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rigid who stood against a wall with
her six children gathered about her
tattered skirts staring out uncaring on
a company of living refugees who are
a more melancholy sight than the
thousands of ancient graves among
which they are encamped They had
been fed one portion of thin watery
rice porridge for them all and now
they must wait in the cold for another
24 hours to pass before they can be
fed again and even then some
stronger ones may push them aside
and steal their turn at the meager re
lief
Strange incongruities flash into
ones mind as he walks about among
these 30000 refugees As I passed
this morning an old old woman cov
ered only by a few rags who sat on
the cold bare ground sharing her
small bowl of rice with a babe of 12 or
IS months evidently her grandchild
who sat on her knees I thought of
some grandmothers whom I know in
America sweet faced and comfortable
and kindly whose evening of life is
made pleasant by the love of children
and grandchildren and who know not
the word want And I recalled some
baby friends sweet ruddy little dears
wrapped in the finest linen with ward
robes upon which love has lavished
its generosity and whose food is a
matter of careful consultation with
physicians and friends
Of course I cannot imagine these
delicately nutured babes in dirty tat
ters and exposed to the cold winter
night and day week after week yet
somehow one picture suggests the
other Just so when a refugee mother
accosted us this morning and asked us
to accept her child as a gift imagina
tion brought instantly to view the pre
ciousness of the American children I
know
Suffering Unparalleled
Incidents could be piled upon inci
dents every one of these 30000 refu
gees incarnates a story a story of a
home abandoned of toilsome journeys
to this southern district in the hope of
finding a pittance of food to allay that
awful gnawing of hunger of the
eager hunt for a sheltered nook in a
doorway of being driven from spot to
spot until at last a few feet of bare
earth are secured out among the
graves with the other refugees a
space no bigger than a Chinese grave
suffices for an entire Chinese family
of the daily and nightly huddling to
gether in one mass for the sake of hu
man warmth of the search for dry
grass with which to make a tiny fire
of the morning struggle for a portion
of the government rice and of that in
describable terrible primitive duel
between life and starvation which the
Chinese so dauntlessly endure
In all this I write of the best and
not of the worst This is only the first
outpost of the famine district
Always Close to Starvation
The Chinese live closer to actual
starvation than it is possible for a
westerner to comprehend they are al
ways poor So the failure of the crops
not to mention the destruction of
their homes by flood at once placed
them in a state of actual destitution
which can only be relieved when the
wheat crop is harvested in July
Meanwhile owing to lack of seed only
half of the spring wheat crop has been
planted
The cargo of food which the Chris
tian Herald sent over to the stricken
district in China cost 100000 and
this sum was raised by popular sub
scription
Its arrival in China is expected to
do much for the sufferers but more
food will have to follow at once Con
ditions have grown steadily worse and
plague has broken out in one or two
of the provinces The sufferers are
huddled together in thousands in the
camps
Millions Face Death
In Russia the conditions are little
less appalling For the first time in
the history of such catastrophes in
Russia the government itself is aroused
to the necessity for relieving the
stress The famine affects no less
than 30000000 peasants inhabiting an
area half as large as the United
States and while this area lies be
tween the steppes and White Rus
sia the famine is affecting indirectly
the people within the pale who de
pend upon the peasants for trade and
commerce
The peasantry represents 85 per
cent of the entire population Their
one means of livelihood is fanning
and when the rain did not come to
a
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JOQD AT CSZNSZQ29GT W 2 L KS
Boston On the treeless steppes of
Russia beyond the pale and in the
arid districts of northeastern China
thousands of human beings are dying
for want of food Lack of rain in the
first instance excess of it in the sec
ond is the cause
Five provinces in China and 21 in
Russia are affected and while from
the former country come awful tales
of the bartering of human flesh for
food of the sale of little children and
of the breaking out of the plague
among the close packed sufferers from
Russia comes a wail of despair where
men women and children are trying
to cling to life with almost nothing to
eat and with no fuel in a temperature
