The Hood River glacier. (Hood River, Or.) 1889-1933, 1915-08-19

such dastsrdly work as this belongs in
[ the class of sneak and chicken thieves.
of whom We have some ~ this locality.
and they are a species Of vermin 10 be
exterminated on the spot.
When a person takes advantage Of a
heighbor's loss to rejoice in it. or TO
exploit that ueighbor's need. thus csus-
ing him an additional loss. he makes
himself a near relative Of the ghouls
who stole watches aud money from the
dead bodies OF victims of the Eastland
| tragedy. Such inhumans would dig up
the bones of their dead parents and sell
them for what they could get.
A Hood River lady came over the
other day, walking all the way TO the
| Underwood heights, to look at some Of
our high class poultry. We can pro-
duce the best Of everything here. Al
falfs grows without irrigation as fine a
crop as anywhere in the land. Our po-
tatoes and apples are the finest and
hest favored and our three year old
dwarf pear trees, three to four feet
high, are hanging down with rs to rs
pears to the bush. They are sight,
worthy Of picture and a write-up in
Better Fruit. Dwarf pears as filters in
apple orchards have not yet been sufii-
ciently understood. Beginning the sec
ond year after planting they bear enor-
mously for their size, the fruit being
as large, or larger. than the standard
pear and better favored. The gather
ing Of the Bartletts will begin this
week. will our we'll paid officials of
the fruit unions get busy and find the
right market, so that the grower will
get some compensation?
Work on the great Skamania county
highway will soon begin under the di-
rection of a United States engineer
and il is hoped we shall get good re-
turns for our money. There arc three |
items Of large expense in the United |
States for which the taxpayer often |
gets shoddy or a gold brick, viz. {: |
Schools, roads and the military. Our |
schools are not giving the young an ad |
equate equipment for the practical |
things Of life and many of our college |
graduates are ignorant of the element |
airy things of education.
1t has long been asserted that half |
the money collected for good roads has |
been wasted. The Department of Ag-
ricuture on investigation found that |
we had too many roads. In h new
country 1t is easy to get all kinds of |
roads located and started without re-
gard to efficiency, needs and grades,
but sometimes more to boom private |
interests. The money is spent and we
find we have no good road anywhere. |
In this vicinity we have spent enough |
money on bad roads to have built
good highway long ago. if we had done
the work scientifically, efficiently and
ecoomically
II has also been found that waste is
occasioned by right of way that is of
unnecessary width. II is folly to run a
roadway sixty feet through an apple
orchard, chopping down fruit trees,
while actually improving a width of
not more than twenty feet. thus leaving
twenty feet on either side to grow up
in noxious weeds. Let Skamania coun.
ty do a better job and show a better
way. IL the vast amount of money
spent and wasted on the military would
be saved and put into good roads and
the development and conservation of
our natural resources we would have q
much better preparation against war
than in the manufacture of huge war
ships, cannon. high explosives and
other machinery of destruction. In
the last fifteen years we have spent
two and half billions of dollars on
our navy. and now the sabre rattlers
and war traders tell US our navy is
only old junk and no good, fni they
want us to invest more largely in old
junk Are we too great suckers not
to see this trick? Roosevelt with his
big stick will soon pass into the muse
um. Swinging around the circle "paw.
ing the earth and laundering in the
index den0uncing all those who will
not have a little gore and kill someone
before dinner as mollycoddles and sis
sizes, Roosevelt with his grinning teeth
and humping his breast seems to have
his face turned to the jungle of the
wild beast rather than towards the fu,
ture of humanity. War is hell and then
some, and human beings are soon going
to get out of hell, even Billy Sundays
hell, and get into something better
We must believe this and work towards
1t or else regard his world as a pande.
monium of lunatlcs and God A lmighty
as fake. There is good Bible class
now at the Underwood chapel which
yOu men oupht tn attend -ThisIledown |