1905. 
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THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
87 
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OBJECTIONS TO THE PARCELS POST. 
The Business Men’s Association, of Hartford, Conn., re¬ 
cently refused to support a resolution calling for a parcels 
post. In the Hartford Courant -I. II. Ilale gets after these 
merchants in his usual vigorous style : 
“Some of your older readers can no doubt remember when 
railroads were first projected, the cry went up it will ruin 
the stage business, and ‘ruin the horse market.’ Many 
hundreds of thousands of miles of railroad have since been 
constructed, stages have about all gone out of business, and 
vet. with every mile of railroad there has been an advance 
in the price of horses, until it costs three times as much to 
buy a good one now as it did before the days of the railroads. 
Then came the sewing machine, and. ‘Oh, dear, what will 
the poor sewing girl do now?’ What’s the result? A sew¬ 
ing machine in every house and the old time wage of $1.50 
to $2 per week to sewing girls has advanced to from $G to 
$ 15 , and the girls are hard to get at any price. When the 
mowing machine was first invented the old time farm hand 
was going to be ‘out of a job,’ or else be obliged to take 
lower wages, and while the machines have been improved 
and multiplied hay-makers' wages have increased 50 per 
cent, and enough men are not forthcoming to do all the work, 
work. 
“Another ‘great, ruination’ was to come with Ihe advent 
of electric cars on our street, horses were going to shy and 
upsel and kill everybody, and if any were left they would 
all ‘go to one center to trade and all outlying towns would 
be ruined.’ Of course, we have not tested them fully yet, 
but very little ‘ruination’ is apparent, and r am quite confi¬ 
dent that any proposition to abandon these roads and pull 
up the tracks would meet with strong opposition. To lie 
sure, they have caused some readjustment in business con¬ 
ditions and temporary losses to some, yet a general benefit 
to the many, just as did the advent of the railroad, the sew¬ 
ing machine and the mowing machine, and yet, do any of 
us want to go back to ‘The good old times' before these 
‘Ruinations’ came along? Just now the great laidy of Ameri¬ 
can people who have given any thought to the matter look 
to the coming of the parcels post as the next great sfep in 
American progress. The rural mail delivery, as well as city 
delivery and the telephone, makes it easy to place orders 
for merchandise without the loss of time and money in leav¬ 
ing home, and with the parcels post to deliver the purchased 
goods at small cost, trade is bound to be generally stimulated 
and everybody benefited, and none more so than the up-to- 
date merchants who through proper newspaper advertising 
will be able to reach more customers than ever before. 
“Some one in Congress has said that for a long time there 
have been but six objections to the parcels post, and those 
were the Adams. American, United States. Wells Fargo, Pa¬ 
cific and Southern Express companies, who make big profits in 
handling goods that ought to go by parcels post at low rates. 
But. of course, there are a few merchants who cannot, see 
very far ahead, men who are never able to look at things 
with a broad view, who fear the loss of trade if it is made 
easier for the public to buy at home. I am sorry to see 
Hartford merchants being led into this class. The parcels 
post is coming sure, and coining to stay. Not one can stay 
the rapidly rising tide of public opinion on this subject, 
and I regret to see my friends and neighbors of the Hartford 
Business Men’s Association on the wrong side of this great 
question, especially as they are led to take that opposition 
through supposedly selfish reasons that are not valid.” 
EVENTS OF THE WEEK. 
DOMESTIC.—The United States Supreme Court January 
16 granted a new trial to Senator Joseph 11. Burton, of Kan¬ 
sas, who was convicted at. St. Louis of accepting a retainer 
from an alleged “get-rieh-quick" concern, in proceedings be¬ 
fore the Post Office Department, and sentenced to six months' 
imprisonment and a fine of $2,500. The verdict in the lower 
court was set aside on the ground of errors in the trial. 
The opinion was handed down by Justice Peckham. . . . 
The Slocum trials began January IS before Judge Thomas in 
the Criminal Branch of the United States Circuit Court, with 
Henry Lundberg. ex-inspector of steamboat hulls, and Boiler 
Inspector John \V. Fleming as the first defendants. They ex¬ 
amined and passed as seaworthy the steamboat General Slo¬ 
cum. which burned June 25 last with the loss of some 800 
lives. The two inspectors are indicted under Section 5344 
of tbi> Revised Statues, which provides that “every owner, 
inspector or other public officer through whose fraud, conni¬ 
vance or violation of law the life of any person is destroyed 
shall be deemed guilty of manslaughter, and upon conviction 
thereof * * * shall be sentenced to confinement at hard 
labor for not more than Id years.” The officers of the 
Knickerbocker Steamboat Company and Captain Van Schaick 
of the Slocum also are under indictment, and their trials 
will come after the cases of Lundberg and Fleming are dis¬ 
posed of. January 20. for the sixth time since it 
was completed a few weeks ago, a section of the new track 
of the Highland Division of the New York. New Haven and 
Hartford Railroad at Storm Lake, N. Y., disappeared in the 
lake. The disappearing section was about 60 feet long. The 
engineers felt certain until this occurrence that they had fin¬ 
ally secured a firm foundation for the tracks. Hundreds of 
carloads of rock and earth have been dumped Into the place. 
