NORFOLK, Nebraska, has a candy factory. BOZEMAN, Montana, wants a creamery. A LATE report says frost has injured the

fruit in Arizona.

THE Iowa legislature has passed a bill forbidding the manufacture or sale of cigarettes.

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, will be the scene of the State Grand Army reunions for the next five years.

THE creamery at Albion, Neb., paid the farmers in that locality $17,500 for milk, butter and eggs last year.

NEBRASKA, Missouri and Iowa are following the lead of Kansas and planting a large acreage to Kaffir corn.

IDAHO has repealed the law providing that the obligations of the State might be paid in either gold or silver.

A NUMBER of settlers from Idaho have laid out a new town to be called Grand Teton, near the Gros Ventre river.

A PARTY of 100 families from Arkansas and Iowa are going West to settle in the Jackson's Hole country, Wyoming.

A VINEGAR factory has been started at Albion, Neb., by Sylvester V. Parrot. Sugar beets will be used exclusively.

WASHINGTON has over fifty creameries, and the output for last year was about 2,500,000 pounds of butter, valued at $312,500.

STATE Labor Commissioner Bird estimates that there are $100,000,000 invested in manufacturing plants and raw material in Kansas.

THE Red Lake and White Earth Indian Reservations in Minnesota comprising 890,745 acres of land will probably be thrown open for settlement about June 1.

SHALLOW artesian wells in South Dakota cost from $50 to $300. Deep wells ranging from 500 to 1,500 feet cost complete about $3.00 a foot. There about 400 shallow and 150 deep wells in the State.

PRESIDENT J. J. Hill of the Great Northern Railway Company has purchased 300 acres of land on the west side of Great Falls, Mont. This will no doubt be made the terminal grounds of this company.

THE fast-thriving little city of Havelock, Neb., five miles east of Lincoln, on the main line of the Burlington railroad, is surrounded by a very fertile agricultural region, and is soon to become one of the important manufacturing points in the West. The principal shops of the Burlington & Missouri River railroad are located here,

employing about 400 men and maintained at an annual expense of nearly half a million of dollars.

CANADIANS took the initiative in an international deep waterways convention held in Toronto during the summer of 1894. This was followed by another convention in Cleveland and more recently by one in Detroit. There is already uninterrupted passage from Chicago and Duluth to Buffalo for vessels drawing twenty feet of water, and the aim is to have the channel completed by deepening the canals between Buffalo and Montreal or New York. Community of interest among grain growers in the great West on both sides of the line has joined them or rather those who speak for them in a common effort to perfect water communication from the head of Lake Superior to the Atlantic seaboard.

ANACONDA, Mont., is to have a smelting plant.

THE Salt Lake Mining Exchange is a

success.

SHERIDAN, Wyo., is to have a mining exchange.

NEBRASKA has an acute attack of the gold fever.

CRIPPLE CREEK now has a population of 60,000. In 1892 it had 1,500.

It is estimated that this year's output at Cripple Creek will reach 20,000,000 tons of ore.

THE annual capacity of the three smelters already erected in West Kootenay is given as 164,250 tons.

EXTENSIVE deposits of onyx have been discovered on the Big Laramie river within eight miles of the Cheyenne & Northern railway.

THE mining fever has struck Wheatland, Wyo. Several discoveries are reported from the country surrounding the busy little town.

IT is estimated that 500 claims in the Cripple Creek district on which the owners failed to do full assessment work in 1895 have been jumped.

THE West has not a monopoly of the gold supply, although it has little to fear from competition elsewhere. The following is the gold output of Southern mines up to December 31, 1893: North Carolina, $11,726,629.90; South Carolina, $2,221,590.90; Georgia, $9,112,328.05; Alabama, $242,994.19, and of Virginia, $1,754,785.02.

THE mineral output of Idaho in 1895 was as follows:

SHOSHONE County, Idaho, produced 63,861,660 pounds of lead in 1895.

THERE is $96,325,122 of capital invested in the Lake Superior iron mines and their equipment; and in docks and railways and vessels for the exclusive transportation of ore, from the upper lakes to Lake Erie ports, etc., $136,916,963, making a total of $233,242,085.

THE largest gold brick ever cast in the Black Hills was recently deposited in the First National Bank of Deadwood. It came from the Cyanide Works, weighed a trifle less than 125 pounds, and was worth about $30,000. It was the result of a fifteen days' run.

THE Golden Fleece Mining and Milling Company of Lake City, Colorado, reports:

Production of mine from Sept.,
1892, to Jan., 1896.......

Less expenditure, Sept., 1892, to
Jan. 1, 1896...

Less Insurance and Construction
accounts..

Balance profit. Dividends paid.