of 25 degrees below zero
Conditions are such in both coun
tries that it is estimated that what in
this country would be the price of a
single visit to the theater would save
a human life until returning crops
bring self support
The Christian Herald of New York
which has taken charge of the Ameri
can end of the Chinese famine relief
pledged itself to supply 10000000
pounds of flour corn cornmeal medi
cal supplies etc in addition to what
Jiad already been sent The govern
ment gave the army transport Gen
Buford to carry this consignment from
San Francisco to Shanghai
Government Aid Inadequate
In Hussia the famine is being re
lieved to some extent by government
aid but the restrictions this aid car
ries with it make it very inadequate
It involves the delivery of one pound
of bread a day only to sufferers less
than 17 and more than 59 years of
age Infants under one year and all
the vast majority between 17 and 59
get nothing except what the unselfish
among the more fortunate are willing
to share And above and beyond this
there is the fact that the black hand
of Russian official graft appropriates
for private ends at least one half of
the money the government voted for
TClieL
Bishop Potter of New York is pres
ident and Dr Samuel J Barrows for
merly of Boston is secretary of the
American relief for Russia
It is hard to judge between the two
but perhaps the situation in China is
the more pitiable at present Statis
tics gathered early in February in one
of the five stricken Chinese provinces
showed a total of 23000 deaths This
ismit a small section of the awful
aggregate
A foreign correspondent writing in
description of the affected districts
says Every semblance of grass
plants and roots has disappeared and
starving parents are eating their chil
dren I know this to be true and
have myself found human flesh on
sale
Three Months in Famines Grip
The district involved in the famine
js known as Kianpeh meaning
north of the river the stream being
the Yangtse For more than three
months this region in northern China
has been in the remorseless grasp of
famine and famine bred disease Forty
days of rain and consequent floods
heaped calamity upon the 40000
square miles of territory and its 15
000000 of people Before new crops
can be raised it is estimated that
despite the best efforts for relief the
death list will exceed that of Naples
San Francisco and Jamaica rolled into
one
Writing after a tour through one of
tlifamine camps of 30000 starving
refugees a correspondent said recent
ly Little more than an hour ago I
isaw two women presumably mother
ixd grandmdther wailing over the
jttny coffin of a child that had been
jmrt of grim famines daily toil
It is all so horrible so overpower
ing so haunting so heartrending that
one cannot write of it in orderly fash
ion It seems as if only the repeated
cry of Help Help Help can be
fashioned for the ears of the prosper
ous American people to whom God
has given a year of plenty while the
poor of China perish from want
Out of the awful mass of suffering
a succession of individual pictures
comes trooping before my vision
There was the man too weak to stand
erect who bore on his back as older
4 brothers carry babies in China his
blind old mother the mere skin-an-
bone framework of a woman -They
wanted help and pleaded for It in the
thin whine of the utterly miserable
and I dared not give them so much as
a copper - r
The Mothers Suffering
t Or that mother hard eyed and
make their crops grow the past season
their only hope of susterancc was
gone
Last year in more than 1500000
square miles of Russian territory there
was sowing but no reaping The peas
ants hopefully put their little store of
seed grain into the ground When the
arid land failed to return a crop not
only were they robbed of the fruits of
their toil but their seed grain itself
which might have served as food was
gone There was nowhere to turn for
work or succor Hundreds of miles
away there were cities but the few
daring ones who reached them sent
back the hopeless words No work
Wholesale Grafting
In 1891 when the famine killed hun
dreds the Russian government hit
upon the expedient of forbidding the
word hunger hut the famine of the
present is so much greater that the
government is fully alive to it Be
sides having appropriated 35000000
already it is now negotiating a loan
qf 37000000 more for famine relief
But even this sum is totally inadequate
to the work in hand especially as half
of the money will line the pockets of
official grafters to whom the deaths of
thousands of poor peasants is merely
an unfortunate incident in their own
short cut to wealth
At present the relief work in Russia
consists of doling out a pound of bread
a day to sufferers The aged and
minors get nothing
Some families of five or six have
perhaps two who draw bread Other
