davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-05-30
Best Tempered Baby Now

From the New York World.
 Frederick. Md.-Irritable for a period of nine months. Robert Surguy, aged Il months, was turned into the best tenn pered baby in Frederick in the fraction of minute. M
 While the mother, Mrs. Henry Surguy. was givinng the little chap a bath she felt a sting on one of her hands, and glancing at the member discovered she had received a severe cut. Investigating she found the point of a needle protrud- ing the baby's side. With pair of pliers she removed good-sized needle.
 She recalled that nine months ago . needle she had been using and which sne . had placed with some embroidery work on the crib where the child lay had die appeared. And she and the physicians laid the infants cranky disposition to teething.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-05-30

vast estuary. 1S6 miles wide and it Is fully that long to the point where the Uru- quay and Paraguay join The Parana proper to where it Is formed by the Alto Parana and the Paraguay Is 800 miles long. and it Is from 10 to IS miles wide throughout that whole length. If you will l4 miles wide running from Philadelphia almost to Chicago, you may have some idea of the Parana proper Both the Parana proper and the Rio de la Plata are more like inland seas of liquid mud than like rivers. took a bath one morn ing on steamer in the Rio de la Plata, just before coming into the port of Monte video. The river there Is 65 miles in width and it is the color of pea soup As and let the water run out In short time I was standing in mud and when stepped out my tracks on the bottom of the porcelain tub were as plain as that which scared Robinson Crusoe on tho shores of his desert island. The silt of the Rio de la Plata discolors the Atlantic for 9S miles out at sea. The Parana brings down a quarter of million tons of mud every day, and it has so filled up the channel near Buenos Aires that that city has to spend more than $40,GJJ.a5.
 making the docks and dredgings that eil- able 1t to be one of the greatest ports of the world.
 The water continues muddy ail the way from Buenos Aires to where the Paraguay flows in. There is so much mud that 1t has built up tens of thou sands of islands. The channels through which the steamer goes are everywhere about as wide as the Mississippi proper. but they wind their way in and out among these islands. There are times when you cannot see the mainland at all, and other times when you behold only q hay line of blue over these low ex- panses of green the blue being the high lands of the opposite shore. Now yot
 seem to be far out on sea of liquid
 mud, now you are close to the islands
The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-05-30

ered that she is woman, There are let ters from children. hundreds of them, who six if there isn't something they can do to help beat the Germans. And there are inexpressibly pathetic tales of brave chaps who have left their peaceful avocations and gone to die heroes deaths for Eng land sake. It is significant that Walter Isaac, who knows better than anyone else what the result of this canvass has been, laughs to scorn the idea of any necessity for conscription Read what is written on only thousand of those pa pers.' said he to the writer, and you will laugh, too, at the idea that there is any need to force Englshmen to fight"
 The colossal job of sorting all these forms has been done, as so many big jobs are being done in each of the coun- tries at war, by voluntary labor. Most of the laborers are women Only the &C., tual sending out of the forms was placed in professional hands. About 100000 forms went out every day. This work began early in November and went on until late in January. On the day after the thing statrted the replies began to pour in They came by the tens of thousands In a few days the mornings post consaste ed of 120 huge mail bags filled to over- flowing. Who was there available for the herculean task of opening. examining and recording their contents? Isaacs be- lieved that voluntary labor could be h. d and he appealed, through their official Journal, to the school teachers of Lon don, 75 per cent of whom are women for help. The teachers responded gallantly Hundreds of them volunteered came /. soon as school was over and worked til, 10. Within few days there were l50 os them hard at it. To begin with the scene of their labors was the big cor ference room of the National Liberal club, the largest club in London. but yh,y soon outgrew that, and were sitting out in the halls. So the work was transferred to the historic Westminster hall of the House Of Parliament Built by William Rufus and enlarged by Richard II, it IS 2SS feet long by 67ia feet broad. but it soon proved too small to contain the workers who were wrestling with the jot of sorting the willing-to-enlist forms Sc still another big place, Caxton hall ir Victoria street, was taken and the over flow of workers installed there. At pres ent, now that the job Is nearing complc. tion, the scene of activity is the com mittee room of the House of Parliamen which looks out on Palace yard
 Since the beginning of the job exactl, 1886 voluntary workers have taken par in it. The original school teachers tolt their women friends that help was needed and the latter turned up by the hundreds rolled up their sleeves and went to work
 One housewife, who lives at Enfield popped in one day and, few days afte. arrived with 50 of her women friends WI,
 straightway fell to and did their bi: Among the women workers. by the way was at least one American. She is Mrs Chester Bailey Fernald, whose hustar<
The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-05-30
WRFSTT ING WITH SEVEN MILLION REPORTS

