Page:EB1922 - Volume 31.djvu/1015

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
MINTO—MISSISSIPPI
963

of the Legislature, are nominated, and consequently elected, on a non-partizan ballot. The 1921 Legislature provided for pre-primary conventions, but all attempts to modify the non-partizan features of the law have failed. The same Legislature passed an Act for a 6% tax on the net value of mined iron ore, tonnage tax bills having previously been vetoed by Governors Johnson and Burnquist. The alignment on the question was largely sectional, legislators from the mining districts opposing. In Oct. 1918 occurred the most severe forest fires that the state ever knew. The fires burned over 770,500 ac., principally in Aitkin, Pine, Carlton, and St. Louis counties, caused 432 deaths, destroyed about $25,000,000 worth of property, wiped out the thriving towns of Moose Lake and Cloquet, and threatened Duluth. Since this disaster the state forestry board (created in 1911) has greatly increased the state force of forest patrolmen, and during the season of danger loal authorities sup- plement this force. During the unusually dry autumn of 1920, 860 fires were reported (as compared with 525 in 1918), but these were so promptly extinguished that less than ioo,oooac. were burned over.

The following governors held office after 1909: Albert Olson Ebcrhart (Rep.), 1900-15; Winficld Scott Hammond (Dem.) (died in office), Jan.-Dec. 1915; Joseph A. A. Burnquist (Rep.), 1915-21; Jacob A. O. Preus (Rep.), 1921- .

During the World War the Minnesota National Guard, after serving on the Mexican border in 1916-7, was incorporated in the army, and a total of 123,325 Minnesota men by enlistment and draft entered various arms of the service. The 1515! U.S. Field Artillery and Base Hospital No. 26 were probably the most distinctively Minnesotan units in the service. War training schools in Minnesota included the reserve 'officers' training camps at Fort Snelling, the U.S. Air Service Mechanics' School in St. Paul, the Dunwoody Naval Training Station in Minne- apolis, and the Students' Army Training Corps, organized at the state university and at numerous smaller colleges and schools. In order that " Minnesota might have, during the period of the war, a governing body capable of efficiently mobilizing its resources in men and property, and applying them to the war's successful prosecution," the Legislature in April 1917 created the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, the first of such commissions in the United States, and appropriated $1,000,000 for its use. The people of Minnesota purchased $483,642,950 worth of Liberty Bonds and war savings stamps and contributed about $10,000,000 to war relief agencies. (S. J. B.)

MINTO, GILBERT JOHN ELLIOTT-MURRAY-KYNYNMOND, 4th EARL OF (1845-1914), English statesman (see 18.564), died at Minto House, Hawick, March 1 1914.

MISIC, ZIVOJIN (1855-1921), Serbian statesman, was the son of well-to-do peasant parents in a village under Mt. Suvo Bor, in the heart of the famous Shumaja (Shumadia) district, which had always been the backbone of Serbian resistance alike to the Turk and to the Austrian. Born in 1855, he passed through the old Artillery school in Belgrade and served in the Serbo-Turkish War of 1877 and the short Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885. He then devoted himself to an intense study of military history and strategy. During the Bosnian annexation crisis he became assistant chief-of-staff to Gen. Putnik, and in this capac- ity made his name in the first Balkan War, being promoted gen- eral. In the second Balkan War in 1913 he was mainly re- sponsible, under Putnik's orders, for the decisive operations on the Bregalnitsa, which ended in the overthrow of Bulgaria. When the World War broke out he was once more Voivode Putnik's trusted right-hand man; and when the Austrians, after their ini- tial failure on the Drina and Sava, invaded Serbia with stronger forces in Nov. 1914, Misic was appointed to the command of the I. Army, which had to bear the brunt of the attack, and strongly urged a counter-offensive. Misic's simple and unaffected heroism inspired his soldiers with confidence: his army order of Dec. 3 is worthy to rank beside Lord Kitchener's appeal to the new armies of Britain, and certainly holds a record of soldierly directness. " Trust in God and forward, heroes," was all its length. , Misic's spirit spread from his owti immediate command to the whole Serbian army and found expression in the decisive victory of Rudnik early in December. The Austrians under Potiorek were driven headlong out of Serbia, with a loss of 40,000 prisoners and an enormous booty, and 10 months were to pass before an enemy was seen again on Serbian soil. Thus strangely enough was fulfilled an authentic peasant prophecy which foretold that a peasant soldier from the Shumaja would rout a northern invader within sight of his native village.

