Page images
PDF
EPUB

ARE AMERICAN

CITIZENS FOR CRIME? NOT ALL, BUT PROBABLY THE MAJORITY! THIS is the answer which Mr. I. Brooks Leavitt makes in the Forum of August to the above question. The article, which is entitled "Criminal Degradation of New York Citizenship," is based upon the evidence brought to light in New York by the Lexow Investigating Committee appointed by the Senate to examine into the charge of police corruption. Mr. Leavitt says:

The Senate Investigating Committee's examination has, however, demonstrated one thing-that the time has come when voters must choose between supporting reform or crime. There is now no middle ground. He who is not for reform, stands for crime.

And at present there seems, on his showing, to be no doubt that the majority, in the cities at least, are for crime. This inquiry has disclosed the terrible fact that the quality of our American citizenship is being destroyed in the race for wealth. Personal convenience outweighs civic duty. That trait of our national character, the dislike of making in little things what we call a fuss, has been treated as if it were a virtue. It was a foible. It has become cultivated into a fault. Said James Russell Lowell, years ago:-"I sometimes find myself surmising whether a people who, like the Americans, put up quietly with all sorts of petty personal impositions and injustices, will not at length find it too great a bore to quarrel with great public wrongs." A true prophecy, so true, that the word "reformer" is even used as a word of reproach. It would seem as if our ideals of American citizenship were to be utterly shattered. Our parties no longer tend to educate statesmen. Our National Congress, our State Legislatures, no longer produce statesmen. The latter, indeed, are nurseries for criminals. The brains and talent of the country stay at home, in private life. They are therefore available for municipal affairs, which have for many years been wholly subordinated to national interests. It is our municipal matters which now demand our best statesmanship.

Demand it, indeed, but hitherto the demand has fallen on deaf ears, as appears if we dwell for a moment upon the New York investigation, popularly called the Lexow Investigation, from the name of its chairman. Mr. Leavitt says:

The prophecy is of long standing, that if an honest, fearless, searching examination should be made into the government of that city, there would come revelations at which the community would stand aghast.

If the testimony of the witnesses is to be believed, there exists in the city of New York, a Police Protective Tariff (to borrow the phrase used the other day by a distinguished ex-mayor of New York), the revenues from which equal the legitimate income of the city. These revenues are divided between various politicians in and out of office. The probabilities are that there is a regular ratio of division, a percentage, as is usual among brigands.

It will be profitable to examine in detail the figures of our Police Protective Tariff as taken from the testimony. It will be seen that the duties are both specific and ad valorem :--

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

This table, says Mr. Leavitt, is not intended as a complete statement of all the trades or occupations, legal and illegal, which buy police indulgences or submit to blackmail, but only of those in which payments have already been proved. The counsel to the Investigating Committee, Mr. John W. Goff, has kindly furnished the figures to the writer.

PROPITIATING TAMMANY.

WHAT IT COSTS, AND HOW IT IS DONE.

"THE Price of Peace" is the title which Jos. B. Bishop gives to his scathing exposure in the Century of the wholesale civic corruption in New York. The most conservative authorities, he says, put the total of bribes received by the Tammany machine in such a year as 1893, when it controlled Legislature, Governor, and City Government, at from two to four million dollars!

[ocr errors]

While it is probably true that in some instances the "peace' money is paid to protect a corporation in the maintenance of privileges that are hostile to the public interests, in the great majority of cases it is paid to secure immunity from all kinds of black mailing attacks. A corporation carrying on its work in New York city, and subject to local regulations, will scon find that unless it makes a "peace contribution, its business is practically at a standstill.

