Litchfield enquirer., 1879-07-17
The West.
LYONS. Iowa. .Tu


 s..t .s LYONS, Iowa, July ', '79.
 Ed. Enq.-There appears to be an increas- ed tendency in the West, to fttingly observe our National Holiday, the Glorious Fourth. I notice very successful celebrations reported in very many places, with general suspension of business, and less than the usual number of l casualties. r..- The city of Fulton, across the river from us
 had an old-fashioned celebration-speeches, reading the Declaration, dinner, fireworks etc. Lyons and Clinton joined in very suc- cessful sporting carnival" gotten up by two young men as private enterprise, held on ] the Fair Ground between the two cities; but 1 furnishing amusement and recreation to large 1 crowd. Their receipts aggregated over $500. | Besides these, were three excursions by steam 1 boat, all we'll patronized We took in the moonlight excursion up the river about twenty miles, returning little after midnight; very enjoyable affair. }. Your papers have doubtless given you most of the interesting features of the late storm | and tornadoes in Northern Iowa, Southern Minnesota and Wisconsin. The rain lasted l fifteen hours, during which time, over six inches of water fell. The damage to buildings and crops, was very great. The belt of the | storm was about 50 miles wide. I will men, l tion only one incident that seemed remarkable l A lady was sitting in her room, when the tor nado struck her house. The floor beneath her opened, and let her through into the cellar, and the house was blown to pieces without l injuring her. That portion of Iowa has been most unfortunate. few years ago the grass hoppers ate them up. Last year, the extreme heat, at the time so many were sunstruck, dried them up, and what there was left of them seems to have blown away.
 With us, all kinds of crops promise we'll I do not remember hearing single ''grumble'' from any of our farmers this year, or at least since corn planting. We had little drouth in the spring that put the corn back some, but l the weather since has been all they could ask.
 The farmers have commenced cutting their wheat, but none has been threshed that know of so cannot state the yield to the acre. Oats seem to yield most abundantly, and they are usually a drug in the market, seldom bringing over % cents But factories or mills for turning them into oatmeal for shipment | are springing up, and their cultivation promis- es to be more remunerative. It is claimed that at Cedar Rapids, they have the largest mill of the kind in the world, consuming i'm mense quantities, and making large shipments to the old country, beating the Scotch on their | native heath. . ..... .... All the signs of the times indicate returning prosperity, and, not among the least, is the ad
 journment of Congress. It seems amazing to | ''man up a tree" that with gold, silver and paper all on q par, and silver so abundant that you have to apologize to a customer, if obliged to give him all silver in exchange for anathema, a,-that Congress should be fighting 1 so consistently for an unlinsSted increase. The | lunacy is well illustrated in Zack Chandlers late speech, where he claimed that the work ing men lost $1SO, ,000,0 900 by the 15 per cent. discount on silver, whereas, there has not been | any where near that amount coined, all told. Besides, some of us would like to know where the laboring man can buy more for dollar in gold than dollar in silver or paper I do not pretend to understand the great subject of finance, but the above are patent facts more easily comprehended than Chandlers statement that the laboring men lose more on the silver discount than the silver coined It must be a grand thing to be congressman and under stand such things .e.t. | A large number of counties report to our State Auditor that the surplus school fund cannot be loaned at per cent interest (price fixed by law) and asked to have the laws changed to alower rate. And the recent per cent loans show that there is no scarcity of money. Clearing House receipts in Chicago
 last week, Gncluding one holiday show an increase of over 40 per cent, on the correspond. ing week last year. Hence, from all the indi- cations of the times, feel inclined to rejoice that we are well rid of Congress for season, and to pray that that from their further inter- ference, Good Lord deliver us! A. B.