Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 30, 1908)
unday Bee PAKT IIL THE OMAHA DEC Eat West IMF-TQIIE SECTICIi PACES 1 TO 4. VOL. XXXVIII NO. 11. OMAIIA, SUNDAY MORNING, AUGUST GO, 1908. SINGLE COPY FIVE CENTS. JAMES WILSON PRACTICAL FARMER AND HIS LIFE WORK "Tama Jim's" Characteristics and Some of the Results Achieved Since He Has Become Head of the Great Agricultural Department of the Government of the United States. Fhe Omaha P TARE 'em year In and year out, no employe of the govern ment sticks to his Job with more effective fidelity than a certain cabinet officer whom yon may know by the familiar sobriquet of "Tama Jim." This is James Wilson of Iowa, secretary of the Department of "Agriculture. He is the dean of the cabinet. He is the only member of the cabinet of the McKinley administration from Us start, having been cop armed on March S, 1857. It is very likely, if the republicans continue in power, that Mr. Wilson. If he pleases, will remain at tne head of the Agriculture department. His aoministration of his department has been so singularly Told cf offense and pregnant of far-reacnlng use fulness to the country that there are many democrats who, in the rent of the success f their party next NoTember, would ask that Mr. Wilson be urged and permitted to stay where he Is so long as he is not weary of the well doing which has distinguished him the dozen years he will haTe spent in his present office. Mr. Wilson takes but Jew vacations. He is often the highest officer of the gov eminent remaining in Washington. Midsunmer finds him at his desk. It Is because he has his heart In his vast work and because he Is enjoytsg the fruition of wonderfully varied tests and experi ment in the vitalizing arts of husbandry that keeps him loth to leave his official quarters to which continually come reports from field and farm of absorbing Interest to him because they are almost Invariably stories of local achievement contributing to a great na tional progress. James Wilson, the secretary, was born within a few miles of the birthplace of Robert Burns, the matchless farmer poet, in Ayreshire, Scotland, just seventy-three years ago last Sunday. August 1S3S. He came to America when he was 17 years old, stopped with his parents awhile in Connecticut, and removed to his present Home in Tama, county, Iowa, in 1855. He has always been an enthusiastic farmer and at the same time has been actively concerned in all legis lation affecting agricultural Interests. He was that as a member of the Iowa legislature. In which he served several terms, and con tinned so as a member of congress, in which he served three terms as a member of the hofese. He served on the Iowa Railway commis sion four years and for six years before he accepted a piace In Presi dent McKinley's cabinet was director of the agricultural experiment station and professor of agriculture at the Iowa Agricultural college at Ames. Characteristics of the Race Mr. Wilson has all of the Scotsman's fondness for the practical things cf well being and all ot the Caledonian's enthusiasm over ths triumph of shrewdly directed industry. He is one of the most inter eating men who ever held office in the government. Simple and un affected In conversation, he has a store of experience and a ripe fertile memory for practical things worth remembering which com bine to convince all who know him ot a staunch superiority of mind and character devoted to the general welfare exceedingly scarce among men who hold high political office. His department is Indeed less Inoculated with partisan bias than any In the government. There are not a few democrats who bold responsible positions In ths department, but Mr. Wilson talks to them about their work, and not about their politics. It is said that he does not know the party affiliations ot a dozen men under him. Soma ot bis most sealous supporters are democratic members of congress. Still. Mr. Wilaon, It Bryan should be elected president, has said be would expect a democratic president to choose all the mem bers ct bis cabinet from bis own political party. Just before Secretary Wilson left for a short vacation at bis western farm be was elated over toe assurance of a great year for farm production throughout the country. The crops this season," be said, "will be the largest and best in our history, unless all signs talL All reports Indicate that the farmers throughout the country are preparing: for an unprecedented harvest, farm bands will be in great demand, the railroads will have few empty cars, and the cotton crop of the south will be great. Why shouldn't we farmers smile?" While "Tama Jim." like Bobby Burns' cotter. Is ready to hymn bis Creator's praise for generous sunshine and vitalizing rains, and for the energy and Intelligence ot American farmers, he takes a natural pride in the widespread fruitful aid given by the Department of Agriculture In vastly diversified directions, which have made many a farm, but recently neglected as scarcely worth the labor viven it. bloom and ripen Into such v axled harvests as