General Intelligence

Labor to Make a Watch - Mr. Dent, in a lecture delivered before the London Royal Institute, made an allusion to the formation of a watch, and stated that a watch consists of 992 pieces; and that forty-three trades, and probably 215 persons are employed in making one of those little machines. The iron of which the balance spring is formed, is valued at something less than a farthing; this produces an ounce of steel worth 4d. which is drawn into 2250 yards of steel wire, and represents in market £15 4s; but still another process of hardening this originally farthing's worth of iron, renders it workable into 7650 balance springs, which will realize, at the common price of 2s. 5d. each, £946 5s. the effect of labor alone. Thus it may be seen that the mere labor bestowed upon one farthing's worth of iron gives it the value of £946, 5s, or $4,552, which is 75,980 times its original value. The Contracts for furnishing copper wire for the various lines of Mie Magnetic Telegraph, have been secured by Messrs. Stephens and Thomas of Belleville, N. J. They have already in progress 1107 miles of Telegraph. The wire averages about 17,000 Ibs. to a hundred miles; so that these contracts will amount to about 188,100 Ibs. of copper wire. Messrs. S. & T. have also just entered into a contract for furnishing the wire for the "Atlantic, Lake and Mississippi Telegraph Co." which has recently been organized for connecting the Atlantic States and the Mississippi Valley, including the Ohio and Lake country. The copper is furnished principally by the neighboring works of the Messrs. Hendricks & Brothers - the most extensive copper works in the country. The Magnetic Telegraph to the Ocean from New York is finished, and goes immediately into operation. The news is thrown open to the public, without any partiality or favor, for the small sum of twelve dollars a year to each individual. This new and incredibly swift mode of communication is now being established all over this country and in most others, and must speedily take the place of all other expresses. - Free Press. Important Decision - Andrew Hatfield, a colored emigrant from Pennsylvania, and a resident of Missouri for six years past, was lately fined $10 for living in the state without a license, as the law requires; committed to jail for his non-payment of it; taken before Judge Krum, on a writ of habeas corpus; and is discharged, on the ground of the unconstitutionality of the law that fined and imprisoned him. This law is nullified by a clause in the constitution which provides, that the "citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." Hatfield, by virtue of this provision, was entitled to the same privileges and immunities in Missouri that he had been in Pennsylvania. Such a principle - and it is obviously a just one - would sweep every black law from the Statute book of every slave or free State. The same law has before been decided in Missouri to be unconstitutional. Fruits of Temperance.- The following account of himself was given at a temperance meeting in Alabama, by Col. Lemanousky who had been for twenty-three years a soldier in the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is a grand testimony to the value of temperate habits. The Colonel rose before the audience, tall, erect, and vigorous, with the glow of health upon his cheek, and said: - "You see before you a man 60 years old. I have fought 200 battles, have 14 wounds on my body, have lived thirty days on horseflesh, with the bark of trees for my bread, snow and ice for my drink, the canopoy of leaves for my covering, without stockings or shoes on my feet, and with only a few rags for my clothing. In the deserts of Egypt I have marched for days with a burning sun upon my naked head, feet blistered, in the scorching sand, and with eyes, nostrils, and mouth filled with dust, and with a thirst so tormenting, that I have opened the veins of my arm and sucked my own blood! Do you ask how I could survive all these horrors? I answer, that next to the kind providence of God, I owe rny preservation, my health, and vigor, to this fact, that I never drank a drop of spirituous liquor in my life; and," continued he, "Baron Larry, chief of the medical staff of the French army, has stated it as fact, that the 6,000 survivors who returned safely from Egypt, were all of them men who abstained from the use of ardent spirits." Lately a little girl, about eight years of age, daughter of a widow lady, residing about eight miles from Lapeer, Michigan, was frightened in such a manner that she died in about two hours after the fright. Her brother, a small lad, dressed himself in a dried bear skin, and chased her as she was going to a neigbboring house. What a lesson that is to bad boys! What sobs and tears that thoughtless act has cost the lad. A cotton factory at Natchez, Mississippi, has recently been established, and is described by the proprietor, Mr. McAlister, in a letter to the New Orleans Bulletin. It has an engine of fifty-horse power. The second story of the building has ten power looms, capable of throwing out 500 yards of heavy domestics nnd 300 of linseys per day; two warping machines, two wool cards, two running machines, and one cotton picked. There are in all, 2,000 spindles. The factory makes, independent of fabrics, twine, candle-wick, plough lines, cotton and wool batting, and yarn suffiient to supply the market. There are employed one white manager, five boys, eight girls, and four men, all negroes; and two white warpers. Austria now contains a population of 30,000,000 souls, including the army, if they may be counted among souls. This is an increase of 24 per cent, within a period of eighty-five years. In 40 years the United States increased in population more than three hundred per cent, viz: from 1790 to 1830. A family of three persons, in Grafton County, (N. H.) have consumed fifty-two pounds of tea, and forty pounds of tobacco in a single year. The two ends of an argument. - Th Columbus Stateatnan, Ohio, thus despatches the Oregon question: "We have two arguments in favor of our claim to Oregon which will override all others. The first is, we want it; the second, we will have it." This is an indisputable way of establishing a right of possession. The two arguments of the pepery patriot belong to the short-hand logic of Ahab, when he annexed the disputed territory of Naboth's vineyard. Rights of Wives. - The Senate of Georgia has passed a law for the protection of the rights and property of married females. It secures to the wife the corpus of the property, but not the artificial increase. When the bill passed, there was a round of applause in the galleries. Romance. - A son of the distinguished Dr. Valentine Mott, of New York, recently married a young lady in that city against the consent of her father, who is very wealthy, and refuses to give her a patrimony. In order, therefore, to punish his severity, and to raise funds, she advertised as Mrs. Valentine Mott, Jr., to give a grand public concert; and her beauty, and the peculiar circumstances of the case have excited unusual interest, among the rich and fashionable of the city. It was supposed her father might 'buy her off!' A Western introduction. - 'Miss Wiggins, let me make you acquainted with an uncle of His'n, just come down from lona county, the town of Freemantie, village of Brendalbane - come away up here to mill (they ha'nt no mills yet up there.) Uncle, this Miss Wiggins, John Wiggin's Wife, up yonder on the hill; t'other side o' the mash - you can see the house from here. She's come down to meetin'. - Mary Clavers.