The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-01-17

the border will be awaited with in Iterest.
 Cotton Acreage
 To Be Decreased INROP diversification in Alabama JS for the present year is promis- ling, but it is yet too soon, of course,
 to predict the result. Certain it is that the farmers arc alive to the inn portance of varying the products of the soil.
 Commissioner J. A. Wade estimates that the acreage Ill winter wheat has been increased slightly-5 or 10 per cent, perhaps. The acreage in winter oats remains about the same. There would have been very substantial in- crease in grain acreage had it not been for the dfy fall.
 Mir. Wade thinks that the Alabama acreage in cotton will be decreased considerably-probably 25 per cent or more. He says the average farmer will hardly undertake to cultivate more than six or eight acres to the fplow. "Good planting seeds of early varieties" writes MT. Wade, fare scarce and high. Fertilizer is little higher than last year, and much labor has gone from the state. Many peo- pie are discouraged and will not try to grow any cotton. Credit on cotton as a basis of collateral is gone. All these factors tend to reduce the acre age, but it will be difficult to say just now what the reduction will be. However, I expect good yields from cotton properly planted and cultivated this year."
 The boil weevil, which played havoc in Alabama in 1916, will not be quite as much in evidence this year. It is moving eastward Georgia, which raised almost normal crop of cotton last season, will suffer from the pest this year, and by 1918 the Carolinas will "catch it." By that time Alabama will have forgot the fact that the boil weevil ever ravaged this state.
 In the meantime the farmers should strive this year more than ever to make success of diversification. Splitting Ordinances
 Should Be Enforced
 M7EW YORK city's health com J N missioner attributes the large number of deaths from respiratory diseases to the practice of splitting in public places. Pneumonia caused more than 500 deaths in New York last week and influenza about 60
 Many cities have anti-spitting ordi- nances. When Birmingham adopted such law about 12 years ago it was well observed for a short while. Spit ting on the sidewalks ceased suddenly, because the police were on the alert. People who had to expectorate stepped to the curb. But in time the public became in different to the ordinance and the po- lice allowed it to become almost a dead letter.
 It was reasonable ordinance and should be rigidly enforced today. A clean city for appearances sake is desirable, but for sanitary reasons it lis even more seriously urged. Sanitary reform may be overdone, but never in the case of splitting on the sidewalks and in street cars. * <
 Giant Motor Trucks
 To Haul a Circus A FTER all, the old-fashioned
 N wagon circus, crawling over the hills and through the valleys from town to town, had a glamor about it that the modern show, with it's inter- minable trains of railway cars, seems to lack. In that delightful romance of the sawdust arena, "Polly of the Circus," as done on the stage, there is a wonderfully effective scene ir
 which the wagon train of the show from which Polly has parted forever