$209.149.88

$729,252.19

4,680.76 213,830.64

$515,421.55 401,979.85

$113,441.70

Surplus on hand Jan. 1, 1896... THE Chicago Mining and Mineral Board have adopted the following rates:

Value.

5,214,498 2,301,321

$10,110,485

This is an increase of $316,405 over the previous year.

LIVINGSTON, Mont., wants a smelter. THERE was no smelter in the Black Hills from 1876 to 1882.

AN appropriation has been made to run the mint at Carson, Nevada, another year.

THERE is a field for the development of copper properties in the Yellow Jacket District, Idaho.

THE waterpower plant at the mine of the Boston and Montana Company in Montana has a capacity of 7,500 horse power.

THERE are two feet of solid copper ore and twelve feet of free milling gold ore on the

Indian Claim in the Yellow Jacket District, Idaho.

It is claimed that there are deposits of very rich gold quartz in Southern Oregon, although placer mining has attracted most of the attention heretofore.

THE Western Mining World says it is scarcely possible to glance through a paper published anywhere in Idaho without reading of new mine discoveries or increased prosperity in the mining industry.

THE report of the Minister of Mines of British Columbia shows the output of gold by districts as follows: Gold mining engaged the attention of, on the average, 1,050 white men and 979 Chinese and Japanese, besides those engaged in Trail Creek division, the newest as well as the richest in the province, but for which unfortunately no gold returns were sent in. The output of the others was, by districts, as follows: Cariboo, $282,400; Cassiar, $22,575; East Koote nay, $17.575; West Kootenay, $10,520; Lillooet, $40,663; Yale, $237,311, a total of $636,544 of the yellow metal, exclusive of the Trail Creek division, as previously mentioned. Of this total all came from placers except $135,000 from the quartz mines at Fairview and Camp McKinney. Even without Trail Creek the returns for 1895 are the largest since 1878, methods having brought about a revival of the industry in temporarily abandoned fields. Since the beginning, in 1858, $55,000,000 in gold has been taken from the fields of this province. Appended to the gold statistics is the statement that in 1895 the gold, silver and lead in the ore from Kootenay was estimated at $2,176,000.

new

BRITISH COLUMBIA also claims to have oil fields.

ALASKA's output of gold last year is estimated at $3,000,000. Of this $800,000 came from the Yukon placer mines.

COAL mining made no progress in British Columbia during 1895. There are immense quantities of coal, but it can not be mined to advantage until the fields are reached by the railroads.

THE production of the oil field for the past year was nearly three times as great as that of the previous year, amounting altogether to 1,368,750 barrels. The average price received was 50 cents per barrel, or $684,375 for the entire output. According to the estimate of the oil exchange, there are 250 wells which have been operated during the year, the mean product of each being about fifteen barrels daily.

The mineral bearing portion of the Belknap Indian reservation in Montana that will probably be declared open for entry within the next six months, is located on the north slope of the Little Rocky Mountains, covering an area of nearly thirty-five square miles. This area is almost wholly made up of abrupt porphyry buttes and steep, broken mountains. The drainage of the district is by tributaries of Milk river; three large creeks issue from this district out onto the vast plateau lying between the Milk river and the Little Rockies.

SINCE 1890 the gold in European banks has increased by $623,200,000. Of this $185,800,000, the Bank of France $167,the Imperial Bank of Russia has gained

400,000, the Bank of England $111,000,000, the Austro-Hungarian Bank $79,800,000 and the Imperial Bank of Germany $39,000,000. The gold comes from the American monetary circulation and from the production of the gold mines. At the end of 1895 the Bank of France and the Imperial Bank of Russia between them held $776,600,000 in gold, a little more than half the stock of gold in the European banks, and this does not include the gold in the Russian treasury, which is estimated at $510,400,000. The gold in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy amounts to $336,000,000 and that in the Bank of England to $580,800,000.

EAST AND SOUTH CATCH THE IRRI

THE

GATION FEVER.

HE agricultural papers of the East and South are discussing irrigation. Various experiments have been made during the past season in portions of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and New Jersey; also in North and South Carolina and other Southern States. The results have also attracted the attention of the daily press, and lengthy articles are being published. Wonderful as these achievements are in the Southern. Eastern and Middle States, they are eclipsed on the former arid lands of Western America because of the more thorough irrigation there. An elaborate, displayed article of several columns in the New York Times will do a world of good in waking up the old style farmers of the entire country. The following is an extract:

Not the least remarkable of the many picturesque anomalies which the cosmopolitan population of Long Island City presents is a colony of Chinese farmers, located on a high bluff overlooking Bowery bay. It was founded a few years ago by Shen Ho Joe, the son of a mandarin who made a fortune in the cultivation of every form of growing thing which flourishes within the great wall of China. Previous to the advent of Shen, the Chinamen of New York and the neighboring cities were forced to depend upon the Pacific coast for vegetables of their own peculiar cultivation.

