Morning journal and courier., 1885-08-20
EDITORIAL NOTES.

The New Orleans Picayune thinks that em- igrants will not be attracted to State until better citizens are appointed to stand at railroad depots with their mouths open as the train goes by.
 Woman suffrage has been established in Kansas in the election of school officers, and the Kansas City Times reports that at Sen eca the other day 'sthe ladies were out in full force and exercised their franchise according to the dictates of their husbands" What is the good of thiss We have been assured that the women would make the men vote right if they were given the opportunity.
 The State Democratic committee of Massa- chusetts has taken the Cleveland vote as the basis of representation in the forthcoming convention, which will make the convention larger than last years by eighty-seven dele gates. That is to say, the Democrats of Massachusetts assume that the vote for Cleveland is the measure of their present and permanent strength. This is a fine dis play of cheek.
 The British war office has determined to investigate thoroughly the subject of charg- ing shells with explosives of higher power than gunpowder. The employment of these explosives has hitherto been avoided on ac- count of the danger which attended their use. Chemists assert that a shell charged with gun cotton or any of the various com pounds of the nitro glycerine order, bursting alongside an ironclad, would shatter the strongest armor afoat, and render the mightiest war ship as contemptible foe as an old wooden frigate. 8
 Belgium affords the worst example in Europe of the harm from over-indulgence in alcoholic stimu1ants The sale of liquor in Belgium has more than trebled in the last fifty years, while the population has only ad- vanced from $500, 900 to 5,500,OO0. The consumption of spirits, wine and beer for 1881 amounted in value to 75,O0O, 900 francs Although the country is so small, it contained in 1880 no fewer than 125,0OO place devoted to the sale of Intoxicating liquors. There was public house on the average for every twelve or thirteen grown up males. The suicides rose from hfty-four per million inhabitants in 1S48 to eighty in 1SsO The lunatics advanced from 75O per million inhabitants in 1846 to 1,470 in 1881.
 Complaints have been frequent, of late years, that the quality of the best Cuba to- bacco has deteriorated. According to re- port made by Mir. Crave, tho British consul at Havana, the deterioration is caused by the use of fertilizers, to which, it seems, some of the large growers in the famous Vuelta AbaJo region have resorted for the purpose of fore ing large crops, to meet the increasing de mand. The result has been such a lowering of the quality of the tobacco that it has hurt the sales; and now the growers are dropping the guanos and phosphates and planting, in some instances, the field to other crops, in order to absorb the fertilizer and leave the old natural condition of the soil for tobacco again. The fine red soil of considerable sec tions of Cuba has been found to produce the finest grades of tobacco in the world-and, strange to say, it has proved rich and deep enough to permit the exhaustive cropping to tobacco, without return, that has been for generations practiced with such profit to the growers.
 A New York jeweler put on his cards the l. 10 Vav. Nv1<,lr