Morning journal and courier., 1888-02-04
EDITORIAL NOTES.


 Maxwell, the man in St.Louis who is to be hanged for the murder of the Englishman Preller, is spending his last days in smoking cigarettes. He has got down pretty low.
 Fire losses in the United States for 1887 were SIPS, ,264 400, and in the last five years have been $555, ,064 400, or half as big as the national debt This is much too much to burn up.
 Dr. Edward Aveling, the English Com munist who made little stir in this country last year, says that there are a great many unconscious Socialists in the United States. This is cheering if true, and the more un- conscious they stay the better.
 The petition to Congress of the Paint and Oil club of New England calls attention to 8 singular anomaly in national legislation. Few people are aware, perhaps, that the federal dealer and paint dealer who sells pure al- cohol solely for mechanical purposes. Such, however, is thesfact; and for more than a quarter of century the wholesale paint deal CTS have been chased with rum shops and charged precisely the same price for fed eral license The injustice of the law is ap- parent.
 Cotton manufacturing in the South seems to flourish. The number of cotton mills south of the Ohio river, and including Mary land and Virginia, in 1880 was 179, with 713, ,9s9 spindles and 15, ,222 looms. On Jan in were 294 mills, with 1,495, 145 spindles and 34, 900 looms. The mills now under con- struct1on, and those for which the money has been secured and upon which work will soon begin, and the additions to the plant of old mills, will require 242, 900 spindles and 58,- 006 looms.
 The Photographic office warns mariners that February is the time when icebergs and field ice begin to be source of great danger to transatlantic travellers in the neighbor- hood of the banks of Newfoundland. The ice in the North Atlantic during the north- quantity or fsize with that brought up from the Antarctic zone into the South Atlantic during the summer months there. From December, 1854, to April, 1855, one mass of ice sixty miles long and forty miles broad, and with an elevation of 300 feet above the surface of the sea, was reported twenty zone times north of the Falkland Islands.
 Times have changed. The Dempsey Clarke institute, school for oolored pupils, opened a few days ago in Hawkinsville, l Georgia. Dempsey Clarke, for whom it was | named, years ago was sold as slave on the l block by the sheriff at the court house door 1 in Hawkinsville. He ran away from his new ! lived as runaway slave. He was at length captured by dogs, but again ran away. His | owner sold him while he was still in the woods. Dempsey was pleased with his new | master and became his most trusty servant 1 After the war he became land owner, pros- pered and is now one of the most prominent planters of Houston county, and his ibera 1 gifts have resulted in the new school.
 l Since September last an association of wo men has supported four penny coffee stands l in different parts of Brooklyn. half pint of the best coffee, with good milk and sugal | about one thousand people have been fec daily during the past four months. The cos 1 of the food supplied has been $291 per montl and the cost of service has averaged abeu l $20 per week at the four stands. There hal been deficit of $116 per month, which hal been met by voluntary contributions, but i is the feeling of those who give to the enter prise that in no other way can they mak' their money go so far and do so much gooe to so many people without doing any harm I The Alabama legislature last year passed law requiring locomotive engineers to hav' licenses. An engineer employed by the Mo- bile and Ohio railroad company, whose lin' extends beyond the State, neglected to get license, and upon being arrested for his neg lect sued out writ of habeas corpus and go his case carried before the Supreme court, ,his plea being that the act of the legislature wal in violation of that clause of the United States constitution which confers upon con eress the power to regulate commerce among the States. The court holds that while i would be competent for congress under thl clause of the federal constitution to prescribe the qualifications of locomotive engineer for employmentby carriers engaged in in ter-State commerce, yet, as it had neglected to do so, the State of Alabama had the powe to make such regulations as the one in ques