A single incident sets the whole system in a clear if rather comic light :

The

Towards the close of the campaign of 1893, the president of a powerful and wealthy corporation called a meeting of its directors to consider a special matter. There was some delay in getting them all together, and the meeting was not held till the Friday preceding election day. When the directors had assembled, the president stated to them that the corporation had been asked to contribute $15,000 to the Democratic campaign fund. He advocated the granting of the demand, saying that the amount was the same that they had paid the year before, that they had got all they had bargained for, that he considered the payment a good business investment for the company, and that as careful custodians of the interests intrusted to them they could not afford to refuse. directors voted the payment. It was stipulated by the "peace" negotiators that the money should be divided into three equal parts, one cheque for $5,000 to go to a State machine leader, another for the same amount to a local boss, and the third to a campaign-committee fund. The cheques were drawn, and were to be called for by one of the beneficiaries on Monday following. They were locked in the company's safe. On Saturday the cashier or other employee in charge of the safe was called away, expecting to return on Monday. He was delayed, the safe could not be opened, and when the cheques were called for, the person calling was told that they had been ordered and drawn, but could not be reached for the reasons given; he was told, however, that it was all right, and if he would call on Wednesday, the day after election, he could obtain them. On Tuesday the election was held, and the result showed that the Democrats had lost control of the legislature. When the cheques were called for on Wednesday, they were withheld on the ground that the democratic bosses "had no goods to deliver" in return for the money.

Republican success developed something like a boss on their side. When the issue of elections is doubtful, contributions are made to the funds of both parties. Mr. Rice feels justified in stating that Maryland and Pennsylvania are the only States, except New York, where a "machine" with an autocratic boss has been established. He suggests sworn publication of accounts by every campaign committee as a remedy.

"THE Complete Leader-Writer: by Himself," which appears in Macmillan's, is an exceptionally racy piece of satire on the methods and ethics of modern journalism.

[blocks in formation]

New Review he appears once more as her champion, and defends her action in the Korean peninsula.

War has supervened at last, not as a political alterative, nor for the reason that Japan considered her military and naval forces complete, but because the crisis had come when Japan must act, or see Korea abandoned in disorder, first, to Chinese mandarins and eunuchs, next, and finally, to Russian intrigue, made all-commanding by occult arrangements with Peking and by the completion of the trans-Siberian Railway.

Nationally, then, because nothing can separate those destinies of Korea and Japan which geography has indissolubly united; internationally, because diplomatic evidence is abundant to prove that the rights of Japan in Korea were at least equal to those of China; and morally, because Japan alone was earnest in the desire to establish order and good government in the peninsula, and to preserve, if possible, its integrityJapan has acted as England would have acted. On all these three grounds the Government of the Mikado stands before the world, la tête haute, and within its good rights. In the existing conflict, indeed, Japan truly represents civilisation, and acts strictly in its interest.

CHINESE MENACE TO WESTERN LABOUR.

Sir Edwin's foreboding fancy finds in the Mongol and the Slav-in China and Russia-the "two stupendous dangers always overhanging the civilised world." The Russophobia is no new thing. But

Those do well who dread the sullen and sombre weight of China, controlled, as it is, by the social system springing from that arch-opportunist Confucius, the most immoral of all moralists. China, to-day, is perhaps only held back from a prodigious immigration into all the fields of labour by one slight doctrinal bond. . . All this depends upon one or two passages in the Confucian Scriptures, and these might easily admit a larger interpretation than that which to-day almost obliges the relatives of a dead Chinaman to bring his remains back to his native soil. . . . But when any such general emigration of Chinamen occurs as that which I am forecasting, it will be a social and industrial deluge. The markets of the world will be literally swamped with the most industrious, persevering, fearless, and frugal specimens of mankind, who will everywhere underbid labour and monopolise trade.

The ultimate factors of the great problem will be seen more clearly when Russia has completed her railway to Vladivostock,

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[graphic]

The distinguished naval critic "Nauticus" discusses in the same Review the relative naval strength of the countries involved. The Korean fleet is practically nonexistent. The armoured ships of China would be a match for those of Japan except for the lack of discipline, organisation and trustworthy officers. The efficiency of the Japanese navy is spoken of in the highest terms. The writer quotes the prophecy of a German officer in Japan, "that Japan has as great a future in Asia as the English race has in America and Australia"; and himself concludes as to the war now going on, "that if there be no outside intervention, the navy of Japan can and will presently drive the navy of China from the seas."

