T PAPER FROM CORN STALKS. Experimenters in United States government laboratories have succeeded in producing several very good grades of paper from corn stalks. Allowing one and one-half tons of stalks to the acre, Nebraska fields can produce enough material to make a most promising prospect for the establishment of paper mills later on. Discussing the newest development in paper-making, John Elfreth Watkins says that from every ton of stalks the experimental separator takes out, aside from the pulp, 250 to 350 pounds of material, which when it first comes out is a dark colored liquid, and which on partial evaporation is of about the consistency of meat extract. The method of extracting it and the pulp separately is patented by a Chicago inventor, who is co-operating with the bureau of plant industry, and the proposition is to return this semi-liquid "food extract" to the farm and there mix it with chopped fodder. It is over 40 per cent glucose and is comparable to malt extract. Thus, inasmuch as each ton of stalks yields 700 pounds of pulp and 250 to 350 pounds of food extract, there is a waste of only about half running off in water. According to these tests from 18,750,000 to 21,250,000 tons of the food could have been extracted from last year's yield of cornstalks. EARNINGS OF HARVEST HANDS IN ENGLAND. From the British Board of Trade Gazette for November, 1908, is taken the table below, that will prove of interest to western farmers. It shows the average cash earnings, exclusive of the value of any food and drink which may have been provided in addition, of men employed on certain farms in Eastern, Middle and Southern and Southwestern counties of England respectively for the corn (wheat) harvest of 1908: It will be seen, says the British publication, that the earnings were highest in the Eastern Counties, which comprise the great corn-growing counties of Huntingdon, Cambridge, Lincoln, Norfolk, Soffolk and Essex. The payments in these counties ranged from about £6 10s. to £8, though more was earned by some men on piece-work in the Fen districts. In parts of Norfolk and in Suffolk and Essex the usual system of payment is for the laborer to contract with the farmer to perform the harvest work for a fixed sum, irrespective of the number of days occupied. A short harvest is thus a profitable one for the laborer, as he gets back to ordinary farm work at weekly wages sooner than in a year when the harvest is lengthened by unfavorable weather. In the Midland and in the Southern and Southwestern counties the systems of payment are frequently on a time-work basis, so that harvest earnings fluctuate from year to year according to the duration of the harvest. The various methods of payment are as follows (apart from that already described for certain Eastern counties): To give the work in separate portions as piece-work; to give the ordinary weekly wages, and, in addition, a bonus of a pound or two at the end of the harvest; to give extra time wages for a month certain, and then pay the ordinary weekly wages during harvest; to pay double the ordinary weekly wages |