GIVING DAYLIGHT A CHANCE day into the interior of the room. The use of any one of these special kinds of glass has the same effect on the room as putting spectacles on the windows. They give the white paint something to reflect. Again, even good glass can't throw a flood of light into a dark factory through a porthole. Plenty of light demands good-sized, if not big, windows. At this point modern inventive genius had to cope with an ancient custom and an ancient stupidity. Men first learned the art of building by erecting ramparts and fortifications; the idea then was to get a strong wall. They thought that the more there was of the wall the stronger it would be. Ancient buildings had fairly solid walls and very few windows. They may have been strong and certainly they were dark as midnight. Modern invention has also surmounted this difficulty and corrected this serious defect in factory architecture. Today a factory building seems to be all windows. Yet it is stronger than the old fortress-dungeon that once passed as a first-class factory building. There are dozens of strong, durable materials from which roofs are made now. These, resting upon steel frames, have windows set into them. There are reinforced concrete, tile, and brick walls which, when properly constructed, give the strength that is requisite without a great expanse of solid surface. Also the old-fashioned wooden window sill, which, burned easily in a fire and had no strength 589 The American farmer, through his own alertness, aided by the knowledge being disseminated so widely by the Federal Department of Agriculture and the State agricultural colleges, knows each year how to get more out of his land. But he isn't an expert on intensive farming and never will be, probably, until he sees how they do such things in England, France, Belgium, and other foreign countries. In other words, the American farmer ought to go to school in Europe. That is the gist of an article you ought to read in January Technical World. DOES MURDER ALWAYS OUT? By WILLIAM BRADY, M. D. S it possible today for a person with scientific training to devise and successfully execute a murder plot without fear of discovery? Can people be removed from this world with that technical nicety of detail suggested by writers of fiction -without leaving clues? prussic, acid has, for instance, long enjoyed a vogue among would-be artistic murderers, the rapidity with which traces of the poison volatilize from the body being a point of considerable favor with educated criminals. But alas, even this old reliable agent of quick and sure death is losing its Does murder ever pass for natural popularity. The modern pathologist is death? Well, let us look into this matter closely; many of us have, or may one day have, relatives-in-law or wealthy uncles just like those in books. A little knowledge is not necessarily dangerous; if it were, every patrolman. would be a menace to his beat. Practicing physicians, we must premise at the outset, are getting to be very unreliable as accessories to murder plots. The average family doctor is as ready and willing as ever to enter "heart failure" or "general debility" on the certificates required for the disposal of his own mistakes, but, when hastily summoned to the unexpected deathbed, he is, for some reason or other, exceedingly prone nowadays to call the coroner in. And coroners, too, in these degenerate days, exhibit evidences of enlightenment entirely foreign to the clutter-brained type conventionally played up in stories of the Anna Katharine Green order. Taking it all in all, coroners today make as few mistakes as detectives and criminal lawyers do. Medical jurisprudence is becoming an exact science. Expert opinion is rapidly giving place to positive fact testimony. Although Our toxicologists and chemists have not always possessed infallible tests for practical. use in homicide cases, it is at present a pretty certain observation that every poison leaves its mark. Hydrocyanic, or generally competent to perform an autopsy and arrive at damning conclusions, if not actual proof, hours or days after the poison itself has entirely disappeared from the cadaver. The toxic lesions remain to tell the tale. A popular delusion of fictional origin. occasionally utilized by amateur criminals in real life, is that a sleeping person may be secretly chloroformed if necessary for the furtherance of some crime. A simple-minded old nurse, hard pressed for a little ready cash, succumbed to temptation and rifled her sleeping patient's pocketbook one night. In order to avert suspicion, and possibly to add a dramatic touch to the event, the poor nurse was discovered next morning just recovering from the effects of chloroform, which she declared had been administered by the burglars while she was asleep. The police, however, sought expert medical advice; and, as a result of this advice, the third degree was applied to the nurse; she promptly broke down, confessed her guilt, and restored the |