F

ORMERLY great herds of longhorned cattle grazed over the unrestricted ranges of the West. Today, with the passing of free land and the fencing of the big pastures, we are nearing the end of the branded animal. The change has been a rapid one. Men now living have witnessed the inception, rise, and partial extinction of the range cattle industry. The railroads, chief among civilizers, are largely responsible for this revolution. Instead of hundreds of thousands of cattle being driven to market over the trails, with many perishing on the plains, agricultural colleges and state boards. of agriculture, in co-operation with the

railroads, are running "beefsteak specials" and urging farmers to breed and feed more cattle. There is a fortune to be made by every stock grower in the production of good beef cattle.

Notwithstanding that the finished. steer of today may weigh one thousand five hundred pounds in yearling form or two thousand pounds as a threeyear-old-that four feet now carry three times as much meat as in the days of the scrub-there is no surplus. Since January 1, 1914, there is, instead, an accumulated deficiency of millions of pounds of meat, and prices have ruled abnormally high, as every housewife knows.

The western steer pictured in this story was photographed in the Kansas City stockyards during the last American Royal Livestock Show. The weight was about seven hundred pounds, and the animal as a whole was typical of a kind of cattle once plentiful but which, in this day of silos instead of soddies, no farmer can now afford to feed. The big Shorthorn was a Missouri product, which weighed more than a ton and carried more really good meat than could be found on the carcasses of a carload of the other kind.

U

NTIL the other day, the deepest diving record stood at two hundred ten feet, and that performance was experimental and could scarcely be said to represent the safe limits of practical operations. That achievement was to the credit of the British Admiralty and the climax of some extremely interesting laboratory tests carried out first on four-footed animals and then upon decidedly courageous human beings; but now the palm of excellence is ours,

OUT OF HIS ELEMENT When the wearer of the new diving apparatus is not in the water he is unable to move.

a few weeks ago two American divers, in Long Island Sound, descended to a depth of two hundred twelve feet. They did not go deeper because there was no deeper water available. They could have gone down another hundred feet quite as safely and have been exposed to less physical hazard than the English naval divers at their record limit.

The average diver seldom goes deeper than one hundred feet, and even then he has to be an expert. With the average first-class worker, an added depth of from fifty to sixty feet is the maximum limit. When operating at

that depth the diver's working period is a short one, usually not over half an hour, and the greatest care must be taken to safeguard him. In coming up, he can not be brought at once into the air, but must be lifted gradually and halted at stages to allow his body to readjust itself to the decreasing pressures. This is called decompression, and the proper estimation of the right amount of time that must be allowed for this determines whether or not the diver shall suffer from "bends" or, possibly, paralysis, and even sudden death.

The pressure of the water increases approximately at the rate of half a pound with each foot of submergence, or, to be exact, forty-three hundredths of a pound. At the depth of a hundred

the pressure is made to correspond with that of the surrounding water as the diver goes deeper. As a result, the submarine worker is virtually standing between two contending forces, the air and the water.

Should the air pumps at the surface halt or fail to maintain the needful supply of air, then, instantly, the menacing water would be supreme, and with all its appalling force would squeeze the hapless man in his rubber suit and drive him into his metal helmet. This would mean sudden death. Because of these hazards and the limits of physical endurance to pressure, few men operate deeper than a hundred feet; because, too, of these bodily obstacles, descents in the ordinary diving suit are not practicable in commercial undertakings much beyond one hundred fifty feet. Why then should men wish to reach deeper into Davy Jones' locker?

MORE AT HOME IN THE WATER

The first man to use the armor made a new diving record. He descended 212 feet.

A competent authority says that the most reliable statistics show an average annual loss of 2,172 vessels in the commerce of the world, and that the estimated value of the vessels and cargoes thus lost each year is something like one hundred million dollars. Only a very small part of this property is ever recovered; and season by season the grim ocean adds regularly to its growing hoard of man's hard-won treasure. If diving could be made reasonably safe, and the period of working under water sufficiently long, at depths of

from two hundred

to three hundred feet, then a vast part of these richly laden hulks could be reached and a part, at least, of their cargoes recovered.

A diving suit which fulfills these requirements has just been evolved, and it was in this dress, or armor, that the two men went down in Long Island Sound to the astonishing depth of two hundred twelve feet. Except for the bronze helmet, the ordinary diving dress is collapsible and made of rubber and canvas. The new suit being entirely of metal, is rigid, and is of itself strong enough to resist the crushing force of the enveloping sea. It is made of an alloy of aluminum, and the armor complete weighs a little short of five hundred pounds. In truth, it is virtually a diving machine, for the man inside is well-nigh helpless in its grip until lowered below the surface, when the water counterbalances the dead weight and the articulated sections permit the operator to move with a freedom something akin to that of the steel-clad knight of old.

In order to give this measure of mobility, the suit has over fifty turning joints. These are made substantially water-tight by leather packing which swells and becomes more effective the greater the pressure of the sea. To prevent this external force from jamming the joints, facility of action is insured by clever arrangements of roller bearings. Indeed, the armor is not

549

INSIDE THE GREAT SUIT ARE A TELEPHONE AND A PUMP TO EXHAUST THE LEAKAGE WHICH SEEPS THROUGH THE JOINTS AND LUBRICATES THEM

diver needs air to breathe as would the submarine worker in the ordinary dress, but in this suit of armor his air is supplied him at atmospheric pressure. So far as the physical effects upon him are concerned, his lungs and body are no more taxed than they would be at the surface. At one stroke this does away with a number of the serious limitations peculiar to the usual elastic underwater dress in which air at intense pressure is inhaled. In the back of the armor is a recess, and therein is installed a very compact and powerful little pump. This pump sucks from the feet of the suit all leakage and forces it immediately outward. This pump is worked by compressed air, and the air, after doing its mechanical work, is exhausted into the suit for the diver to breathe, and then passes up to the surface through the free space in an armored rubber tube within which are led the compressed-air pipe and the electrical connections for a telephone and a lamp. In this manner the armor is thoroughly ventilated, and, even should the pump not work for a number of minutes, there would still be enough free air in the roomy dress. and the tube space to meet the diver's needs for at least ten minutes while he is being hauled to the surface.

Indeed, during the demonstrations in Long Island Sound, the pump was halted for that length of time when the diver was a hundred feet down. He

He

suffered no inconvenience, and when the compressor started again he was lowered to the bottom one hundred twelve feet deeper. Such a situation in the usual elastic dress in all probability would have meant sure death. The brief breakdown showed as nothing else could what can be expected of the suit in actual service. Because the operator is not exposed to air pressure, no matter how deep he goes or how long he works there, no delay is necessary in hoisting him to the surface. According to the British Admiralty regulations, should a diver go down two hundred four feet-its table covers no greater submergenceand remain there for twenty minutes to half an hour, the total time of his ascent must not be less than one hour and seven minutes! In bringing up the divers from the bottom of Long Island Sound, two hundred twelve feet down, the maximum time was eighty seconds. The men were absolutely unaffected by this abrupt change in pressure, although the deepest one of them had ever before been in the ordinary dress was ninety feet, and on that occasion he had suffered from bleeding from both nose and ears.

The remarkable advance in the art of submarine diving, and the fact that men can now be sent so safely to greater depths, promises to open up an immense field for salvage work and subaqueous exploration.