ho see

families of citizens, second to skilled farmers, third to families of alien residents or unnaturalized immigrants, and last to quota immigrants not included in any of these groups.

Fifty Years a Publisher

FIFTY years ago Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of the New York "Times," began his career as a newspaper publisher with his ownership of the Chattanooga "Times." In honor of the anniversary, the Publishers' Association of New York City tendered to Mr. Ochs their resolutions of congratulation, in which they said: "In all his endeavors, however difficult the problems presented, he has never sacrificed either his intelligence or his honor, nor put either to test by seeking to tread the border-line of newspaper ethics." They paid tribute to his enterprise, cleanliness, dependability, and 1. good taste.

Lightning, Still a Puzzle

LIGHTNING has been challenged by science. Not that science or engineering expects to prevent it except over limited areas, but rather, if possible, to understand it.

From the Evening Standard (London)

gently be controlled. There may come a time when man can bid the lightning defiance.

It Takes Money to See Mars
ONE good battleship costs about forty

million dollars. For that amount-far

less, indeed-man could pry into another kind of secret of Mars, viewing the ruddy planet himself by means of a remarkable chain of five astronomical telescopes planned by Professor G. W. Ritchey, to whose superlative skill astronomy and its friends owe the world's

Thus far but little has been learned concerning lightning. More has been learned, however, in the past five years largest existing reflecting telescopes. To

than during the whole time since the famous and dangerous-experiment of Benjamin Franklin. It has recently become practicable to make lightning artificially on a small scale in the laboratory, and thence to test it. At the present moment electrical engineers from the Westinghouse Company's research laboratories are on the trail of real lightning in a wild spot in the mountains of Tennessee. Equipped with such instruments as oscillographs, osisos, and klyndonographs, they expect to make scientific records of every flash that occurs in the vicinity of a high-tension power transmission line that crosses the mountains. Despite their startling names, these instruments are quite tame and domesticated. The oscillograph has marked agility. If a flash of lightning lasts only a ten-millionth of a second, its magic pointer, consisting of nothing but a beam of electrons, will keep step, leaving a permanent record. The klydonograph records the maximum shock received by the transmission line-and here is the most practical part of the research; lightning sets up terrific surges in transmission lines, like uncontrollable surges of water up and down a bathtub. These do damage; but, as they are not yet wholly understood, they cannot intelli

July 18, 1928

spend forty millions on astronomical telescopes might impress many as foolish. Relatives of a deceased millionaire rejury that a man who willed a million to cently succeeded in convincing a Texas the science of star-gazing must have been out of his mind. Yet on a referendum, valuable? how many would vote a battleship more

Despite all which has been written about Mars, the largest image we have

Halladay in the Providence Journal

Can he catch him?

ever been able to get of it by means of the very largest telescope is only an eighth of an inch in diameter. Professor Ritchey now proposes a new kind of telescope, twenty feet in diameter, to be situated in Arizona, which would provide an image of Mars a full inch and a half in diameter. Doubtless this would resolve the much-debated canals into their real objectiveness, especially when photographic enlargements of the inch-andone-half image were made having a diameter of twelve inches. This would amount to an enlargement over the

naked-eye power of 14,100 diameters.

This might pry open the secrets, not only of Mars, but of the other planets.

They "Pass"

EVERY year five thousand Negroes who show no trace of color augment the ranks of the white population. This on the word of Bishop J. W. Martin, of the American Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. They "pass," say some of their darker brethren, scornfully. They leave their own, Bishop Martin declares, because only as "whites" can Negroes do the work they like best and for which. they are best fitted.

"I know the mayor of a certain town," he said recently, "who is a white man now, but as a boy was as good a Negro as the community had, and his brother is to this day a good colored preacher.

"We want the doors of all professions and trades, of all skilled and unskilled labor opened to us, and we want them opened wide enough for us to get in without having to 'pass.'... We want no special favors, no extraordinary kindnesses, no granting of handicaps, but just a chance to shoot from taw and keep on shooting until the game is ended.

"How we colored people live in the United States of America depends on where and under what conditions we are

forced to live. Restricted districts, prohibitive purchase prices for houses, exorbitant rents, threats, and abuse are only some of the means employed for adding insult to our already sorely injured group.

