a thermofier! An instrument maliciously planned to defeat Jack Frost.

Some may not understand the hard times Johnson had while he was planning this improvement. Many of the best men in the town who had been leaders in public improvements had to "Call a halt" when the young engineer proposed to send steam through pipes to radiators, pass it through this thermofier arrangement, and return it to the plant as water to be reboiled into steam, and again sent out, again and again, and some more yet, and all for a price below the cost of coal. They were publicThey were publicspirited citizens, they wanted that understood, but there was a limit, and when it came to this kind of a scheme-well, although residing in Kansas, there would still be a demand for visible proof.

The lowest bid Johnson turned up in Chicago, to equip his town, was $9,500. And that was rather too stiff. The doctor with his hospital plans, involving about $75,000, was with him, and together they searched the town. It must be possible, Johnson argued, for a town to get wholesale prices when it bought in wholesale lots. He got his cut rates, too, finally, and then the "Big Business" came around with a lower bid and Sabetha got its pipes and its radiators and the little contraptions with the long name. When the system had been installed; the labor of digging having been done by high school boys for twenty-five cents an hour; Sabetha had spent exactly $4,922. That included the vacuum pumps. Standard steam pipe was used, in size eight inches at the plant, reduced to seven inches, two or three blocks away, with a three-inch return pipe all the way. To serve a consumer a two inch tap pipe was used, with one-inch return pipe.

The pipes were laid in a conduit which cost, for material and labor, including the digging of the ditch, at 25 cents an hour, $2 a foot. The conduit to carry the pipes consisted of a pine box of one-inch stuff, having no cover, laid in the trench on top of four inches of concrete, at the bottom of which was put a four-inch tile to carry off any seepage. The main steam pipe and the return pipe were laid in the box which was filled with concrete. Expansion joints care for the usual pipe activity, and under the con

duit a roller at certain intervals disposes of "creeping." The construction, the engineer believes, could be done somewhat more cheaply after the first trial, but this was one of the things they learned by experience.

Steam, Mr. Johnson knew, could be produced, alive, for nine cents a square foot of radiation, but thermofiers were needed, and money for development was needed, so they charged 25 cents. He satisfied himself, too, that electricity could be produced at the board for 3/4 cents a kilowatt hour, if fuel oil were used. One gallon of this oil will evaporate fourteen pounds of water. The steam produced is sent through the pipes at one pound pressure, usually, but it enters the vacuum at the velocity of a cannonball, and when it condenses in the radiators the water is pulled back by these vacuum pumps through a smaller pipe lying underneath. The pumps are duplicates having 6 by 8 steam cylinders, and 12 by 8 water cylinders. Less than two per cent. of the steam is wasted in the process.

Of course no one man, "unaided and alone," could handle a deal like this, unite all the opinions, and satisfy every viewpoint. Sabetha has a finely organized Commercial Club which holds the people's confidence-it is the people, for that matter-and a city council which does just what the said Commercial Club. thinks is right. It was this representa-tive body that carried out the inside ramifications of the business when it came to equipping the stores and factories and homes with radiators. These were bought by the town in Chicago, and sold to the consumers at an advance just high enough to pay for the work of putting them in. Seven blocks, or, rather, three on both sides, had been equipped when the extremely cold weather came. rate for this service is now twenty-five cents a square foot of radiation, about 75 per cent. the cost of coal, the users say, but this will be reduced after the plant is paid for, which will be in a little more than two years. The revenues from steam heating, the last service year, will be about $2,000. The town used, last winter, 10,000 square feet of radiation. As the surrounding towns are arranging to buy electric current from Sabetha for

The

light and power,

more

steam will be generated, and in this way the inevitable extensions will be supplied those who need steam heat.

One of the chief joys of Sabetha, with its fuel oil furnaces and its steam radiators, is the town's cleanliness. It has no coal smoke. The houses are bright, the windows shine. One's linen shows no marks of black. There are no ashes in the alleys. There isn't any coal in the town, except in the home districts where the steam pipes have not been laid. And these districts will have steam next winter.