to rejoice the '.eart of It owner. ' . Bureau cf Soils Especially gratified Is the secretary with good results schleved through the operations of the bureau of soils, under Prof. Milton Whitney. This is the branch ot the department which is in closest relation to the farmer. It Is the foundation of his well being. In the language ot a soil expert, who has reason himself for pride in the work of the science of agriculture, it has no middlemen and it speaks what the sell tiller can understand, so that few have wondered when the powerful opposition of the appropriations committee was overthrown at the last session of the house ot representatives and an Increased sum was voted to be put into the hands ot Prof. Whitney for the acceleration ot soil surreys. Although still but in its initiative the results obtained by the bureau et soils have already closely in terwovea themselves with the daily work of the farmer and have solved planting problems in a way which harvests have strikingly Illuminated. The latest phase ot soli study which has been taken up win. In the opinion of the student workers, prove the greatest boon yet enjoyed by the tillers of the ground. In nothing connected with the revelations of tests founded upon the chemical knowledge has more light been shed than upon the old problem of fertilization. From the earliest days fertilization of the soil has been one of the mos. Important and absorbing Questions wltt a the farmer. It is certain, according to the erudite department authorities, that ancient agricultural people worried over it. and that maybe Qncinnatus. when called from bis plow bandies to the helm of state was pondering this very question. It is likewise held that in all old time discussions and experiments there was a vital part of the prob lem which remained undiscovered. The bureau of soils has found that plants often kill off suc ceeding generations In the same soil, not by. exhausting it and ex tracting all the nutrition, but by depositing toxic or poisonous sub stances which always hamper and frequently prevent the growth ot the succeeding plant. So. Instead ot devoting all its time to re plenishing the ground with those elements and substances which have been given off during the growth of the plant, the bureau has pursued Its experiments of tbe theory of Isolating and removing the poisonous matter. The discovery of these hurtful substances dis closed that with all the necessary mineral or nutrient elements na tive to the soil the plant would not flourish. After a series of ex periments the character of the toxic elements was chemically identi fied and there Immediately began the revolution in soil treatment by the bureau which continued until it has uncovered the noUonou excreta ot all the most useful plants. The evil has been counter acted successfully by the discriminating use of chemicals and fer tilisers and the farmer, it is claimed, has been freed from a presence More baleful a thousand times than the Loll weevil to cotton or the natural exhaustion of the land. Help for the Farmer Thus far the toxic properties have been removed In many In stances by a n amber of simple operations. The experiments are proceeding with all possible expedition, the object being to afford ths farmer a cheap and convenient method ot making his land ield the greatest possible uniformity of profitable production year la aad year out The farmers ot the country are as a rule co-operating cheerfully and intelligently with the department and the thief of the bureau ot soils. Prof. Whitney is greatly encouraged, feeling that the Importance of the work is properly appreciated by those whom it fijvst eoaceras. Experiments are constantly going on with commercial fertilisers aao, with the view of supplying a particular fertlUxer for each type preservation, proposition and growth of forest reserves. t the head ot which bureau Is Gifford H. Pinchot. who Is in the work from a sheer enthusiastic love of it. This is In truth a conservatloa of the natural resources of the country and it has been a pet hobby of Tama Jim's for many years. This work is proving to be the most responsive to Intelligent effort of any of the great bureaus of the De partment of Agriculture. An army of men Is employ?! in h work in the forests already existing and another army is engapd in plant Ing and caring for the young trees in the experimental for?ta and preventing trespass on these baby forests, some of the largest of which are located In Nebraska and are gradually evolving Into a most gratifying success. Problems of Forestry JAMES WILSON. which will replace all the nourishing elements taken from the plant annoyance of the packers, but always for the public good. So per ln the course of its life. As there are more than 460 different kinds feet has this governmenUl Inspection become that, rinderpest, Texas fever, pleuro-pneumonia, foot rot, trichina, hog cholera and kindred live stock diseases have ceased to be alarming, and even diseases and -maladies of the glanders order among draft stock have been con ottered by the