"When it comes to public parks and playgrounds, leisure and recreation, the Negro often is not even thought of in connection with them. What we are going to do about it I do not know, but this I do know, the fight is on."

One Stone, Two Birds SENATOR NORRIS, free and independent Republican, let fly a sizable stone the other day at two birds-the "water power trust" and the Electoral College.

The "water power trust."

"There has never been such a stupendous attempt to undermine the foundations of government and civilized society as the secret machinations of this gigantic monopoly. It is poisoning the minds of youth through the secret control of text-books in our public schools. It has reached its deceitful hand into the church and has undertaken to bribe the minister in his pulpit. It has crept in the back door of State universities and colleges to practice deception on the coming generation. It has crept into the midst of such organizations as the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America.

"It has, with deception and bribery, undertaken to influence State Legislatures. By the expenditure of huge sums of money it has undertaken to buy seats in the United States Senate and, by the organization of the greatest lobby that has ever been gotten together in our capital city, it has expended untold sums for the control of our National Legislature.

"All this is being exposed by the Federal Trade Commission. This exposure has been going on daily until the corruption disclosed has smelled to high heaven, and yet the great political parties in their National platforms are silent on the subject. . . .

...

"And what are the progressive-minded people of the United States going to do about it? Under our system of machine politics, the people are practically helpless. It is easy to say that a third party can be organized, . . . but the machine realizes that this gigantic trust knows that under our system of electing a President such a course is, for practical purposes, an impossibility.

The Electoral College.

"If our worse than useless Electoral College were abolished, and the people. were allowed to vote directly for President, it would be very easy and inex

pensive, when the people are dissatisfied with the nominations made by the major parties, to run an independent candidate for President. All that would be necessary would be to file the required petition in the various States to put the name on the official ballot. This could and would be taken care of locally without the expenditure of any money and without the necessity of any political organization."

Until that is done, Senator Norris predicted, political organizations will pay no attention to the rank and file of political parties or to citizens generally.

Germany's New Government Wins CHANCELLOR MUELLER, the Social Democratic leader, and his new coalition Cabinet, made up also of Catholic Centrists, Democrats, and leaders of the German and Bavarian People's Parties, have passed their first test in the Reichsstag. Upon its declaration of program, the Parliament gave the Government a vote of confidence of 261 to 134. So the criticism of the Nationalist reactionaries was nullified, and a liberal administration received unquestionable sanction of its authority.

Returning to the post he has held before as Chancellor, Mueller made it clear that he would both stand for fulfillment of the Dawes Plan for reparation payments and also follow previous Governments in seeking evacuation of the Rhineland by the French forces of occupation. He plans further an amnesty law for political prisoners and action `to reduce income tax burdens on wageworkers. This is in line with the Social Democratic support of the Dawes Plan, subject to conditions that do not bear over-heavily on the laboring class; and it represents the issue on which he is likely to have most trouble with the industrialist opposition of the more conservative ist opposition of the more conservative parties.

Gobbled Up

THE piles of unsold bonds on the shelves of dealers are said to have been mounting with money rates, but the new 33% per cent bonds offered by the Treasury have been welcomed. The $250,000,000 have been welcomed. The $250,000,000 offered for cash were gobbled up and the overflow demand swung towards the Third Liberty Loan Bonds, exchangeable for the new issue, with such force as to push the price up a full point in one day.

This warm response probably means that no more long-term bonds will be offered in exchange for the $1,225,000,000 worth of Third Libertys now out

standing. Secretary Mellon announced that if cash and exchange subscriptions exceeded $500,000,000, there would be no more long-term financing in connec tion with the Thirds. This total should be exceeded easily.

Many Wall Street diagnosticians pointed to the offering as an indication of easier money in the future, but this interpretation will not hold water. For various reasons, the Treasury may have thought it necessary to make a gener ous long-term-bond offer, whatever it thought of the future trend of interest rates. If it had felt free to offer either long or short term securities, however, and it had expected easier money, it would certainly have offered short-term issues.

