page 6 5ho Nebraska. Indopondont august 10, 1905
IN THE WORLD OF PROGRESS I
o " ' a.
At Cheboygan, Mich., is the largest sawdust
pile in the world. It is a hill, 1080 feet long, 875
feet wide, 3625 feet in circumference, ranges from
20 to 50 feet in height, and covers 12 acres. It is
the accumulation of one lumber company since
1877.
The state railroads of Belgium have institut
ed a system of railroad hospitals. Each car in
the service contains eight movable couches, a dis
pensary an;4 an operating room. The cars are
being distributed at convenient points of the
system.
The business of the Equitable Life Assur
ance . society shows a loss of $15,000,000 as com
pared with last year, but the income for the f.rst
six months of 1905 was $38,799,138, an increase
of $.386,810 over the corresponding six months
of last year, according to a statement which was
submitted to the board of directors yesterday.
A police canvass of the voting lists of Phila
delphia developed nearly 32,000 bogus names on
the registry. A subsequent canvass by unofficial
people produced a total of 70,000 spook voters.
The impression is quite general that Philadal
phia's vote will suffer a severe shrinkage next
fall.
Chicago automobilists are facing the real
thing when they wish to pass through the govern
ment reservation at Fort Sheridan. Orders have
been issued that no machine can go through the
post faster than five miles an hour, and the
sentries have been ordered to stop all who try
, -o. If any chauffeur refuses to stop, the soldiers
' In further nr?cii,1 fn chnnf 5 v,
f Ad stop them, whether or not. .
Veterinary surgeons know, b ;t the general
public probably does not, that some animals are
as liable to meningitis as are human being. Goats
and horses are the principle sufferers in the dumb
creation, and from them the infection may be
transmitted to man. In horses the disease is
Itnbwn as "hydrocephalus acutus." Of horses af
fected with the disease, 78 per cent die, and the
remainder have a chronic tendency to relapse.
Health Commissioner Darlington of New
York has made a report to Mayor McClellan in
which he recommends the expenditure of $17,000,
000 for a filtration plant to purify the city's water
supply. Dr. Darlington declares that the only way
to put an end to the growth of typhoid in New
York is the creation of such a plant, and states
in this connection that the deaths from typhoid
fever in New York during the last five years
have reached the total of 16,360. The alternative
plan of New York's buying the watersheds around
its various sources of water supply is estimated
by the health commissioner to cost $200,000,000,
and even this would not, in his opinion, eliminate
all chance of pollution. He further argues in
favor of the filtration plant on the ground that
in time New York will be compelled to take water
from the upper Hudson, as the demand grows, and
that such water, with its sewage contamination,
could only be used if filtered.
Recently an imprint of a finger tip in place
of a seal, to establish indisputably the identity
of the maker of a will, was taken as evidence by
Mr: Fast, a New York lawyer, in an important
will contest. He will present a bill in the next
session of congress and the state legislature to
legalize finger imprints and give them the weight
a seal now pessesses. Discussing his plan to give
a legal status to finger tips, Mr. Fast said the
seal, which formerly was an indubitable attesta
tion of a document, was fast passing into disuse.
"I suggest," he said, "that as a guarantee of gen
uineness every person choose one of his ten fing
erswhich 1 shall call my 'ego' finger and place
an impression of its tip after his signature, espe
cially on documents requiring a seal by law. In
that casa the impression should be made after the
seal, and in addition to it. Not alone are the
lines of each, of every person's ten fingers differ
ent, but the 10,000 finger tips of a thousand per
sons all vary, Thus, the Impression of a man's
finger tip would be incontrovertible evidence Uiat
he was present when a. document was signed.
As we have ten numerals and also ten fingers,
the impression of each different finger may be
adopted for a different figure. If I want to certify
by finger tip evidence that a document was exe
cuted by me, say on June 14, -SJ05, I make the
following impressions: First, after signing my
name, I imprint my 'ego' finger, my left thumb;
this means, 'I myself; then I imprint my right
thumb (the sixth finger), for the sixth month;
then the little finger of my left hand for 1; then
the index finger of my left hand (tne fourth fing
er), for 4; then the little finger of my right hand
(the tenth finger), for 0, and finally the thumb of
my left hand (the fifth finger), for 5, reading: 'F.
It. Fast, his "ego" 6-15-'05.'- The adoption of fing
er Imprints would save a great amount of litiga
tion. I specially recommend that impressions of
one or more finger tips be placed on documents
which are signed by illiterate persons with a
cross, also on checks, on letters of credit, and
cn identification cards."
Intense excitement was created at the Illinois
Chautauqua at Springfield when resolutions were
introduced disapproving of the bitter attack made
by Senator La Follette on John D. Rockefeller.
The resolutions were laid on the table by almost
a unanimous vote amid a stirring scene. The
majority took the position that the subject was
a delicate matter and that the assembly should
keep its hands off. This incident, coupled with
the departure of Rev. R. S. McArthur, the noted
New York divine, without defending the charac
ter of the oil king, as he publicly announced he
would, caused a sensation. The Chautauqua man
agers declared that the action on the resolution
does not mean that the assembly believes Rocke
feller is the greatest criminal of the age, as he is
stamped by La Follette. They say the Chautau
qua should keep silent and that the introduction
of the resolutions was a grave mistake.
