Morning journal and courier., 1885-08-28
EDITORIAL NOTES.

MT. Troup's declaration of independence has provoked much discussion both in and out of the State. It is generally admitted to have the merit of clearness.
 The factory at Alvarado, California, has made twelve hundred and fifty tons of re- fined beet sugar this season. This is said to be four times greater than the total sorghum sugar in the United States. The Alvarado factory has been in operation six years, and it's profits are computed at $104,00O on an investment of $125,0 The growers get $4 50 ton for beets, and the yield is said to average twenty tons to the acre. The factory pays out about s90,0OO a year for beets.
 A we'll known physician in British India wants to make criminals who have been sen- ment for the purpose of ascertaining how to treat cholera successfully. He would take any prisoner under sentence of death who gave his consent, experiment. upon him, and if the experiment itself did not result fatally spare the prisoners life. As the number of capital convictions in British India is be- tween three hundred and four hundred a , ca1 u4iCAO PiOooOAy Oo HAChGy VI candidates for the chance of escape thus af- forded.
 A tourist of worldwide experience puts forth the plausible theory that the glorious climate of California fosters irreverence, mendacity and meretricious morals. He holds that the habit of sin in that State is not so much matter of diseased conscience as of atmospheric pressure and sinister in 1uence of weather. They have practically no winter there, and so ''miss the best means of higher and overruling power, which people living in sterner climate can so easily com prehend." The skies are so soft and the tenn perature so pleasant that men are led to think lightly of serious things. to forget how to cultivate the virtues.
 A specimen of Democratic reform has just come to light at Washington. A certain Major Saxton, an old soldier, obtained Q $1, 400 clerkship in the Treasury department nineteen years ago, at the expiration of his term of military service. Sixteen years ago for merit and without any influence outside he was advanced to be chief in his division, a position which he has filled with entire credit ever since. Now, however, to make room for Democrat who ''needs the place, '' he is requested to resign and to accept his old $1 400 place, from which he was pro noted for merit sixteen years ago. His work will be in the same room, and he will be required to instruct the new chief in his duties.
 The extent to which some of the less con- spicuous industries are carried on in certain sections of the country is not generally un- derstood-notably that of charcoal and it's peculiar products. Thus, there ars charcoal works at Grand Rapids, Mich, which con- sume forty thousand cords of wood yearly, and at which even the smoke is utilized and manufactured into chemicals by being blown by immense fans into purifier, from which it eventually comes in the form of an acid that is clear as amber. From the acid are produced acetate of lime, alcohol, tar and gas. Each cord of wood contains some twenty eight thousand cubic feet of smoke and two million eight hundred thousand fee! of smoke handled every twenty-four hours produce twelve thousand pounds of acetate of lime, two hundred gallons of alcohol, etc
 The system of electric lighting which is in use in Detroit is attracting attention. The lights are placed on towers from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seyenty-6ve