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i L A RSI *»• -1 m iMrifl . ■ Florence POBMSHED EVKHV A^ CEPT 8l * IT ■triage licenses is* has been steadily dropping for the past four years, and In 1897 it was nearly twenty per cent, less than it had been in 1893. Bays the Chicago Inter-Ocean: The Bhah of Persia is said to own $75,000,- 000 worth of jewels and gold orna ments. He doesn’t keep up moch of a nary, and buys diamonds instead of gatling gnns and bombshells. Ex-Senator John B. Henderson has thoroughly studied the problem of the West Indies, and he predicts Euro pean flags on the islands will be pulled down one after the other until there will be a powerful republic of the “United Islands of America.” The American people have a very sweet tooth. Last year they consumed 2,096,263 tons of sugar—an increase orer the consumption of the previous year of 136,177 tons. Daring 1897 we produced 41,347 tons of beet sugar, 289,009 tons of cane sugar, and enough sugar from maple trees and sorghum to bring the total amount up to 336,- 656 tons. This is a good deal of sweet ness, but it is a mere trifle in com parison with our imports of 1,760,607 tons from foreign countries. H. C. Bussell, a scientific man of New South Wales, announces as a re sult of a prolonged examination of his tory from the earliestjtimes, that sea sons of drought recur with unfailing regularity at intervals of nineteen years. Of two hundred and eight droughts recorded since the year 900, all but fifteen conform to this theory, w,hich is that there are, every nine teen years, one long period of three years during which the rainfall is somewhat deficient, and a shorter period bet ween each of the long periods when the deficiency is excessive. He even finds a confirmation of the Bible chronology in the fact that the dates of the Egyptian drought in Joseph’s time, the drought during King David’s reign, that foretold by Elijah, and that predicted by Elisha, all fall into the tjawataeu-year period. MAKING BIG GUNS, How the Government Hurry-Orders For Great Weapons Are Being Executed. War Down on the meadows of the Passaic, on the shore of Newark Bay, and within the bounds of the city of Newark itself, says the New York Herald, men arc working day and night on guns for the Government. The complex and exquisitely adjusted machines that turn and bore “jackets” and “tubes” never stop, except for a “rest” of an hour of so or the replac ing of a cutter dulled by honrs of slow, steady ploughing through the hardest and finest steel. Steel is everywhere, in almost shape less, oblong ingots, fresh from the casting room; in forged lengths, in cylinders, now hearing some resem blance to a “rapid fire,” and in chips and shavings. There are strange and interesting scenes in these gun shops and the pictures presented each hour are dramatic in the extreme. Here in these processes is to be seen the acme of American manufacturing, the great essential fact being the machinery, that is almost automatic in its work, and the few men needed to control and guide it. Except in the forging room scarcely a blow of a hammer is heard. The shops are almost as silent as the grave. Wheels revolve, cutters turn, men stand placidly by the side of machines, moving softly here and there. All this time, each second, the gun that some day will belch forth tire and steel of its own is coming nearer com pletion. Chips fall as the bars re volve, but the cutters are not heard. The guns, it would appear to the first testa would have to show that the Government standard had been reached. Oftener than otherwise these results can only be obtained through much trying and the expenditure of time. A batch pf guns may thus take months in the making, while good luck may bring it down to weeks. It is in the casting shop, of course, that the process of jgun making has its — nouan casts. very beginning, in the furnace where steel is made from a medley of pieces of old iron, pig iron lengths, broken bits and odds and ends of castings, long since relegated to the scrap yards. Hero is the first stage of the modern gun—ragged and rusty metal that is carted in wheelbarrows up to the fur nace doors. The maws of blazing 4* Poor De Lome’s downfall is a cruel blow to the pessimists who are fore- ever moaning about the inoompetenoy of our diplomats, exclaims the New York Commercial Advertiser. We «nay uot have a class of trained diplo matists, and we may send country law yers to contend with experienced Min isters at European courts, but