One of the most active prospectors and mine operators in the extensive zinc-mining district of southwest Missouri is a woman, Mrs. Sarah Matlock. There is much activity in the Wentworth district, where her interests are located, and she is carrying on operations on a big scale. One of her many mining properties comprises one hundred and sixty acres. The biggest mine in that district is owned by her. Much of her land is subleased.
Indian Given State Office.
Oliver la Mere, of the town of Winnebago, Neb., is the first Indian to hold an appointment under the Nebraska State government. He has been appointed dairy inspector by Food Commissioner C. E. Harman, a department of which Governor Morehead is the chief.
Mr. la Mere is not an expert dairyman, but is a farmer, and has had considerable experience with dairy cattle and dairy products.
He is thirty-six years of age and has a wife and seven children. He attended the Indian school at Genoa, Neb., three years and attended school at Carlisle, Pa., in the year 1902. While he was a student there during that year he played center on the famous Indian football team. He then weighed two hundred and five pounds. He has written some newspaper articles on Indian clan organizations and Indian burial customs, and has coöperated with the government in anthropological research.
Lightning-rod Dispute is Officially Settled.
A few days ago a lightning-rod salesman near Bloomington, Ill., was struck by lightning and seriously injured. Notwithstanding the fact that the unfortunate salesman could not be expected to have his person and rig fitted out with a system of his alleged lightning catchers, extending far above his head and continually plowing into the roadway, as he made his tours of the country, still, the incident again revived the oft-discussed question as to the efficacy of the wares that constituted his stock in trade—the great American lightning rod—the mysterious economic discovery that has caused thousands of American farmers the loss of so much sleep and so many dollars in coin of the realm.
Ever since Ben Franklin designed the lightning rod as a means of protecting structures from lightning stroke, there has been periodically raised the question of the efficiency of these rods as a means of warding off the[Pg 65] bolts from the heavens. Men of eminence in the electrical world have been found arrayed on both sides of the question, and in order to arrive at some well-founded conclusion, the subject was taken up by the weather department.
The investigation was conducted by Professor J. Warren Smith, who addressed an open letter to the mutual fire-insurance companies throughout the country, especially those in the rural districts, asking for any information which these organizations might have which might throw some light on the subject. The value of the rods was undoubtedly attested to in the answers, and Benjamin Franklin has received full vindication.
In two recent years two hundred mutual companies doing a business of fully $300,000,000 had 1,845 buildings struck by lightning. Of this number only sixty-seven were equipped with lightning rods. So far as could be learned, about thirty-one per cent of the buildings insured by these companies were rodded; hence, if the rods had furnished no protection, the number of rodded buildings struck should have been five hundred and seventy-two instead of sixty-seven.