Newspaper Page Text
THE ATLANTA SEMI-WEEKLY JOURNAL, ATLANTA, GA., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1913.
THE SEMI-WEEKLY JOURNAL
ATLANTA, QA., 6 NORTH FORSYTH ST.
Entered at the Atlanta Postoffice as Mall Matter of
the Second Class.
JAMES R. GRAY,
President and Editor.
SUBSCRIPTION PRICE
Twelve montha *
Six months 40c
Three months 2Rc
The Semi-Weekly Journal Is published on Tuesday
and Friday, and is mailed by the shortest route* for
early delivery.
It contains news from all over the world, brought
by special leased wires into our office. It has a staff
of distinguished contributors, with strong department*
of special value to the home and the farm.
Agents wanted i:t every postoffice. Liberal com
mission allowed. Outfit free. ,Write R. R. BRAD
LEY. Circulation Manager.
The only traveling representatives we have are
J. A. Bryan. R. F. Bolton. C. C. Coyle. L. H. Kim
brough and’ C. T. Yates. We will be responsible only
for money paid to the above named traveling repre
sentatives.
NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
The label used for addressing your paper
shows the time your subscription expires. By
renewing at least two weeks before the date on
this label, you insure regular service.
In ordering paper changed, be sure to mention
your old, as well as your new address. If on a
route please give the route number.
We cannot enter subscriptions to begin with
back numbers. Remittances should be sent by
postal order or registered mail.
Address all orders and notices for this de
partment to THE SEMI-WEEKLY JOURNAL,
Atlanta, G*.
The Convention of Vital
Importance to the South.
The fifth annual meeting of the Southern Commer
cial Congress which is to be held at Mobile, Ala.,
from October the twenty-sevent. to the thirtieth will
be the most important and the most interesting event
in the history of that useful organization. In former
conventions the Congress has stressed the need and
thd opportunity of developing the South’s material re
sources, its soil and forests and streams and mines,
' and of upbuilding its educational interests. In the
forthcoming convention particular emphasis will be
given to the question of practical means for utilizing
'the trade advantages soon to be offered the South by
the opening of the Panama canal.
Other subjects of current interest will be dis
cussed. President Wilson will deliver an address
on rural credits and several members of his cabinet
will speak. The American Commission of Agricul
tural Co-operation, which spent several months this
year in Europe studying farm methods and partic
ularly farm economics, will make a report. The mat
ter of chief consideration, however, and about which
other topics will be,grouped, is the relationship of
the great canal to Southern industry and commerce.
The Congress will thus have a definite bearing
upon the one great practical issue in which every
State and every city of the South are now peculiarly
concerned. From its deliberations there will doubt
less evolve some adequate plan under .which all parts
and all interests if this section can co-operate for
their common advantage in the new commercial era
that is at hand. It need scarcely be added that every
Southern city should be well represented at the Mo
bile convention and also in the subsequent trade expe
dition to Latin American countries which will be con
ducted under the auspices of the Congress. The
South must prepare for the opening of the canal, if it
is.duly to enjoy its share of opportunity; and the
Congress offers direct means for united, effective
preparation.
Ex-President Taft hasn’t reduced* his weight so
much that he can’t give a lusty Yale yell.
!
In Colonel Roosevelt the South Americans will
find a man who likes the idea of a revolution.
The Three Candidates in Mexico.
The voters of Mexico will have at least a variety
of candidates to choose from in their forthcoming
presidential election. Frederico Gamboa, the nominee
of the Catholic party, is seasoned in statecraft and di
plomacy, a man of honorable record, of unquestioned
- ability and singularly free from the old factional
intrigues. Manuel Calero, head of the Liberal ticket,
is said to be in high favor among the followers of
former President Madero, though lacking the support
of the army. His party holds a large majority in the
Chamber of Deputies and is distinctly progressive in
its temper. The third candidate is Felix Diaz, a
nephew of the famojjp dictator whose return to Mexico
has lately been rumored. Diaz is nominally the stand
ard bearer of a so-called Labor party but it seems
doubtful that he represents more than personal am
bition. His role in the betrayal and death of Madero
was anything but admirable. He is implacably hated
by the friends of the former president and by Liber
als at large.
