Willmar tribune., 1909-01-13
news OF minnesota,
MATTERS OF INTEREST IN THE
GOPHER STATE.
Surveying the Minnesota River-Fx.
ing Legal Age Of Girls-Num-
Der Of Hogs Slaughtered.
Drainage.

Drainage.
Crookston. employed bv
the state drainage board and under
the directions of George A. Ralph,
state drainage engineer, will start out
on a survey of the Minnesota river
basis. They will continue work for
some months, running it from the
rivers junction with the Mississippi
at Mendoza back to it's rise in Big
Stone lake.
The purpose of the survey is to ar
rive at the best method of preventing
the annual floods which have been
wiping out crops and doing other dam.
age in the bottom lands along the
river. The survey will show bench
marks for low water and flood marks
will give distances and make it possi-
bic to calculate the flow, the capacity
of the channel, the area of the basin.
Congress will eventually be as kdeot
Congress will eventually be asked to
provide reservoir system to hold
back water in the spring and release
1t when needed for navigation in the
Mississippi.
Plans are also under consideration
for Strengthening the river channel in
some places. The legislature is ex.
pected to make some provision for
improvements and to complete the
survey.
The Minnesota River Improvement
league has been organized to push
this work, and members from the val
ley counties will do what they can
in the legislature this winter to pro-
mote tho work of controlling the river.
Age OF Girls.
st. Paul-Whether the laws Of the
state, which now fix eighteen years
as the age at which girls attain their
majority, should be changed so as to
make the age twenty-one years, was
one of the principal subjects under
consideration yesterday at meeting
of the Minnesota Society for the Pro-
motion Of the Interests of Children of
Public Concern at the capitol.
At present the law fixes eighteen
as the age at which girls pass from
the period designated by the lawyers
as infancy. But for many purposes a
girl is not considered woman until
she reaches the age of twenty-one
years. She cannot exercise her lin
tied franchise until she is twenty one
and she is counted a child by the law
in reckoning the school appropriation
fund of the state until she reaches
that age.
Many Hogs.
South st. Paul.-The year 1908 was
banner one in the hog market at
South st. Paul and the long looked for
million mark was passed. This record
is 250,000 greater than any previous
year, the total number received dur
ing 1908 being 1,133,412.
While the hogs have been getting
heavy the cattle have been going
light, the latter having fallen of
about $4,000 from 1907. The sales of
cattle exceeded any other year by sew
eral thousand. The sheep receipts
also showed decrease, while the
number Of calves on hand during the
year was the largest ever.
Taking the year as whole it was
very satisfactory to the local cattle
men and they are much pleased with
the results in view of the condition OF
business over the country in general.
Arrested.
Surrounded by every bulwark of Sc.
crecy United States Marshal H. A..
Rider of Little Falls, Minn., arrived
in st. Paul last evening with George
T. Frankhauser, for whose capture a
reward of $4,000 has been offered
and who will stand before a United
States commission in St. Paul today
charged with holding up the Oriental
Limited of the Great Northern railway
at Rondo, Mont, in September, 1907,
and robbing the United States mails
Of $4,000.