premium of one per cent, the agreement with the Panama bankers was swallowing a fortune. The authorities saw that a new method of securing funds must be adopted quickly, and they cast about for a man to solve the difficulty. After some inquiries, they called in Edward J. Williams of Chicago to act as disbursing officer on the Isthmus, and told him to go ahead. Previously Williams had been connected with the disbursing department of a great railway system, and because of his experience, was eminently fitted for the position; and now he showed the soundness of his training by plunging right into the heart of the work and attacking the untoward conditions that were causing the drain. In the first place, he was confronted by the onerous arrangement with the bankers of Panama from whom he had to secure his funds. This arrangement cut into the Government funds in several ways. In those days, as later, when the employe had received his stipulated wage or salary, he would either spend it with the various merchants on the Isthmus or he would deposit it in one of the banks for safe-keeping. In either case, the cash would come to the banks. The banks, in turn, would sell the cash to the disbursing officer in exchange for a warrant or draft on the United States sub-treasury in New York City, and for this service, they would get a premium of one per cent. The warrants, because they are backed with the credit of the United States and because of the ease of handling, commanded an exchange premium anywhere. Williams started out by abrogating this agreement with the bankers that was pumping money from the treasury. To him, for all intents and purposes, the disbursing office was the treasury of the United States on the Canal Zone, and he deemed it unnecessary for him to go outside of that treasury for any needed funds. Instead, he worked assiduously to make the vaults of the disbursing office the final depository of all the United States currency in circulation on the Canal Zone, and arranged to make all payments on the Isthmus from them. Another problem for him to solve was that of speeding up the circulation of the currency, so that the cash would return quickly to the issuing office. One of the methods was the establishment of money order departments in the post offices on the Zone. This feature, which was the result of the efforts of the new disbursing officer, soon became an important source of post office revenue, as a large proportion of the employes would purchase money orders either to remit the money home or as a convenient way of safeguarding surplus funds. The effect of this rearrangement of affairs was that all of the channels in which the United States currency circulated were in the control of the disbursing officer. All of the funds paid out quickly reached either the banks or the post offices and were returned to the vaults of the disbursing officer in exchange for his draft on the sub-treasury. So well did the new arrangement work that the disbursing officer was able to meet a monthly pay roll aggregating three million dollars, with only one million dollars in actual cash. Since the disbursements, while Williams was in power, amounted to two hundred and fifty million dollars, it will be seen that merely by eliminating the premium to the bankers, he saved the Government two and a half million dollars. Now that the Panama Canal is finished, Williams will again be called upon to demonstrate his ability to handle funds. in large volume. He has been made the assistant treasurer of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. This commission is an association comprising the American Commission for Relief in Belgium, the Spanish Commission for Relief in Belgium, the Italian Commission for Relief in Belgium and the Comité National de Secours et D'Alimentation, and the resources at its command are, in amount, almost equal to the revenues of a nation. Air Pump Mouse THE NEW FORM OF BREAKWATER Rising bubbles of air rob the waves of their force. SAVE SHORES Air Pipe C RUTCH ISLAND, Maine, is protecting its sea coast with a breakwater of air, which has, so far, proved completely successful. Pipes were laid at the bottom of the sea some distance from the shore line. Air is pumped into these pipes from a plant on shore and it escapes, in turn, through perforations in the pipe below the surface. The rising bubbles of air form a wall that seems to dissolve the largest breakers. On one occasion, when the spray was dashing to the tops of the trees on shore, the air was turned on and in fifteen minutes it was possible to paddle in a canoe, in the area affected, with perfect safety. The fight of man against the sea is age old and not marked with great success. Expensive breakwaters, and cheap structures, designed only to save a beach from consumption by the breakers, have failed to do their work. If air can do it on a large scale, a tremendous problem will be solved. The power of bubbles to overcome the action of waves was noticed at the time the Hudson tunnels were built in New York, when escaping air from below made a disturbance on the surface of the river, and every wave that came in that neighborhood was dissolved as though by a magic potion. Some observing person noticed this, and as a result, we have the air breakwater. The scientific explanation is compar atively simple. A wave is merely oscillatory, that is, the particles within it are vibrating back and forth and not moving, until it breaks. A complete change then takes place and the particles move and together act to do the damage of the powerful breaker. The force is equal to the speed of the water and the weight of the mass. The rolling waves of the open sea become mighty breakers of the beach, because the beach disturbs the vibration of the whole. The advancing wave has a new vibration, and it is the destruction of this movement that is theoretically possible with a blanket of air, the particles of which disturb the new rhythm which has been established. Possibilities of air breakwaters would be tremendous, for they could be applied where breakwaters have been impossible in the past because of their necessary forms of construction. The light ship at sea could form a still pool in which it might ride at ease, no matter how high the sea around. Jobs of erection at the sea shore, and in the water extending from the shore, could be continued in any kind of weather, if an air breakwater was first constructed. Stranded vessels could be protected from destructive pounding on a beach. The fundamental feature of the new breakwater that makes it so promising is the fact that it can be installed so quickly and at a very low BEHIND ALBION'S CLIFFS TEACHING THE BLIND TO WALK The most pitiable part of the war perhaps is that aspect reflected in this picture. Every nation has established hospitals for soldiers who have lost their eyesight, and is trying to teach them how to make themselves as useful as possible, when they are restored, broken and shattered, to civilian life. WHEN the greenish gray German flood poured over the border into Belgium last August, to open the Great War, it was backed by machine - like organization that had foreseen absolutely everything. The redtrousered French that leaped to meet the invasion lacked the perfected German organization; but they had plans and an imperious hand that swooped down on the nation in an instant, compelling everyone to take an assigned part in the national life until the struggle should end. But England had neither one nor the other. True, there were plans enough for handling the armed forces of the nation; but civilian coordination with the national effort was helter-skelter for a time. field. Workers from crippled industries are kept busy in such shops as those shown on this page, where aeroplanes and ammunition cases are being made; more and more fighting men, trained in the use of life-belts because of German submarines, fill the transports and pour out onto the plains of France; the production of munitions of war is being speeded up. England is now at work in |