industry of Tama Jim and his army of Intelligent and watchful assistants. Bureau of Plant Industry The bureau of plant Industry is another ot the great accom plishments of the Department of Agriculture. Wonderful strides have been made through this bureau In the better production of to ot soil in the United State, this will be no easy task, but great progress has been made, and already a number ot sections have been advised by the bureau just what elements the soil requires to be tickled to yield a maximum harvest. Commercial fertiliser is used chiefly In the Atlantic and Gulf states, and since 1899 its use has doubled in this country, until now 1100,000,000 is annually spent for this kind of soil improvement. It is not alone In the bureau of soils that the Department of Agriculture is putting in Its best work. There is the bureaa of ani mal Industry, which has become one of the most important of the departments and has in its employ an army of expert inspectors, not bacco, cotton and tea. and the introduction of new food and forage alone in the packing houses to watch aad Inspect the evolution of live stock from the moment of arrival in the stock pens to the kill ing, curing, preservation and refrigerating departments, but in the field. Inspecting live stock on the cattle ranges and feeding lots. In fact a constant governmental supervision is bad over live stock from plants, their propogatlon and acclimatization and in ee?d distribu tion. In connection with the bureau of plant Industry is that of entomology, which is waging a constant and interminable warfare against the insect pests that beset the farmer and hortic lltarist and thus Involve millions of dollars of loss to the agriculture! industry its birth, care, shipment, nutrition to the abbatoirs. where it becomes of the country annually. Scarcely has the entomological bureau got the meat of commerce. The brand of approval affixed to a carcass the better of one insect pst until another appears, requiring new by Uncle Sam's Inspectors is the guaranty of excellence that is taken experiments with varied success, but in the main tremendously bene as the standard the world over. Greater care is now taken in the in- ficial and saving annually to the farmers ot the country sere than spectlon of live stock on foot and in the packing houses than ever the entire appropriations made for the maintenance of the Agricul before. The inspectors have become better versed in their work tural department. and consequently more exacting, at times much to the chagrin and Another great bureau is that of the forestry service for the The forestry bureau has been up aralnst it hard recently in the disastrous forest fire in the northwest. The overcoming ct these fires Is a problem yet in its Incipiency. Their prevention is the eas iest thing in the world but for the carelessness and ( Indifference of hunters sod campers, through whose criminal carelessness most of these fires originate. Spontaneous coajbustion is an occasional cause, but it is so rare as to be classed as an actual cause. It baa been demonstrated time and again that the accumulation of under growth in the great forests is a fruitful danger in propogatlng the spread of forest fires. The forestry bureau is now const! -ring the most effective plans for getting rid of this undergrowth and it is likely that a force of men will be put to work in the forests cutting out and destroying this tangle of undergrowth wherever possible. It Is believed by Mr. Pinchot and bis assistants, and particularly by Secretary Wilson, that the forist fire problem can be as easily han dled as the prairie fire problem of a few years ago. All that is needed is the intelligent and caivful co-operation of people living in the vicinity of the forest reserves in watching for Incipient fires, and to make it a felony for hunters or tourists to permit their camp fires to linger after they have left their camps. Since becoming a part of the Agr.cultural department in 181, when It was transferred from the War department, the weather bureau has developed into one of the greatest bureaus of the depart- ment and one of the most important. Under the intelligent manage ment of Chief Willis L. Moore the weather bnreaa has rendered in calculable service to the Agricultural department. Its value is man ifested in its forecasts, frost possibilities and warnings. Weather stations have been established in every hamlet and village in the ag ricultural areas. Daily reports and warnings are given, and with the evolution of the telegraph, telephone and rural free delivery the farming communities are put into instant communication with the weather bureau with the same facility as in the commercial and trade communities. The approach of cold or hot waves is annouaced with the same care as in the commercial centers and the farmers ere rap Idly availing of this valuable information. Secretary Wilson has found an enthusiastic coadjutor In Chief Willis L. Moore and the weather service is becoming daily more important to the faming and stock-raising communities. Its