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Frontispiece. 
 
 GREAT SHIPS WILL SAIL IN THE CLOUDS 
 
 The last wars will be fought in the skies. Men shall fly like birds in the 
 
 coming age. — See page 56. 
 
WONDER 
 STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS TREVELYAN MILLER 
 
 Litt. D., LL. D. '^ 
 
 Founder of the 
 JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY 
 
 Author of 
 
 AMERICAN HERO TALES 
 
 PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY OF THE 
 CIVIL WAR, Etc. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN HERALD 
 
 Bible House, New York 
 
T47 
 
 .He 
 
 Copyright, 1913 
 
 BY 
 THE CHRISTIAN HERALD 
 
 New York City, N. Y. 
 
 y^cU 
 
 ©CI.A357961 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 THESE WONDER STOEIES are entirely orig- 
 inal and novel in their form of narrative and 
 reveal hitherto unfathomed depths in American 
 character and genius. They tell how Americans have 
 set out to conquer the hidden secrets of the universe ; 
 hoYi they have reached up to the sun and moon and 
 stars ; how they have dug down deep into the bowels of 
 the earth; how they have walked under the oceans 
 and flown on the winds. They tell how Americans have 
 created mighty structures with their muscles and 
 brains ; how they have performed almost superhuman 
 services to mankind ; and how their achievements have 
 deservedly placed them in the category of modern 
 miracle workers. 
 
 It has been the purpose of Dr. Miller in writing 
 this fascinating book to tell only entertaining stories 
 about everyday things. Plain truths are told, and 
 there has been no effort to make a complete record, 
 for such would require not one but many volumes. The 
 technicalities of the scientist are purposely avoided 
 and only the interesting phases are set forth in these 
 pages. G-reat care has been taken, however, to pre- 
 serve the accuracy of all the facts. Seldom has there 
 been compressed in a single volume such an amount 
 
 III 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 of information set forth with rare literary skill and 
 in a way so attractive that the book becomes a treasure- 
 house of human knowledge, human genius, and human 
 achievement — all interwoven into stories that are as 
 true as wonderful. 
 
 It is a real pleasure, therefore, as well as a privi- 
 lege, to send this volume into the homes of America 
 where The CHEISTIAI^T Hekald has long been a welcome 
 
 guest. 
 
 The Publishers. 
 
 IV 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 The Story of the Astronomer and the Wonders of the Universe 3 
 The Story of the Heliographer and the Mysteries of the Sun . . 11 
 The Story of the SelenogTapher and His Trips to the Moon . . 17 
 The Story of the Geologist and His Journeys on the Earth.. 23 
 The Story of the Statesman and the Country in which We Live 28 
 The Story of the Congressman and Government by the People 33 
 The Story of the Railroad— the Forerunner of Modem Prog- 
 ress 38 
 
 The Story of the Empire Builders Who Awakened a Continent 43 
 The Story of the Steamship and the Conquest of the Seas. . . 50 
 The Story of the Aviator and the Ships that Fly in the Clouds 56 
 The Story of the Canal Builder Who Severed a Hemisphere 62 
 The Story of the Bridge Builder Who Spans Rivers and Can- 
 yons 69 
 
 The Story of the Engineer Who Tunnels under the Earth ... 74 
 The Story of the Irrigators Who Transform Deserts into Gar- 
 dens 79 
 
 The Story of the Dam Builder Who Conquers the Mighty 
 
 Waters 84 
 
 The Story of the Ocean Cables that Connect the Continents. . 89 
 The Story of the Architect and Our Great Skyscrapers .... 94 
 The Story of the Man in the Cab Behind the Locomotive ... 99 
 The Story of the Journalist and the Making of a Newspaper 104 
 The Story of the Postmaster and the Marvels of the Post-office 109 
 The Story of the Inventor and the Genius of the Patent Office 114 
 The Story of the Great Seaports and the World^s Commerce . . 119 
 The Story of the Telegrapher and His Messages Through the 
 
 Air 124 
 
 The Story of the Telephone that Speaks Across the Continents 129 
 The Story of the Sewing-Machine and Woman^s Emancipation 134 
 The Story of the Typewriter that Revolutionized a World . . . 139 
 The Story of the Inventor Who Immortalized the Human 
 
 Voice 145 
 
 The Story of the Motion Pictures and their New Revelations. 150 
 The Story of the Street Railway and How It Links Our Cities 156 
 
 V 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 The Story of the Elevator and the Buildmg of Great Cities . . 161 
 
 The Story of the Automobilist and the "Horseless Age" 167 
 
 The Story of the Fire Fighters and the Conquest of Flames. . 172 
 The Story of the Chemists Who Create Our Powerful Ex- 
 plosives 177 
 
 The Story of the Gold Miner Who Digs Nuggets from the 
 
 Soil 183 
 
 The Story of the Silversmith Who Works in Precious Metals 188 
 The Stoiy of the Copper Mmer Who Crushes Fortunes from 
 
 Rocks 193 
 
 The Story of the Coal Miner Who Finds Fuel in the Earth . . 197 
 The Story of the Iron Miner Who Takes Wealth from the 
 
 Mountains 201 
 
 The Story of the Oil Driller Who Taps the Earth for Riches 205 
 The Story of the Well Digger Who Conquers the Natural 
 
 Gases 209 
 
 The Story of the Foundryman and the Giant KJnown as Steel 212 
 The Story of the Farmer Who is the Foundation of Civiliza- 
 tion 217 
 
 The Story of the Sugar Grower on the Southern Plantations 224 
 The Story of the Lumber Man and the Giants of the Forest. . 229 
 The Story of the Ranchman and a Glimpse in the Abattoir. . 234 
 