they do aot make spectacles of themselves by insulting the heads of the govern ments they are accredited to. They may eat with their knives, but they do not get themselves sent home in dis grace. If Saokville-West and De Lome are trained diplomatists, the United States will be satisfied a time longer with its untrained ones. It is worth notice, however, that European diplomats make more of these blund ers in the United States than in any other country. Europe must send all its cheap raw material here. Oom Paul Krueger seems to have a life position. Mr. Krueger is a won derful man, and his unexampled suc cess in maintaining the independence of his country in face of a rich, intel ligent and violently hostile majority of the actual inhabitants of the country within, and against all the forces of noderp civilization without, is a fact to which history furnishes no parallel. He is the incarnation of the spirit of his race, masterful, stubborn, rugged »nd tenacious of their own. In addi tion, he has a quality foreign to his people, such sagacity and craft in policy i AAWW Bismarck or some competent judge declared him to be the one born diplomat he had met. The history of Krueger and his race reads like a chapter out of Lacede monian history. In stern contempt for luxury and progress, hatred of foreiguers, grim content with old- fashioned ways, disdain for refine ments and comforts, scorn of wealth and all it can bring beyond four meals a day and long range rifles, they are '/^ike the people who chose iron for ohey metal and trained their yonag . —' ^ yp ont of doors. There is no Tot’ure a cfcr such a people in modern Take Laxative Ifroit. Its time will coma tablets. All druggisUtion shall have bred money if it faili tocurf decay and grown ripe ® quest by rude strength. not lastYill then. They o late or too soon. BOBINO MACHINE. onlookers, are almost making them selves. Of the stur Best type of American mechanics are the men employed. They are workmen who think and who know, men who can jndge when a cer tain instant has arrived, knowing its approach by intuition, rather than men of brawn and muscle. The latter qualities are not so much needed in a gqu shop of to-day. Should a partially finished tube or jacket have to be moved there is the electric traveling crane overhead, that, at the jerk of a cord, swingsorer its grappling irons, and these need only to be attached. The gun man of to-day needs only to guide and to know. These works are of the Benjamin Atha & Illingworth Company, one of the three concerns in this country that have the plant and the skill to turn ont gnns of size. Their main shops are at Harrison, the next station to Newark, and their casting shops across the Passaic, on the “Island.” oiaf MOULDS. Dozens of pieces for the navy and for ocaat defence are being made here. ; Work of Great Care. Six weeks is practically the minimum of time fqr the making of a modern gun, and to finish one within that space everything would have to go marvellously well. The “treatment” of the steel would have to be a success at the very first attempt—something that does uot often happen—and the heat, sevex-al thousands of degrees in intensity, stand open to receive it. So overwhelming is this heat that even the master melter has to put on blue glasses to peer into the flames rising over the babbling sea of metal when the doors are open. When the doors are dropped down—that is, shut— there is only revealed a single spot of brightness, an eye that looks into the furnace’s flame, and even this cannot be approached too closely with the naked eye. Becinnlnj- the Gun. The gun is under way. Ten tons of metal are already in the furnace—a lake of molten, seething metal held in by banks of sand. Other things of steel are to be made of this mass, the gun works being only a portion of the Atha & Illingworth plant. Whether used for peace or war, steel is steel, differing only in quality. It is all “boiled down” in the same way. In shadow is the casting shop, ex cept when the doors are raised, when a flood of light, a wave of extreme heat, is thrown out. In the dusk of the shadows grimy meu raise the sea of metal with long bars. The master melter, never still, steps now and then to his wheels, set at one side of the furnace and looking like the brake wheels on a freight car, and gives one or the other a sharp twist. By this he regulates his fire—five hundred de grees at a twist. The s^ica^brieks with which the furnace Jis lined can stand four thousand degrees of heat