THE SAFETY OF RAILWAY TRAVEL. 



Last year on American railways one 

 passenger was killed in accidents out of 

 every 2,827,474 passengers carried. That 

 is to say, that you can take a train 2,827,- 

 474 times before, on the law of averages, 

 your turn comes to be killed. You will 

 have to travel 72,093,963 miles on the cars 

 before that turn comes, and 4,541,945 miles 

 before you are injured. If you travel 20 

 miles every day for 300 days in the year, 

 you can keep on at it for 758 years before 

 your turn comes to be hurt. If there had 

 been railways when our Savior was born 

 and you had begun to travel on the first 

 day of the year A. D. 1, and had traveled 

 100 miles in every day of every month of 

 every year since then, you would still have 

 (in this year 1898) nearly three million 

 miles yet to travel before your turn came 

 to be killed. 



The Hon. Frank A. Vanderlip, Assist- 

 ant Secretary of the Treasury, will have 

 in McClure's Magazine for October an ar- 

 ticle on the "Cost of the War." There 

 has been a great deal of speculation and 

 talk on this subject by people who were 

 in no position to come at the facts; but 

 Mr. Vanderlip must have them all right 

 under his hand, and his article, therefore, 

 cannot fail to be read with eager interest. 



Mark Twain is the next famous person 

 to be "anecdotalized" by The Ladies' 

 Home Journal, and the Humorist's closest 

 friends have sent to the magazine for its 

 next number some twenty odd stories 

 about him, none of which have ever been 

 printed. They are, of course, of the droll 

 sort, but not more funny than the "snap- 

 shot" pictures of Mark which his friends 

 have also loaned the magazine. These, 

 too, have never been printed. 



Mr. Davis handles the Satiago campaign 

 without gloves in his article on "The Bat- 

 tle of San Juan," in the October Scribner's. 

 He says, regarding the part played by Gen- 

 eral Shafter: "The unthinking answer 

 which is invariably made to every criti- 



cism on General Shafter is that, after all. 

 he was justified in the end, for he did suc- 

 ceed; he was sent to Cuba to take Santi- 

 ago, and he took Santiago. He did not 

 take Santiago. His troops, without the 

 aid they should have received from him of 

 proper reconaissance and sufficient artill- 

 ery, devotedly sacrificed themselves and 

 took the hills above Santiago with their 

 bare hands, and it was Admiral Cervera 

 who, in withdrawing his guns which cov- 

 ered the city, made a present of it to the 

 American army." 



The plan to make the Columbia and 

 Snake rivers navigable to the sea has been 

 proposed and is enthusiastically endorsed 

 by many western people. Mr. Noltner, an 

 Oregon editor says: "It is a matter of the 

 utmost importance, and no man should be 

 elected to either branch of congress who 

 is not openly and enthusiastically in favor 

 of this improvement. It is the regulating- 

 power of inland transportation, and is de- 

 manded in the interest of all classes of 

 producers." 



One of the newspapers, in commenting 

 upon the assassination of the Empress of 

 Austria, remarked that "only a crazy 

 anarchist could see how the stabbing of a 

 woman could benefit the common people. 



Reports from Elk City, Io., near the Bear 

 Ridge mining town, state that a miner 

 has made a valuable acquisition. It is a 

 free milling proposition and runs from $50 

 to $500 to the ton. Work on the claim will 

 be pushed during the fall and winter. Elk 

 City is coming to the front as a mining 

 section. 



We wish to call attention to the ad. of 

 B. F. Shuart, which 'appears on another 

 page of this issue. Mr. Shuart deals in 

 the Shuart Earth Grader, a machine that 

 is invaluable to orchardists, alfalfa grow- 

 ers and irrigators in general. See ad. on 

 another page. 



We wish to state, to prevent any misun- 

 derstanding, that the work on "Mystery 

 and Mastery of Irrigation," advertised on 

 another page, is in galley proof form . 