 The Story of the Refrigerator and the Magical Ice 238 
 
 The Story of the Canneries and the Task of Feeding the 
 
 World 242 
 
 The Story of the Fisherman and His Wonderful Fisheries. . 247 
 The Story of the Modern Wizard "\^^lo Creates Fruits and 
 
 Flowers 252 
 
 The Story of the Biologist Who Discovered the Secret of Life 259 
 
 The Story of the Physiologist and the Miracle of Man 264 
 
 The Story of the Ornithologist and the Birds of the Air .... 269 
 
 The Story of the Botanist and the Kingdom of Plants 275 
 
 The Story of the Physician and His Fight Against Disease.. 280 
 The Story of the Surgeon and How He Saves Our Lives.... 285 
 The Story of the Scientist and a Visit to His Laboratory. . . . 290 
 The Story of the Photographer Who Records the World's 
 
 Events 295 
 
 The Story of the Mathematicians Who Count Our Population 300 
 The Story of the Diver Who Walks on the Bottom of the Sea 306 
 The Story of the Plowman as He Drops His Seed in Rich 
 
 Earth .,... .,..,,,. ..,.. 311 
 
 The Story of the Reaper in the Empire of Golden Grain.... 315 
 
 VI 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 The Story of Power and the Men Who Harnessed Niagara. . 319 
 
 The Story of the Physicist Who is Harnessing the Sun 324 
 
 The Story of the Mint-m?ster and How He Makes Our Money 328 
 The Story of the Meteorologist and the Weather Prophets . . . 333 
 The Story of the Miller and the Life-giving Grains of Wheat 338 
 The Story of the Incubator that Creates and Saves Life.... 342 
 The Story of the Housewife and the New Domestic Science. . 346 
 The Story of the Cotton Planter and the Modern Cotton Mills 350 
 
 The Story of the Sheep-raiser and His Crops of Wool 355 
 
 The Story of the Tanner and His Hides of Leather 360 
 
 The Story of the Pin-maker and What He Has Done 364 
 
 The Story of the Needle-worker and Her Service to the World 370 
 The Story of the Weaver and His Wonderful Skeins of Thread 376 
 
 The Story of the Match-maker and His Magic Fire 381 
 
 The Story of the Carpenter and How He Builds Our Homes 386 
 
 The Story of Light and How It Has Conquered Night 391 
 
 The Story of Heat and How We Learned to Create It . 396 
 
 The Story of Water and How We Came to Conquer It 401 
 
 The Story of the School-roistress and the Army of Children. . 406 
 
 The Story of the Librarian and the World of Books 410 
 
 The Story of the Sunday School Teacher and Her Good Work 414 
 The Story of the Young Men of the Nation— and a Benefactor 419 
 The Story of the Young Women of the Nation— Future Moth- 
 ers 424 
 
 The Story of the Working Women and Their Modest Earnings 428 
 The Story of the Hospital Nurse and the Battle for Health . . 431 
 The Story of Modern Sanitation and Its Great Blessings.... 435 
 
 The Story of the Paper-maker and a Visit to the Mills 439 
 
 The Story of the Glass Blower and His Creations of Beauty. . 444 
 The Story of the Rubber King and a Journey into the Jungles 449 
 The Story of the Printing Press as the Guardian of Liberty. . 454 
 The Story of the Type-setter and the Marvelous Linotype. . 457 
 The Story of the Immigrant and the Lure of American Free- 
 dom 461 
 
 The Story of the Philanthropist and His Gifts to Humanity. . 466 
 The Story of the Scholars and the "Book of All Books".... 471 
 The Story of the Archeologist and His Adventures in America 478 
 The Story of the Explorer Who Digs up Long Lost Cities. . 482 
 The Story of the American Woman and the Torch of Civiliza- 
 tion 488 
 
 The Story of the Pioneer on the Path of the World's Progress 493 
 The Story of the Clergyman and the Miracle of Miracles. . . 498 
 
 VII 
 
Dr. Miller wishes to acknowledge the 
 valuable assistance of the following 
 staff of researchers in gathering the 
 material in The Search-lightJ Library 
 for these Wonder Stories : Walter R. 
 Bickford, Herbert G. Wintersgill, 
 Wallace H. Miller. Miss A. K. 
 Walker. T. Arthur Nesbitt. J. W. 
 Russell. David St. Clair. Frederick 
 H. Dewey, Victor Emanuel, 
 Gabriel Schlesinger, Meyer Cohn. 
 Joseph Devlin, A. T. Sieker, N. 
 O. Wilhelm, and J. S. Beckett. 
 
 VIII 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Page 
 Great Ships Will Sail in the Clouds ^ Frontispiece ^ 
 
 First Vessel Passing Through Gatun Locks of the 
 
 Panama Canal 55 ^ 
 
 Hurling the Human Voice Across the Continent . . . 119 v^ 
 
 How Men Tunnel into the Bowels op the Earth to 
 Secure Coal to Furnish Fuel for Homes and In- 
 dustries 183 
 
 A Modern Miracle Worker Among the Flowers He 
 
 Created , 247 "^ 
 
 Solving the Problem op Long Life 311 ""^ 
 
 *' Going Down to the Bottom op the Sea" 375 u^ 
 
 The Man Who Turned Night into Day 439 «^ 
 
 IX 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 WONDER STORIES— what a world of romance 
 gathers about these words ! What hidden mys- 
 teries are nnveiled as we turn these leaves! 
 What tremendous impulses kindle the imagination as 
 we listen to these tales of the achievements of men who 
 are solving the problems of the universe ! 
 
