'<Sha iv VJ . 
Who Owns the Pennsylvania? 
Not long ago we rewived a rather ou- 
,rious question from one of our readers, 
who said he wanted the answer to settle- 
a heated debate among his neighbors. It 
appears that one side claimed that the 
great proportion of the stock in the Penn¬ 
sylvania Railroad Company was owned 
by ’‘widow's, orphans and newsboys,” and 
w'e were expected to act as umpire in this 
debate. Of course this made a pretty 
broad qualification, for there are many 
widow's of wealthy men. and thousands of 
people over 35 years of age may be said 
to be "orphans.” As for "new'sboys,” no 
doubt some of the large new’spaper pro¬ 
prietors, who usually invest heavily in 
stocks, might be classified under that 
heading. At any rate, in trying to get the 
facts we went to the Pennsylvania Rail¬ 
road Company and as a matter of interest 
to many of our readers we will print their 
reply. We regret that we cannot settle 
the exact question which caused the de¬ 
bate. but this is as near as we can get 
to it: 
We have absolutely no means of know¬ 
ing what percentage of our railroad stock 
is owned by “widows, orphans and new.s- 
bovs,” as it would be utterly impossible 
to make a canvass to determine the per¬ 
sonal status of each stockholder. ITow'- 
ever. there are some very interesting facts 
about the stockholders of this company 
which I give herewith. 
The Pennsylvania Railroad Company 
at the opening of .Tanuary, which i.s the 
last date for which figures are available, 
had 100,038 stockholders. Of this num- 
Ix'r 40.4‘20 were women. represcTiting 
40.47 i)er cent of the total number 
stockholders. 
There are 0.085,314 shares of stock 
«utstanding, of a par value of $50 each, 
and all but 2.1 per cent of this is now 
owned in the United States. Refore the 
war nearly 15 per cent of the stock was 
held abroad. 
The average number of shares held by 
each stockholder is 00.82. 
The stock of the Pennsylvania Railroad 
is moi'e widely distributed, and is held by 
a greater number of individual owners, 
than that of any other railroad corpora¬ 
tion in the world. 
In Cctober, 1010, the Pennsylvania 
Railroad had 80,821 stockholders. Hince 
that time it is estimated that between 
$50,000,000 and ,$00,000,000 worth of the 
stock formerly held abroad has been 
liquidated in this country, and as the 
number of stockholders in the same period 
has increased bv more than 10,000, it is 
believed that the foreign holding.s in que.s- 
tion have gone permanently into the 
hands of that many new American stock¬ 
holders. 
.\t the opening of the war the average 
number of shares held by each stockholder 
was 110.51 shares. The reduction to the 
present average of 00.8‘2 shares is further 
evidence of the wider distribution of the 
stock among the general public which has 
taken place in that time. G- b. iiabley. 
An Insect Invasion 
I had a farmhand working here and 
he has brought an infe.station of lice, 
in the room where he slept. His 
room has a carpet, and bedding is all 
good. It seems a pity to destroy it. I 
got a powder good for bedbugs and fleas, 
but it does not .seem to kill the lice. 
Can you tell me what will kill those 
pests? 
New York. 
This is one of the hardest and mean 
est things to get rid of. These lice work 
into cracks and crevices so .small that it 
is almost impossible to get them’ out with 
any powder or liipiid. Generally speak¬ 
ing, about the only thing you can do is 
to fumigate that room. The fumes will 
get into the bedding and the carpets and 
kill the lice when they strike them. You 
can use the cyanide of potassium, which 
is a very poisonous gas, or you can 
fumigate thoroughly by burning sulphur 
in your room. The best way to do that 
i.s to make the room air-tight, shutting 
all the doors and windows, and hanging 
or ])asting paper over the cracks. Then 
open up the bedding fully exposed, and 
oiien all the doors of the closets. Get a 
tin pan about half full of water and put 
a brick into it. On that brick put a 
flower pot or a deep dish and put a quan¬ 
tity of brimstone right into it. l*our a 
little alcohol over the brimstone, touch 
it with a match, and get right out of the 
room, shutting the door airtight. That 
brimstone will slowly burn down, and it 
will kill the lice as it reaches them. 
Hiring Strangers 
It is not safe to hire strangers on the 
farm and keep them in the family home. 
One does not know he does not belong 
to a gang of robbers and is spying for a 
good haul. I know of a case where a 
man hired a stranger who jvorked sev¬ 
eral months till one day a man came to 
pay off a note for a large sum, and too 
late to take it to town to the bank. The 
man decided that evening he would quit 
and go home, about 30 miles away. 
After midnight the door was smashed in 
quickly and some men rushed in and 
covere<l the old folks with revolvers, two 
took out a trunk from their sleeping 
room, and when the signal was given 
the gunmen backed out and all disap¬ 
peared. It proved that the hired man 
went home hurriedly and got his pals and 
did the job, and served time in the pen 
fer it. 
I have known others to hire late in the 
afternoon, ■ even on Saturday night, and 
stay till working time and work a 
while till the boss was gone, then dis¬ 
appear. If a stranger can board at a 
hotel or in town one might put up with 
him when badly needed. People should 
carry references with them when looking 
for job.s. . -u. T; (ox. 
Ohio.'' - ^ ■?>- •■ •.:J ^ . 
IIW-Y O K K E R 
Legal Holidays 
Will you '^ve'all of the-legal holidays 
of the United States? M. J. S. 