MR. HENRY NORMAN'S VIEW.

There are few journalists who wield a more facile pen, or have seen more of the world both east and west, than Mr. Henry Norman, formerly of the Pall Mall Gazette, now of the Daily Chronicle. His paper on the Korean question in the Contemporary is the best and most interesting plea for Japan that has appeared. He is a Jap through and through, as may be seen from the sentence with which he concludes his paper:

Japan, in spite of all her mistakes, stands for light and civilisation; her institutions are enlightened; her laws, drawn up by European jurists, are equal to the best we know; and they are justly administered; her punishments are humane; her scientific and sociological ideals are our own. China stands for darkness and savagery. Her science is ludicrous superstition, her law is barbarous, her punishments are awful, her politics

[graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

"I AM A SOCIAL PURITY MAN."

DECLARATION BY MR. GRANT ALLEN.

IN the Humanitarian for September, Mr. Grant Allen, defending his "New Hedonism" from the criticisms of Dr. Bonney, takes occasion to make the above avowal. The passage in which it occurs is the following:

The point in Dr. Bonney's article to which I attach greatest importance, however, is the vague hint thrown out in passing, that the New Hedonism would regard without dislike or disgust certain hateful and unnatural vices of Græco-Roman society. On this issue, the most serious one raised in the entire paper, I desire to be quite explicit. I am a Social Purity man. I can find no language sufficiently strong to say with what dislike and repulsion I regard such vices. In my article in the Fortnightly I tried my best to make this clear. I contrasted the perfectly pure and wholesome state which is the outcome of Hedonism with the world as we know it, the product of nineteen centuries of Christian teaching. I spoke with no uncertain voice on the evils of prostitution and of those other still more hateful vices which naturally and necessarily flow from a religion of asceticism, a régime of repression. Surely it is clear that the New Hedonism-the ethical philosophy which posits as its summum bonum the highest pleasure for all in the only life we wot of-must needs be opposed to these hateful practices, destructive to health, to bodily vigour, to mental purity, to refinement of life, to decorum and beauty, to the poetry of love, to all that is noblest and sanest within us. Above all, the New Hedonism cannot fail to perceive that every man and every woman holds his or her sexuality and productive power in trust for humanity. Any paltering with these, such as our existing system permits and justifies, is treason to posterity. We are bound to bring to the begetting of future generations sound and wholesome faculties, unsullied by disease, unblunted by vile practices, unsmirched by low and hateful associations. My main charge against the prevailing ascetic creed is just that-that it has degraded our manhood and soiled our womanhood; that it has chosen for the fathers and mothers of our community men debilitated by vice and crippled by disease, women unfit for the cares and duties of maternity. The child is the kernel and key of the situation.

You must judge a system in its entirety, not by one side only of its complex working. Now our existing system is not, as people hypocritically pretend, a system of pure monogamous marriage; it is a mixed system of marriage and prostitution, or rather, if one treats it from the practical side in the order in which most men come to know it, a mixed system of prostitution and marriage. The greater number of men are introduced to the sexual life through prostitution alone; they bring at last to marriage and the production of future generations only the leavings and relics of an effete constitution. Our whole existing social fabric is based upon the degradation of the paid harlot-that is to say, upon the vile slavery of a large number of unhappy women; and it also involves other and still more soul-killing practices on the part of a vast proportion of our developing boys. Hardly one man in ten brings to marriage and child-getting an unimpaired virility. It will be the object of the New Hedonism to combat these vile vices; to put the relation of the sexes and the production of children on a sound and wholesome basis, moral, physical, and emotional; to insist on the rights of unborn and as yet unbegotten generations. Hedonists will not rest till they have relieved the women of the community from the hateful slavery of the streets, till they have vindicated the claim of the children of the community to a sound father and a sound mother. They will not rest till prostitution is as effectually dead for our race as polygamy; till the equal freedom and dignity of woman is universally admitted. What they ask is that every man and every woman shall live a life of perfect purity and perfect liberty; that every child shall be the pure offspring of a healthy and natural union of unmixed affection. Will Dr. Bonney help us in this crusade against vile custom? No bought love; no forced cohabitation with a drunken, a violent, or a distasteful husband, for the production of hereditarily tainted children; no priestly blessing on a wicked bargain between the unfit, the