 It was an interesting scene on that memorable day 
 when the Story-tellers gathered around the big read- 
 ing-table in the library. They had come from all the 
 corners of the land. There was the Westerner, with 
 Ms tales of the mines and their fabulous wealth ; there 
 was the Northerner, with his tales of gigantic indus- 
 tries ; there w^as the Southerner, with his tales of the 
 great plantations; there was the Easterner, with his 
 tales of giant cities ; and there was the rugged Story- 
 teller of the Middle West, with his tales of vast em- 
 pires of golden grain. 
 
 The log glowed brightly on the hearth as they drew 
 their chairs closely about it. There were lawyers and 
 doctors, ministers and schoolmasters, bankers and 
 manufacturers, merchants and farmers, scientists, in- 
 ventors, and engineers. From every trade and occu- 
 pation they had come, each with his story of some 
 marvelous creation from the hands and minds of men, 
 true stories of modern life more wonderful than the 
 ancient fables or the tales of the Arabian Nights. 
 And there were women among them, women of cour- 
 age and genius, whose stories rivaled those of the 
 others in the recital. 
 
 1 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 So it was that the story-telling began, each relating 
 his or her own narrative of some modern miracle, 
 until a hundred tales had been told — one each night 
 for a hundred nights. 
 
 The library table was strewn with papers and 
 books. There were great encyclopedias and works of 
 reference. The walls were covered from floor to ceil- 
 ing with spacious shelves, filled with deep red boxes in 
 which were treasured records and pictures relating 
 to every phase of the world's progress. 
 
 It was like delving into the treasure-chests of old 
 Mother Earth. It seemed as if the Story-tellers were 
 gathering at the foot of her throne, while she, like a 
 magician, revealed her secrets one by one, and un- 
 folded before her listeners the wonderful visions of 
 the genius of man. 
 
 It so happened that among these listeners there 
 was one whose duty it was to preserve them, a young 
 historian filled with the love of life and all living 
 things. Thus it is that they are spread before you in 
 these pages in the simple, homely language of the 
 Story-teller. Every story is true; each reveals some 
 wonderful secret in life, and each informs the listener 
 about people, things, and events that are a part of 
 everyday life in America and the world. 
 
 You are bid welcome as a guest to sit down before 
 this book and listen to its revelations; to meet these 
 magicians of modern science and industry, these al- 
 chemists of civilization. They will carry you through 
 every current of human ambition; they will take you 
 face to face with the great problems of human exist- 
 ence; you will penetrate with them the mysteries of 
 nearly every phase of human effort. With these Story- 
 tellers you will cover the vast area of human thought 
 and human action, for their tales are in themselves a 
 liberal education for all who desire to know life. 
 
 2 
 
THE STORY OF THE ASTRONOMER AND 
 THE WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE 
 
 THE old astronomer was chosen to tell the first 
 story. As he arose, the Story-tellers stood for 
 a moment in tribute to his venerable years. 
 
 A shock of snow-white hair fell over his bent shoul- 
 ders. The deep lines in his face told of long struggles 
 with the elements. In his sunken gray eyes there was 
 a far-away look, as though he were peering into other 
 worlds. 
 
 *^I am the eldest among you," he began, ^*and my 
 tale is the tale of eternity. It is the story of the men 
 who are solving the riddles of the universe. In the 
 realms to which I shall take you they reckon time by 
 millions of years, and distance by billions of miles.'' 
 
 His lips trembled as he spoke. 
 
 ^^We do not really begin to comprehend the won- 
 ders of life," he said, ^^ until we seek to unfold the 
 secrets of God's gigantic plan. Wonderful as our 
 earth seems, it is but one of many worlds which some 
 day we may visit — who knows? I have seen so many 
 miracles in my long life that there is no doubt left 
 within me. I fear nothing, and least of all to die, for 
 I know that all is well on the other side. ' ' 
 
 The grim face lightened with the glow of faith and 
 hope. 
 
 * ' Far up on the summit of a rugged mountain, ' ' he 
 began, ^4n the dead silence of giant forests, 4,000 feet 
 above the level of the sea, there stands a strange build- 
 
 3 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ing with a huge steel dome. It is reached only by a 
 road that winds its way from the San Jose valley, in 
 California, up the sides of the mountain range, until 
 it brings you to the lonely edifice in the clouds at the 
 end of a twenty-five mile journey. 
 
 ''It is to this house of modern miracles that I invite 
 your imagination to-day,'' he continued, bowing gal- 
 lantly. ''This is the famous Lick Observatory on 
 Mount Hamilton, the first of the world's great moun- 
 tain observatories, and it is here that American scien- 
 tists are sitting to-day at their great telescopes, 
 focusing their visions on the unknown worlds in an 
 heroic effort to 'bridge the chasm.' On the borders 
 of Lake Geneva, in Wisconsin, another group of sci- 
 entists at this moment are peering into the heavens 
 through the largest telescope in the world, in the 
 Yerkes Observatory. On another mountain peak 8,000 
 feet high, near Arequipa, Peru, still a third group of 
 American scientists from the Harvard Observatory 
 are giving their lives to solve the secrets of the 'Great 
 Divide.' 
 
 "The wonder story of the astronomers is almost 
 beyond human belief. Throughout America, in nearly 
 every university, you will find men standing on duty 
 in the observatories like pilots at the wheel of a great 
 ship on its endless voyage through the heavens. 
 
 "To-night, if the sky is clear," said the astronomer, 
 "go out onto the balconies of your homes, as if they 
 were the decks of the ship, and watch the giant lights, 
 the buoys of the sky, as we pass them on our voyage. 
 Then, too, we may hail other ships — ^mammoth planets 
 like our own — that are steering their courses through 
 infinity. 
 