wrote "The Cat and the Cherub." Fer nald now lives in England, where hs Pursuit of Pamela" was produced re- gently and is interested in the film ous'- ness. Sir George Alexander has just ac- cepted a new play of his.
 lot of men helped in the work of recording the results of the house toulouse canvass, too. When l visited the committeeman of the House or Commons last Tuesday the males work ing there numbered two to perhaps 50 women. That is about the proportion that has prevailed. Each worker had big pile of forms in front of him, The forms record the number of male persons between 19 and Ss years old residing in each house willing to enlist for the war only There are spaces for surname, Christian name, age, for stating if married or single with the number of children, and for "occupa- tion," If any member of the house. hold has already enlisted. the partic- ulars are to be given. soverleaf"
 These forms are first sorted into three sets, the good bad and "oueries." The good are those that
 
 contain the names of men willing to serve, the bad those who can't or won't, for tiny minority have de- clared frankly that they won't Of them more anon. The "queries' are those forms, numbering thousands, that nave letters attached to them. To deal with these a special staff was heeoeo Trained women were necessary. Tney were found among the government tel egraph workers Twenty girls dnd women therefrom volunteered and nave worked after hours They have wadec through literally miles of "queries, aggregating, to date. 110,649 separate letters Boy scouts have helped, too' At first the business of cutting open all the envelopes was done py the ordinary workers. but it was oecioes that this mechanical work only wasted their time So a squad of 20 poy scouts was enlisted. They have worked from 10 to every day. just opening en- velopes. The other workers nave pun in such time as they could some four or five hours a day Some have given the whole day. As matter or ract all the 100000 forms are now being scrutinized for the second time' Inis is because, when the forms were 1ilieo in. many men said that they would be glad to serve but that they were under the required nelsnI
 has since been lowered, so 1t mas peer necessary to look up these men.
 The workers have not lacked fol many A hearty laugh Many Of the re- piles have been highly comic Mrs Fernald mentioned few that she nat unearthed personally. One ald maie wrote: There is only me and my yl'tti' dog, and we must serve in other ways A mother wrote that her son would DO glad to serve. "but he is unmedicali! fit" Another declared that her sol was anxious to join "but has odd legs. one of the most amusing of the letter.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-05-30

a transportation service which today is one of the large ones of the world. When he began he had to buy his coal for cash, five tons at time. When he died, only a short time ago, his vessels con stunned 10000 tons every year. He left millions and had other large undertak- ings outside his steamships. He was the founder of the La Blanca meat packing establishment. since bought by the Ar mours: He also owned several hundred thousand acres of land.
 Outside the Mihanovitch line the traf- fic of the Parana and Paraguay is large ly in the hands of Brazilians, although until the war occurred the Germans were carrying on passenger traffic between Buenos Aires and Montevideo and they had begun to compete for share of the interior river transportation. The Lloyd Brazilian line has passenger and freight steamers which leave Montevideo every 15 days for the north. They go up the Parana and Paraguay as far as Corum- ba, Brazil, which is five days beyond Asuncion. Another line is the Mercante Argentine line, which has five steamers from Asuncion to Buenos Aires. These vessels are all of low draft. The most of them draw less than 10 feet, and those which go beyond Asuncion seldom draw more than five feet. The smaller steamers go as far Cuyaba, the cap ital of Matta Crosse, 2700 miles from the Atlantic. Think of starting in at New York and going across the North Amer ican continent as far as Salt Lake City. That is what steamers starting at Bue- nos Aires can do in this part of South America. Some of the vessels are large Ocean steamers can travel inland beyond Rosario and load grain for Europe.
 It seems to me that there are great openings for good ships on the Parand system. All I have seen have been crowded. The San Martin, on which am travelling, has been full of passengers all the way to Corrientes near the mouth of the Paraguay. It belongs to the Mi hanovitches; and if it is any index to the
 other ships of the trust any company oi
 well managed vessels could ca silly crowC
 it out of the waters The ship is long
 low three-decked sdewheeler, with hun
 dreds of cabins and a dining room a'
 one end of the deck. Its accommodation:
 are filthy The food is not good. and bu
 little attempt is made for the comfort Q
 the passengers There are crawling thins.
 in my cabin and the bathrooms and tn other sanitary arrangements are sucl that they would not be tolerated on
 Eurorean or an American vessel. l an
 told that the line has other vessels tha are newer and better, but I would advis
 all American tourists to examine person ally the steamers of this line before the.
 take passage and what other line have to offer. There is now railroa, connection between Buenos Aires an , Asuncion. by which one can make tn trip in two days. If the boats were goo the ideal way would be to go up by raj
 and to come back south by steamer whe the current of the river should ena bl the voyage to be made in three days. Tn rates on the river are $42 to Asuncion an
 S3S for return to Buenos Aires. Ther are reduced rates for the round trip.
The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-05-30