The New Hedonism will

decrepit, the insane, the cancerous. protest against all that, and will cry out with a trumpet voice, in spite of detraction, that whatever makes for race-preservation is pure and holy, whatever makes for race-extinction or race-degradation is vile and hateful; and it will hold it vile and hateful still, though the Archbishop of Canterbury stand over to invoke the benediction of God on a loveless marriage or an immoral compact.

The New Hedonists and the Isocrats have their hands full. Possibly after they have had a little more experience of the weary failures which attend all such reforming efforts, they may have a little more sympathy for those who, however mistakenly, have been fighting against the same evils on other lines.

The rest of the article hardly calls for much notice, if we except Mr. Grant Allen's dicta on Jesus of Nazareth, Paul of Tarsus, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Lord Byron. Mr. Allen takes very little stock in any of them, especially the first and last. Of Jesus, he says we know little or nothing." He "may or may not have lived, though recent researches like Frazer's would seem to suggest the idea that He was a mythical being." He is doubtful whether there is any certainty about the authenticity of His works. As to the others, this is what he says:

I do not regard Rousseau as a "moral luminary;" on the contrary, I know him to have been an exceptionally weak and untrustworthy creature, given to most deadly forms of sexual aberration; while for Byron I have the profoundest moral contempt and hatred. His treatment of women was worse than brutal; he was cruel, heartless, vindictive, selfish. know no more awful life than his; I feel it a crying and terrible warning against aristocratic institutions and the evils of our existing amorphous ethical education. For Byron was one of the devils who "believe and tremble."

PALMING OFF POOR SONGS.
66
THE ROYALTY" NUISANCE.

MR. F. H. COWEN, the well-known song writer, is interviewed by Mr. Frederick Dolman in the Young Woman. He says that he usually begins and finishes the score of a song in an hour or an hour and a half. Of "The Better Land," which was written at this rate seventeen years ago, he thus tells the origin:-" Madame Antoinette Sterling called my attention to Mrs. Hemans' poem one day, saying that she thought it would make a beautiful song for her. I went home, wrote the score, and sent it to Madame Sterling."

Mr. Cowen calls attention to a very unpleasant development in the output of English songs. Seventeen years ago to have a song sung by a great singer was almost sufficient to secure its success. "The smaller fry were content to take up the songs sung by the leading artistes." Not so now. The keener competition among music publishers has led to "the system of indiscriminately giving royalties for the singing of a song."

In order to advertise a song the publisher will pay a fee to Mr. Brown or Miss Jones every time they sing it at a concert, and moreover he will advertise their names into the bargain. Then second-rate artistes like to have songs "expressly written" for them, and owing to the competition among song composers there is no difficulty about this. As a consequence, the singers of the second and third rank do not implicitly follow, as they used to, the lead of such artistes as Mr. Edward Lloyd or Mrs. Mary Davies, and a great deal of rubbish is inflicted upon concert-goers. But the time is probably coming when the publishers, in self-defence, will be obliged to combine and to refuse to pay royalties to any singer, great or small. The thing is, of course, ethically indefensible, and is most unjust to the composers.

