The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-16

Copyright. BO7 by Frank c. Carpenter) "UNIs, June -(special)-Uncle
 Sam should send his commercial X travellers to Tuaisia and Algeria These two French colonies are rapidly increasing in population. Tunisia has doubled within the past ten years and Algeria is growing both by immigration and by it's increased number of births. II If were not for the divorces both coun- tries would be more populous than they are now. The most of the people are Mohanmedans, and their marriage laws are such that man can get rld or ms superfuous wives far more easily than the American can divorce his only one 'n South Dakota or Oklahoma. There are now about fifteen thousand divorces in Alveria every year, and this is almost half the number of marriages. All that a Mohammedan has to do to secure a separation is to point his wife to the door and say, .1 divorce you! l divorce you'll I divorce you!l!' and out she goes If is not much better with the Tunisian Jews; the chief difference being that the Mohammedan has the right of four wives while the Jew can have but one. At present plural marriage is declining in popularity among the Mohammedans. With the influx of Europeans living grows more and more expensive, and it costs too much to keep up a harem with more than one mistress.
 African France.
 Notwithstanding all this African France as these two colonies are called has more and more people from year to year It is a big country. Algeria, outside the vast territories of the French Sa hara, is as large as all New England' with New York, Pennsylvania, West Vir- sinia and New Jersey added thereto, and l. has a population larger than any of our states outside New York.
 Tunisia is just about the size or Ala bama. and it has as many people as Massachusetts. The population or the two countries is fully one-eighth that of the whole United States, and the most or the people might be consumers or American goods. So far, our dear Uncle Sam seems to be running his consular business here on the cheap. We have a poorly paid consul in Algiers, and with in the last few months we have reduced the vice consulate at Tunis to a con sular agency. This means that the man who represents us here in this city of 25O,OO0 and country of 100000 and more receives practically nothing for office eX- penses, and that his fees amount to only a few hundred dollars year. This Is so. notwithstanding we are paying our consul general of Morocco several thous- and dollars a year and have recently raised his predecessor. MT. Gummere, to the rank of a minister with salary several times as large.
 Altogether we spend only three or four thousand dollars in pushing our trade in these two rich provinces belonging 10 France, where the market is worth many million dollars a year, and waste three or four times that on the wild of Morocco, from which we get nothing now and can not hope for much until far in the fu- ture. Similar conditions prevail in some other parts of Africa.
 Up-to-date Africa.
 Tunisia and Algeria are a part of up- to-dase Africa They are still behind the times, but they are rapidly introducing all modern improvements. Life and prop erty in them from the Mediterranean to far down into the Sahara are safe; there are police everywhere and the people are. paving less taxes than ever before.
 The facilities of communication are rap idly growing. The two countries have in the neighborhood of three thousand miles or railroad, thousands of miles of good country roads, and hundreds of miles of electric tramways. One can now travel through Tunisia and Algeria for dis tance as great as from Washington to Seattle in an automobile, and that over roads better than nineteenth of the coun- try roads of the United States. The soil is largely underlaid with limestone, and the roads have been macadamized from one end of the land to the other.
 As to the telegraphic possibilities, the wire now in use in Algeria would make a girdle around the earth, and the tele-