Students of the political situation in Mexico think
that the contest lies between Gamboa and Calero, with
the balance of advantage slightly in favor of the
former. Gamboa is backed by a well systematized
and well financed organization. He has the tacit ap
proval, or rather he has not the disapproval, of Pro
visional President Huerta. Calero, however, enjoys
considerable popularity among the rank and file of
citizens, particularly among those who resent Hu
erta’s usurpation.
Oae significant fact, so far as the United States
is concerned, is that Huerta will not he a candidate.
He has realized the folly of attempting to maintain
a regime that is distasteful, if not abhorent, to this
Government. His elimination attests, the force of the
Wilson policy and presages happier relationships be
tween the neighboring republics; we may hope, too,
that it bodes better times for Mexico.
Carrying Education to the Farmer.
Everyone interested in the improvement of farm
methods and the increased production of food wel
comes the announcement of Senator Hoke Smith’s de
termined purpose to secure the earliest possible pas
sage of the agricultural extension bill. This measure
has been truly described as one of the most valuable
pieces of constructive legislation that has been before
Congress in the past fifty years. It provides ample
means for ea/rying directly to the farmers of every
State and every county those educational advantages
whic.i are now limited, for the most part, to students
at agricultural colleges; its aim Is to put into prac
tical dally use the wealth of scientific knowledge that
has been garnered through long years of professional
study and research, but which is now available to
comparatively few.
The pending bill’provides among other things for a
fixed appropriation from the federal treasury of ten
thousand dollars a year to every State and further for
conditional appropriations, beginning with three hun
dred thousand dollars a 'year, to be appropriated
among the various States on a basis of rural popula
tion, this latter fund to increase annually by the sum
of three hundred thousand dollars until a maximum
of three million dollars is reaches. In order to re
ceive its share of the larger appropriation, each
State must contribute to the same purpose an amount
equal to that offered it by the federal government.
These funds will be spent in each instance through
the State College of Agriculture. It is required that
“at least seventy-five per cent of the money be used
for actual field demonstrations; of the remainder,
twenty per cent may he used either for household
economics or for further demonstration work.”
Tjie enactment of such a bill would put into oper
ation educational forces that would advance the ag
ricultural Interests of this country beyond reckon
ing. It has been said that if half the present store
of knowledge concerning the soil and its cultivation
were turned to definite account, it would soon revo
lutionize our system of farming and add incompar
ably to the nation’s wealth. The great problem is to
utilize what has already been learned, to give the
rank and file of farmers the country over the imme
diate advantage of scientific data and businesslike
methods in their workaday tasks; and the surest,
the speediest means of doing this is through a plan
of regular demonstration conducted in each agricul
tural county. President Wilson stressed the need of
such an enterprise when he said:
“The farmer has not been served as he might
and should be. We have set up and liberally
supported agricultural schools, horticultural
schools, schools of poultry raising and others,
and they have done excellent work. Our support
' of them should be hearty and generous; but a
more effective way still has been found by which
the farmer can be served. Lectures and experi
mental farms attached to schools are, like labor-
■ atories, excellent but they do not and cannot of
themselves push their work home. The thing
that tells is demonstration work. The knowl
edge of the schools should be carried out to the
farmers themselves. When the farmer does fully
take science Into partnership and becomes his
own master and fortune builder, the day will, be
gone for once and for all when he can be taxed
and ignored.”
The farArs’ interests In this regard are the com
mon interests of the entire American people. Most
problems, in their final analysis, are problems of the
soil. The pressure of the high cost of living has
arisen largely from the / fact that the production of
food has not kept >ace with the increase in popula
tion. When the government of the United States
turns its intelligence and resources to the develop
ment of a truly scientific system of national agricul
ture, as the leading governments of Europe have,
many difficulties and dangers that are now alarm
ing will melt away.
The agricultural extension, to which Senator
Smith is devoting particular effort, will mark an im
portant stride In that direction. It is one of several
kindred measures now before Congress, all of which
are meritorious and which should be passed. But
the need of adequate farm demonstration work,
adapted to the peculiar problems and opportunities
of each county, is so urgent that it should be sup
plied without delay. There is good reason to hope
that when the currency bill, which now overshadows
all other legislative work, lb disposed of, Congress
will act promptly and favorably on the agricultural
extension measure. To do so will he a distinctive
credit to the Democratic party and an inestimable
boon to the nation.
OU^TRY
The Superlative Bacilius
BY DB. PRANK CRANK.
(Copyright, 1913, by Frank Crane.