To get steam into the homes of Sabetha the property owners must pay for the mains in the street. By combining, this does not create an excessive expense; about $125 to $140. The rate then is based on the price of coal, and what it cost to heat the houses the winter previously. This method was used last winter. For instance, the Sabetha National Bank had a 'rate of $57. Its coal bill, in the winter of 1910-1911 was $66. It had more steam heat, last winter, than it needed. A drug store 60 x 22, with 16-foot ceiling, paid $41 for its radiation, last winter. It cost $70 to install the system. This store couldn't be heated with furnace for less than $75 a winter. Another delightful feature is the fact that if you don't use steam heat in Sabetha you don't have to pay a tax for someone else's heat. The tax is apportioned among the users, in the

257

shape of payment for services, and those earnings take up the city's warrants

issued to pay for the equipment.

But Sabetha is just the sort of town

to demand the new service just as fast as it can be supplied. It is a motor town. There are so many motors in use that a special rate was made. I have never seen more electrical conveniences in homes anywhere. They are found in the shops, the butcher stalls, planing mills, garages, grain elevators, and in homes; they are used for passenger elevators, feed grinders, washing machines, ironing, laundries, and dentists' offices. They seem to delight in putting in every convenience they can buy. They were not satisfied until they had spent $26,500, a few years ago, to install septic tanks and sanitary sewers, a system large enough for a town four times as big as Sabetha. Their lateral sewers cost them $15,000 more, and all this tax, as the books show, was paid up within thirty days, except $3,022.12-the treasurer insisted upon having the exact amount reported.

And how about paving? Sabetha will have paved streets, thank you, after a while. It prefers, right now, to let the steam plant pay for itself, as the light and water plant has done. It would like, too, to have a fund-a paving fund, but it does not care to put down a foot of asphalt until all the wires are underground. Think of that in a town of 2,100! You couldn't string a line of poles in Sabetha today for love or money. All wires must go under. There's the "White Way," for instance, on the principal street. The ornamental poles, with three or four globes, have been ordered for seven blocks of business property, and every foot of the wire will go under ground. This improvement will cost every business man $8.33 as an installation charge. After that, presumably.

ing" like the others, for everyone in Sabetha pays according to his consumption, with a liberal discount above certain amounts. The ice plant uses $400 worth of current a month with a four-cent rate. Twelve cents a kilowatt hour is the basis for this charge.

It is due Sabetha at this point to draw attention to the fact that it is not a Socialistic town, a co-operative community or a union of any sort. It is a town almost without politics. Indeed there are no parties when the welfare of Sabetha is concerned. These distinctions are reserved for state and national disturbances and newspaper polls. There are two tickets in the field when the town has an election; Citizens' and Municipal,

although both, bless their hearts, are working for Sabetha. The only contest appears to be to see which side can get the candidates first. A city official in Sabetha has precious little to do, anyway. The people don't leave him many of his prerogatives. When something turns up that would look good there they call a meeting of the Commercial Club and talk it over, and that's all there is to it, so far as Mr. City Official is concerned. It would be hard to imagine a happier family, municipally speaking. And not a lawyer in the town.

Sabetha, however, does not exactly attribute its prosperity, its freedom from discord to the absence of members of the legal fraternity. No, it does not so indiscriminatingly jumble its causes and its effects. It thoroughly understands that the lack of lawyers alone does not make for harmony. When the good citizens of Sabetha-if that day should ever come-grow fractious and quarrelsome, lawyers

66

HAT instrument should

be at Scotland Yard.
It would be the greatest
detective of them all,"

exclaimed King Edward

VII after witnessing a demonstration of the dictograph at Buckingham Palace on June 25, 1907. At least, so the story runs; and it is such a good story that to raise any question about its authenticity would be a burning shame.

If the manufacturers of the dictograph had employed a press agent their product might long ago have occupied the center of the stage on the strength of such marked evidence of royal approval. Instead of being given the benefit of such aid the dictograph was left to dub along the best way it could until it became mixed up in a sordid graft scandal in Ohio before it achieved the distinction of a place on the first pages of the newspapers.

On that historic occasion at Columbus, Ohio, the dictograph was hidden under a sofa, with an industrious stenographer at the other end of the wire, while Detective Harrison dickered with members of the legislature and paid them marked bills for their support of an insurance measure in which he pretended to be interested. Sergeant-at-Arms Rodney J. Diegle was more cautious than the others, for he looked into the closet, behind the furniture and even under the sofa before he would consent to talk business with the detective. But Rodney did not see the dictograph under the sofa, or if he did he did not grasp its significance. Because of this lack of perception he is now serving a term of three years in the penitentiary. At his trial the competence of the dictograph as a legal witness was established; for M. Turner, the president of the company that manufactures it, appeared and demonstrated for the benefit of the judge and the jury, not only that the instrument would receive and con

vey ordinary conversation, but that it would also reproduce the tones of the speakers' voices so faithfully that the listener at the other end of the wire could infallibly identify each voice.