Shen's initial effort created a commotion among the truck farmers of Astoria. His beans were as large as an ordinary-sized radish, and all the other celestial vegetables were the envy and admiration of the neighborhood. The gourmets of Mott street were in ecstasies of delight over the new venture and the demand for Shen's vegetables far exceeded the supply. In order to meet the growing de. mand for garden truck which came from Mott street alone, five other Chinamen

started rival farms adjoining that of Shen Ho Joe a year afterward. Shen meanwhile had established a prosperous line of trade and had saved a snug sum of money from the proceeds of the first year's crop.

In the spring of the second year he sunk two wells on his farm for irrigation purposes and built a sausage factory and a large manure tank, from which liquid fertilizers are spread over the ground by means of a rubber hose. This innovation revolutionized Chinese farming in Astoria. The same kind of soil afterward yielded twice as much net for Shen as for the others. Of course, gradually, the influence of this progressive man extended throughout his neighborhood, and the old-fash-. ioned methods of watering and manuring the ground soon gave way to new methods. The Chinese farmer from time immemorial has been a great believer in irrigation.

At the end of the third year Shen Ho Joe had acquired a competence and sold out his farm. With the proceeds of his three years' venture he sailed for China, leaving Yu Lee, Yung Gee Tschiu, Chu Lick and Yumb Yab in undisputed possession of the field.

The soil of the celestial farms is sandy and poor. The fields are divided into squares called wells, from their resemblance to the Chinese character signifying a well, surrounded and furrowed by ditches.

There are upward of fifty different kinds of vegetables grown on this celestial

farm.

DR. RUSK ON THE MORMONS.

The Rev. Dr. John Rusk, of the Militant Church, Chicago, is not following the policy of the ordinary orthodox preacher. He is taking up live subjects of interest at present. In a recent sermon he referred to the enterprise and thrift of the "A man's share in what is goMormons. ing on in this world is not a dog's share nor a hog's share, but a man's share," he

CLESSON S. KINNEY, OF UTAH The author of the articles on "Irrigation Legislation" now appearing in THE AGE.

said. "How shall he get a man's share? By getting a home. The Mormons settled that in a superb way. They traveled West till they came to the superb valley of Salt lake. Brigham Young's plan was to have every man at work and every man in a home. A home a man's share. Not only that, but he overcame the isolation of agricultural life by settling a town with farms about it. He kept his people from mines, the thirst for gold, and held them to land and home. In addition, he associated his people so that they operated factories, mills, railroads, telegraph lines, stores and all that pertain to life in a community. It has become the example and pattern of the new colonial movement, and its success means hope for the city-bred man as well as the farm born. Whilst I must dissent from polygamy with all my being, I must say that it is the only religion which compels every man to own his own home. It teaches that no man has a right to own one more acre than he can use, a great Christian lesson of unselfishness. They found a desert and made it a paradise, because they taught that God made the earth for all and not for a few. Necessity taught them that no man

had a right to waste one drop of the precious water with which they irrigated their lands; their religion and the religion of Christ teaches that a man has a right only to so much of God's land as he can use. The Mormons are not allowed to fence in a prairie, nor are they rewarded for keeping land idle by having taxes reduced. It is a part of their religion to make the waste places blossom forth and to turn idle lands over to the industrious to improve and own what they do improve and use, but not one acre more. That religion places a premium on industry and unselfishness; that part of it is Christlike, and they live nearer Christ in this respect, far nearer, than the vast majority of socalled Christian people. Fully 98 per cent of the Mormons own their houses and the land on which their houses stand. I want to see the time when every Christian owns his home. I want to see a practical use of the Christian religion as I believe Christ intended it. I have visited the Mormons and found them most delightful

companionable, all of them industrious, and many highly cultivated."

VALUABLE STATISTICS.

The assessable property of Arapahoe county, Colo., is reported at $82,133,000.

Nebraska has 352,028 children of school age. According to the usual calculations this would indicate that the State has a population aggregating 1,760,000.

The general land office report for the fiscal year of 1895 shows some very interesting figures relative to the business transacted by the local land office in North Dakota. At the Bismarck office 887 entries, covering 138,000 acres, were made. The total receipts were $14,116.09. Devil's Lake land office shows 1,067 entries, and total receipts of $19,441.56. The Fargo office shows 766 entries and total receipts of $9,755.25. The Grand Forks office shows 1,234 entries, and the receipts were $20,193.52. The Minot office shows 86 entries and receipts of $1,105.77.

The total of land transfers for last year was 132 millions, an advance of twelve millions over 1894. There is a falling off of forty-eight millions as compared with 1891 or 1892, but it must be remembered that there was a great amount of specula