A FRENCH VIEW OF THE GERMAN EMPEROR. M. JULES SIMON, the well-known French man of letters, and one of the most important members of the Peace Society, gives in the August Revue de Paris a sympathetic sketch of William II. as seen by him during his late visit to Berlin. What struck the old Frenchman most was the Emperor's extreme frankness and honesty of

manner.

Of the Imperial Palace and of a reception given by the Emperor and Empress he gives an interesting account. "The Emperor stopped and said a few words to me, as did the Empress, a rare favour which made me at once acquire a certain importance to those round me; then a message was sent to ask me to walk alone behind the Emperor and to sit at his right hand." But far more interesting than this banquet were the conversations held by M. Simon with William II. at one of the latter's small private parties, which are held once a week, and when only intimate friends are received. On this occasion M. Simon was again asked to sit by the Emperor. "I never saw him excepting in uniform. On the occasion of which I am writing he wore a white Hussar costume, and with his tall slight figure looked like a young officer. . . . His countenance is agreeable, his manner affable and kindly; and his nut-brown hair seems sometimes shot with gold." The Kaiser speaks French it seems without the slightest accent and with extraordinary ease, and few, according to the writer of this article, know so thoroughly both ancient and modern French literature. He confided to M. Simon that his favourite novelist was Georges Ohnet, but he has a violent antipathy to Zola. "I know that he has great qualities," said the Emperor, "but it is not to them that he owes his popularity: it is to the moral villanies and dirt with which he poisons his stories. That France should like such a writer gives foreigners the right to judge her severely;" but, observes M. Simon significantly, a few days later Berlin was flooded with the great realist's new work.

William II. assured his French visitor that he was a regular family man, and that his happiest evenings were spent in dining quietly alone with his wife and reading aloud to her a chapter of some novel before going to sleep.

M. Simon could not "draw" his host on the question of war, excepting in the most abstract fashion, such as observing incidentally that the man who tried to provoke a war between two great nations would be both a madman and a criminal.

On social questions the Emperor seems to have very clear and decided views, and to be possessed with a very real fear of Socialism. He would like to limit the working hours of women, especially those who happen to be in what is termed an interesting condition; and when the Labour Congress passed a resolution recommending such a course to be taken, he specially congratulated M. Simon on the part which the latter had taken in the discussion.

M. Jules Simon dined with Bismarck the evening of the day on which the Iron Chancellor sent in his resignation to his Imperial master, and during the long conversation which they had after dinner, the Prince told his French guest that he intended when in retirement to write his memoirs. M. Simon has done both William II. and himself good service in publishing this interesting account of the Emperor of Germany, for his words bear weight, and he is known to have been at no time of his long life a courtier.

WHY NOT NATIONALISE INSURANCE? THE demand for the nationalisation of land, or at least agricultural land, at a time when the value of land has sunk, or is rapidly sinking, to that of the prairies, has never seemed to me a profitable speculation to the community. With town land it is different, and if you are to nationalise anything, why not nationalise that which pays, rather than that which does not pay? Banks, for instance, pay, and insurance companies. New Zealand is taking a forward step this year in the nationalising of the State bank. And now from Austria we learn that a ministerial commission has just advised the Government to take all insurance liabilities into its own hands. This relates to fire insurance :

As reasons for this proposal it is urged that the State offers far greater security than can be given by any, even the best and longest-established, private insurance company, and that the profits of the insurance business, which now fall to private enterprise, ought by right to belong to the State, since insurance is specially an institution connected with public, not civil, law, and has nothing to do with rights of a private character. Further, the Commission has proposed that insurance against fire should no longer be voluntary, but obligatory.

The Insurance Department of the Home Ministry is now occupied in preparing a Bill to be founded upon the resolutions adopted by the Commission, and to be laid before Parliament next Session.

