Road Built
Eighty-Seven Days for the Late
President Harding.
At Cedar City, Utah, on July 9, 1922,
President Carl H. Gray of the Union
Peacific Railroad company, with a broad
vision and sturdy courage, decided to
construct a 35-mile branch line from
Lund to Cedar City as the first impor-
tant step in opening a new scenic won-
gerland to the world.
April 2 the first earth was moved in
making grade; 70 days after, the first
locomotive rolled into Cedar City over
a new, uneven, unballasted almost tem-
porary track, says the Salt Lake City
Tribune.
Seventeen days later, there came to
Cedar City upon a wel trimmed,
neatly aligned, full rock-ballasted
railroad of main line type the
greatest train in all America—the
special carrying the President of the
United States and his Alaskan party.
It was the completion of this railway
branch in 87 days, to the very top
limit of a safe, smooth, solidly bal-
lasted track, prior to the President's
avrival in the West, that made his visit
to Zion National park possible. All
Utah recognizes this fact, and its citi-
sens extend this public appreciation to
President Gray, his most able and effi-
cient staff of officers, engineers and
construction men, whose loyalty and
untiring energy, compressed within an
unheard-of time limit, produced an ale
most magica’ accomplishment in the
history of railroad construction.
USEFUL AS SOIL RENOVATOR
Importance of the Peanut as Article of
Commercial Value Is Now Very
Generally Recognized.
Peanuts are becoming more popular
fn this country. They mostly come
from the East. Some very good Chi-
nese, in shell, or kernels, are now on
the market. America has recognized
the importance of the peanut, some-
times called the “monkeynut” here, as
an article of great commercial value.
No less than one hundred varieties of
peanut products were on exhibition last
year at Washington, including several
forms of stock foods, milk, flour, meal,
oils, sauces and relishes, flavorings,
confections, and other forms of food,
in addition to which there were face
cream and powder, ink, and wood stain.
The area under peanut culture in
“America 1s over 2,000,000 acres, and
millions. of gallons of oil are expressed
from the nuts. Australia has very
suitable areas for production, and is
taking up the question of the com-
mercial value of peanut culture.
Hitherto Australia has imported con-
siderable quantities from China and
Japan, using the nuts chiefly, as we
de, for confectionery and roasting, but
is setting out to produce oil. The cul-
ture is very useful as a renovator of
the soil. The whole piant is harvested
and stacked, and when the nuts are
removed the vines constitute a capital
fodder for stock.
Early Uhited States Currency.
Latvl. proposes to replace the old
ruble by a metallic coin called the lat.
Lithuania Is going to have a new unit
of currency called the lith. These de-
velopments should be of interest to a
country which early in its history
found itself under a similar necessity.
Although the Conginental congress had
passed resolutions and ordinances in
favor of a decimal system of coinage,
the new government came into exist.
ence in 1789 with nothing more than g
small amount of copper coins as a
sign of its financial independence.
How far we were from supplying our
own needs in this respect is shown
vividly enough by the fact that duties
were made payable in the gold coins
of England, France, Spain, Portugal,
or in any other gold coins of equal
fineness. Not until 1791 was the sub-
ject presented to congress. In that
year Hamilton proposed the dollar as
the unit. r
Sterling Pioneers.
Nova Scotia has just celebrated the
arrival 150 years ago of its pilgrim
“Mayflower” in the form of the ship
Hector, the pilgrims voyaging to what
are now known as the maritime prov-
fnces from the islands of Scotland.
British and American warships shared
in the ceremony, and events were en-
acted by living descendants of Scot-
tish pioneers. The monument has been
unveiled in the market place of Pic-
tou, the town founded by the pioneers
on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, whence
they spread throughout Nova Scotia.
The Hector brought over about 200
souls. This marked the beginning of
Scottish immigration to Nova Scotia
and Canada.
Anchor Cable Nearly Century Old.
An interesting find hus been made
m the bay at Port Elizabeth by the
tug Talana. She tas dragging for the
anchor and cable of the mail steamer
Norman, which had been obliged ta
slip her cable owing to the fouling of
the anchor. A cable was encountered
and brought to the surface, but it was
clearly rot a modern chain. It was.90
fathoms in length, and each indiv@lual
link was stamp®d with the date “1824”
—clearly a relic of the days of the
early settlers.—Montreal Family Her-
ald.
————
Through Air Mail.
Jt is asserted that a through ah
mail service between New York and
San Francisco will soon he started.
The planes will fly by night between
Chieago and Cheyenne. Beacons will
be seen fifty miles, and emergency
flélds ‘will be lighted every twenty-five
miles over the prairie,