 "The stars," said he, "have always had a peculiar 
 fascination for mankind. Their number and bril- 
 liancy, and, above all, the mystery that seems to hang 
 
 4 
 
STORY OF THE UNIVERSE 
 
 around them, have attracted men from the beginning 
 of time. Centuries ago the primeval shepherds gazed 
 at them raptly as they tended their flocks. 
 
 ^^What are the stars? It is a story of absorbing 
 interest. On a clear night we see the entire sky 
 spangled with these tiny points of light. Perhaps we 
 have tried to count them. There are about 5,000 stars 
 visible to the naked eye. But the telescope has multi- 
 plied this number ten thousand fold. The number of 
 stars already discovered amounts to about 53,000,000. 
 And what proportion these bear to the stupendous 
 whole — those countless worlds that exist in the fath- 
 omless void far beyond the telescope's reach— who can 
 tell? Their number has been put at five hundred bil- 
 lion as a minimum estimate. 
 
 ^^Kow far are the stars from us? Light travels at 
 the rate of 12,000,000 miles per minute. So vv^e will 
 put down in ^light-years' the time that it takes the 
 light of a star to reach us. Take the nearest of the 
 stars, Alpha Centauri. Jt takes its light four years 
 to reach the earth. This conveys some idea of its vast 
 distance. But if we were to reduce the four years to 
 minutes, and then multiply by 12,000,000, the result 
 would give the estimated distance of the nearest star 
 to the earth." 
 
 *^How far would that be?" asked one of the 
 listeners. 
 
 *^ Merely a distance of twenty-five trillion, two 
 hundred and twenty-eight billion, eight hundred million 
 miles," answered the astronomer, with a smile. 
 
 ^^This is the nearest star — our next door neigh- 
 bor," he added. ^^But when we come to some that 
 are farther away our heads begin to swim. I will 
 leave you to work it out. It is only necessary for me 
 to say that there are some whose distances are 
 estimated at 10,000 light-years. That is, it takes their 
 
 5 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 light ten thousand years to reach us. They may have 
 been extinguished ages ago, but their light still shines 
 at a distance of 630 qua-trillion miles. A beam of 
 light, leaving one of these stars the instant Christ was 
 born, traveling at the rate of 12,000,000 miles a minute, 
 had not, in 1913, completed a fifth of its journey to us. 
 It will not reach the earth until about 8,000 years from 
 now, or in the year 10,000 A. D. 
 
 *^The astronomers pile up wonder on wonder. Sir 
 William Herschel puts the light-years of the Milky 
 Way at 12,000. The limit reached in the year 1913 
 gives a calculation of three and a half million light- 
 years for a certain star. Figure out the distance for 
 yourself; then you will begin to comprehend the vast- 
 ness of this awe-inspiring universe in which we live. 
 
 **Let us hail a few of the sister planets as we pass 
 them on our voyage,'' exclaimed the astronomer. 
 *'They are our sister ships in the universe, as they 
 sail in orderly array around the sun as their center. 
 There are seven planets, besides the earth and some 
 minor bodies, called asteroids. Two of these planets, 
 Mercury and Venus, are nearer to the sun than is the 
 earth; the rest are farther away. Some are smaller 
 than the earth; others are considerably larger. At 
 one time or another we can see every planet except 
 Uranus and Neptune, which are at such vast distances 
 that they cannot be seen with the naked eye. 
 
 ** Mercury is the smallest of the planets and is so 
 near the sun that it is difficult to see it. 
 
 "Venus is about the same size as the earth and is 
 the most brilliant of the planets. We can see its sil- 
 very form for many months either in the morning or 
 evening. Mars is much smaller than the earth, whose 
 nearest planetary neighbor it is. It is always recog- 
 nized by its reddish light. 
 
 ** Jupiter is the giant planet, being nearly 1,300 
 
 6 
 
STORY OF THE UNIVERSE 
 
 times the size of the earth. For this reason it appears 
 very bright and golden, although its distance from us 
 is at least 367,000,000 miles. It is more than five times 
 farther away from the sun than is the earth. Jupiter 
 has a long way to travel around the sun, and this 
 makes its year equal to about twelve of ours. 
 
 *^ Saturn is the most distant of the planets that 
 can be seen with the naked eye, being over a billion 
 miles from us. It is second in size of the planets and 
 would make 760 earths. Its distance from the sun is 
 about 900,000,000 miles ; and it takes about twenty of 
 our years for it to travel around the sun. The most 
 interesting feature of Saturn is the beautiful rings 
 surrounding it, about which many theories have been 
 formed. 
 
 ** Uranus was regarded as the most distant planet 
 of our system until 1846. But here occurred a wonder- 
 ful scientific achievement — ^truly a triumph of astro- 
 nomical mathematics. Certain irregularities were 
 noticed in the orbital movements of Uranus. Two 
 astronomers, Adams and Leverrier, maintained that 
 these irregularities were due to an undiscovered 
 planet, which would be found in a certain position. 
 Sure enough, Neptune was discovered there. 
 
 *^ Neptune, the last planet to be discovered, is at 
 a distance of nearly three billion miles from the earth. 
 It is an inconspicuous object even through a telescope, 
 although it is about eighty-five times larger than the 
 earth. At the uttermost confines of the solar system 
 it moves in its vast orbit round the sun once in about 
 165 years. 
 