and now near the shore of the mainland. The country Is so low that the islands seem to be floating, and in flood times there are really floating islands, consist ing of great masses of vegetation that have been torn by the river from the highlands of Brazil and are moving slow ly down to the ocean. Jaguars, deer, tapivs and other wild animals are some times seen in these floating islands. In some places the banks of the islands are steep. They have been coated and built up by flood after flood, as you can see by the strata which are so plain>that theJ' look like the layers in cake and appear to be sliced down with knife Many of the islands are covered at flood timel, and then the river goes far out over the mainland. At Rosario, about POO miles from Buenos Aires. the stream at lov water is l5 miles wide. and in the floods it extends 10 miles farther out
 Many of these islands of the Parana are inhabited This is especially so of those near Ruenos Aires, where hum dreds of thousands of acres have been taken up by fruit and vegetable plan tatons This region is known as the Tlgre. The islands are so close to- gether that they seem one great body of and separated only by narrow canals. There are villas on many of them, and the place is also a pleasure resort and one of the gambling hells for city. Far ther upstream many islands are devoted to pastures. You cattle feeding upon them and animals are ferried over from the mainland in times of drought. The islands are as fertile as the valley of the Nile. They will raise rice, and it is believed that they might furnish enough of that grain to feed the whole country and give some for export. Al together they cantan thousands of acres, but they form a very small part of the undeveloped regions of this mighty Par ana basin, which potentially is one of the great food lands of the world
 know of no place on the globe that compares with the basin of the Parana in its undeveoped possibilities. The oth- CT large bread and meat areas of the world are practically all under cultiva- tion. Let me recall some that compare in extent with this region. First. take the great plains of China. They are cut up into garden patches. They are spot ted with cities and with countless vl- lages of mud huts, and they support sew eral hundred millions of people. And then, the great plains of the Ganges They are so overpopuated that less than an acre is allotted to the support of eact person. The poverty is so great that some of the people eat opium to keep down their hunger figuring on the number o' bites they may eat for dinner at night to be sure they may have breakfast nex
 morning. The wheat lands of Russia might be improved by good farming, but they are often the scenes of terrible fam inc. And last, but not least, we have the basin of the Mississippi which is now so thickly settled that we have to import meat from abroad.
 The basin of the Parana is bigger than that of the Mississippi and it is a ques- ton whether it has not more cultivable territory. It is more than 20oo miles long and in places it reaches from the Andes clear out to the ocean. All the way UT
The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-05-30

received was the following, which came from Halifax, in Yorkshire:
 q object to serve for the following reasons: Since my revered mother died on January 1, 1900, no married lady has visited me except for subscriptions. or being a relative, or to pay rents. l mean no lady in my own position of life. I live in my own house, keeping up a staff of three servants. I have lived in this house since 1869. l am assessed at f63, it used to be f130. If men have their duties. so. have the women"
 This misongynist deserves an introduce tion to the writer of another amusing let ter. She keeps lodgings at Hume, near Manchester. She furnished list of eight former lodgers, all of military age. They all left, she explains, owing her money They all had plenty with which to buy erink, she declares, but not enough to pay her Accordingly, she furnishes their addresses and apparently hopes. by way of revenge, that they will be bounced upon and forced to fight the Germans.
 Quite surprising number of men wrote advocating conscription. They explained that they were ready and willing to go to fight, but not as long as "slackers" were allowed to escape service. A vastly different tune, however, was sung by one avowed socialist" He told the recruiting committee frankly that he had no inten- tion of fighting. He remarked that he could be no worse ofr under German than under English rule. "rhe Germans, if they come,' said he, Twill not take an inch of my property. If Great Britain conquers Germany. shall not get an inch of that country And he concluded, de- fiantly. ''I propose to reserve my fight ing abilities for the man who tries to conscript me-
 The letters from old men form a study In themselves. The most venerable of them all wrote
 T am very sorry to say that am too old to serve again, Was 100 years old last August, the 18th, now I am in my lolst year But am very proud to say that l have five sons and eight grand sons now serving in our (sic) majesty S service I am also very proud to tell you, sir, that have fought in two wars myself"
 One of the forms returned contained the names of four men, Thomas. Henry, Edward and William Bate of Plymouth. They are. respectively, ss, s5. ss and "a years old. "The only male residents ' added note, "all ready when required for the front.'
 Then there was an old Irish street sweeper at Stockton-on-Tees. who admit ted that he was S2, but declared he wal fit for service and attached a photo graph of himself to his form to prove it. His name is J. Sutherst. and he evi dently is still "rale broth of a bhoy.' A pathetic letter from another veteran ran as follows: < My age is 75 years. My son. Alber
The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-05-30