When the exact truth is known about the trial of the Los Angeles dynamiters, if it ever is known to the public, it will be found that the plea of guilty was probably brought about largely by the little dictograph. The same little instrument also caused the arrest of Mayor Thomas E. Knotts, of Gary, Ind., on the charge of soliciting and accepting a bribe of $5,000 for his approval of a public service ordinance. It performed a similar service in a little affair in Salt Lake City in which the head of a brokerage house and three others were involved, to their subsequent sorrow, in a wire tapping scheme. Also the dictograph did some effective work in the election frauds at Louisville, Kentucky.

Two Italians were recently arrested in Pennsylvania for the murder of a paymaster. Although morally certain that they had the right men the detectives lacked the necessary legal evidence to secure a conviction. A hurry call for a dictograph was turned in, then the two suspects were placed together in a cell in which the instrument was concealed. Their lawyer, suspecting the very trap that was laid, warned his clients against

it. To be on the safe side he told them not to speak at all. For nine days and nights the jailers listened, but not one word did the prisoners utter. The silence becoming intolerable at last, they began discussing their crime on the tenth night in tones meant to be too low to reach the ear of the mysterious eavesdropper. They did not stop until they had sealed their own death warrants.

Some time ago the Illinois Central Railroad management became convinced that it was the victim of an extensive swindle in the matter of car repairs. The road's own secret service operators were ordered to investigate, but they could find out nothing. Then an outside detective agency was called in which proved to be equally helpless. When the case was referred to a second outside agency its operative concealed a dictograph in his room at a hotel with the receiver in an adjoining room. Summoning two of the suspected men to his room he said just enough to create the impression that he could tell a great deal about car repair graft if he wanted to, then excused himself and went out. He hurried into the next room where he picked up the receiver of the dictograph and listened.

"What do you think he knows?" asked one of his callers.

"Oh, he doesn't know anything." "He is on to something, all right." "Don't you believe it. Let me talk to him and I'll fix things up.'

Thereupon ensued a discussion of the story to be told. In ten minutes the dictograph had accomplished something that had baffled the shrewdest detectives in the country for ten months; for when the amiable host returned he knew enough about the affair to warrant the arrest of three or four prominent officers and former officers of the railroad in question. At the preliminary hearing a spiracy was uncovered which involved a number of railroad employes ranging all the way from yard men to a vicepresident. The gang had plundered the company of at least a million and a half of dollars. Had it not been for the dictograph the gang might still be operating.

con

An officer of one of the largest corporations in the country became convinced that a conspiracy was on foot among a clique of directors to give him

the thirty-second degree in high finance; or, as the process was formerly known, to freeze him out. So the officer, who was also a heavy stockholder, decided to employ a dictograph to defend himself. The conspirators were in the habit of meeting in a large room purposely left as bare as possible. There was not a picture on the wall, no closets and no furniture except a plain table and some plain chairs. Although the dictograph is a very unobtrusive instrument, there seemed to be absolutely no place to conceal it. But a more careful search disclosed a hollow ornamental brass globe on the chandelier over the table. The transmitter was placed in this globe, the wires were run up through the gas pipe, then down to the desk of the intended victim where the receiver was concealed in a drawer. Thereafter the victim was able to hear every word of the plots laid against him. Under these circumstances he was able to thwart the conspiracy and to save his money.

The dictograph or acousticon, is nothing more nor less than a hypersensitive telephone. When used by the deaf a vulcanized rubber transmitter is pinned on the clothing or even hidden beneath it, with wires leading to a light watchcase receiver and a dry cell battery so small it can be readily carried in the vest pocket. This constitutes an outfit that enables the wearer, however deaf, to hear ordinary conversation. It was long ago adapted for use in churches by placing a battery of transmitters on the pulpit with wires running to certain of the pews where members of the congregation who were hard of hearing could place the receivers to their ears and so hear every word of the sermon as well as their more

fortunate neighbors. Today twenty thousand deaf persons are listening through the acousticon to church services.

H. G. Spaulding, who had charge of the acousticon exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, was the first to suggest the use of the instrument in jails as a perpetual eavesdropper to listen to the incriminating words of suspects. Three years later the acousticon was adapted for use as an office telephone and rechristened the dictograph. It had a transmitter so sensitive and a receiver so