families have none If two of a fam
ily of six draw bread and divide it
equally it meana that each member
eats one third of a pound a day The
regular diet of a Russian peasant is
five pounds of bread daily Thus the
most fortunate are now existing upon
one fifteenth of their regular fare or
to an American who has three square
meals a day two meals in three
weeks
The very seeds of the weeds have
been eaten and the ground has been
stripped of every green thing The lit
tle horses have all been sold or eaten
and the occasional cows too Nothing
remains but the hope of relief from
the outside There is no wood for
fires and many families have joined
together in one house for warmth
tearing the other dwellings down for
fuel
It is estimated that in the province
of Samara alone there will be 200000
deaths in a total population of 3000
000 and others of the 21 provinces af
fected will have like averages
Seek Aid of the World
Determined efforts are now being
made to enlist the sympathy of the
world with the suffering ignorant
peasants and emissaries have been
sent to this and other countries M
Shiskoff who is in America to enlist
aid says that 8 will save the life of
an adult and that 5 will keep a child
from dying
The immigrants to Boston from Rus
sia are mostly people from the pale
and they are taxed several times a
year to help their persecuted friends
and relatives at home It is estimated
that delegates from Russia took not
less than 5000 out of Boston last
year to help the victims of persecu
tion and probably 5000 more was
sent across the sea to individuals
either to relieve suffering or to help
them to emigrate
To the Russian Jews in this city the
famine tragedy now enacting is the
climax of misery long drawn out They
will do what they can but as one of
the men at the civic service house on
Salem street said the other day
Where our people can get more
money to send to Russia is a puzzle
they have drained their purses time
and time again and now it remains
for all the charitable in general over
here to do their share
The famine means a tremendous set
back to Russia At present the prob
lem is how to obtain food Later will
come the question of the future of
provinces whose people have lost
farms animals and savings and have
no money Friends of Russia how
ever see promise of better times
ahead although this necessarily in
volves a vast amount of work The
hope of the peasant in the famine area
lies in his education in modern farm
ing methods to take the place of the
thousand-year-old customs which he
still follows and in the installation of
great systems of irrigation so that
crops may be grown even when the
rain fails
AS
Discovered Compound for Burning Ashe
3tom stereograph copyright by Underwood N T
John Ellmere a cobbler of Altoona Pa says that he has discovered a
compound for burning ashes which will revolutionize the industrial world He
says that tests have demonstrated that ashes treated with the compound make
a fire hotter and at the same time cheaper than the fire produced by the
burning of coal Should the new process prove practicable it is asserted
the price of fuel especially coal will be reduced to but a fraction of its pres
ent cost Another advantage claimed for the new compound is that it almost
wholly does away with smoke
COAL
N
ANTHRACITE DEPOSITS OF GREAT
VALUE BEING WORKED
Mines on West Coast Have Proved
Most Profitable First of Arctic
Islands to Send Fuel
to Market
Washington The prospect bright
ens that Spitzbergen may become a
source of anthracite of some impor
tance The more the archipelago is
examined the more promising it is
said are the coal mining prospects
along some of the coasts and in a
number of the valleys The railway
which was built three years ago a lit
tle inland from Advent bay to bring
coal down to the shore is to be ex
tended further into the main island to
tap new sources of supply recently
discovered This is in about 78 de
grees north latitude or a little more
than 800 statute miles from the north
pole In order to make the short rail
road already in operation available
the year around the miners built it all
the way under cover Many tons have
been hauled down to the shore on
these tracks to await the arrival of
steamers that have carried several
loads of excellent coal to European
markets
The chief discoveries of coal have
been made in Ice fiord the deep in
dentation of the west coast and espe
cially in Advent bay where the rail
road was built Here about 50 miners
are living in small warm dwellings
They have already proved the practi
cability of winter mining and two
years ago they installed electricity to
illumine the long Arctic night in the
coal mine and in their little settle
ment so that they may add to the coal
output every month in the year It
was in Advent bay that Mr Conway
who made the first crossing of Spitz