It’s easy for a bride to imagine her husband is
a saint—until she gets acquainted with some of his
fool friends.
No matter how much men rail at marriage, some
of them are just a litle bit envious of the late Mr.
Solomon.
Don’t Walk On Railroad.
The loss of fourteen lives in a wreck would loom
forth as a national horror; yet, statistics show that
there is an average of fourteen deaths every day
caused by the dangerous custom of walking on rail
road tracks or otherwise trespassing on such prop
erty. It is estimated, indeed, that in this manner
occur more than half the fatalities incident to rail
roads in the United States; and the majority of the
persons thus killed are not tramps but children and
valued citizens.
The time has come when the public should take
serious note of this record with-its grim warning to
all who are accustomed to use railroad tracks as a
common highway. The transportation companies are
exerting themselves to end this peril and the Inter
state Commerce Commission has spoken to the same
purpose. After all, however, it is upon the individ
ual that responsibility must rest; it is popular sen
timent and popular judgment that must correct this
evil. Five thousand lives a year is a terrible sacrifice
to carelessness. It can be reduced and prevented only
through individual recognition of the great risk in
walking on a railroad track.
This matter should now be of peculiar concern
to the South where railway traffic is fast increasing.
In Georgia and neighbor States many more trains are
in operation today than ten, or even five years ago
and their number is continually multiplying. The
danger to pedestrians who venture on the tracks is
accordingly more and more serious. It is far better
to stick to the muddiest highway or the roughest
woodland path than to take the deadly chance of
following a railroad track simply because the latter
affords easier walking.
Much emphasis is now laid on the need of greater
caution in the traffic of crowded cities but it is
scarcely less Important to remember that in rural
districts and in the open country there lies a con
stant jeopardy of life to everyone who walks on a
railroad track.
After a man has loafed around a while waitinf for
his ship to come in he is willing to compromise on a
schooner.
Ayp TlNHlLJ
OME T0PIC5
CONPOCTED BrjOHS-imytUOA
NEW SUBSCRIBERS ASK FOR CONSUMPTION CURE
I have published Dr. Hoff’s cure several times, but
when several new subscribers to The Semi-Weekly
Journal beg for it and appear to be in sore need of a
consumption remedy, I cannot refuse another publica
tion. I do know that old subscribers cut it out and
save it. It will be well for the readers of The Jour
nal to clip this reprint and preserve it. Hardly a week
passes that I am jiot requested to send the cure.
A CURE FOR CONSUMPTION.
The distinguished Dr. Hoff, of Vienna, has made
public a remedy for consumption. It is the result of
years of practical investigation and is fortified by his
experience in the treatment of the disease according to
the formula he has recently proclaimed. We here
give this formula, or prescription, as he has communi
cated it to the world through the medium of the Cen
tral News Agency:
“Acid, arsenic, 1; kal, carbon, dep., 3: aqua cinna-
mylic, 3; aqua destill, 5; coque usque ad perfectam so-
lutionem; deinde adde cognac, 2.5; extralaudan, aqua,
3; quod in aqua destill, 2.5; solution ^et deinde filtra-
tum friiit.”
Converted into plain English the formula runs as
follows:
“Arsenic acid 1 part, carbonate of potash 2 parts,
cinnamyllic acid 3 parts, aqjl distilled water 5 parts;
heat until a perfect solution is obtained, then add -
parts of cognac and G parts of watery extract of opium
which has been dissolved in 25 parts of water and
filtered.”
And next comes Dr. Hoff’s statements and speci
fications:
"Dr. Hoff’s directions are: At first take six
drops after dinner and supper, gradually increasing to
22 drops.’
“He states that he has tried the remedy on 200 pa
tients from the lowest classes, who had been long un
der observation.
“Mild cases wer e quickly cured, and partial cures
were soon brought about in several cases. The appe
tite and weight were increased steadily, the fever
lowered, night sweats, insomnia, and asthmatic symp
toms lessened, cough decreased, and rattles stopped.
The patients are asked only to keep the kidneys in
order.
“The duration of the treatment depends upon the
condition of the patient. Mild cases are cured in two
months, but the more severe require a year or two.
“Dr. Hoff says he does not claim for the solution
the power'of a magic wand, which cures at touch, but
he can state this—that one of his patients had cavities
in the lungs big enough to put one’s fist into, yet he
was cured in about two years. It is absolutely neces
sary that the solution should be taken after eating,
when the stomach is full.