 ** There are many legends about the stars," con- 
 tinued the old astronomer. * ^ Some of them are about 
 the North or Polar star, which for ages has been a 
 guide to mariners, owing to the fact that it is always 
 situated in the same position, no matter from what 
 2 7 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 spot it is seen. There are many legends of the Great 
 Dipper, kno'\\Ti by this name because of its resemblance 
 to a dipper with a bent handle. The Romans called 
 it ^the seven ploughing oxen/ because it seemed to be 
 a yoke of seven stars. There is an ancient myth about 
 the Pleiades, Trhich relates that the seven daughters 
 of Atlas were translated to the skies, but that one hid 
 herself from shame at her mesalliance with a mortal, 
 so there are now only six stars in the Pleiades. 
 
 '^Of all the stars, Sirius, the dog-star, is the most 
 splendid. Consider that it is eight light-years distant 
 and yet its light appears brilliant to us. Sirius 
 must then be of stupendous magnitude. Our own mag- 
 nificent sun shrinks to insignificance in the comparison. 
 
 *^ Algol, the 'demon star' (so-called by the Arabs) 
 has come in for a good deal of attention from astron- 
 omers. It figures in the famous story of Perseus and 
 Andromeda. Perseus, you may remember, killed 
 Medusa, whose look turned mortals to stone ; and Al- 
 gol has been placed in her head in the sky. Algol's 
 brightness is more than fifty times that of our sun." 
 
 ^'What are the shooting-stars?'' inquired one of 
 the Story-tellers. 
 
 *' Celestial fireworks," answered the astronomer. 
 ** There is a special display about every thirty-three 
 years. They are pieces of broken comets or dead 
 worlds; and they often fall to the earth, in various 
 shapes and sizes, sometimes as fireballs, at other times 
 as meteoric stones or aerolites, some as small as grains 
 of sand. From the earliest times there have been 
 legends of stones falling from heaven. Until the be- 
 ginning of the nineteenth century, the scientific world 
 treated such accounts as fairy tales. No one doubts 
 nowadays that meteoric stones fall from the skies, but 
 they are no longer worshiped, like the black stone in 
 the Kaaba of Mecca or the black stone of Emesa. Un- 
 
 8 
 
STORY OF THE UNIVERSE 
 
 der the entrance arch to the Museum of Natural His- 
 tory in New York may be seen the largest aerolite 
 known. It measures eleven and one-half feet in length, 
 seven and one-half in width, and is three and one-half 
 feet in thickness. But it may have been much larger 
 when it first fell, for when it was found among the 
 Eskimos of Greenland, they told how for many years 
 they had been manufacturing knives and other weap- 
 ons out of it. 
 
 ^^The birth of a star! It is a wonderful event. 
 We think of it as belonging to the remote past, but 
 new stars come forth every now and then. The as- 
 tronomers of Mount Wilson Observatory were privi- 
 leged to witness the birth of a star in 1911 ; or, rather, 
 they viewed the new star when it was ten years old; 
 for it took that length of time for its light to reach 
 the earth. More than that, they photographed it. 
 They tell us that it originated from a nebula five 
 hundred billions of miles in diameter, and, when seen, 
 was already one hundred and fifty billions of miles 
 from the parent body. 
 
 ^ ' Do stars die ? They do — but their death is a slow 
 process stretching through countless ages. These 
 dead stars are dark and cold, but they move on their 
 way with incredible rapidity. Sometimes two of these 
 dead worlds meet; and then there is a catastrophe 
 such as we can barely imagine. We are told that the 
 fragments broken off by such a collision become 
 sometimes a new star, sometimes a mass of meteorites. 
 
 ^'We come now to the most stupendous fact of 
 all — the fact that gives us hope for our own future. 
 The stars are not ^ fixed,' as we call them, but are, 
 one and all, moving forward in a straight line for some 
 unknown destination. They are moving with fearful 
 velocity, some twenty, some as much as a hundred, 
 miles per second. Think what that means in a year, 
 
 9 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 still more in a century ! Yet the naked eye could de- 
 tect little change in the position of the stars in thou- 
 sands of years. Our sun, being a star, is likewise 
 moving, carrying with it planets, earth, and moon. 
 The solar system forms one of a series of grand pro- 
 cessions through the universe. We are moving to- 
 ward the constellation Lyra at the rate of about 
 1,600,000 miles per day! 
 
 **Are we the only living beings in the universe? 
 Many eminent scientists think not. They point to the 
 wonderful ^canals' on Mars, and claim that they are 
 the work of sentient beings who have attained to a 
 plane of civilization far in advance of our own. 
 Astronomers have extremely interesting theories about 
 our heavenly neighbors. Some believe that the Mar- 
 tians are highly intelligent; others believe that they 
 are monstrous beings in the shapes of crabs, scorpions 
 or spiders. Another states that life on Mars is cen- 
 tered in a huge, all-embracing vegetable or plant spread 
 out over the planet and having a monstrous eye. Some 
 think Martians resemble us in form. The solution may 
 come any day, for it is now proposed to communicate 
 with the planet by means of a huge reflector which 
 could be constructed at a cost of $10,000,000 and would 
 flash a vivid mathematical formula across the inter- 
 vening space. 
 
 ^^What does it all mean?^' asked the venerable as- 
 tronomer in conclusion. ^^When did it all begin? 
 Where will it all end? Do we go to the stars when we 
 leave the earth? Is death merely a sudden change to 
 another planet which we call heaven? Do we leap from 
 planet to planet and star to star through the ages? 
 After all, with all our marvelous progress in science, 
 with all our wonder stories, we have barely lifted a 
 corner of the curtain that screens the wonders of the 
 firmament. ' ' 
 
 10 
 
THE STORY OF THE HELIOGRAPHER 
 AND THE MYSTERIES OF THE SUN 
 
 
 THE last lingering rays of the snn were stream- 
 ing through the library windows. Its fantastic 
 shadows were dancing on the dark green velvet 
 rug like elves in a mossy glen. Far away, over the 
 western hills, the huge world of flame was slowly 
 sinking from its throne in the skies, leaving behind it 
 a brilliant trail of blood red and gold. 
 