Fagg went down in the 'Cressy. My son Frank Fagg and my son Arthur J. Fagg, were in the Seventh Dragoon Guards. Both lave been killed in this war
 I'm 55 and as good as ever I was" wrote another man, an old soldier, who pleaded to be set to work at anything" Seven nephews and one nephew-in-law at the front
 Still another declared: "I am 52 and feel 29, especially after the recent lombard ment." This letter came from Hartlepool, one of the famous fortified places that the German cruisers sheled just before Christmas last. Thereby hangs a tale.
 When those watering places on our east coast were bombarded." said Isaacs. "our recruiting forms for those thought it would be a good chance to see what the real moral effect of the thing had been, so I directed that the forms should go out at once. They did, 350,000 of them. And do you know, the returns from those district showed double the normal percentage of men willing to servei That should show the Germans, if anything can, that they can't scare the English people. Every manifestation of their frightfulnesS' in this country will have precisely tho opposite effect than that which is in tended"
 As a contrast to the forms filled up by octogenarians, there were many amusing ones concerning juveniles. The best of the lot read as follows:
 Hunt, John; age. F. Single. (very). Occupation, "Worrying motherv'
 AnOtbpr 1affpr in a W linz Hl<i0'' hand, read:
 "I am the only man In the house, and my age is II, and I want to go tu the front. Please let me know what I can do for my king and country
 ALBERT EVANS
 Then there was this letter from a mother. evidently an Irish one, -au- dressed to the prime minister person. ally. .A
 ITO MT. Asquith.
 q have four sons who are anxious to avenge little Belgium, but as then ages range from to IA, am at presen' unable to grant their desire. thougf l would willingly let them do so now that you have home rule in Ireland. Touching in It's brevity is one forn filled in by a feminine hand
 "No man now in this house. M, husband went down in the Bulwark.
 Another woman said that she hat sent her husband and five of her son to the war. q have only my younges boy who Is IS. toe protect me ant my five little ones," she added. "so gray you not to take him, but if h. r1ust go, I will surrender him. too , One of the thousands of forms file, : up by famous women was that show , me was that of Mrs. LloydGeorge, wifi of the famous chancellor of the exche quer She simply gave the names O l her two sons who have joined tn pcolors, Richard and Gwilyn Lloyd Gorge
The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-05-30

v LONDON, May 20.-(Special)
 A One of the biggest and most i'm P:,sss;S,.,-, portant jobs of it's kind ever GzSsssED undertaken in th.s country IS
 now nearing completion. The results of il are inspiring, pathetic and funny. The job in question was the cir cularizing of every householder in the United Kingdom with the object of learn ing from him or her how many men will irg to perform military service there were under his or her roof In other words, how many men the country still could put into the fighting line, if need be, under the voluntary system. It meant the send Ing out and subsequent sorting and ex- animation of the contents of over 100000 forms printed in English and Welsh. It represented one of the many activities of the parliamentary recruiting committee, the non-party organization representing the Houses of Lords and Commons. Of this committee the prime minister, the Right Honorable Bonar Law, leader of the opposition. and the Honorable Arthur Henderson, leader of the labor party, are oo-presdents,
 This move of the parliamentary recruit ing committee was regarded by many a S a possible preliminary to conscripton. The complete list of the householders of the country had to be compiled from the par liamentary registers, i. G.. the list of voters in the United Kingdom. This wal a gigantic task in itself. It represented, so l was told yesterday by Walter Isaac, who. in peace times is honorary secretary of the London Liberal federation. and who bossed this big job, the first time in history that the whole of the electorate
 l,, agency.
 The outcome of this monster canvass may be described in official language as "highly satisfactory Exact figures and similar details are withheld for obvious reasons. We have the word Of Lord Kitchener. however. that the first couple of months of the canvass revealed the names and whereabouts of over LOCO men who were ready and willing to serve if the emergency demands their serv- ices These millions on millions of care fully filled up forms, most of them with letters attached, reflect, in the most strilS- ing way possible, the spirit of England They tell of households bereft of men because all have gone 10 the war. In some cases all who have gone have been killed There are letters by the thou sand from men long past military age from gray-bearded veterans, Tn fact, who plead that their services may be utilized in any capacity. Most of them declarc that they are as good today as many youngsters.
 There are brave letters from women who have sent their husbands and sons and lost them. and who urge that mem bers of their sex should be allowed to fight the Germans. One of them makes the surprising statement that she already has served in the British army for l: years and is indignant that they will no! take her now because they have discov-