“The treatment must not be forced by increasing the
doses. As long as tile patient shows signs of improve
ment the dose should not be increased. It is some
times beneficial to reduce the dose.”
Evidently, Dr. Hoff is not a quack with a nostrum
to sell or a prophylactic to exploit. H e is a professor
of medicine, recognized as high authority in medical
circles. I am glad always to oblige Journal readers.
MRS* FELTON.
HOW STEEL FENS ARE MADE.
There are more than 200,000,000 of steel pens made
and used in the United States annually, if statistics
are reliable. Twenty years ago this computation gave
twelve pens to each man, woman and child in Great
Britain. Notwithstanding the invention of the type
writing machine and fountain pens, the sale of steel
pens shows a steady increase. Even the operator of
typewriters is obliged to scribble, and children con
tinue to graduate in greater numbers every year.
Steel pens were first introduced into this country
in 1832, more than eighty years ago. They were not
popular at first and the Bank of England continued to
use quill pens for fifty years afterwards.
In 1836 the great fire in New York consumed more
than a million goose quills, and then steel pens be
came more popular. There is great variety in steel
pens, and I find some pens write much more easily
and legibly for me than others.
Although a pen is so small a thing and apparently
so simple to make, it takes at least ten days to execute
a firstclass steel pen, according to scientific reports
on the manufacture of pens.
This is mainly due to the frequent heatings and
polishings. Pens can be made out of eight metals—
steel, brass, copper, gold, silver, platinum, amalgum
and aluminum. Aluminum pens are a considerable nov
elty and are said to be durable.
In my long experience I remember that all early
school teachers were supposed to be expert pen mak
ers in my childhood. We children carried goose
quills from home and the teacher cut the pens,
was a delicate task because it was easy to spoil a
quill, and I can well remember the sorry things that I
had to use in my early efforts at penmanship. The
teacher was in the habit of sticking his own pen
above his ear, just as lead pencils very often appear
nowadays. Steel pens were a # welcome Introduction,
and a good gold pen was worth having.
A CAUTION TO TOBACCO USERS.
Mrs. W. H. Felton, Cartersville, Ga.
Respected Madam:—Allow me to beg of you to
write a few articles to the press of Georgia on the
evils of tobacco and all its constituent parts. When
people were more honest and the gjreed for money
making was not so great, The growers and producers
of tobacco for commercial trade used labor to remove
insects and woyns from * 1 * * * * * * * 9 the tobacco from plants to
maturity. Now they are using thousands of tons of
crude arsenic as insecticides to rid the growing crops
of such insects as above stated.
Arsenic in its crude state such as Paris green, Lon
don purple, death dust, etc., are all mineral poisons
that are not soluble in water or the elements; hence,
it is largely taken up by the rough leaf, tobacco stalks
and plants, and is thereby sold to the tobacco manu
facturers of this county, thereby giving to all con
sumers a de'adly poison, causing mouth and throat
diseases of all kinds.
Tobacco and snuff is the curse of many common
people, especially factory and shop girls and boys of
all ages. The habit of using snuff has become so
great that it is often eaten and swallowed for its ex-
hilirating effects, and when impregnated with crude
arsenic from the stalks and stems of tobacco, of which
all tobacco snuffs are made, its use is conducive to
vice and prostitution withxboth the old and the young
of all ages. The use of snuff and the cheaper grades
of tobacco is the prime cause of more vice * in the
southern states than all the white slave traffic of
the union. Crude arsenic has only been used as an in
secticide within the last few years; hence, the grow
ing vices of the common people is largely on the i-
crease. Crude arsenic is being used on various vege
tables as an insecticide; hence, the much dreaded cab
bage snake.
It is to be hoped that vour pen, always in the in
terest of our people and social system, will influence
some of our legislators to remedy the great evil.
By putting all tobacco products under the control
of the pure food and drugs laws of the United States
1 and at the same time the use of crude arsenic on to
bacco and vegetable products should be prohibited.
In the interest of the young girls afid boys addicted
to the use of tobaccos in all their forms, I trust that
you will write a few articles on the foregoing sub
ject that will, in a measure, have the effect of de
stroying the evil that is dragging and driving many
into vice and prostitution beyond conception.
I am, dear madam, most respectfully
WILLIAM C. R.
A CHEERFUL LETTER.
