To-day he is the operating head of the greatest street-railway system in the world, with two assistants, thirteen division superintendents, and thousands of men under his control.
What Women are Doing.
“Woman’s work never ends,” wrote a poet long ago, and his statement is as true to-day as ever. In addition to the women who work in their homes, performing manifold household duties and rearing their children, there are many who engage in the “gainful occupations,” as the census reports call them. There is hardly an occupation listed in the latest United States census in which woman is not represented. There are, for instance, seventy-seven woman lumbermen—raftsmen and wood-choppers—in the United States. There are 2,550 woman stock herders and raisers, forty-five quarry operators, thirty-one blacksmiths, fifteen brick and stone masons, and forty-four longshoremen. Many women have traveled far up the road to success in their work. Ten women head iron foundries. There are 325 woman bankers and 1,347 bank cashiers. Nearly a thousand women are wholesale dealers. One woman is listed as a railroad official. Three are proprietors of grain elevators.
Our Talc and Soapstone.
The United States produces more talc and soapstone than all the rest of the world combined. Moreover, according to the United States Geological Survey, our production has nearly doubled in the last ten years, increasing from 91,185 short tons, valued at $940,731 in 1904, to 172,296 short tons, valued at $1,865,087, in 1914.
Of talc alone the United States produced 151,088 tons, and of soapstone 21,208 tons. Talc is a mineral of which soapstone is an impure massive form. Few people are aware how much we owe to talc and soapstone. It is one of the softest of minerals. It is so smooth and slippery that it has become a great panacea for friction in many branches of human industry. Talc is used in making talcum toilet powder, the tailor uses it to chalk fabrics for new suits, and talc “slate pencils” and crayons have enabled many scholars to solve knotty problems. Talc bleaches out cotton cloth, and in paints we see it everywhere, but its chief use is as a filler in paper of many kinds.
There are nine States producing this useful mineral. New York continues to be the leading producer, yielding more than fifty-seven per cent of the total production of talc in the United States, and far outranking all other States excepting Vermont, which has in recent years so greatly increased its production that in 1914 its output was about three-fourths that of New York.[Pg 65]
Of soapstone, Virginia holds the greatest supply, and, backed up by Vermont, it meets the great demand for washtubs, sinks, and fireless cookers.
Florida Camphor Industry.
The camphor industry in Florida, which may be said to have begun in 1905, has developed so greatly within a single decade it is confidently expected that within a few years it will be able to supply the demand for this important gum in this country. The bulk of the camphor now used here is imported from Japan. A single tract of 1,600 acres of camphor trees planted in 1908, last year yielded over ten thousand pounds of camphor gum, in addition to the proportionate supply of oil.