Morning journal and courier., 1889-02-16

There is ice enough now, but next summer we shall hear that this winter was 8 very poor one for ice and be charged accordingly. Lovely woman is again conspicuous. Mrs. Mary Edna Hill Gray Dow, the president of the Dover, New Hampshire, Street Railway company, is able to report an Il per cent. dividend as the result of her first years management. The employees wages have been advanced meanwhile, the service inn proved and 8 surplus accumulated in the treasury.
 They have a very gentlemanly sheriff in Iberia parish, Louisiana. After three ne- groes had been killed, others brutally whip ped and many more driven from their homes by threat, this sheriff, whose name is Bar Morse called on me to have the trouble end ed. spoke to the leading parties and asked them to let things quiet down, and they agreed to do so."
 A curious case has just been decided in the Frankfort law courts. A few years ago the collection of coins owned by the town of Cologne was robbed of several valuable pieces of money. Among these was large thaler of the time of Karl V, which had got into the possession of Hamburg collector, who sold it to an antiquarian firm at Frank fort. The men of Cologne hearing of this sent to demand their own, but the firm not unnaturally objected, having paid f27 for the coin. The judges deemed that the Cologne collection had right to it's stolen thaler, and it is now again reposing in state among it's former fellows.
 The Union League club of New York has paid some attention to the prison labor prob lem, and has adopted resolution in favor employment of persons confined in the penal institutions of the State in such productive labor as is adapted to the sitution in which they are placed" The committee which submitted this resolution made report upon the subject of prison labor and the effect of the ill-advised legislation of last summer. By way of showing how in6nitesimal is the competition of prison labor, it mentions that the total receipts from it in the most profita- bic eyear-1S84-were only abous $401 ,00O, while the product or the manufacturing in- dustries of the State amounted to $1,0s0,- 696, ,596. Labor of convicts in the State prisons on productive industries would be equivalent to that of about ,560 men, while the total labor force of the manufacturing industries in the State is at least 650, 1000 persons.
 That is an interesting experiment. which the Michigan Agricultural college has been trying on the barren and sandy lands along the line of the Michigan Central railroad in the southwestern part of the State. These lands naturally bear nothing but jack pine and stunted red oak, and it is supposed that the soil was spoiled by being burned over by the Indians year after year until vegetable growth was killed out and nothing was left to make soil. Prof. Kedzie of the college does not agree with those who hold that fertility is fixed element in the soil, but believes that nature provides for re- newal of fertilizing clements by chemistry of its own, when the conditions are favoras ble for such process. The college secured eighty acres of this land near the village of Crawling, Crawford county. Last May twenty acres were sown to different kinds of grass, hardy trees were set out and some seeds were planted. The season proved unusually dry, but it was found that some of the grasses and plants grew well. Among these was spurry, a favorite