BLIND AUTO REPAIRMAN SUCCEEDS

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NEVER has Ray Fortney seen automobile. But he can take one apart and put it together again with the carbureter in perfect "tune" and every cam in place and the gears where they ought to be. Fortney is a blind man who "sees" with his fingers.

Repairing pianos has been his occupation, but recently he started to learn the automobile repair business. He now does much of the work on cars left at the automobile school for repairs. In a few weeks he will be graduated from the school as an expert automobile machinist, having demonstrated that eye

sight is not necessary in the repairing of

a motor-car.

The sense of hearing is greatly accentuated in the blind and ears often assist in locating the trouble in an engine.

He grew tired of twisting his neck sideways to watch the drill mark. So he cut a two-by-four just as long as the drill is wide and fastened one end of it directly behind the center of the drill, running a wire from the middle of the timber to the left side of the drill. With a little wooden runner fastened to the outer end of the timber, weighted down so that it would cut into the ground, the marker was complete. He drives so as to keep the little wheel on the mark made the round before.

PHOTO BY PAUL THOMPSON

SEEN ON THE LONDON STREETS

It looks as though it were built for the war office but in reality it is merely an honest attempt by an English engineer to build the right sort of a car to contend with the British climate. The only battles it will have to pass through are those with wind, rain, snow, sleet, and mud, for all of which Great Britain is famous. As it is the little car can sail through almost anything which presents itself.

THE "WAMPUS" OF THE TRACKS

LOCOMOTIVES with smoke

stacks next to the tender and the cab at the front end are used in hauling heavy passenger and freight trains up the steep grades of the Sierras. This avoids the blinding and choking of the enginemen by smoke while going through the miles of snow-sheds and tunnels. The passenger engines have twelve high drivewheels and doubleheaded can take the heavy trains over steep grades at high speed. The freight engines have sixteen drivewheels of smaller diameter. They are built for power, their capacity being rated at nearly two thousand tons each up a two per cent grade at ten miles per hour, ten times their own weight. Both types use oil for fuel. These engines are known among railroad men as "wampuses."

The railway station men still enjoy the novelty of seeing the huge locomotives top a grade. the big cab square in front like an interurban car, the smokestack belching exhaust steam from the rear, just in front of the tender.

The "Wampus" is a pronounced stride forward in the engineer's problem of putting trains over the steep mountain grades of the West.

F the average length of life of mankind continues to increase at the same percentage of gain of the last century, the time is not far distant when one hundred and fifty years will be the usual span of a human life. This may seem a remarkable statement but it is no more remarkable than the facts upon which it is based.

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The average longevity in the United States at present is placed at 44 years. Records kept in the New England States show that in 1789 the average life was 35 years; in 1855, 40 years; in 1895, 45 years; and in 1903, 47 years. The increase of longevity in Europe is still more sigrificant. In Switzerland, in the sixteenth century, the average life was only years, but in the seventeenth century it had reached 25.7 years. The eighteenth century was marked by an average of 33.6 years, while the nineteenth century saw an increase to 39.7 years. Let the estimates of Professor Finkelnberg of Bonn University answer those skeptics who gloomily assert that people do not live as long as they used to, that we are becom

lings, and that civilization is proving the undoing of mankind. The av-erage life over all Europe in the sixteenth century, was 18 years. Now it is 40 years, a gain of more than one hundred per cent in three centuries.

The more progressive and civilized. a nation, the longer is the average life there, for it is shown conclusively that the countries of the United States, England, Germany, France, Sweden, and others have greatly lengthened the chain of life, while the average in India at present is only 23.6 years. In 1881, the average in India was 23.7 years and

two hundred years ago the average was 19 years. China's average human life is but fractionally different from that of India.

But the increase of the past does not indicate the increase of the present or the future, for all authorities agree that the more highly civilized nations are actually doubling the percentage of increased longevity, due to discoveries of the last ten years in causes and cures of diseases, enforced observance of the hygienic and sanitation laws, pure food, length of work

ing day, and working condition laws. People not only live longer than they formerly did, but what is better, they retain their vitality and usefulness longer. The condition and happiness of the average man has improved with his longevity. They cannot be separated. One element is essential to the other.

There are few persons in the United States who realize that we have with us more individuals of great age than fifty years ago. There are from five to six thousand persons in the United States today who have reached one hundred years. Some have reached one hundred and twelve years and there are records of still greater ages. A Montana Indian proves that he is one hundred and thirty-three years old; an Oregon woman reached one hundred and twenty. Only two years ago there died near Quitman, Texas, Mrs. Laura Kilcrease, at the age of one hundred and thirty-six.

Flourens and Haller, famous physiologists, pointed out the fact that other mammals live five times the length of their growing period. They put the human growing period at thirty years,

AVERAGE AGE: OVER EIGHTY-EIGHT

Octogenarians of Monroe County, Pennsylvania, in their first annual reunion last fall. In the middle of the first row is Mr. Macager Weiss, who is one hundred and twelve years old. He gets around as though he were not more than sixty and seems to be good for twenty or thirty more years of life.

and asserted that one hundred and fifty years, therefore, should be the span of human life.

Pure water has played an important part in lengthening life. It was not so many years ago that little or no attention was given to sources of water supply. Now cities spend immense sums to furnish fresh, pure water. Between the years of 1902 and 1906, figures on typhoid fever victims showed that the death rate per one hundred thousand inhabitants in four cities that used water from wells was 18.1 per cent. Again, figures from nineteen cities that used polluted river water showed that the death rate from typhoid was 61.1 per cent. This difference shows what a little care will do to extend human life.

In the eighteenth century, fifty million persons died in Europe from the ravages of smallpox. This was easily half the population. But when vacci

nation was introduced, this disease lost its terrors. Yellow fever, cholera, and typhoid have also been conquered.

Laws have been passed giving the workingmen an eight-hour day and requiring that conditions of factories. shall be sanitary. It has been shown that longer working hours

shorter lives; that tenement districts have a much lower mortality rate than districts where the well-to-do live. People who rent have a higher death rate than those who own their own homes, and persons living in five- and six-room houses live longer than those who live in houses of less rooms. Of course there are exceptions, but these facts have been found by the highest authorities, chief among whom is Professor Irving Fisher of Yale. He was commissioned by the United States. Government to investigate and report on the conservation of human life, and his search included all parts of the world, and comparisons of all data and authorities.

Mankind is making a determined but gradual effort, not only to add years. to life, but to add years of usefulness, and to increase the length of working

power of man, and success is crowning these efforts.

Some men and women in the United States who have advanced past a hundred years of age display vitality that amazes, yet which should only be expected in view of the lives they have lived. These remarkable old persons are young compared to the age humanity will attain if it keeps on increasing the average. Some of these persons. of more than a century of years are as robust as many half their age. How have they retained this vitality? It is no secret. Simple living, plenty of outdoor life, not too much work or too much idleness, and absence of worry are the greatest factors.

Abraham Wilcox of Fort Worth, Texas, is one hundred and twelve years old, but he takes keen enjoyment in life. He walks two miles or more every day as a "constitutional" and, occasionally, he even takes a small glass of beer. He looks forward with all the enthusiasm of a boy to a visit to the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915, when he will be one hundred and fifteen years old. Mr. Wilcox reads the newspapers every day and is inter