A curious phenomenon was observed with the,disappearance 
of tlie railroad. As the emnankment was swallowed by the 
water a small island appeared in tlie center of the lake, many 
feet away from the railroad, and remained there for a short 
time and then disappeared. The phenomenon was caused 
apparently by the pressure of earth from the railroad em¬ 
bankment upon the mud in the bottom of the lake. . 
Frank Croker, son of Richard Croker, the Tammany boss, 
was fatally injured, and ids auto driver, Alex Raoul,, killed 
instantly January 22 by the overturning of Croker’s racing 
car on the beach at Ormond, Fla. A motor cyclist ran in 
front of young Croker. who was driving north at high speed, 
and Croker turned sharply, grazing the motor cyclist and 
throwing him to the ground, breaking his leg. Croker’s ma¬ 
chine lost a front tire and darted into the ocean, turning 
over twice. Croker was running at 85 miles an hour when 
the accident occurred. . . Five American mining pro¬ 
spectors were killed by Yaqui Indians near Torres, Sonora, 
Mexico, January 20. John Kenneth Mackenzie, son-in-law 
of the late Dr. Clinton Locke, and Dr. Robert Coy, both of 
Chicago, are known to have been among I lie victims of the 
savages. . . . William O’Brien, George Bresher and Ed¬ 
ward Purcell, young boys, were blown up by an explosion 
of powder in the Taby mine, Shamokin, Pa., January 22. and 
were burned horribly. O’Brien will likely die. The victims 
had penetrated the mine without the knowledge of any one. 
Three hundred feet along the tunnel they found seven kegs 
of powder, the head of one being open. One of the boys was 
tilling his cap with the explosive when a spark from a lamp 
fell into the cap, causing an explosion which ignited all the 
kegs. The boys were blown a distance of 30 feet from the 
scene, while the mine was badly wrecked. A rescuing party, 
after a hard battle lighting their way through smoke, carried 
the boys to the surface. . . Bounties offered by many 
of the Western States for the skins of wild animals have 
been fraudulently obtained to the value of thousands of dol¬ 
lars, and the swindle has only recently been unearthed. Utah 
has suffered to the extent of $75,000, and other States pro¬ 
portionately. Information from adjoining States is to the 
effect that the same men operated in all the States. The 
frauds in Salt Lake County are already shown to be fully 
$20,000, in Weber County $12,000. and many other counties 
of the State have been mulcted in smaller amounts. In every 
case so far investigated it has been found the outside men 
operated in collusion with some man in the County Clerk’s 
office. The law requires that each skin presented to the 
clerk be examined and the ears punched. It has been proved 
that certificates calling for thousands of dollars have been 
issued without a single hide to show for them. In other 
cases the holes in the ears were patched and mutilated ears 
sewed up. Hides were shipped through several States, boun¬ 
ties being collected not once, but. many times in each Slate. 
According to records, one conspirator was paid in Salt Lake 
City alone for killing 1.085 coyotes, 314 wildcats, 190 wolves, 
121 mountain lions and 41 bears in three months. 
FARM AND GARDEN.—The American Breeders’ Associa¬ 
tion will hold its second annual mooting at. the College of 
Agriculture, Champaign, III., February 1-3. 
A convention of corn growers was held in the Agricultural 
Building of the University of Illinois at Champaign, January 
23 to February 3. The following among other papers were 
presented: Alfalfa. Cow Beans and Soy Beans,” by L. F. 
King. Huntsville, 111.: “How I Prepare Corn for Show,” by 
W. E. Johnson, of Athens, III. ; “The Maintenance of Soil 
Fertility,” by Dr. C. G. Hopkins, of the University of Illi¬ 
nois : “Varieties of Corn for the North.” by Prof. W. M. 
Hays, of the University of Minnesota: “Practical Landscape 
Gardening,” by Prof. .1. C. Blair, of the University of Illi¬ 
nois: “Improvement of Corn by Seed Selection,” by C. I’. 
Hartley, of the United States Department, of Agriculture: 
“Clover,” by Prof. Joseph Carter, of Champaign. III.; "Prog¬ 
ress in Plant Breeding," by Prof. W. M. Hays, of the Univer¬ 
sity of Minnesota. 
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