A suit of clothes made of stone is being promoted by a Broadway
clothing dealer. The fabric was imported from Russia. It is manufactured from
the fiber of a filamentous stone from mines located in Siberia. The material is
soft and pliable, and, when soiled, has only to be placed in a fire to be made
absolutely clean.
Brick Silcot tied up the Reliance at Creston on Saturday, and
came home for a visit. He has built up a fine trade with his boat, and we are
glad of it.
“Old Faithful,” Carr B. Shaffer, was arguing Democracy to the
boys in town last week.
Mail service at this place has not been so unsatisfactory in the
history of the town as they have been recently. The mail coming up the river is
by boat, when it comes. From Smithville, it gets in so late at night that it is
very inconvenient for those who have their business to attend and answer matter
by the outgoing mails, such as the banks. A letter mailed from Glenville on Jan.
10 was received by a gentleman addressed at this office on Feb. 2, and there is
a daily mail from there to this place.
It seems incredible, but the U.S, just 15 years after having
helped smash Hitler and Ger-many into submission and utter destruction, is now
urgently pleading for help from Germany--in the fight to maintain a stable
dollar.
The Germans have responded by promising to spend a billion
dollars on foreign aid. This will ease the pressure on the dollar in the field
of foreign trade, to some extent, but government officials say it is not enough.
One of the reasons for this pinch is inflation, which gripped
the dollar after World War II and during and after the Korean War. When we took
controls off the economy after World War II, and when we failed to impose
sufficient controls during the Korean War, cost of practically everything
skyrocketed.
Products such as automobiles and steel rose so sharply in price
that they were priced out of the European market. They were so high, other
people in other countries could not buy them--and sales were lost. While we
still sell more than we buy, the margin has narrowed so much that our large
expenditures for military forces abroad are unbalancing the exchange and gold is
flowing out of this country at a rate this year of about four billion dollars.
Despite the excuses, it is poor commentary that we, the richest
nation in the world, find ourselves in such a financial pickle at this time.