dozen inland cities, of Reno, Spokane, Tucson, Phoenix, Boise, are busy following up the advantage gained by the reduction of freight rates ordered by the Interstate Commerce Commission in favor of Spokane. All of these cities, all the communities of the vast territory between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, have to pay higher freight charges for a shorter haul than the Coast cities whose terminal rates are lowered by water competition. The Coast cities, of course, are fighting against the reduction in favor of inland towns, fighting hard on the side of the railroads. They are fighting for their vested right, for a low freight rate, long continued, becomes a vested right. Upon it factories and Upon it factories and warehouses are built. Shift it to some other point, and the factory or the warehouse is badly crippled.

Upon the Pacific Coast a sharp struggle between capital and labor is in progress, a struggle gaining in intensity and spreading from Mexico to Canada. At the bottom of this struggle lies the freight rate, or rather the readjustment of freight rates in favor of the smaller inland cities of the West. So long as the Coast cities enjoyed comparatively low freight rates caused by nominal water competition while the interior points were smothered by back-haul differentials, the Coast cities transacted a vast and lucrative wholesale business in goods manufactured in the East. Now this rate supremacy is vanishing. They begin to realize that a large share of the distributing business is bound to go to interior points, sooner or later, and they are preparing to regain the lost ground by shifting from the jobbing to the manufacturing business.

Hitherto the West has been too busy mining, grazing, felling timber, producing the raw material, to pay much attention to the manufacture of the goods, of the finished products it consumes. The market for these finished products is growing rapidly and the wholesalers of the Coast cities are preparing to supply this market with goods made at home instead of hauling the goods across the continent. What raw material cannot be had from the mountains, forests and plains, the Panama canal will furnish at

only one factor in manufacturing. To compete successfully with goods sent from the East via the canal, the labor cost must be reduced. Through the Panama canal a flood of cheap European labor is expected, but to be sure of taking advantage of this flood, capital is engaged in a struggle with labor to assert its supremacy against the hour when ten times the present supply of labor will be needed.

It will be impossible to eradicate all the flagrant discrimination in freight rates between communities. An attempt to introduce a tariff based solely upon distances would ruin the industries of New England and of Pittsburg, would be a remedy worse than the evil it is to cure. But a readjustment within certain limits is coming, and this readjustment will be in favor of the smaller towns. Already the Texas Railroad Commission has been weeding out discrimination against small towns whenever brought to its attention, and many of the little Texas communities have taken advantage of the opportunity to attract new industries and enterprises. In Kansas, likewise, Governor W. R. Stubbs is championing the cause of the small town. As population follows the low freight rate, he is anxious to stimulate the growth of the commonwealth evenly, as opposed to the development of one or two large cities.

There is still another factor working in favor of decentralization, in favor of the smaller jobbing and manufacturing centers. In the large centers land values are increasing by leaps and bounds. Every year more room for terminal facilities, both freight and passenger, is needed, and every year it becomes more costly and more difficult to provide this additional room. The freight congestion in the yards of Pittsburg and other centers during the height of prosperity in 1906 gave warning. Every year the terminal charges at the big centers are growing, are eating a larger hole into the carriers' revenues. A point will be reached-and in some cities has almost been reached-where terminal costs will become prohibitive, forcing the carriers in self-defense to divert some of the business to smaller places where terminal

States had 206, of which eighty-eight were on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, forty-eight were on the Great Lakes, fifty-one on the Pacific coast, sixteen in Alaska, and three in the interior. The United States Navy had 344 ship and forty-seven shore stations, the army thirty shore and sixteen ship stations.

In 1909 the Marconi Company transmitted between ship and shore messages aggregating 519,000 words. The transAtlantic business ranges from 50,000 to 75,000 words a week. The British Postoffice Department reported that in the three months ending October 1, 1910, twice as many wireless messages were sent and received as in any other corresponding period. As the first step toward establishing a ring of wireless stations completely encircling the United Kingdom, the government has purchased the stations already in operation. The New Zealand government recently asked for bids for erecting five wireless stations, while fifteen. new wireless stations now being constructed along the Amazon and Paraguay rivers in Brazil will be in operation before the end of the year.

This staid and perfunctory catalogue by no means includes all the activities of the radio-telegraph. It is now used for such strange and widely different purposes as keeping trawlers in the North Sea posted on the state of the fish market and for giving the correct time to vessels within three thousand miles of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. On May 24, 1910, the French government began sending out time signals at midnight, at two minutes and again at four minutes past the hour. These time signals are expected to be of value to navigators by enabling them to correct daily any possible variations in their

chronometers. A still more important application of the radio-telegraph is rendered possible by the Bellini-Tosi wireless compass by means of which the direction from which a wireless signal comes and also the approximate distance may be determined. This is a most valuable invention, for by this means a vessel approaching land in a fog may be directed so as to avoid danger of running ashore.

Yet it is only ten years since Marconi installed the first wireless telegraph outfit on a merchant vessel for regular service. Such a growth could hardly have been attained in so short a time by any mere money-making device. The wireless telegraph has progressed so swiftly because to its solid commercial worth

there has been added an extraordinary list of spectacular achievements in effecting the rescue of persons on sinking ships. It would probably be nearer the truth than such sweeping generalizations usually are to assert that within the ten years of its commercial career the wireless telegraph has saved more lives and more property than any other invention ever has in the same length of time; but to support the allegation by official statistics is out of the question for the sufficient reason that no one has ever thought it worth while to keep a record of the instances in which the wireless telegraph has played a part in rescuing disabled vessels or those on board of them from the merciless action of the

seas.

All the government publications, yearbooks and almanacs, which are so overwhelmingly and minutely informative concerning things that no one really wants to know, are totally silent regarding the very important rescue work of the radio-telegraph. Ask any of the men in London or New York who ought to be primed with statistics on the subject and the best you can get is a guess. One such guess, which has received the indorsement of several men prominently identified with marine interests and which may, therefore, be given for what it is worth, was hazarded by Chief Engineer Frederick M. Sammis, of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America, who es

timated the value of ships and their cargoes in all cases up to December 1, 1910, in which the wireless telegraph was used to summon assistance to vessels in distress, at one hundred million dollars, and the number of lives involved, which may thus be said to have been saved, at approximately ten thousand.

But there is one source which, while far from complete or satisfactory in many of the details we should like to know, is specific as far as it goes; and that is the daily newspaper file. From this source it is possible to learn that during the year 1909 at least twentyfour steamships, after accidents of various kinds, sent out appeals by wireless telegraph which brought assistance with admirable promptness. Taking the more conservative estimates, the aggregate value of the vessels and their cargoes saved from probable, and in some instances certain, loss was in the neigh

borhood of $11,775,000. Including six other cases in which the vessels were lost but their passengers and crews, or most of them, were rescued, no fewer than 5,215 persons may be said to owe their lives to the wireless telegraph in the year 1909. Here is the list so far as it is ascertainable, as explained above. with the estimated value of ship and cargo and the number of persons on board who may be said in all truth, to have been saved through the direct agency of this modern marvel, wireless: