The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-11-24

sew York, Nov. 2s.--(Special.)- )-With the United States leading all other na- tfons in Are losses every year. New York as the largest city in the coun- try naturally takes first place in this respect in the metropolitan list throughout the world.
 Every day there are twenty-four fires here, taking the average, or to- tai of s,700 each year. Throughout the whole country indeed nearly one-half the buildings erected in the course of . year go to replace others that have been destroyed by flames, according to statistics which form the basis of a study of the national loss by fire which is to appear in the next number of Appleton's Magazine.
 The compiler of these statistics as- serts that while no other nation builds so much as the United States, no oth- CT burns even a small fraction of the same amount of valuable property. The figures show that in the country at large $3,500. 100000 worth of property has been destroyed by fire in the past twenty-five years, while 100000 build tngs have been wiped out of existence in ten years. The cost of fighting is given as $300,000,00 900 a year and $195.000,000 Is paid over to the insu- rance companies for protection.
 Confiagrations consume on the aver
 
 lie halls, twelve churches. ten schools, eight public institutions, nine depart ment stores and apartment houses, twenty-six hotels. 140 flats and 1.600 individual homes.
 Thirty-si thousand lives are re- ported to be endangered every day by fire while 1000 lives are sacrificed an- nualiy to the same cause. It is said that 73 per cent of all the damage done by fre to buildings aside from those in which 1t originates is due to improper ly constructed windows.
 MIX at $10 per gallon, pork at SIS per pound. chickens at $35 a pair and cows at from $500 to $500 each; these are not panic prices in New York, but the cost figures of the city's most ex- pensive farm which is now to be dis continued. M Surprising as these figures may be they are those of the cost of various articles produced by MT. willetts, the owner of this, the most costly farm in the world, which was run on scientific and cleanly principies-so scientific and cleanly indeed that a meal consisting of Q single slice of bacon and a glass of milk from this farm would cost more than the average family spends -on food in several days.
 The cowsheds were all constructed of
 
 morning after the cows were turned out the whole structure was scrubbed and scalded. At milking times a corps of milkmen, clad in sterilized white duck suits, appeared with sterilized milk stools and sterilized milk pals to ex- tract pure milk from cows after steril- ixing them by bathing, an extremely expensive proceeding resulting in milk costing $10 a gallon to get and selling for 60 cents in an exclusive market. The same process applied to the care of pigs resulted in cost price of pork of SIS per pound, which is certainly a figure to make the beef trust envious. With chickens. the same tender care resulted in a cost value of $17.50 for each, on which basis a single drum stick would be worth about $5. To these prices, ordinary business meth ods would add per centage for profit, and the resultant figures are so staggering that 1t ds no wonder that scientific methods carried to the extreme have received black eye in the discontin- uance Of the costliest farm in the world.
 While New York feels that the ss65.O00 for harbor Improvements which it Is reported Congress will be asked to appropriate for carrying on years work Is entirely inadequate. there is nevertheless some satisfac- tion expressed that anything at all may be done.
 The metropolis comes pretty near to holding the long-distance record for delays in necessary harber improve ments as instanced in the case of the Harlem River. the busy little stream connecting the East River with the Hudson. whose commerce last year amounted to nearly $500 900 .o00.
 Twenty-nine years ago. that is. in 1878, the improvement of the Harlem on plan estimated to cost $2,OO0, 900, was undertaken. Up to date the work is only about half completed, so that with changed conditions a quarter of century has accomplished very lit tie.
 But more ambitious plans are under way and as a result of the city's awak- ening to the needs of her waterfront. Gustav H. Schwah is to attend the convention of the National Rivers and Harbors Congress in Washington in the first week of December to voice the feeling of the metropolis in advo- eating the adoption by Congress of a systematic national plan of river and harbor Improvements. for which the waterway advocates are working.
 Reviving old memories of the real leopard hunt in New York more than 6 quarter of century ago. and the press agents scare by which 1t was reported at an equally remote period to the terror of the whole city that several circus lions confined in a sta . bIe had broken loose and were devour- ing horses and men, was the appear ance on the east side of the city this week of a real eagle.
 The bird was the kind described in school books as noble with meas tip, capable of carrying off and de- ton was first drawn to the eagle by his unsatisfactory attempt to grab and devour a wooden advertising sign in the shape of a woolly limb.
 Immediately after this attempt moth CTS on the crowded East Side became particularly busy in gathering up their children Indeed. what almost amounted to a panic ensued all be- cause of the child-devouring feathered monster. Meanwhile, the eagle, the first the city has seen, except in cap tivity, for nearly thirty years. lighted on the f1aR-pole ornamenting the roof of building.
 Two policemen, urged on by vocifer- ous feminine cheers. quickly shinned up the pole in an attempt to capture the child sna tcher. but although one of them succeeded in getting a grir on him, the first eagle which New York has seen in third of century sailed away without having devoured any children.