 It was then that the young man with a long, slim 
 face, who had been listening attentively to the vener- 
 able astronomer, arose. 
 
 I beg the honor,'' he said, bowing courteously, 
 of being allowed to tell the second story, because it is 
 so closely akin to the wonderful tale to which we have 
 just listened. 
 
 *^I am a heliographer, " he continued thoughtfully. 
 *^It is my duty to take photographs of the sun. I am 
 more than this : I am a uranographer — that is, a man 
 who constructs celestial maps and describes the heav- 
 enly bodies.'' 
 
 *^My friends," he said, '*let me tell you about 
 those rays of light in the window. They are the source 
 of all life. Without them nothing can long exist. Some 
 day we shall learn the incalculable value of the sun- 
 beams. They are more precious than all the gold and 
 all the richest gems of the earth ; and yet they are free 
 to every human being. The sun, like many other great 
 things, has become so commonplace that we are in- 
 clined to ignore it. If it could be seen only from 
 
 11 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 one place, or on one day of the year, no spectacle in 
 nature wonid be so eagerly sought after, or so deeply 
 appreciated. We would then go around the world to 
 get one glimpse of sunshine. 
 
 ^^That gigantic ball of fire called the sun is a mil- 
 lion times larger than the earth. It has stood like a 
 monarch in the heavens, pouring out its heat and light 
 since the beginning of time — some scientists say for 
 more than one hundred million years. 
 
 ' ^ Look at that sunbeam flickering on the rug. How 
 far do you think it has come on its journey from the 
 sun to our feet ? ' ' 
 
 The Story-tellers awaited his answer with deep in- 
 terest. 
 
 ^^It has traveled 92,500,000 miles, '^ replied the 
 young scientist, ^Ho bring its life-giving forces to us. 
 It has taken it less than eight minutes to get here. 
 Its speed is 12,000,000 miles a minute. Just think of 
 it, 200,000 miles a second ! How would you like to be 
 shot around the world in an eighth of a second? 
 
 *'It is no wonder that in ancient times the sun was 
 worshiped as a god. There it rules in all its majesty, 
 giving us the light which we call day and then leav- 
 ing us in the darkness which we call night, whenever 
 we turn away from it. So tremendous is its power 
 that it holds the earth and the planets in their orbits 
 and forces them to revolve around it in an endless pro- 
 cession, like courtiers before a king. It is not sur- 
 prising that its daily appearance and reappearance 
 with unfailing regularity — never a moment late in its 
 time-table — has excited the interest and piqued the 
 curiosity of man. 
 
 ^^In the days of the old Greeks,'' he continued, 
 **it was believed that Apollo was the divinity of the 
 sun and also the twin brother of Artemis, the moon- 
 goddess. He drove across the skies in a glorious 
 
 12 
 
STORY OF THE SUN 
 
 chariot. Do you remember the tale of his inexperi- 
 enced son, Phaethon, who drove the chariot too near 
 the earth and almost caused a universal conflagra- 
 tion! The ancient Mexicans believed the sun was the 
 supreme deity, while down in Peru the Incas, or royal 
 family, claimed to be children of the sun. The Par- 
 sees of India still worship the sun as the chief emblem 
 of divinity. The American Indians worshiped the 
 sun and passed their peace-pipe around in the direc- 
 tions of its course. All over the world the great lumi- 
 nary has received the adoration of mankind. 
 
 ^^Then there came the day,'' continued the Story- 
 teller, *^when the sun ceased to be worshiped in the 
 civilized world. It fell into comparative insignifi- 
 cance for a long time. It was stripped of its divinity 
 and, for all its splendor, became only a great lamp for 
 lighting the earth. It was then believed that the one 
 central thing in the universe was the earth, the home 
 of man. The wise men claimed that the world had 
 been made so firm that it could not be moved, and that 
 the sun revolved about it. ' ' 
 
 The listeners laughed heartily at the idea. 
 
 *'But the sun finally came unto its own," contin- 
 ued the young scientist. ^ ^ Its divinity had, indeed, van- 
 ished; but it acquired its rightful place as center of 
 the cosmic system. 
 
 *^It was an old German priest, Copernicus, who 
 proclaimed, in 1530, that the sun was the fixed point, 
 and that the earth revolved around it. Since that 
 great discovery, the history of astronomy has been a 
 successive unrolling of the wonders of the heavens 
 before the eyes of mankind. The planetary system was 
 mapped out; new planets came within range of the 
 telescope ; and, impossible as it once seemed, the vari- 
 ous heavenly bodies were weighed and measured. Our 
 world, once considered to be the whole of creation, 
 
 13 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 shrank into insignificance compared with some of the 
 little 4sles of light' that hid their diminished heads 
 before the giant sun. 
 
 *'But the most remarkable thing about the sun," 
 continued the Story-teller, ^4s its heat. Every day 
 our American scientists are working on plans for util- 
 izing the rays of the sun for power. Do we realize 
 the stupendous amount of heat that the sun is con- 
 stantly distributing to the earth and the rest of the 
 planetary system! If the sun depended on coal, it 
 would have to burn every hour a quantity sufficient to 
 coyer its entire surface to a depth of twenty feet." 
 