Poker Face" Wins

WIMBLEDON has no terrors for Helen Wills. In winning the final on the famous center court she disposed of a really high-class opponent in Mlle. De Alvarez. The latter is very much of an all-round athlete as well as a finished tennis player. She has taken honors in swimming, is a hunter and mountain climber of note, and can sail yachts of almost any size. She is also very much at home in the air. Her tennis is improving steadily, and she may be consid erably harder to beat another time.

One wonders how so much power ever came to be packed away in the not too large frame of Helen Wills. But the power is there. She was never able to turn it on at the full against Suzanne Lenglen, but then Suzanne was admittedly on a lonely eminence so far as tennis is concerned. Miss Wills is a better tennis player every year. She is just now beginning to lose some of the placidity that gave her the nickname of "Poker Face." She is beginning to get what the English call "devil" into her strokes. Her driving cannot be improved upon. and her court generalship is of the best. There is still before her a long career of victory.

Our Olympic Athletes

THIS country's Selection Committee has announced, as the result of some blazing racing in the Harvard Stadium and other trials, what is probably the strongest track and field team ever to wear the United States shield in the Olympic games. While congratulating ourselves on the remarkable abilities of these eighty-two performers, it is well to remember that other countries-notably Germany-have come along mightily since the war, and have thrown into ath

letics of the competitive sort much of the energy that once went into goose-stepping and mass athletics of the purely gymnastic type. We shall have stiff We shall have stiff

competition. No sooner do we bring out a group of spearmen who can hurl the javelin around 200 feet than a lusty Australian turns up with a throw of 22 feet better.

It is to be presumed that the United States will clean up in the dashes and the field events, and do extremely well in the hurdles. The runs are problematical. We shall find Kornig (German) and Houben (Hollander) disputing the dashes; Nurmi, Wide, Douglass Lowe, and an occasional Swiss and Frenchman showing us the way in some of the runs. There will be a great race in the 400meter hurdles between Morgan Taylor, who has been breaking the world's record recently, and Lord Burghley, a rugged British timber skimmer. The jumps and the pole vault are unmistakably ours. And, of course, everybody hopes that Joie Ray will bring home the ten thousand meters and the Marathon. But Joie is stubborn, careless, and has yet to prove himself in the Olympics. Perhaps the brightest feature of the Harvard trials was the work of Lloyd Hahn, the Nebraskan from Boston, not so much because of the times he made as the manner in which he made them.

He has lengthened his stride, learning something from the style of the Finns and Swedes. This is no longer the rather awkward, short-stepping Hahn, but as pretty and finished a long-striding runner as the sport has seen.

California's crew won the right to represent us in the Olympic Regatta at Amsterdam by virtue of a quarter-length victory in a terrific race with Yale on the Schuylkill. It is true that Yale had been through a savage dash against Princeton the day before, and perhaps Princeton the day before, and perhaps the men from the west coast were a little the fresher. However, that is the luck of the game, and it is not difficult to believe that California would have won in

any case.

Over Niagara Falls

JEAN LAUSSIER wanted to buy his father and mother a farm for their old age, so

he invested his savings in a rubber ball and bounced over Niagara Falls in it.

The ball was made of layers of rubber and canvas on a framework of steel. It was nine feet in diameter and weighed about 700 pounds. Friends lashed Laussier to the framework, a rowboat cast him off near Cayuga Island, about three miles up-stream, and the end of the mad adventure lay with the violent river.

Spectators watched the red ball bounce and bob through the rapids, saw it shoot over the falls about midway between the Canadian shore and Goat Island, then lost sight of it in the smother at the foot of the wall of water.

Fifty minutes after Laussier dropped his moorings at Cayuga Island, "Red" Hill, a riverman, rowed out into the eddies below the falls and towed the red ball ashore. Emerging, Laussier addressed admiring spectators as follows:

With three thousand miles behind them, the next three thousand of the journey are quite likely to result in an Olympic championship. There is apparently nothing to fear from the English this time. The Thames Rowing Club victory in the Grand Challenge at Henley was not impressive, and the Leander Club of today is not the Leander Club of pre-war days. The principal danger lies in the entry of the Argonauts of Toronto or the University of Toronto. The latter was the runner-up at the last Olympics. These Canadians know how to row and to race, and they are taught by the famous Joe Wright, greatest of all the Argonauts.

