January 1927
THE UNITED AMERICAN
pared with two hundred pounds in Germany, five
hundred and thirteen pounds in Belgium, six hundred
seventy-four pounds in Holland and fifty pounds in
France and Italy, each, per crop acre. This com
parison of the uses of commercial plant foods in dif
ferent countries is an indication of the extent to which
scientific methods are being applied in the cultivation
of the soil. Intense cultivation may be necessary
in Belgium and Holland, but their people have
learned that scientific treatment of the soil is
the only remedy against failures. No amount of farm
relief will produce such crops as scientific work will,
with the aid of proper commercial plant food.
The total commercial fertilizer used in the United
States for 1926 was 7,508,132 tons, as compared with
7,450,294 tons in 1925, an increase for the twelvemonth
of 57,838 tons.
If the countless farms in America that have been
literally “worked to death” were given a reasonable
amount of fertilizer every year, the soil would, in
most instances, produce as well as any piece of land
in any country in Europe. No country in the world
can produce fertilizer or plant food as cheaply as
can the United States. All we need is a little more
intelligent public demand. This demand must come
from the agriculturist himself. The virgin strength
of the tillable soil in America has been taken out of
it, and the time is now for every man who plows a piece
of ground to put fertilizer in it, if he desires to obtain
a harvest at the end of the season.
IN THE INTEREST OF GOOD HEALTH
T F YOU WANT to reach a ripe old age and yet dwell
1
in this land of moist and changeable winter
temperature you should now commence to take pre
cautions, is the opinion of Portland’s city physician,
Dr. John G. Abele, who is especially concerned lest the
influenza germs might cut short the threescore years
and ten of the general allotment. Here are some of
Abele’s simple anti-influenza remedies:
Keep regular hours.
Drink plenty of water all the time.
Dress warmly.
Keep from getting wet.
Don’t overeat.
Nothing difficult about these don’ts, but the doctor
declares that their observance will keep away this
dreadful sickness. Overeating reduces vitality, one of
the ideal conditions, for the “flu” to commence its
work. Drinking a great deal of water will prevent
congestion and sluggishness of the intestinal system—
a no less important factor in keeping the body fit in
its battle against the “flu” germs.
If these health rules are observed, Dr. Abele con
tends that, there will be little need of worrying over
colds, coughs and chills, the little forerunners of the
dread malady we have come to know as influenza.
Those who seek public office on the strength of
fancied race hatred and religious intolerance would do well
in looking over the records of political ups and downs of
those who sought and won office that way. The disconcerting
thing about the few victories that have been won on such
campaign issues is that they so qiuckly turn into defeat.
There is nothing stable about such issues, according to some-
sad and sore fellow citizens who describe their political for-
Page Thirteen
tunes and subsequent misfortunes as something akin to the
bather’s experience who is practically carried out of the
water and onto the dry land by a strong wave, but before he
has time to contemplate this marvel, the wave changes into
an undertow current that takes him with an irresistable force
and carries him right back again out into the briny deep.
Carried into office on the sweep of passions and hardly seated
before being booted out by a sobered public opinion, is an
experience that has come to a number of American citizens
during recent years. A few Oregonians have gained public
office that way, but, alas, the big majorities that put them into
office melted away in no time. For want of support, the in
cumbents have been turned out of office at the first opportunity
while but a hopeless and enemic minority was left to watch
the exit of their fallen idol and the consignment of an erstwhile
hero to perpetual political oblivion. Some of these political
blunderers are already out, but a few are yet to face the reelec
tion voting squad. The political horizon has some ominous
signs. No one can read these signs better than those who
pledged themselves to false issues and agreed to meddle with the
equal rights of the citizens at large, making unwarranted
concessions to some and denying others their just rights.
Funny how some people never can learn that the inevitable
Nemesis runs all through life.
The gracious queen of the Roumanians who but
a few months ago almost “captured” the people of the United
States of America should lose no time in stopping the terrible
anti-Semetic excesses in Roumania that are shocking the civi
lized world at the present time. The queen’s stock in America is
going to lose its value unless she gets 'busy right quick, for she
is still the power behind the throne, as the saying goes, if not
the power on the throne in that country, where that obsolete
institution still has a working margin even though it is
slender. Can it be possible that the queen is permitting or
condoning these excesses, as a compliment to Henry Ford
for putting luxurious automobiles at her service in almost every
town she visited while on her tour of this Country? No doubt
that Ford is pleased with the anti-Semetic campaign that is
sweeping through Roumania, for it isn’t so very long ago since
his anti-Semetic propaganda factory in the United States was
busy turning out Roumanian language dope on the Jews for
broad distribution in that country. The mental reaction in
Roumania left nothing to be desired. If the current reports on
this subject are any criterion, it is safe to say that the helpless
Jewish population in Queen Marie’s country has been paying a
fearful toll in property, virtue and blood to appease the revived
passions of race hatred which that propaganda unquestionably
helped to fan into flame. Protests against these anti-Semetic
excesses in Roumania have been placed in the hands of the
Department of State at Washington and our government of
ficials have asked the American ambassador to that country
to investigate.
Good lawyers with a keen sense for plain facts
make good judges of the kind the plain citizen taxpayer is
interested in. Poor judges never were that kind of lawyers,
if you take the trouble of looking up their records as practi
tioners before the bar. Only a few lawyers happen to be
good politicians, which explains, in part, why so few good
lawyers are elected judges. But the voters are getting onto
their “mistakes” of the past and good lawyers who happen
to be poor politicians will hereafter have a better chance to
be elected judges than they have in the past. That’s en
couraging to the good lawyer who would gladly go on the
bench to serve his constitutency and help to put the American
court on a higher plain, and it is encouraging to the people
who pay the cost of the courts, but it is admittedly dis
couraging to some of the mediocre boys who are holding down
the bench, here and there, in more ways than one.
It certainly does make a fellow feel creepy these
days the way baseless and unfounded rumors of all sorts are
manufactured, published and scattered about. Monsters are
conjured up from inuendos and casual gossip and the language
is so carefully guarded that in the lay mind it becomes a
statement of facts, while the authors and publishers rely
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