He has a simple method-of course. Everything is simple that accomplishes big results, it seems. He bores two tiny holes in one side of the steel girder he wants to test. They are about twenty inches apart, very shallow, and wider at the surface than at the bottom. Then he takes an instrument which may be described as made of two tubes, one sliding within the other. At one end of the outside tube is a small point turned toward the side. At the opposite end of the inner tube is another similar point, similarly turned. Putting one of these points into one of the holes in the girder and the other point into the other hole, he easily measures the space between them. Taking this measurement on different days or weeks or months and comparing with a standard and with each other, he readily discovers whether the girder is bending out of shape to a dangerous degree.

some very important and valuable tests of boilers, by means of which he has discovered things that had never been known about boilers before. For instance, nobody knew, till the new instrument was applied, that the strains around the man-hole and the safety-valve in a boiler, were greater than elsewhere. Nobody knew that the strains on the

seams between boiler plates grew greater along the line of the seams from front to back. Such matters are very weighty, when measured by the results that may follow ignorance of them and by the expense saved by knowledge.

In Indianapolis the other day, they tested the pavements in certain streets to find out whether the material used was acting properly under the temperatures to which it is submitted. Mr. Howard's little instrument was used.

A life-record of a building may now be kept, that will be like the chart of a fever patient. On it will be reported and compared the changes in the condition of various parts, and the relation of these will be studied to discover whether or not the building needs. treatment. When the trolley-car runs out upon the bridge or the cold wind. blows against the side of the trestle, the effect, temporary and permanent, will be recorded-the actual effect in practice, not the mere theoretical effect from guess-work. When the old bridge's back begins to bend, and the arteries of the sky-scraper begin to harden, as it were, we shall know it. There will be fewer failures, and very much less excuse for not anticipating them. Margins of safety that are left in the building of structures of all kinds are very large; so an instrument that can record a difference in a steel girder's erectness when the sun shines on it and when the frost touches it, will be able

Of course, the changes in the steel girder may be very slight indeed. For that reason there is a micrometer screw between the points which deals in tenthousandths of an inch and the measurements are finer than any hair-line that was ever made proverbial. Mr. Howard recently used his instrument on a big building under construction in New York and was able to tell, from its readings, on what floor the workmen were assembled. He could tell a much more important thing, too, and that was that every column and girder was bearing its full proportion of the load. He could discover whether the weight of flooring was properly distributed, whether stresses on spans was actually what the architects and engineers intended those spans to bear, and all similar matters, about which it is rather important to have the fact bear out the prophecy.

Mr. Howard has also recently made

benefits of the Association. Since the membership is limited to forty members, each owning an acre of land, there are thirty acres left over. This land is called common land; the tract is cultivated in common and the yield equally divided.

In case a member wishes to go into agriculture more extensively than his single acre will allow, there is a provision whereby he may purchase on the same monthly terms-an additional acre which another member, on account of sickness or some other cause, may be forced to abandon. Three acres are all any one person may accumulate; but the possession of three warranty deeds does not mean three votes in the transaction of the Association's business-"one man one vote," whatever his holdings.

For the benefit of those who had no other savings than those they contributed to the pool, a loan fund was cre

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their equipment. After such members had secured a house and their land was cultivated and stocked, they were expected to pay back the loan in installments of $5 or $10 a month so as to enable other members who might want to make additional improvements to have the use of the money.

But even with this fund, there was not money enough available to enable every family to occupy its acre the first winter. Several families merely camped in tents the first summer, the father holding his job in the city and going back and forth. The rest of the family (mother and the boys and girls) worked on the land, getting out the stones and witch-grass, planting, weeding and cultivating. Oftentimes such a member, earning his weekly pay-envelope and finding his living expenses reduced, was able to hire another member-who had some spare time on his hands to dig his cellar or build his henhouses or beehives.

Thus started, the family moved back to the city for the winter. The following season they began where they left off-that much ahead of the game. At the present writing all the members, save three, are all-the-year-round residents. And one of the members has grown so enthusiastic that he has created another Fellowship of

ated. Part of the $2.50 monthly assessment has always gone toward reducing the mortgage-which will be wiped off in another year but some has also been regularly put into this loan fund, which has been rented out to members who had no money with which to build a home and buy

ASSISTANCE WHATEVER.

Under this Fellowship plan a member need borrow no money if he has $500 saved up. That is enough for a man with a family to start on. A single member requires much less. The capital of $500 will provide a two-room house, built for the most part by the member himself, an equipment of one kind of stock, and tools-a hoe, rake, spading fork, wheel-barrow, shovel, wheel-hoe and cultivator. One of the married members, who had $500 as a starter and who went into hens, has figured up his income for the second year.

With his capital he built his two-room house (which he is planning to enlarge as prosperity warrants), set out onefifth of his acre to small fruit, planted sixty fruit trees, built his primitive coops, brooders and incubators, and bought his stock which consisted of 120 well-mated cocks and hens, one cock to a dozen hens. His income during the second season at Westwood shows the following items: 200 dozen hatch eggs

at 50c a setting....$100.00 1,000 ten day

old

In addition the sale from the early broilers offset the feed bill for the new stock. Vegetables left over, cabbages and mangel wurtzels, provided green stuff for the poultry in winter. He saved out beside 150 selected stock to carry over for the next season, which pay their way with their eggs.

Forty, who, under the same plan, have bought another seventy acres in Norwood (about seven miles across country