Tennille, Go., Oct. 1, 1913-
Dear Mrs. Felton—J always read with interest every
thing you write for The Journal. If I have only time
to read one thing it is sure to be what “Sister Felton”
has to say.
If our young people would only - hoed your wise
Max Nordau is after a new microbe- He calls it
“superlativism.” I clip from a Dayton, Ohio, paper:
“There are two kinds of people who have a ten
dency to this language of excess,” says Dr. Nordau.
“They are either madmen or charlatans. And while
it is only in extreme cases that the tendency gets be
yond control, thousands of people go about every day
in the incipient stages of this malady.”
Thousands is a poor guess. In this country alone
we have steen thousands of girls in high schools,
boarding schools, finishing schools, and business
schools. Almost without exception they have been
bitten by the superlative mosquito and show a con
stant high fever of overstatement.
Maine says she has “waited hours” for you (exact
time eight minutes), that she was sur.e (fancied, possi
bly) that you had been run over by an automobile,
that she is simply starving (mildly hungry), and that
she is as tired as two dogs (tired as one impatient
little lady).
In any given clump of school girls two-thirds of
them in seventeen minutes by th e watch will declare
that upon such and such an occasion they “simply
died,” or that upon certain supposed contingencies
they would “surely die.”
“Simply dying” seems common among young ladies
of Hie ginger beer age.
The bacillus superlativus, however, is not confined
to “backfish,” as the Germans call girls in their en
thusiastic teens. We all have it.
Did you ever hear a professional singer talk about
herself or himself? (No, not you, Josephine, nor any
of those present. I mean others.)
Did you ever hear a traveling man tell of his sales?
Did you ever listen to the siren song of the poet
who is describing to you the new 1914 Spoopendike he
wants to sell you?
Have you hearkened unto the lay of the candidal
for political office and have you read the glorious plat-
* forms of the various parties?
Have you heard the lover moaning forth whoppers
into his mistress’ ear?
Hav^g you heard a mother tell of the precocities of
her darlings?
Have you seen the railway booklet describing the
charms of Lake Wayback and the delights of travel
over the B^ U. M. and P. road?
We all do it. But Nordau is wrong. Superlativism
is not a disease. It is a sign of surplus steam.
There is one thing more boresome than to be with
the person who always exaggerates—it is to be with
the person who always states things with distressing
precision. Far deadlier than the bacillus superlativus
is the bacillus statisticus.
THE SMILE GIVER
Some envy you your millions, some envy you your
fame,
Some envy y<ou the buildings great on which is carved
your name;
Some envy you your luxuries and some your great
- success,
And some the force for doing things which you today
possess.
But I—I saw a young man gaze at you as you passed
by
And O, I envy you the look that lit that youthful &ye.
S
I do not envy you your chance to give in large amounts
When all is said and done it’s not the size of gifts that
counts
I do not envy you because you own this building fine.
I might not be a better man today if this were mine.
But did a young man look at me in such a grateful way
As I have seen one look at you, I’d happier be today.
I do not envy you your wealth, I might gain that and
more
And still not have one single friend come smiling to
my door;
A man might climb the topmost heights of fame and
stand apart
The cleverest one of all the age—and be a cad at heart.
I envy no man’s skill, but Oh, I’ll say to you tonight
I envy you the grateful look that made that boy’s eyes
light.
I envy you his smiling face, his kindly thoughts of you.
I envy you the splendid deeds that some day he will do;
For in his eyes, I read of you, not sordid gifts of gold
For which, so oft, the taker finds his manhood he has
sold *
But kindness in a larger sense, above all place and
pelf.
I envy you the chance you gave that youth to help
'' himself.
Dedicated to C. W. Post by “A Pal.”
counsel what a chanjge for good it would bring about.
But, alas, they heed not, till sometimes it is too date.
But I hope you may never cease the good work of
your mighty pen till God shall call you up higher
where you will then get your just reward kept for His
faithful servants for “well done.”
I’ve only once had the pleasure of looking into your
sweet face and that when you lectured in Milledgeville,
Ga., then my home. But I have kept in delightful
touch with you by your writings.
I read in The Journal September 26 a letter written
to you from “T. J. H.,” of Baldwin county. If you
don’t mind and have that right will you please give
me the name in full with the address? I, like you,
want one of those large gourds or some of the seed.