According to figures compiled by the state
board of charities at Albany 'the poor dependent
on public charity in New York City are steadily
on the increase. In 1876 the percentage of this
class of the city's whole population was 3.22; in
1904 it was 8.69. The figures were prepared for
C. A. Locke, a charities expert of Great Britain,
who is collecting statistics for all are large cities
of the world. Secretary Hebbard of the state
charities board said: "It is due largely to the in
crease in population, which has gone up from
1,041,886 in 1875 to 4,437,202 in 1900. It is due
also to what is evidently an increase in depend
ency which has resulted from the great influx
of immigrants to New York, and finally the in
crease is in part due to the moro adequate meth
ods of supplying relief to the poor. In early years
vagrants were cared for at police stations; now
they are cared for at municipal lodging houses.
The public medical relief is better organized
today." At the percentage given the total poor of
Ne7 York would be in round numbers 385,000.
A single-phase electric locomotive has been
designed for the Swedish government railroads,
and experiments are to be carried out therewith,
on the application of the electric power to the
trunk railroads. Externally, there is no departure
from the design of the conventional electric loco
motive. Current is drawn from an overhead con
ductor, and is designed to work at a line pres
sure of 18,000 volts as a maximum, though ar
rangements are made to use several lower pres
sures, the lowest being 3,000. The locomotive
carries an oil-cooled auto-transformer to reduce
the pressure for the motors, and an oil circuit
breaker. The electro-pneumatic control system
is used, a compressor driven by a single-phase
motor supplying air for all auxiliary power pur
poses, such as switching, braking, sanding, etc.
The locomotive and equipment weigh twenty-five
tc and are carried on four- 11-inch wheels. Each
pair of these is driven by a 150-b rake-horsepower
single-phase motor at twenty-five periods, with a
gear reduction of 18 to 70. The locomotive will
handle a train at 40 miles an hour, and has been
built by the British Westinghouse Co., limited.
The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad
company has bought 1j acres of land west of
Chariton, la., and will build a reservoir on it
this summer that will hold between forty and Mty
million gallons of water to supply the needs of
the railroad at this point for one . year, even
though there should be no rainfall in that time.
The land was bought from Mr. and Mrs. Carl
Sigler, of Indianola, and the sum of $100 per acre
was paid for it. The road is also negotiating for
thirty acres adjoining the above tract, which now
belong to E. E. Carroll, which will make a tract
of 40 acres, and forms one of the nest reservoir
beds in the state. Work on the reservoir will be
commenced in about thirty days. The road Is
spending about $5,000 on land adjoining its yards
here, and additional thousands to build a large
reservoir and waterworks of its own. While it
is not known what the intention of the officials
Is with regard to the action taken, it is conjec
tured that Chariton may some day be an Import
ant point on the Burlington, as it is favorably
located for either a passenger or freight division.'
Attention has been called by technical writ
ers to the fact that the wheels of vehicles in
tended for driving roads have not kept pace in
development with the other parts of carriage
mechanism. Experiments with heavy vehicles in
dicate that wheels should be made both higher
and broader. In England it has been recommend
ed that with a maximum s axle load of eight tons
the width of. tire should be about 10 inches.
Increase in the diameter of the wheel is said
to be more effective in preventing damage to road
beds than width of tire.
v
In announcing that he had solved the prob
lem of the electric propulsion of auto vehicles,
Thomas A. Edison took occasion to discredit re
cent extravagant assertions attributed to him con
cerning an electrict storc.ge battery, which he says
he has perfected. The report said the battery
might run a pleasure vehicle at a rate of twenty
miles an hour for a distance of 150 miles. The
best he would guarantee on a sing! , charge was
100 miles. "The troubles with the battery I have
been trying for two years to remedy have been
purely mechanical," said Mr. Edison. "They ha . e
been due chiefly to the swelling of the nickel ele
ment. I have succeeded in reducing the weight
of the battery to about forty pounds per horse
power. With a proper motor and wagon equip
ment we can take the cells and operate an ordi
nary delivery wagon at 58 per cent of the cost of
maintaining a horse." The inventor said he has
worked with the particular object of applying the
power to auto trucks for commercial purposes
and that he can drive a two ton truck at the rate
of thirty-three miles an hour.
The immigration figures for the past fiscal
year, just published, show an inpour of 1,07,421
for that period this being the first time that im
migration into the United States has reached or
passed the million mark. The nearest approach
to this previously was made in the fiscal year
1903, when 857,046 immigrants arrived. The pres
ent figure further compares with 812,870 in 1904
648,700 in 1902, 229,299 in 1898, when the low
record of recent years was made, and with 788 -992
in 1882, when the high record of all time
previous to the present was established. During
the decade of the '80s the average yearly immigra
tion into the United States was 520,000; during
the next decade, which included a long period of
hard times industrially, the average was only
about 381,000. Since 1899 with the recurrence of
"boom" times, the average has, been 713,760 a
year. Since 1820 the number, of immigrants ad
mitted to the country reaches the remarkable
total of 22,932,905, and about one-fifth of this total
have come here within the past six years. This
vast exodus has been contributed to by countries
as follows :
Great Britain- 7,286,350
Germany 5,187,090
Italy 2,000,250
Austria (all since 1861) 1,971,430
Scandinavia 1,730,720
Russia ...... 1,452,620
France 428,891
China (mostly between 1853 and 1883).. 491,455
Switzerland 220,200
Netherlands ...... 146.16S
Japan (all since 1893) 88,909
All other countries ... .2,059,636
Ireland, of course, has been the heaviest
contributor from Great Britain, with England
next, and those countries led in the great, move
ment of population westward. . Then came Ger
many, whose , emigration to- the United States
was heaviest in the early '80s. Now it is .the
countries of southern and southwestern Europe
which lead the procession.