and more before they commence to melt. The master melter runs up the heat to the extreme point and then lets it down. There aye three “heats” a day in the casting shop. Three times metal is heated, three times it is let go with a mighty rush into the casting pot. The last few moments of each heat are the dramatie instants. It is then, at the judgment of the master melter, that the furnace is fed with “medicine,” shovelfuls and blocks of metal being tossed in. On this depends the qual ity, the strength, the elasticity of the steel, essentials of the most vast im portance of the gnn of to-day. Into the Castinc Pot. Two hours is usually sufficient for the boiling of this steel in its cradle of sand. At last the one moment ar rives. The bar at the furnace’s back is worked through the sand to make an ojpening. An instant, and into tha casting pot below the mass runs, scat tering millions of sparks, agiowing, golden torrent that foams and hisses as it plnnges down. The picture of the gun’s second stage is snperb. On every hand fly these sparks, and the mass babbles and seethes in the casting pot. On its top, through the glow, can be seen a dirty mass—the slag or the scam that is of no nse cr value. But the picturesqueness of the scene has not ended. The casting process is only half through. The liquid metal must get into its moulds, and that in short order. On a track the casting pot rests. It is pushed along this track until a gi gantic crane overhead seizes it, swing ing it aloft. Over mounds of sands it is swung, and the metal, by the move ment of a bar,is allowed to drop down in a thin stream. Again shower upon shower of sparks, surrounding the men who, with chains and staves, control the clumsy pot and pull along the crane. The pirn old shop, with its floor of sand, its unrelenting dust and and its dreariness, is made into a brilliant cavern for the moment, and the toiling men are supernatural in the light. In the Hough. A prosaic time follows, when the metal in the moulds must cool. When the saud is finally kpocked away the gun that is to be is only a rough mass of cast steel, indicating only to the ex pert its fine quality, and not even to him in any degree, for the tests must come to prove that. In the forging shop this mass is hammered and worked until it becomes an octagonal ingot of just twice the weight it will possess when it is finally turned and bored in to a ‘ ‘jacket” or a ‘ ‘tube. ” The hoops, the third part of a gun, are cast and forged hollow, not in solid cylinders, as the jacket and tube are. With the carrying away of the rough ingot of steel from the forging shop the special work of gan-making com mences. The boring and taming factory is the scone of the first step in this process. Completed gnns, ready for mount ing and for fire, are not turned out in these gun shops. The finishing touches, the actual putting together of the parts of the gun, the rifling it self, are done at the ordnance works in Washington. It is the business alone of a gun shop to make the steel and to hand over to the army and the navy the three parts of a great gun— the “tube,” the “jacket” (which is slipped on over the tube and then “shrunk on” by contraction) and the “hoops,” two in number, which, for the purpose of strengthening, are fit ted on tightly over the muzzle end of the tubes. Once these three parts are together the metal becomes, practical ly, one piece and it would be very nearly impossible, by any art or sci ence known to experts, to get the jacket off. Finished by the GoYernment. Only the “rough machining,” in tech nical phrase, is done on these guns, this meaning that the final finish and the rifling is put on by the Govern ment itself. “Rougljo machining” seems, however, a strange term, for if delicate work requiring the utmost ac curacy aud preciseness is not dona here it never was anywhere. Centennial Celebrations. I This year’s crop of centennial cele brations includes observations of the four hundredth anniversaries of Vasco de Gama’s discovery of the way to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope, at Lisbon, in May; of the burn ing of Savonarola at Florence, also in May, and of the birth of Holbein at Basil, in Switzerland. Montpellier will celebrate the hundredth anniver sary of the philosopher, Auguste Comte; Ancona that of the poet Leo pardi, who was born atBecanati, close by, and Paris that of Michelet, the historian. Old Hank In] Nebraska. The building in which the oldest bank in Omaha is located is in a very