 **What is this heat, and how is it perpetually main- 
 tained?" asked one of the listeners. 
 
 ^'That question puzzled the scientific world for 
 some time," answered the speaker. **They have 
 worked for generations to discover how all this heat 
 is continuously produced. It was thought at one time 
 that the sun was an ordinary ball of fire which was 
 cooling off, and would some time leave the earth in 
 utter darkness. This would cause the end of the world. 
 If that had been true, it would have burned itself up 
 in the course of 3,000 to 4,000 years. It was then ar- 
 gued that it was being constantly fed by hot meteors. 
 The scientists finally decided that it is a great body of 
 gas that radiates its heat and light. It was agreed 
 that the sun becomes smaller in size each year and 
 that it once was many times larger than it is to-day. 
 It has been carefully calculated that it diminishes 
 about 250 feet each year. ' ' 
 
 *^What are the Americans doing toward solving 
 these great secrets of the sunT asked one of the lis- 
 teners. 
 
 ^'The scenes in the observatories tell their own 
 story," answered the heliographer. ** Their patient 
 researches have brought us much of our present 
 
 14 
 
STORY OF THE SUN 
 
 knowledge. It was an American, Jonathan Homer 
 Lane, wlio discovered how the contraction of the sun 
 generated its heat. It was another American, Pro- 
 fessor George Ellery Hale, who invented the instru- 
 ment that photographs the sun's rays. The story of 
 Professor Hale is a wonder story in itself. He was 
 born in Chicago, in 1868. With the assistance of his 
 father, he established the Kenwood Observatory in 
 Chicago and here it was, in 1892, that a landmark in 
 the history of astronomy was passed. At an age when 
 most scientists have barely started experimenting, 
 George Hale achieved a great thing. He produced 
 the first successful spectroscopic photograph of the 
 sun's disk ever obtained." 
 
 ^*How was this accomplished!" asked one of the 
 listeners. 
 
 ^^It has always been difficult to obtain a satisfac- 
 tory photograph of the sun," replied the scientist. 
 **In glancing at the sun, we feel in a vague way that 
 we do not know exactly what we are seeing. When 
 seen through a telescope, the image of the sun is con- 
 fused, even to the expert. A photograph obtained by 
 the ordinary instruments is at best a composite pic- 
 ture of the actual mass of the sun. Professor Hale 
 invented the * spectroheliograph. ' The word is not 
 so formidable as it sounds. It simply means ^sun 
 spectrum-depicter, ' an instrument for taking a pic- 
 ture of the sun by means of its spectrum. It photo- 
 graphs the sun in the light of its own luminous ele- 
 ments, one by one. The spectroheliograph thus makes 
 possible a clear photograph of the sun, revealing, so 
 far as may be, what is going on there. ' ' 
 
 The young scientist held a photograph in his hand. 
 
 *^ There is a picture," he said, ^^ showing two 
 clouds like waterspouts, with a black hole at the cen- 
 ter of each. They are the solar cyclones or tornadoes, 
 
 15 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 having opposite rotary motions. The imagination 
 fails at the thought of these titanic storm clouds of 
 electrical particles, whose magnetic strength has been 
 measured as accurately as that of a magnet. ' ' 
 
 ^^ There is an interesting story about Professor 
 Hale, ' ^ exclaimed the speaker. ' ' It came about in this 
 way. Two great glass disks were ground by Alvan 
 Clark, the well-known lens-maker. They were in- 
 tended for the proposed observatory of the University 
 of South California, but remained in the rough for 
 want of funds. Professor Hale heard of this and had 
 an idea. He went to Charles T. Yerkes, the street car 
 magnate, and persuaded him to buy the disks for the 
 Chicago University. This was the origin of the Yerkes 
 Observatory, which to-day houses the largest refract- 
 ing telescope in the world. It was certainly unusual 
 to appoint so young a man — Professor Hale was only 
 twenty-six at the time. ' ' 
 
 The young Story-teller hesitated a moment. His 
 voice was clear and decisive. 
 
 *'We have only just begun," he said, ^^to learn 
 about the sun. The time may come when the sun- 
 beams will heat our homes and take the place of the 
 coal which is being so rapidly exhausted. We may 
 have solar engines to run our mills. 
 
 ** There is nothing improbable in this wonderful 
 world. I have long since ceased to doubt. I am ready 
 to expect anything. We have only just begun to solve 
 the mysteries of the universe. '* 
 
 16 
 
THE STORY OF THE SELENOGRAPHER 
 AND HIS TRIPS TO THE MOON 
 
 THE shades of evening had fallen. The mantle 
 of night lay over the city like a huge black robe. 
 Proudly the old moon mounted the skies like a 
 queen in her chariot. 
 
 The Story-tellers were sitting in the darkness. The 
 silvery light of the moon transformed the library into 
 a veritable fairyland. The dim outlines of the tall, 
 gaunt figure of a middle-aged man, with smooth face 
 and shaggy brows, moved from a corner of the room. 
 
 ^^I will introduce myself,'' he said. ^'It takes all 
 kinds of occupations to make a world. I am a selenog- 
 rapher. It is my business to photograph and map 
 the mountains and valleys of the moon." 
 
 ^'Are you the original man in the moon?'' inter- 
 rupted a voice from the darkness. 
 
 *^No, I am not," replied the speaker, somewhat 
 seriously, ^^but I have been watching that man in the 
 moon for a good many years. I am also very well ac- 
 quainted with the woman in the moon, and I am going 
 to tell you something about their wonderful home. ' ' 
 
 ^'We Americans," he continued, ^'are inclined to 
 ignore the wonders that surround us. We look out of 
 the window on a moonlight night like this and merely 
 mention that 4t is a beautiful night.' Little do we 
 think that the huge object before our eyes is a dead 
 world — a world devoid, so far as can be ascertained, 
 of air and water. It is a world with astonishing ex- 
 tremes of temperature — utterly unfitted to be the 
 
 17 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 abode of any animal or vegetable life with which we 
 are familiar.'' 
 