bergen replenished the coal supply of
his little steamer 11 years ago
The world will not be indifferent to
any important coal resurces which the
Arctic regions may afford Some day
it may be drawing appreciable sup
plies from Greenland and news of
fresh discoveries of coal in any part
of the accessible Arctic will be heard
with interest
Meanwhile Spitzbergen the first of
the Arctic islands to send coal to mar
ket and to be the goal of tourists
SPrrZBERGEN
every summer is still a neglected waif
whom none of the family of nations
has yet sought to adopt Some benev
olent party of tourists may give it a
flag of its own unless the protection
of one of the nations is extended
over it
SNIFF KISS ORIGINAL CARESS
Ancients Did Not Understand Art of
Osculation Says Professor
Philadelphia The climax of inter
est at the recent session of the Ameri
can Oriental society was reached
when Prof Hopkins of Yale read his
paper on The Sniff Kiss in Ancient
India
The paper was a history of the kiss
as we know it The learned professor
traced it from its birth and proved
that the earliest peoples and earliest
times knew it not That there might
be no mistake he labeled the kiss of
to day the genuine kiss and the
perfect kiss Oddly enough he finds
that the genuine kiss was invented by
a woman The description is given
in the epic of ancient India which
treats of the science of love
She laid her mouth to my mouth
recites the poet and made a noise
which gave me pleasure
With that discovery said Prof Hop
kins grew the fashion which has
since known no abatement
The early peoples he continued
knew nothing of the kiss in any form
Had they known of it they would
have told something of it in the mass
of records that has come down to us
for surely an act which conveys such
pleasure could not have been forgot
ten
With the development of the gen
uine kiss the sniff kiss disappeared
never to reappear It had served its
purpose and soon was forgotten
Mothers Have 38 Children
San Francisco Cal Statistics pre
pared by the immigration board at
this port show that according to the
claims of all the Chinese who swore
they are native born every Chinese
woman in this country- must have
been the mother of 3S children This
interesting condition was made known
when the figures collected from vari
ous points in the country were tabu
lated
SOCIETY OF ETERNAL YOUTH
New Iowa Organization Fines All Sick
Members
Des Moines la The First Society
of Eternal Youth is the name of an
organization founded here which has
for its object the prolongation of life
and which purposes to fine every
member who becomes sick That the
association is in earnest is evidenced
by the fact that 100 men already have
enrolled in the scheme the preamble
of which reads as follows
The special object and business of
this society shall be to renew and
perpetuate the mental moral and
physical youth and strength of all
its members to build up and continue
in the highest degree the mental vig
or in each individual member and
imperatively requiring from each and
every member that he live the life
of health thereby contributing his
share in banishing the specter of dis
ease and death from the face of the
earth
Any member who is reported sick
from any disease and so remains sick
and is confined to his bed for a con
tinuous period of three days or more
shall be fined in a sum not less than
one dollar nor more than ten dollars
for the first offense For the second
offense under this article any mem
ber shall be suspended from member
ship and for the third offense of any
member In violation of this article ex
pulsion from the society shall be the
penalty
All members upon joining must
sign a pledge that he or she will con
tinually assert that there is nothing
but custom and habit of thought that
causes people to be sick grow old
or die
Nitrate of Soda to Be Imported
Mobile Ala The first cargo of
nitrate of soda ever brought to this
port has arrived on board the steam
er Brantwood from Chili Further
shipments will follow to supply not
only the territory adjacent but those
points in the middle west where the
inland freight is cheaper than from
Baltimore and Philadelphia
A few cargoes have been received
at New Orleans during the past IS
months Nitrate is used in this coun
try for a variety of purposes the
principal ones being for the manu
facture of -powder and fertilizers par
ticularly in the latter field consump
tion of same has increased rapidly
especially in the south
Chili it is said is the only country
in the world where nitrate of com
mercial value is found
Etiquette of a Real Gent
Weary Willie Ill talk straight
sport Im dyin fur a drink Gimme
a quarter will yer Gailey But you
dont need a quarter to buy one
drink Weary Willie One Why I
aint de kind of a gent watll drink at
anudder gents expense an not ask
him ter join me