"I knew I could do it. It cost me $7,000 to finance the adventure, but I hope to get it all back, and more besides."

He said he had had a terrific bouncing, but the only bruises he suffered were of a minor nature.

Newspaper editors searched their files and discovered that Laussier is the third to make the trip and live. The first was a woman, Mrs. Anna Edson Taylor, who went over in an oak barrel in 1901. Ten years later Bobby Leach dared it in a steel barrel.

Watching the latter's dangerous but successful venture, Laussier, then a boy, was fired to emulate him. Now, if vaudeville booking agents are alert, maybe his father and mother will get that farm.

Salvaging Abandoned Cars EVERY city has its automobile graveyard. There cars whose careers have come to an honorable or dishonorable end rest and rust in peace. They yield such parts of their skeletons and inwards as might serve to prolong the life of some other cars. But the mass of their

iron and steel is of no more use than so much raw material. And even along roadways may be found here and there abandoned cars that will never again run under their own power or carry another passenger.

If all these cars could be collected in one place, they would constitute a veritable iron mine. So numerous have they become, however, that, scattered as they

Wide World

are, many of them have proved to be worth salvaging. Bernard Lester, representative in Kansas City of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, is quoted in the New York "Evening Sun" as saying that his company has received orders from the Sheffield Steel Corporation to equip electrically a steel mill to be erected in the vicinity of that metropolis of western Missouri, far from any great natural iron-ore beds. This plant will operate, he says, chiefly on scrap obtained locally.

There is so much of this that it is estimated it will supply a large proportion of the local demand for steel products.

"An abandoned automobile has some value as scrap," said Mr. Lester, "but not enough to justify shipping it a considerable distance to a steel center. But if it can be melted down, locally valuable material that otherwise would be wasted is saved and the merchandise made from it does not have to pay longdistance freight rates."

Unlike timber, which replenishes itself,

iron once taken out of the ground cannot be replaced. But, unlike oil, it does not disappear when used. It still remains iron. So our automobiles and other discarded machinery and worn-out iron ware may serve as raw material and to some extent relieve the drain upon our ore deposits. And, incidentally, regions which have no ore may become to a limited extent sources of metallic raw material.

Beryllium, an Old-New Metal

THERE was a time, to recall which one does not need to be past middle age, when aluminum was a laboratory curiosity, highly expensive despite the fact that aluminum in compound form (clay, for example) is one of the most plentiful elements of the earth's crust. Now we are promised a new metal, harder by far than aluminum yet two-thirds lighter.

What use shall we make of it?

The metal is beryllium. In the gem stone beryl we are familiar with one compound of this old-new metal, yet there it stubbornly clings to its atoms of

silica and other elements. To pry it loose, reducing it to metallic form, cost as much as $5,000 a pound as recently as 1922; but now that methods have been found for performing this operation on larger lots, the price has already fallen to $200 a pound. What practical use could we make of a structural metal costing $200 a pound? Yankee fashion, one retorts with a question: "When aluminum was made in one-pound lots, did it not cost as much?" It is expected that the price of beryllium will soon fall to $10 a pound.

What use will it be put to? Again, Yankee fashion: "Who could say thirty years ago what uses aluminum would have?" This newly available metal is already being used in alloys. It takes a high polish and will not tarnish in the air as aluminum does; in fact, it gives aluminum an added resistance to corrosion when alloyed with it, while it makes copper much more rigid. Less than twice as heavy as water, it is harder than glass. It will be surprising if this rather unusual list of qualities does not meet with some great demand.

THE final issues of the "Congressional Record," published after the adjournment of Congress, are in a way interesting reading-at least to the student of government.

These last issues are filled with "extensions" of remarks that were never made on the floor of Congress. The object of these "extensions" is to get political speeches into the record which can later be distributed at Government expense to hungry constituents.