1 am not 100 years old, but I love old people, and old-
time things, especially the old-time flowers and the
gourd. I raise some every year and have them put up
for the martins to build in, as I enjoy their cheerful
chatter, and besides, they scare off the hawks which
would otherwise trouble my young chicks in the
spring. I live on the farm, but I try to have my
home and its surroundings as cheerful looking and as
attractive as the town homes nearby. But I want
country things; hence, my desire for gourds, etc.
Hoping that God may spare your useful life many
more years and that your last days may be your best
days, I am One of your many lovers,
MRS. J. R. D.
NOTE.—The name and address you desire is: Dr.
T. J. Howard, Merriwether Postoffice, Baldwin county,
Georgia.
THE SHADOW ON THE ROYAL THRONE.
The story that comes from Spain, where two of the
children of the king and queen of that country are dis
covered to be deaf and dumb, is truly sad in its indi
cations and misfortunes. Children who do not hear
9
—are mutes. It is an object lesson for ambition and
pride of place.
Queen Victoria was an ambitious mother and
grandmother, and her granddaughter and namesake,
the child of her favorite Beatrice, was proffered to the
boy king Alfonso because she might thus be called a
queen.
Questions of state and the urgings of personal am
bition contributed to the match.
There are children in plenty, but the blight on their
lives seems to be something, tragic. Of the ®ix already
here, one-third are deaf mutes. The oldest, puny from
birth, soon sickened and died.
The young mother narrowly escaped a bomb and
assassination before she was a week-old bride, and
more than once has Alfonsb been shot at in an attempt
to kill him in the streets of Madrid.
The mother is said to be devoted to them, and the
father, himself a posthumous child, has developed won
derfully in many clever ways despite The fact that his
Austrian mother married his father to be able to call
herself queen of Spain- He was a sickly child and
undersized, but contrived to live to manhood and as
sume royal prerogatives. Had he been a dwarf he
would have been a marriageable catch, but this heavy
blight of deafness and dumbness has descended upon
the children. Their parents would gladly pay out
great sums of money to remove this blight.
The child of the poorest workingman in Spain who
has been born with speech and hearing has no reason
to envy these stricken infants of royal birth.
CROP FAILURES
III.— GREAT FAMINES OF HISTORY.
BY FRFDFRIC J. BASKIN.
The record of terrible seasons of hunger begins
early in the world’s history, and the terrific toll fam
ine has taken of human life can only be approxi
mated. Some famines were due to drouths, some to
deluges, a few to war, and some to isolation, any of
them could never occur under present methods of com
munication and transportation, and it seems certain
that the widespread distress and the great death lists
of the past can never recur. No land was exempt from
them in the first fifty centuries of human history.
...
The nineteenth century, especially the first eight
decades of it, probably showed a greater death list
from famines than any other two centuries together.
It was during this century that the Irish potato fam
ines started the tides of Irish immigration toward
American shores, and demonstrated that truly it is an
ill wind that blows .no good. And it was also during
this century that India and China had the worst vis
itations in all their history.
/ • • •
The Bible frequently speak o' famines in Palestine
and its neighboring countries, and the seven lean years
of Biblical Egyptian history are said to have begun in
1708 B. C. There is evidence pointing to the fact that
this period of starvation extended also over the whole
of Palestine. From that time to the end of the nine
teenth century there were nearly 400 famines exten
sive enough to be listed in the literature of hungry
people.
...
Rome, early in its history, felt the pangs of hun
ger. In 436 B. C. there was a famine so sore in the
Eternal City that thousands threw themselves into the
Tiber to escape the pangs of starxy *ion. In 192 A. D.
Ireland was the scene of so great a famine that “lands
and houses, territories and tribes wer-s emptied."
Thousands left their native Erin, and this is said to
be the first time in history where a great wave of
emigration was forced upon a people by crop failures.
A century later England suffered the same sort of a
visitation, and the people are said to have become so
famished that they gnawed the bark from trees like
rabbits. Within a generation another famine overtook
England, and it is said 40,000 people starved.
• • •
In 331 A. D. Antioch was visited by a famine so
serious that a bushel of wheat brought 300 pieces of
silver, and a hundred years later Italy was the scene
of a scarcity of food so great that unany parents ate
their children. In the years immediately preceding
700, England and Ireland suffered a fate as terrible as
that of Italy, and Scotland and Ireland in turn suf
fered a like fate, while at another time the r~ouhd of
Wales was "covered with dead bodies of men and
beasts,” starved to death.