forecasts and warnings have already saved millions of dollars to the farming and stocii-ia!siug Interests and its work has only Just begun. Safeguarding the Pantry The bureau of chemistry Is another of the Department ot Agri culture's valuable adjuncts. It comes in close touch with uany ot the other departments and bureaus and under the able management ot Prof. H. W. Wiley Is second in importance to but few of the other bureau. Prior to the passage of the pure food law the bureau ot chemistry bad charge ot all of the chemical experiments and in quiries pertaining to the Agricultural department ia the investigation and testing of foods, and through these investigations and tests, with the aid of the famous "poison squad" was the pure food law brought about. This bureau is still in active operation, covering many activi ties that cannot be reached under the pure food law provWion. The reclamation service, the irrigation service, the biological survey, covering the game birds; the division of publicity, the bureaa ot statistics and the vast number of experimental stations which em brace every species of plant, plant food, human food and miscellane ous experimentation, all come under the jurisidiction ot the Depart ment of Agriculture and have received their greatest impetus through the painstaking and conscientious energy of, Secretary Wilson. Last, but not least, of the great bureaus of the Agricultural de partment is the pure food laboratories, established to carry out the provisions of the pure food laws. Thirty-two of these laboratories have been located throughout the country, the greater number beics In the central west, the great food-producing region of the continent. The ablest chemists of the country will be appointed to superintend the work of these laboratories, which are to be most elaborately equipped and furnished for the analyxatlon of food products and drugs and everything that enters into human food consu mption or for the cure of human ailments. The laboratories will aid in the testing of dairy and butter products, particularly such as process and filled butter, which are to some extent now under the supervision ot the revenue departments. The bureau of crop reports, of sanitation in dairies and every thing that can contribute to the welfare of the great agricultural in dustries ot the country are but another of the multiple duties that appertain to the Agricultural department and have reached their present perfection and efficiency through the untiring efforts of Tama Jim." Newest of Theories of What Constitutes Light CAMBRIDGE. Mass.. Aug. 2i. The theory of light pressure, the subject ot discus sion for some time pst among astron omers, physicists and chemists, has be gun to impinge itself upon popular con sciousness and to appeal to the imagination of those who are by no means experts, who look back with pleasure and perhaps a little regret to the neatly boxed categories of the universal forces which were easily understood in the days before Sir Oliver Lodge announced "the astronomy ot the atom. It was made quite certain then by experiment as well as treatise that the undulatory theory was adequate to explain all the elemental forces. The ridiculousness of the antiquated hypothesis of minute corpuscles of reamer shot off from illumi nated bodies, ot electric and magnetic fluids cours ing through the veins of things was palpable. It gave pleasure to the youthful Intellect to accept Huyghens' doctrine of a universal ether which ac counted for the propagation of light rays. It was good to know that the Individual and indivisible atoms easily split out of molecules in the chemis try class had after all something to float around in. This was a dear old cosmos anyway. Cf all the well-behaved universal forces which the secondary school intellect loved to contemplate light has perhaps yielded np the most astonish ment to laymen In rveent years. Hat las been pursuing its wsy without startling aberrations, Sound always has been more or less of a pseudo force, a mere slow shuffling among molecules, use ful for purposes o' conveying intelligence, but not especially stimulating to the imagination. Of electricity queer things are expected anyway. But light, so weU behaved, so definite and so positive la the laboratory has been creating scan dals among the makers ot textbooks. New sec tions have had to be added to explain the ultra violet microscope. . And now the books apparently must be revised to Include a theory whi'h makes of the pressure of light a force co-equal in impor tance with gravitation. Just whether Arrhenius, Lebedev, Hull and Nichols, whose names are associated with the re cent discoveries of the cos deal significance of light pressure, have hit upon something as funda mental in the history of science as Newton's dis covery of the law of gravitation it would be out of place to attempt to argue now. Enough that their theories have proved to be immensely suggestive that conservative astronomers like Prof. Edward C. Pickering at Harvard, whose work has lain in other than