Every one is familiar with proposals to insure against old age, and from that it is but a step to suggest that the entire life insurance of the community should be undertaken by the Government departments. In the Arena for August Rabbi Solomon Schindler, in a paper," Insurance and the Nation," pleads strongly for the nationalisation of insurance business. He would centralise all the branches of life, fire, accidents, etc., into one focus, with the result that much lower premiums could be granted and a basis established for compulsory insurance. Among the indirect effects of this change, he thinks that legislation in regard to precautionary measures against fire and water would be prompt, trains would be run with greater care, and sanitary regulations would be more strictly enforced. He believes also that nationalisation of insurance establishes the simplest and first step towards the establishment of a new social system. Half the people now employed in managing a multitude of competing companies would be sufficient under a proper system to do the whole work. It would also be a valuable training ground for the Government in work it would have to undertake if the State were to be socialised.

Pearls Made to Order.

IN an entertaining paper by Mr. H. J. Gibbins on "Curiosities of Pearls," in the Gentleman's, this striking incident in pearl-making is recounted:—

An extraordinary treasure, illustrating the successful manner in which these precious gems can sometimes be produced by the "strategical process," was lately shown by the Smithsonian Institute. This was a pearl the size of a pigeon's egg, of an exquisite rose colour, and the receptacle containing it was the original fresh-water mussel in which it had been formed. The nucleus of this wonderful stone was nothing more nor less than an oval lump of bee's-wax, which had been placed and left for a few years between the valves of the molluse, which had at once proceeded to coat it with the pink nacre it secreted for lining its shell. The mussel was kept in an aquarium while engaged in its lengthy task. It belonged to a species common in American rivers, and it is suggested that the result of the experiment opens to every body the possibility of establishing a small pearl factory for himself by keeping a tank full of tame mussels and humbugging them into making "great pink pearls" for him.

THE CO-OPERATIVE CREAMERY.

A SURE REMEDY FOR DEPRESSED AGRICULTURE.

MR. EDMUND MITCHELL in the Westminster Review urges on the distressed British farmer the duty of co-operation in lines of production still open to him. In view of the prolific granaries of Manitoba and the as yet undeveloped possibilities of Australian agriculture, "wheat-growing in these islands is doomed." But dairy farming is open to us. Yet dairy produce to the value of over £25,000,000 was last year imported into Great Britain from abroad. The foreign producers are handicapped by distance, and only gain on us by using scientific methods and new appliances.

A HINT FOR OUR COUNTY COUNCILS.

The

The salvation of the West Victorian agriculturist has been nothing more nor less than co-operative dairy-farming. Five years ago not a pound of butter was shipped from Melbourne; now the exports are little short of £750,000 per annum, and within another decade will be double or treble that amount. Thus, almost at a bound, the colony has become one of the great butter-producing countries of the world. This result is due to organisation and co-operation. Government, at the request of the farming community, sent practical men to study American methods of dairying, and also introduced American experts to teach local producers the use of the very latest appliances. A travelling dairy, equipped with the best machinery and placed in charge of a skilled instructor, was organised, and journeyed round the colony, remaining in each district a sufficiently long time for every one interested to attend the lectures and master the various processes.

SCIENCE AND FELLOWSHIP.

The value of this work is sufficiently proved by the fact that the travelling dairy invariably left behind it in each locality a co-operative dairy, or creamery, its itinerary being marked by a series of new buildings equipped with centrifugal separators, milk-testers, and all the newest appliances, owned and managed by the farmers themselves, and worked on a system that eliminates the middleman and is almost ideal in its realisation of the principle of co-operation.

In the United States there are over 6,000 co-operative creameries of this kind, and new establishments were started last year at the average rate of two a day. . . . The application of ammoniacal refrigeration is extending rapidly, and is gradually equalising prices all the year round. ... The lesson was taught by Denmark and Sweden to America and Australia, and must be learned by British and Irish farmers.,

The few creameries in England and Ireland are mostly capitalistic, not co-operative.

MARVELS WROUGHT BY THE MILK-TESTER.