wJjWuirriniiiiifWitw
WILL EST SALTPETER
UNIVERSITY STUDENTS TO SET
TLE MOOTED QUESTIONS
wciwmrwiirffii1iglTwrirtlll1 l J
Years Experiments in Interest of
Beef Eating Public One Half to
Be Fed on Meat Cured
with Solution i
New York For a period of from
six to twelve months a squad of vig
orous and healthy men will be the
subjects upon whom a small company
of savants working in the interests
of humanity in general and beef-eaters
In particular will test the effects
of meat that has been cured with
saltpeter and other supposedly injuri
ous preservatives
This was settled the other day
when what will be known as the na
tional commission for the investiga
tion of nutrition problems was formed
in New York at the Fifth Avenue ho
tel
This organization will act under the
auspices of the University of Illinois
and it Is composed of Prof II S
Grindlev of that institution Prof R
H Chittenden of Yale university
Prof J J Abel of Johns Hopkins uni
versity and Prof A P Mathews of
Chicago university
The movement was inaugurated by
Prof Edmund J James of the Univer
sity of Illinois who will also take an
active part in Its progress The ex
periments will be carried on at the
University of Illinois and it is said
that they will be the most thorough
of the kind ever undertaken in the
United States
There has been great difference of
opinion among experts said Prof
Grlndley as to the effect of certain
preservatives used in the curing of
meat and the commission will direct
its attention first to the determination
of some of these important questions
The first experiments will be to dis
cover the effects upon the human
body of the saltpeter used in curing
meats
It Is a well known fact that salt
peter taken in considerable quantities
is a poison but whether the small
amount consumed by the eating of
cured meats is in any way injurious
has long been a mooted question
The data obtained will be of prime
importance in aiding the enforcement
of the present pure food laws and of
the utmost importance in aiding in
the formulation of further just regu
lations as to the use of this and other
preservatives in food products
The saltpeter squad as it might
be called will be boarded in a special
ly equipped house in such a way that
the weight of all foods eaten by each
man can be accurately determined
and the food completely analyzed A
physician will keep a daily record of
the physical condition and health of
each member of the squad
The diet of half the men will in
clude cured meat products now on the
market containing saltpeter and the
other half will be fsd on a diet exact
ly similar except that the cured meats
will contain none of the preserva
tives
Another interesting feature of the
experiments will be that efforts wili
be made to have the men housed
pleasantly and their meals so pre
sented to them as to eliminate if pos
sible the influence of the mental con
dition of the squad -on the processes
of digestion and nutrition
It is the purpose of the commis
sion also to make experiments of a
similar kind upon the lower animals
so that at the end of the work the an
imals may be killed and a thorough
examination made by the most ap
proved methods to determine the ef
fect of the saltpeter upon the internal
organs connected with the processes
of digestion and assimilation
TO END ROCKING OF SHIPS
British Expert Offers Hope to Sea
sick Travelers
London Ships that will not rock
is the heavenly dream of Sir Wil
liam White late chief constructor of
the British navy held out to ocean
travelers as likely to be realized at
some future time
Sir William put before the mem
bers of the Institution of Naval Arch
itecture recently the results of ex
periments with Dr Schlicks gyro
scopic apparatus for steadying ships
The experiments were carried out on
a German first class torpedo boat the
apparatus a flywheel one meter in
diameter oscillating on trunnions and
making up to 3000 revolutions a min
ute being placed in a compartment
before the boiler room
In all cases said Sir William White
the rractical effect was to extinguish
the rolling motion of a ship almost
immediately The torpedo boat was
practically deprived of rolling mo
tion and was simply subjected to
heaving motions To use Dr Schlicks
words
The waves seemed to disapper un
der her and she rose with a gentle
motion vertically upwards and sank
again just as gently into the trough ot
the sea without even spray coming
on board to any extent worth men
tioning
Steamships of high speed continued
Sir William formed a class in which
the steadying effect of gyroscope
would be of great advantage and
there would be no difficulty in fitting
them It might be anticipated that
experiments would be made before
long with gyroscopic apparatus in de
stroyers and in the smaller classes ot
cruisers
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