Headlines on August 16, 1919: ANDREW CARNEGIE IS DEAD, Bronchial Pneumonia Takes Life of Aged Steel Magnate.  Carnegie gave away over $300 million in his lifetime.  He was born in Scotland in 1835 and progressed from his first job as a telegraph operator to owning a steel company.

The U.S. appropriated $1.5 million to study the prevention of the re-occurrence of influenza.  It was estimated that 550,000 deaths in the U.S. were caused by the flu (updated estimate at 650,000).  A Dr. Pfeiffer thought he had discovered influenza bacillus as the cause; however that theory was abandoned.  (Researchers finally isolated the virus that causes the flu in 1931.)

Americas Doughboys ate 800 million pounds of roast beef, 300,000 pounds of candy and smoked 425 million cigarettes. 

A bill in the House was proposed to stop immigration for two years and deport all aliens who escaped military service.

The Secretary of the U.S. Bureau of Standards said that during the war the U.S. was forced to use the metric system in the manufacture of guns and locomotives.  “America, by refusing to adopt metric units is keeping herself as far behind the matter of proper standards as China, who has not adopted the metric system.” (China did adopt the metric system in 1929.)

“Has the country gone regulation mad?”  Railroads, utilities, shipping are regulated to death, and can no longer stand on their own. Now, politicians turn to new fields to hold on to their jobs.  Meat packing and farmers are next.  This must stop.  The cost of living will bankrupt the common citizen.

“It is not difficult to trace at least a part of the cause for high cost of living.” As of July 15, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had 7.6 million cases of eggs and 108 million pounds of butter in storage. 

“And what’s with the merchants in Alamosa who invariably have higher prices,” complained a patron.  In Alamosa eggs are 60 cents this week and in Monte Vista they are 45 cents.  Butter in Alamosa is 60 cents and 35 cents in Monte Vista.   

The Toltec Canal Co., whose first ditch was constructed 50 years ago (1869), was purchased by Henry F. Jordan.  The Canal Company owns decrees from the Conejos and San Antonio rivers at 1,500 cubic feet/second. The Trinchera district was cited to appear in court to show why it should furnish water to the land around Baldy Station in Alamosa County.  District attorney E.H. Ellithorpe will try to get the case transferred to Costilla County. 

Alamosa Day was well attended at the Monte Vista Stampede.  “The sports were well chosen, and much enjoyed by the crowd, from the standpoint of applause, rather cold.”  Monte won the ball game; Miss Mable Bruns won the quarter mile race mounted on her horse ‘Ina’.  A dancing horse was one of the star performers.  “Altogether there was something doing every minute and a person’s neck was elongated several inches of securing a fleeting vision.”  Fullenwider Park was the scene of open-air speakers, trapeze performance, and war dances of the Taos Indians.   

Frank McCumiff, the drug dispenser at Groves, spent Sunday in La Jara visiting his mother.

Job opportunity for men with good teams to haul logs for $4 per thousand foot.

An automobile tire was found between 7th and 8th Streets.

A diamond ring was lost between East Main and Cascade Avenue.

The train overturned outside Walsenberg one man was killed and one injured.

Genial water commissioner W.P. Robinson was confined to the hospital for the week.

The Alamosa school district published its June expenditures. A total of $1,859 was expended including teacher salaries at $765, building costs $200 and library costs at $45. A public notice appeared in the August paper about a school tax.  The district was seeking $80,000 to erect a new school and $6,000 to furnish it.  Monte Vista began excavation on a new, 16- room, two- story school.  This would be Monte’s fourth schoolhouse.  A central steam plant will heat three of the schools. 

Pears for $2.25 and peaches $1 per box were available from Palisade.  “Eat plenty, but all you can, while you can, and now is the time.  Fruit will not be cheaper.”  Basset Stow Mercantile.

Attractions at the State Fair will be very interesting this year. Automobile races, auto polo troup, balloon and parachute artists, airplane fliers, fireworks and fife and drum men will be presented.  Soldiers get in free on the 23rd of September. The Pueblo High School horses are predicted to be the big attraction.

In La Jara the Labor Day celebration will honor returned soldiers.

There have been 834,000 acres of winter wheat were harvested this season.  Colorado’s average was 15 bushels per acre and the national average was 14.6.

Fifty thousand pounds of frozen beef was to be sold to Denverites at 15 cents per pound.  The meat is only suitable for boiling.

Barnes Business Commercial School, at 1624 Champa in Denver, advertised opportunities for women in business.  The advertisement claimed that the war opened up the door to office work. Office work naturally appeals to women because the work is pleasant, the hours easy, the surroundings congenial and an opportunity for rapid promotion. 

Twenty-five building lots going on sale in the Park Addition.  There is no finer site in Alamosa.  Sold on easy payments by C. Wallrich Lumber. 

The portion of the Courier called the Hooper Mosca Tribune was published upside down! (Those editors.) But the “overworked” printer of the paper complained that not one person had brought him a mud hen during these cloudy, sportsman duck hunting days.

A jolly bunch of youngsters from Antonito motored to Alamosa on Monday evening to attend a Jazz dance.

An odd entry in the paper stated that a prominent doctor was seen on the street early in the morning with a wagon full of cantalope and a leg of lamb.  Someone overheard him say “Paying for the lot” and another opinion was that he was just getting in from an “all night stand.” Anyway, the entry said, “He got away with it, so we give him credit.”

My HEAD! Another advertisement from Dr. Pierce’s Pleasant Pellets. 

When the head feels thick or aches, when one feels out of sorts-perhaps a coated tongue-it is the signal that poisons are accumulating in the system, and should be cleaned out at once.  Auto-intoxication can be best ascribed to our own neglect or carelessness.  When organs fail in the discharge of their duties, the putrefactive germs set in and generate toxins-actual poisons, which fill ones own body.  Sleepiness after meals, flushing of the face, extreme lassitude, biliousness, dizziness, sick headache, acidity of the stomach, heartburn, offensive breath, anemia, loss of weight and muscular power, decrease of vitality or lowering of resistance to infectious disease, disturbance of the eye, dyspepsia, indigestion, gastritis, many forms of catarrh, asthma, ear infection and allied ailments result from auto-intoxication or self poisoning.  Take castor oil, or procure at the drugstore, a pleasant vegetable laxative called Dr., Pierce’s Pleasant Pellets, composed of May-apple, aloes and jalap (a cathartic root extract from a plant related to bindweed).