dilapidated condition. The porches Nebraska’s oldest bank. A V Some folks I Skin diseases t on Its face—absti believes, there. Stay the onlj safe and e*rtaltf «) V f worm. Eczema and other Itchy Irri for Dandruff, too. At drug stor by mail from J. T. Shuptrtne, Sav ing at Some men who possess silver have lots of brass. I If pric Jean up-te" half the' ^a’hor Dtinpma, iKDieriTiOM and all Btcssash trosblss sorsd by Taber*- Fepein Compound. Sample bottle mailed free- Writs Dr. Taber Kfg-Oo.. Sevaaaah, Os. The battleship Kentucky took water In those launching ceremonies. Zducate Tear Bowels With Caecarji', C4ndy Cathartic, core constipation forever. -Ce.SSc. If C. C. C. fail, druggists refund money- The dollar you pay back looks twice as large as the one you borrowed. * To Cure a Cold In One Day. Take Laxative Bromo Quinine Tablets. All Druggists refund money if it falls to cure. 35c. Come to think of it, a worthless man couldn’t be worth less, anyhow. Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup forehtldrsn teething, softens the gums, reducing inflamv tion,allays pain.cures wind colic, 36c. a bottle. It is wicked to bet and lose, for a man has no moral right to be wrong. To Cure Constipation Forevet. Tnke Cascarets Candy Cathartic. 10c cr SBm If C. C. C. fail to cure, druggists refund mousy. Everything seems to get round in a sewing circle. Lyon & Co’s Pick Leaf Extra Smoking To bacco is made from the purest, ripe-t, sweet est .eat grown In the Golden Belt o. N. C. Whenever the counterfeiter needs money bad be makes it. Chew Star Tobacco—The Beit. Smoke Sledge Cigarettes. A man may be fast asleep, but rather slow when awake. Dost Tobacco Spit and Smoke lour Mfe Away. To Quit tobacco easily and forever, be mag netic. full of life, nerve and vigor, take No-To- Bac, the wonder-worker, that makes weak men strong. Ail druggists, 60c or II. Cure guaran teed. Booklet and sample free. Address Sterling Remedy Co, Chicago or New Tori', Love and sen sickness may be felt, bat they cannot be described. * Fits permanently cured. No fits or nervous ness after first day’s use of Dr. Kline’s Great Nerve Restorer. $2 trial bottle and treatise free Dr. R. H. Kline, LW..831 ArchSt..Phila., Pa. Land and a Living Are best and cheapest in the New South. Land S3 to $5 per acre. Easy Terms. Good schools and churches. No blizzards. No cold waves. New illustrated paper, “Land and a Living,’’ 3 months, for 10 rents. In stamps. W. C. Rineauson, G. P. A., yueen A Crescent Route, Cincinnati. Spring Mndicin A G~9od Hood’sISarsaparilla Unequ for Making Rich, Red Blood The necessity for taking a good Spring Medicine to purify the blood and build up the system is based upon natural and un avoidable causes. In cold weather there has been less perspiration and impurities have not passed out of the system as they should. Food has consisted largely of rich, fatty substances, and there has been less opportunity for outdoor exercise. The result Is. the blood is loaded with Im purities and these must be promptly ex pelled or health will be- endangered. Hood's Sarsaparilla is the host Spring Medicine because it is the best blood purifier and tonic. It thoroughly purifies the blood and gives vigor and vitality. Hood's 8 *'", Is America’s Greatest Medicine. §1; six for $& are tnmbling and ita windows and tops of the doorways have been taken poseftsion of by the sparrows. Not only was this, the first bank of the town, bat the first financial institution nnder the charter of the Territory of Nebraska. Its president was Thomas H. Benton, son of the Senator. Leroy Tuttle was cashier, and A. N. Wyman teller. In the panio of ’57 the doors were closed. The ancient structure is decidedly picturesque in its dilapidation and has frequently been put into pictures by local artists. UnnriV PSIlo ere the favorite cathar- nUOu S rillS tic. All druggists. 26cta. Corn responds readily to proper fer tilization. Larger crops, fuller ears and larger grain are sure to result from a liberal use of fertilizers containing at least 7% actual Potash Our books are free to farmers. GERMAN KALI WORKS, 93 Nassau St., NuwYmfc. W HAT “BOB TAYLOR/’ GOV. OV TENN., SAYS. Barbie City Drug Mfg. Co.. Knoxville, Tsnn. Gentlemen:—In reply to your letter of recent date, will say that I did r -oeive great benefits from “Dr. Frank’s Cough Care." I consider it the best remedy for coughs and colds I have ever used. Yours truly. Robert L. Tatlor. For sale by all druggists at 35c.. or sent direct 4.-96. DRUG ST( Flore* )RE, s, S. C