’ Uhenango (^o., N. Y. 
'riiere are no national legal holidays. 
Congress has appoiirted, special holidays, 
hut even the Fourth of .Ttily is a State 
holiday. When the President issues a 
Thanksgiving proclamation it becomes a 
holiday only in the District of Columbia 
and the territories. There are 42 dates set 
apart as State holidays, including Farm¬ 
ers’ Day ill Florida, Pioneers’ Da.v in 
Utah and many other special State days. 
263 
may shoot him at once. It is not too late 
to obtain damages if your stock has been 
killed or injured'. Write to the Dei)art- 
ment of Agriculture at Albany and get 
a copy of the law and the blank forms re¬ 
quired in making a claim for damages. 
You can collect a fair sum for the turkeys. 
Poultry Attacked by Dogs 
In a recont issue you mentioned com¬ 
pensation being made to farmers for loss 
of poultry through dogs. Fvery year my 
fine flock of purebred Bi'onze turkeys are 
chased and many are killed by dogs. 
What redress has a person who sees a dog 
in full chase among a flock of turkeys, and 
who finds a turkey dead with entrails torn 
out; also another turkey found at the 
s:ime time with a broken leg? It is too 
late to do anything about it this year, but 
if you can enlighten me as to method of 
procedure another year I shall feel grate¬ 
ful. as I still have the same neighbors, 
and the neighbors have the same turkey- 
killing and turkey-eating dogs. K. E. M. 
Rossie, N. Y. 
T'nder the new law if you see a dog 
cl’.asiug or worrying your turkeys you 
Camouflaging Woodchucks 
T.ast Summer there was distinctively a 
woodchuck community ex[)loiting alTair 
along the upper branches of the little river 
bluffs near the writer’s home. They 
worked havoc in the kitchen gardens, and 
trapping, poisoning or shooting did not 
seem to avail anything in stopping their 
ravages. Hubbard squash seemed to be 
the attraction, after beans and the like 
had disappeared, at least in my garden. 
All devices failed, and squash after squash 
was devoured. This Avas a mitigating cir¬ 
cumstance. A squash once sampled was 
devoured completely before "toothing” an¬ 
other. After all things had failed, in¬ 
cluding dynamite cartridges, we hit upon 
a camouflage of disguising them to look 
like something else. Ten-i)ound paper 
sugar bags were procured and .slipped over 
the squashes and pinched ui» about the 
stems, and tha-t was the end of the raids. 
Uhuckie would not molest the bags, and 
the squashes grew and matured quite as 
well. _ J. G. 
“WiiAT is this camouflage?” “The art 
of making Nature's face seem what it is 
not.” "Um. My wife’s complexion is a 
rare bit of camouflage.”—Judge. 
toRiy^ 
tnOneYear. “ 
I’ve been in the spreader business so long that I know what 
I’m talking about. Take my word for it, when I signed that 
guarantee I knew I was taking no chances. 
Here! Take your pencil and let me prove it. 
Suppose, for argument’s sake, that you keep biit six cows, 4 horses and a 
few hogs or sheep. They will make—according to Cornell Experiment Station 
reports—approximately 120 tons of manure per year. When these reports were 
made the chemical value of fresh manure figured out $3.31 per ton, and piled or 
stored manure at $2.55 or less, depending on the length of time it has lain. Nobody 
knows what the potash and nitrate are worth now at war time prices. Anyway, 
fresh manure is worth at least three-fourths of a dollar more than old; and when 
you add the hard extra labor involved in hauling, piling and hand spreading, it’s safe to make the figure fu?ice that. Many 
other Experiment Stations and the U. S. Department of Agriculture support these figures, and some make them even higher. 
Now you can see from this why, on any farm of 80 acres or more, I am willing to put my reputation squarely behind the 
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al Wide Spreading 
Spreader 
A farm implement which pays for itself in one year is a 
100 % dividend payer ever afterwards—a fact that thousands 
of successful farmers have learned concerning the New 
Idea. Why shouldn’t you get this dividend? 
The New Idea was the first spreader to embody the wide¬ 
spread idea and maintains this supremacy to this day. It 
operates with an everlasting chain sprocket wheel drive 
that minimizes breakage and saves wear. Has a tight bot¬ 
tom and an endless chain conveyor that brings all the load 
to the two beaters. Handles a load 30 inches high as readily 
as any other does an even box full. A convenient lever 
allows spreading any quantity desired-3, 6, 9, 12 or 15 
loads per acre. Back of the money-making New Idea Spreader 
See the machine at the New Idea dealer’s. If you don’t know him, we 
B. C. OPPENHEIM, Mgr. 
NEW IDEA SPREADER CO. 
**Spreader Specialists** 
Main OmcEAND Factory:—Coldwater, Ohio 
Branches: Harrisburg, Pa., Columbus, O., Indianapolis, Ini., Jackson, Mich., Chicago, III., 
St. Louis, Mo., Minneapolis, Minn., Omaha, Neb., Kansas City, Mo. Guelph, Ont., Canada, 
is my guarantee that means the best in material, construc¬ 
tion and operation. You don’t.gamble when you buy a 
New Idea because I will even make good any breakage from 
any cause within one year. 
I want you to read our immensely interesting booklet “Help¬ 
ing Mother Nature’’and 
will gladly send it on 
request. Also our hand¬ 
some catalog. If you 
want to make or keep 
your land fertile this will 
pay you. Send today. 
Address me at Box 583 
will send you his name. 
