The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1922-04-05
Bureau of Information

Suppose you buy, direct from a
mine, bituminous coal that costs
you 500 delivered. Out of that
500, the railroad gets $3.50 for
freight. The mine operator gets
$48.5O and $32.88 of this goes to
the miner for wages. These figures,
furnished by the National Coal as
ISOLATION, are said to represent an
average of all soft coal buying.
Something is out of balance when it
costs 60 per cent more to ship coal
over a railroad than it does to mine
it.
Heinstadt, the Swiss physical Gull
turist, checks up and finds that the
average American business man takes
100000 steps a year. That's equi-
valent to walking 5000 miles, or
across the continent each year.
Roughly, it's ten miles day, making
allowances for Sunday rest. To walk
ten miles in day requires lot of
energy. Few of us realize how
strong we really are. The champion
weak muscles and low mileage are in
the brain.
DR.. Karl Heinstadt, Swiss physi-
cal culture expert, says the fox
trot is the finest exercise ever de-
vised for the legs. A fox trotter,
he estimates, covers a mile and
quarter in twenty minutes. In four
hours of dancing, a fox trotter
travels Is miles. And finishes fresh.
Doesn't seem like work. Yet if you
suggested to the dancers that they go
out and walk fifteen miles, the groans
would be heard for a mile Dread
makes a job four times as hard
as it really is. That's why the
man who has found the work he likes
is lucky.
The best year the bituminous coal
miners ever had was 1918, when they
worked an average of 252 days.
Even in that best year, making allow
ances for Sundays and holidays, the
average miner was idle two months.
The coal problem can never be solved
scientifically until way is worked
out, to stabilize production-give the
miner year-round employment. That
can come two ways-either by inducing
the public to stock up with coal when
mines are dull, or by learning how to
store in big quantities without spon-
taneous combustion.
To get cheaper food and more of
it, county agricultural agents of the
department Of agriculture make $780,
819 field demonstrations in year.
These demonstrations are scientific
exhibitions, teaching how to grow
more, to the acre. Hit-or-miss farm
ing, trusting to providence and the
elements, is a thing of the past. The
American farm is becoming a chemic-
al laboratory. The department of
agriculture is easily the most import
ant branch of the national govern
ment, just as farmers are our most
important citizens.
Farmers still have a bothersome
surplus of corn on hand-about l.
313 100000 bushels. But farm hold
ings of corn are PSI, 712,0OO bushels
less than a year ago. The corn
problem grows SIldllcI. LII louI
months the farmers have marketed
2,026,437,OOO bushels. Prices have
been low, but the big sales of corn
have helped iquidate debts and
stimulated the corn growers buying
power. For general business, this is
equivalent to TRANSMISSION of blood.
i
The cost of keeping up American
roads and building new ones last year
was 81 for every man, woman and
child-after deducting money from
auto license fees. So reports the
National Automobile Chamber of
Commerce. 1t is equivalent to a cent
and tenth a day for each Of us. To
save that much, few would surrender
even the street in front of their house.
Roads are about the greatest blessing
Of civilization, also the cheapest.
It'll 1J1 &c