Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1903-01-14

The Treasury Department figures
show that our trade with Porto Rico
and the Philippines is rapidly increas-
ing. Shipments of mer chandise from
the United States to Porto Rico from
January to November l amounted to
SIC, 900, 900. against So, 100000 in the
corresponding months of last year.
To the Philippines the shipment in
these ten months were over $4,000, 900,
against little over $3, 900. 600 in the
corresponding months of last year,
and So, $780, 600 in the corresponding
months of 1900. Imports from Porto
Rico to the United States were nearly
$9, 900, 600 for these ten months against
six and one-half millions last year,
while the receipts from the Philippines
were over $1,000, 1000.
The good roads question is likely to
be brought home to some sections of
the country in practical manner.
The Post Office Department has been
deluged with complaints from rural
mail carriers about the roads on the
routes; many during the wet seasons
are impossible or nearly so. 1t has
always been the governments policy
to withhold or abolish city delivery
in towns which let their sidewalks
fall into decay. 1t is now proposed to
apply the same principle to rural
delivery and to refuse to establish or
abolish routes along roads which are
not kept up. Such policy will GER
tainly have salutary effect. Where
rural delivery has been tried its
beneficiaries will not readily dis
pense with it, even at the expenditure
of considerable time and labor. Then
any intelligent work done on the road
What wonderful and stupendous
changes take place in the lifetime of
one man. The writer of this we'll re-
members when the telegraph first
came into commercial use, although
the invention was made a few years
earlier, and now we have lived to see
Marconi's wireless telegraphy an ac-
complished fact. and messages actu-
ally sent across the sea through the
atmosphere. We write and type is set
by electric light. When first we saw
the inside of printing office, the
only lights were candles. (about half
| a candle stuck in the box in the
| lower case) and even Kerosene oil he'd
not been discovered and the only
lamps used were filled with fish or
animal oil or "camphene' or alcohol.
We were boy. big enough to carry
two pals of water at once, before we
saw railway and now we ride by
steam and electricity outspeeding the
wind and grumble because we do not
20 faster. Verify, verify the world
moves. Franklin County Recorder.
Colonel Mosby, whose name struck
terror to the Union troops in northern
Virginia in the sixties, is now a spe-
cial agent of the Interior Department
in Nebraska, and the old veteran ap-
pears to have gotten into the enemy s
camp as effectively as he was wont to
do forty years ago. He has discovered
| that some of the big livestock out
| fits have been fraudently acquiring
title to thousands of acres of Govern
ment land by inducing widows of old
soldiers to take up homesteads and
get title to the land and then for a
small bonus Immediately transfer it
to the companies. Which is but one
evidence to show the necessity for
the repeal of the Communication clause
of the homestead law, which allows
such fraud, also the desert land act,
another law whereby the Government
is steadily losing large acreages of its
best remaining lands through the frau
dulent manipulations of the big com.
panies. The people Of the east should
remember that they are joint owners
with the rest of the country in the
vast areas of public lands of the
United States.
In response to the unanimous re.
quest of the pupils the Ida Grove
board of education has decided te
grant the local high school the privi
lege of absolute self government.
That is to say, the pupils will be al
lowed to hold constitutional conven
tion which shall decide ON system
of government in which the pupils
shall make their own laws and pro
vide for their enforcement. The plar
includes relieving the instructors o.