electro-chemical directions, axe ex pressing themselves as intensely Interesting in ths generalizations from the light pressure doctrine, that to most people the conception ot light as a propulsive agent is still a new and even startling one. That a beam of light theoretically ought to exert pressure upon whatever object it falls was evident in the days when the Newtonian theory of emission of luminous corpuscles was held by scientists. If a candle flame or a sun in burning threw off minute panicles of material light clearly the Impact of these traveling through space at a rate of 1&6.000 miles a Second should be consid erable. . Had earlier physicists possessed tfea apparatus to measure this force the overthrow of Vswtoa's hypothesis might have been delayed, hera was, however, no tangible proof that light avtMtlly did exert a push, and when the newer conception ot sound, heat, light and electricity as nudKu of. mo tion became definitely accepted most scientists forge: that there ever had been a hypothesis of light pressure. Since 1S45, when Faraday noticed that strong magnet exercises a peculiar action upoa polarized light, the science of light and the science ot electricity have gradually come to overlap until now it is hard to say just where the one ends and the other begins- Hartz showed that electric waves can be reflected, refracted or polarized; that in other words they have the characteristic qualities of light waves. Clerk Maxwell. In de veloping his theory that light consists of electric vibrations in the ether made some calculations as to the probable pressure exerted by rays of light Quantitative demonstration followed. The scientific precision which has enabled the measur ing of differences in light velocity amounting to not more than ne-miiilouth of a second ot time has not proved wanting in the measuring of the weight of Incident light. The Russian. Lebedev, first proved experimentally that light exerts pres sure. Profs. Nichols and Hull, working at Dart mouth college, confirmed his experiments and im proved his methods. Meantime Svante Arrhenius of the University ot Stockholm began drawing up statements of changes of cosmic theory that must take place now that a new factor la the framework has been demonstrated. A few of the consequences ot the acceptance of the light pressure theory as seen by this Swedish scientist may be set forth. The sunlight perpetually beating upoa this planet, exerts, according to the measurements of the Americans, a pressure ot about 75,000 tons. That is a merely negligible force as compared with the pull of gravitation, which is many times as great. Out In the solar system, however, where there exists no one knows how tenuous a condition of the material fining in. the propulsive force exerted by the light upon any little particle of matter that Is flying about may be quite as potent as the power of gravitation that tends to draw aU things to gether. Light pressure, in other words, appears to be a foil to the universal get-together tendency. Just why this force Is relatively more impor tant when acting upoa minute than upon large masses will be evident on a moment's considera tion. Gravitation acts upon masses is a whole. Light pressure is exerted only on surf fvces. The more closely a certain number c f particles of matter are compacted the less the surface that is exposed to pressure. If the same &ass is spread out very thin by division and cubdivkiion a condition obviously may be reached where the light gets as much ot a purchase on the particles as gravitation holds upon them. In this neigh borhood a particle that is one one-hundred-tbou-sandth of an inth in diameter will be exactly bal anced in space, pulled one way by gravitation, pushed in an opposite direction by the yuallght Now see what a reversal of high school notions regarding conditions in Interstellar space Is In volved on acceptance ot this principle, even If nothing had become public earlier to disturb the cheerfully simple belief that the earth's atmos phere somewhere comes to a stop with a definite wavy surface like that of the ocean, we used to be taught and that thereafter you encounter a vast void of ether. Incredibly cold, until you arrive in the atmosphere of some other planet or in the veil of hot gases surrounding the sun. Trae, other recent pronouncements of the scientists have indi cated that nothing much is boxed off in the uni verse, that it la hard to say just where either the earth's atmosphere or the sun leaves off, that thf diffusion of hydrogen out from the air is a curious, not to say portentious, phenomenon would not slew processes of electrolys' account for the grad ual diminution of the earth's water supply more naturally than any sinking of the ocean Into cracks of the earth's crust? it is suggested and that with negatively electrified tons shooting all over space there must be lively happenings off there where we once pictured an imponderable. Immeasurable, mysterious calm, punctuated by the occasional whis of a meteor or the sml-occa-(Contlnned on Page Tour.)