Platforms of the Democratic and Republican Parties, the keynote addresses at the two Conventions, all appear in the records of a Congress which adjourned before the Conventions were held. The extended remarks of individual Congressmen vary greatly in character. One Congressman from a Pennsylvania district (the racial complexion of his district can be easily guessed) gets leave to print a eulogy to the Welsh. Another Congressman from Kentucky boasts at considerable length of the 350,000 pieces of literature and mail that have gone out from his office. Some Congressmen throw in speeches addressed to their own constituents, with only the slightest reference to the august gathering at which the remarks are supposed to be

Crime and Politics in Chicago

IN extending Chicago's greetings to Miss That pa Earhart, a Chicago alderman, L. J. Grossman, announced the purpose of giving Chicago a better reputation. "Chicago has rid itself of crooks and bums," he is quoted as saying. "We call it now the safest city in the world. We want other people to call it that. You know 'throw away your hammer and buy a horn.""

Another method than horn-blowing for improving Chicago's reputation has been adopted by the Chicago Bar Association, which started an investigation of the alliance between politicians and criminals. One grand jury has already reported and has brought in indictments against henchmen of the Republican machine of the Twentieth Ward. Among the abuses which the grand jury lists are the forcible compelling of voters to cast ballots against their will, the voting of fictitious names, the repeating of votes by sending gangs from one polling-place to another, kidnappings, assaults, robCbery, and the willful blindness of police to violence. "The alliance of crime and politics," the Grand Jury says, "was manfested to us in the testimony produced before us, and that alliance is always cemented at the primary election by force, frauds, and murder." The Grand Jury recommends that election systems in other cities be studied. The Grand Jury's comments on the police would shock any community not hardened to collusion between lawbreakers and law enforcers.

While the Grand Jury's report was being published, a beer-runner chieftain narrowly escaped assassination. While Chicago is making its effort to clean up and to save its good name, Chicago methods, including assassination by machine guns and the process of bleeding business by the employment of one gang as supposed defense against the operations of another gang, are invading New York. The "racketeer," who has made it dangerous for some business men and their customers to do business except under his dictation, has a rich field in the metropolis. It is suspected that the Brooklyn gang leader, Frankie Uale, or Yale, as he preferred to be called, met his death at the hands of a Chicago gang. Meantime a new grand jury in Chicago has resumed the investigation into the partnership between crime and

politics.

An Air Mystery

Alfred Loewenstein

side door by mistake instead of a washroom door. The difficulty in opening the outside door has led others to believe that the financier's death was suicide. The legends that have grown up about Loewenstein have led still others to suggest that possibly he disappeared before the plane left England or after it landed in France, and that his disappearance is a prelude to another financial coup. The report of Loewenstein's death had a

C

serious effect upon the securities in which he was known to be interested.

The Heroine of the Friendship

AMELIA EARHART belongs to that little group of aviators who love flying for its rassed by the popular applause that folown sake and who are really embarlows a notable feat. Her reception in New York City and by the press of the country at large shows that she is liked for herself. Her modesty, her eagerness to see that full credit is given to her pilot, Wilmer Stultz, and her mechanic, Louis Gordon ("I was really only baggage," she said over and over again), her frank pleasure in being the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane, and her avoidance of advertising, theatrical, or other "show-off" stunts-all mark her as well placed in a plane named Friendship.

Miss Earhart may have been a mere passenger in her latest flight, but she long held the woman's altitude record of 14,000 feet, and she has been handling the controls for ten years or so. Her flying is both sport and recreation, and it fits in quite well with her work in practical sociology, with her reading and study, and with her side-sports of chemistry and languages.

The Flight to Brazil

THE Crown for the longest sustained flight now belongs to Italian aviators. Captain Arturo Ferrarin and Major Carlo del Prete on July 5 landed in Brazil after a non-stop flight from Rome. The distance from Rome to Natal, where the plane came to earth, is estimated at 4,475 miles, a great advance over the previous record. The aviators had hopes. of continuing to Rio de Janeiro, or even Buenos Aires, but weather conditions on the South American coast were unfavorable.

stood to have agreed to recommend his nomination to their countries. So indirect participation by the United States in the World Court is likely to be continued.

Germany wants to have a judge on the World Court bench-now that she is a member of the League of Nationsand so does Poland. Their desires complicate the matter of electing another