The very name of the milk-tester is unknown to thousands of our farmers. Yet by letting the farmer "know exactly how much butter each individual cow produces from every gallon of its milk," it enables him to cull his herd, and replace poor by good butter-producers, thus doubling in time the average yield per cow. "Were the milk-tester in universal use throughout Great Britain and Ireland, the capitalised value of our dairy herds might be increased in a few years time by fully 25 per

cent."

The enormous growth in the New Zealand frozen meat industry is due to the adoption of co-operative effort. Mr. Mitchell concludes:

With co-operative creameries in every important centre, increased facilities for theoretical and practical teaching in dairy work, and the general use of the latest appliances, such as the separator and the milk-tester, it is not too much to say that an era of renewed prosperity may open for British agriculture.

THE NEW FLYING MACHINE.

BY HIRAM S. MAXIM.

HIRAM MAXIM, in the National Review, describes what his machine has done and what he hopes to do with it. He is quite sure that he has solved the question. He says:

Now that it has been shown that a machine may be made which will actually lift itself and travel through the air at a very high velocity, I believe that some of the Military Powers who have so long been experimenting in this direction will take advantage of what I have accomplished, that they will obtain sufficient appropriation, and that an actual flying machine for military purposes will soon be evolved, whether I continue my experiments or not. As for the commercial value of flying machines, I do not think it is likely that they will be employed for freight or passengers. Perhaps they might be used for sporting purposes, and it is not altogether unlikely that in the daily journals of twenty years hence we shall find illustrations of some popular prince of the realm on a flying machine pursuing a flock of wild geese through the air and firing on them with a Maxim gun.

After explaining the principle upon which he constructs his machine, he gives the following account of the successful experiment which he made the other day:

I found that a large engine would be more efficient for its weight than a small one; moreover, the weight of the two or three men necessary to navigate the machine was a smaller factor in a large machine than in a small one. I therefore made my engines over 300 h.-p., and the total width of my machine over 100 feet. When finished and loaded the machine with its water, its fuel, and three men, weighed very nearly 8,000 lb., and the actual horse-power developed on the screws was 363 h.-p., with a screw thrust of rather more than 2,000 lb. But of course it would not do to launch such a machine into the air at once without some previous practice in regard to steering, for it will be seen that an aerial machine has to be steered not only in a horizontal direction, but also in a vertical direction, and any pitching up or down might be disastrous. I therefore determined to run my machine in a straight line on a railway track, in fact on two tracks, one an ordinary track for supporting the machine, and the other an upper and inverted track, to receive and hold the machine when it lifted clear of the supporting track, and thus keep it in a horizontal position, the tracks being so arranged that, when the wheels were lifted an inch clear from the supporting track, another set of wheels was brought in contact with the upper or inverted track. Upon running the machine it was found that at thirty miles an hour very little load remained on the lower track, and at thirty-six miles an hour the whole machine was completely lifted, and the upper wheels brought in contact with the inverted rails. Upon running, the machine at full speed the lift on the upper or safety track became so great that the axletrees for holding the machine down doubled up, and one of the timbers of the safety track was broken, lifted up, and became entangled in the framework of the machine. Steam was instantly shut off, and the machine brought to a state of rest, when it fell directly to the ground without any serious shock, embedding its wheels in the turf in such a manner as to show that its fall had been directly downward, and that the wheels had not moved after they had touched the earth. These experiments, although causing considerable damage to the machine which will take some months to repair, demonstrated in the most conclusive manner that it is possible to construct a boiler, engine, propelling-screws, and aeroplanes so light, and at the same time so powerful, as to lift themselves into the air. I think it has been admitted by scientific men on all sides that if this could be accomplished a flying machine would soon be a fait accompli.

MR. WILLIAM MORRIS and Decorative Art in England form the subject of a highly interesting article, by M. Jean Lahor, in the Revue Encyclopédique of August 15, and the illustrations include specimens of wall-paper design, house decoration, bookbindings, book illustrations, etc.

« PreviousContinue »