Respirator Appeal Swamps British.
One day’s appeal through the London press has given the English army all the respirators needed, and the press bureau issued the following notice:
“Thanks to the magnificent response already made to the appeal in the press for respirators for the troops, the war office is in a position to announce that no further gifts of respirators need be made.”
“It looks,” says The Daily News, “as though every woman in England who could find time for it made respirators. No doubt reports from soldiers who had suffered from fumes had a tremendous effect in prompting the instant answer to the appeal of the army, but the response was of such an extraordinary nature as to set up a record.”
Great Waste in Potatoes.
Doctor Carl L. Alsberg, chief of the bureau of chemistry in the department of agriculture, said, in a talk to the New York Society of Chemical Industry at Rumford Hall, 50 East Forty-first Street, New York, that millions of dollars’ worth of potatoes and grain were destroyed by excessive moisture in this country every year, when they could be utilized for making alcohol and other purposes.
The United States, he said, had relied on Germany for a supply of potato dextrin used as an adhesive, when it could easily be obtained here by simple processes from the potatoes which are annually allowed to rot in the Pacific coast States.
America Leader in Tobacco Trade.
The United States holds first rank among the nations of the world as producer, exporter, importer, and consumer of tobacco. Our production of leaf of all sorts averages somewhat more than 1,000,000,000 pounds a year, having a value to the producers of about $100,000,000.
An enormous quantity is exported—considerably more than a third of the production in normal years—and the sales of tobacco abroad are excelled by only seven other products. They exceed in value such items as cotton manufactures, electrical machinery, paper and paper products, and leather and leather manufactures.[{61}]