Music, who had been created voivode after Rudnik, distin- guished himself still further during the terrible retreat of the Serbian army in the winter of 1915, before the joint German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian advance. Unhappily, politics entered into the military rearrangements which followed the concentration of the wrecked Serbian army at Corfu: but Misic stood beyond the reach even of party intrigue. After a long interval spent at a western health resort in recovering from the strain of the campaign, he resumed command of the I. Army on the Salonika front in Aug. 1917, and in June 1918 was made chief-of-staff. In this position he played a preeminent part in elaborating the plan to which the piercing of the Bulgarian front and, indirectly, the collapse of Austria-Hungary was due. As a convinced believer in Serbia's national destiny and the idea of Yugoslav unity, he did all in his power to promote the efforts of the exiled Yugoslav committee to organize Yugoslav legions on every front. His death on Jan. 20 1921, after a long and painful illness, was received with national mourning.

MISSISSIPPI (see 18.599). The pop. in 1920 was 1,790,618, a decrease of 6,496, or 0-4%, from the 1,797,114 of 1910, as against an increase of 15-8% in the preceding decade. The negro pop. was 853,962, or 52-2% of the total as compared with 1,009,487, or 56-2% of the total in 1910. The foreign-born whites in 1920 numbered 8,019, or 0-4% of the total pop. The density was 38-6 per sq.m., as against 38-8 in 1910. The urban pop. (in places of over 2,500) was 13-4%; in 1910, 11-5%. The six cities having in 1920 a pop. of over 12,000 were:

1920

1910

Increase per cent

Meridian Jackson Vicksburg Hattiesburg Laurel Natchez

23,399 22,817 18,072 13,270

13-037 12,608

23,285 21,262 20,814 11,733 8,465 11,791

o-5 7-3 -13-2

I3-I 5l-o 6-9

Agriculture. In 1920 61-3% of the land area of the state was in farms, and 51-2% of the farm land was improved. The number of farms was 272,101, a decrease of 0-8 % since 1910. These farms con- tained 18,196,979 ac., of which 9,325,677 ac. were improved land. The improved acreage increased 3-5 % from 1910 to 1920. Of the total number of farms in 1920, 91,400, or 33-5%, were worked by owners, or part-owners (68,131 by whites and 23,179 by negroes). The number of white owners increased 12-4% from 1900 to 1920 and the number of negro owners II %. The average size of the farms decreased from 67-6 ac. in 1910 to 66-9 ac. in 1920. The average value increased from $13.69 per ac. in 1910 to $35.27 in 1920. Cotton continues the most important crop. The acreage of cotton decreased from 3,220,000 in 1907 to 3,100,000 in 1920. The number of acres planted in market-garden produce, peanuts, potatoes, sor- ghum-cane and corn is increasing. The live-stock industry, pure-bred hogs and cattle, made the greatest relative advance of any branch of agriculture from 1910 to 1920.

Manufactures. The value of the total output from factories increased from $57,451,445 in 1905 to $79,550,095 in 1914. Mississippi ranked 39th among the states in the value of manufactured products and 3ist in number of wage-earners. The capital invested in manufactures increased from $50,256,309 in 1904 to $81,005,484 in 1914, or 62 %. The chief manufactured products are lumber, cotton-seed oil and cake, cotton goods (thread, drills, sheetings, muslins, etc.), turpentine and rosin. The leading manufacturing centres are: Meridian, Jackson, Greenville, Columbus, Laurel, Hattiesburg, Natchez and Vicksburg.

Education and Charities. The most important development in education has been the establishment of county agricultural high schools (1908). Every county may establish one for white children and one for negroes, or two counties may combine and create one set of schools for the two counties. These schools receive state aid on the basis of the number of boarding pupils. They receive also Federal aid. To equalize the term in the grade schools between the delta and hill counties the distribution of the state school fund is based on the number of educable children in each county (1920). A compulsory school attendance law passed in 1920 applies to all children between the ages of seven and fourteen. The state has a normal college for the training of teachers, at Hattiesburg (established 1910). A five-million-dollar bond issue was authorized (1920) to provide buildings for the state's charitable institutions and institutions of higher learning. Greek letter and similar secret fraternities