• • •
The seven years of the lean kine of Egyptian his
tory told about in the Biblical stoi c Joseph, find a
counterpart in the famine of Egypt in 1064, A. D.,
when the overflow of the Nile failed for seven years
to put in its annual appearance. Two provinces were
entirely depopulated, and half of the people of several
other provinces were carried away by death or emigra
tion. Bread went so high that only the very rich
could afford it. The poor resorted to cannibalism aft
er the supply of rats and other vermin was exhausted.
People on the streets were kidnaped by men dropping
down huge fish hooks attached to ropes from windows,
and catching them under the chin or by the clothing.
• • •
In 1262 England was the victim of a' drouth in
which no rain fell from Whitsuntide to autumn, arqi
the prices of foodstuffs rose to unprecedented heights.
O.-.ly six years later the country was again stricken,
this time as a result of cold north winds in the grow
ing season. Many thousands starved, and fifty ship
loads of foodstuffs were procured from Germany. Cit
izens of London were prohibited from dealing in this
food, in order to prevent any one from taking advantage
of the extremities of the people, in spite of the leg-)
iElative efforts that were made to hold down the pries
of food, wheat sold for more than *6 a bushel as long
as- there was any-to sell anfi in the end, some 20.000
people starved to death In London* alone.
• • a . »
iti
One of the longest famine® in the history of the;
race was during the last part of the thirteenth cen
tury, when, for twenty years together there was an
unbroken chain of crop failures, of prices that were all
but prohibitive to the poor, and of hunger throughout
the length and breadth of England. Parliament,, at
the end of this lean era, passed a law regulating
prices, and a royal proclamation was made forbidding
the manufacture of beer.
• • •
In 1321 England had what is regarded by most au
thorities as the last of its serious famines. But this
was the beginning of a series of great crop shortages
in Ireland. In 1332 wheat sold for $10 a bushel there.
A half century later there was a famine of three
years in England, which was attributed to the hoard
ing of corn. The mayor and citizens of London took
out of the orphans’ chest in their guild hall money to
buy corn and other foods beyond its seas, and pro
vision was made whereby the government sold food
to the poor at appointed prices, where they were able
to pay for it, and took notes payable several years
hence, where they were not able to pay cash.
The English Poor Law dates from 1686 when Queen
Elizabeth "observing the general dearth of corn ami
other foods, resulting partially from drouth but prin
cipally from the greediness of the corn masters, issued
a proclamation requiring government reliet .
tended by the justices of the peace to ...e poor of
their communities.”
. . .
One of the frequent complaints in England was
t- i too much grain produced there was -'■id abroad.
Penketham says that, in 1796, "some apprentices find
other young people about the city of London, being
pinched of their victuals more than they had been
accustomed, took butter from the market folks, paying
but 3 pence a pound when the owners could not af
ford to sell It under 5 pen le* x pound; for which dis
order the said young men were punished on the 27th
of June, by whippb.g, the pillory and long imprison
ment.” It was about this time that England became
very severe on all people who gave short weight, or
otherwise took advantage of the buyers of food.
• • m
There were numerous famines in the seventeenth
century, beginning with one in Russia, in which a half
million people died. Wars caused famines in Ireland
and in India during; this century. In 1796 occurred
the first of the great famines of India of which*we
have record. It is estimated th»* 3,000,000 people
died during this famine, and the chronologers of the
period say that the air was so infected by the odors
of decaying bodies that it was scarcely possible to
go abroad without perceiving it and without hearing,
also, the frantic cries of the victims of the famine
who were seen at every stage of sufferir - and death.
V» hen the new crop came forward in August in many
ses it had no owners.
• * •
With the rapid growth of population during the
nineteenth century and the slow development of trans
portation facilities, there were demands for fo$d that
could not be met. India and Ireland were the worst
sufferers. Ireland’s first great potato famine oc
curred in 1822, and was repeated at intervals up to
1846. During the latter year it was supposed that a
quarter of a million people died. Parlikment advanced
nearly $50,000,000 *or protecting the masses from star
vation. More than a million Irish left for America to
escape the starvation and the pestilence which fol
lowed. That was the last of the great famines of Ire
land.
Editorials in Brief
Or^e pretty girl will inspire more feminine envy
than a dozen clever ones.
* • •
How happy the average married man would be If
he were only half as well satisfied with his wlffe as he
is • ith himself!
r
/