 *'How far away is the moon from us!" asked one 
 of. the listeners. 
 
 **It is our nearest neighbor," replied the speaker. 
 **It is only 239,000 miles from the earth — ^merely ^next 
 door' when we consider astronomical distances. The 
 moon is much smaller than the earth. It would re- 
 quire the materials contained in eighty-one moons to 
 form our globe." 
 
 ^^The moon is full of interest and importance to 
 us," continued the Story-teller. "It belongs to the 
 witching hour of night, with all its magic and mystery. 
 It plays a large part in our myths and legends. In the 
 ancient religions there were always moon-goddesses. 
 One of these was Artemis, twin-sister of the sun-god, 
 Apollo. Calm and majestic were those divinities, and 
 many romantic stories are told of them. 
 
 "Popular superstition has always credited the 
 moon wdth a powerful influence on human affairs. Our 
 word ^lunatic' is a survival of the ancient belief in the 
 etfects of moonlight on the brain. The moon has al- 
 ways been associated with good or evil fortune; cer- 
 tain acts have been lucky or unlucky according as they 
 are performed under a new or full moon. It was this 
 belief that once hindered the Spartans from taking 
 part in the great battle of Marathon, and thus shar- 
 ing in its glory, 490 years before Christ. Even to-day 
 these superstitions linger. There are still people who 
 tell us that it is unlucky to view the new moon for the 
 first time through glass." 
 
 A ripple of laughter passed around the room as 
 the guests taunted each other about their supersti- 
 tions. 
 
 "Modern science," continued the selenographer, 
 "has taken away some of the poetry and romance of 
 
 18 
 
STORY OF THE MOON 
 
 our celestial neighbor, but it has given ns fresh won- 
 ders in compensation. We have learned that the moon 
 is the earth's solitary satellite. Some planets can boast 
 quite an array of attendant orbs. We are now trying 
 to find out just what there is on this neighbor of ours ; 
 whether, for instance, the strange markings observed 
 on it are canals or not. The telescope of the Lick 
 Observatory in California brings the moon within a 
 hundred miles of us. Some day explorers may visit 
 the moon. You will remember that Jules Yerne in his 
 stories told how the intrepid explorers of the moon 
 found themselves skipping like young lambs over the 
 moon, bouncing up and down, like rubber balls, on its 
 surface. This is in accordance with scientific 
 probabilities. The moon's force of gravity is only 
 one-sixth that of the earth. This would cause curious 
 results from our point of view. Things would have a 
 greater tendency to go up than to come down, and the 
 exertion required to raise a weight from the earth 
 would raise a weight six times greater on the moon. 
 
 ^^No one has ever seen the other side of the moon/' 
 remarked the Story-teller. '^ There are many roman- 
 tic explanations of this. Marie Corelli has advanced 
 the theory that all w^e see of the moon is the perma- 
 nent image, projected into space, of a world long anni- 
 hilated. 
 
 *^And now for the American scientist," he ex- 
 claimed. ^'It was an American, Professor Henry 
 Draper, who gave to the world its first authentic 
 knowledge of the moon, when, on those notable days, 
 half a century ago, he took the first photographs ever 
 made of that mysterious world and opened the way 
 for astronomers to map it out as though it were 
 merely a distant country. These celestial photo- 
 graphs proved that the man in the moon and his lady 
 love were nothing more than the shadows of hills and 
 
 19 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 valleys. A. fascinating picture met our gaze. The 
 markings of the surface, perceived dimly with the 
 naked eye, were seen to be a mass of craters, unlike 
 any that we have on earth. They occur in endless 
 profusion, some with a diameter of one hundred miles 
 and with exterior w^alls towering 20,000 feet high. It 
 is a world of craters. In some places, they are crowded 
 together in an indistinguishable mass; in others, a 
 central cone clearly appears, with smaller peaks 
 around it. Some of the large craters have been named ; 
 we have, for example, the Crater of Copernicus and 
 the Crater of Archimedes. There are lofty moun- 
 tains, some peaks of the lunar Apennines rising to a 
 height of 20,000 feet. 
 
 ^'We used to think, '^ he said, slowly, ^Hhat there 
 were seas on the moon, and the name mare (the Latin 
 for sea) is still used in astronomy. But these ^ seas' 
 of a waterless world are simply large stretches of sur- 
 face, which are comparatively level, and which are 
 crossed by thin lines, or ^ rills,' sometimes hundreds of 
 miles long. Then there are curious streaks or rays 
 of brilliant whiteness, radiating through some of the 
 principal craters." 
 
 '^Tell us something about the first celestial photog- 
 rapher," urged a young man who was fascinated by 
 the narrative. 
 
 *^ Professor Draper," said the narrator, 'Svas the 
 first to give to the world the wonders of the moon 
 by means of photography. He forged the last link in 
 the long chain connecting star-worship with modern 
 science. It is a long stretch indeed from the Chal- 
 dasan sage to the American astronomer. But the mod- 
 ern professor wrought wonders of which the ancient 
 star-gazers never dreamed. He made the dim and 
 shadowy moon a reality to us, mapped it out, showed 
 us, here its mountains, there its craters." 
 
 20 
 
STORY OF THE MOON 
 
 *^Who was this first of selenograpliers ? ' ^ 
 
 ^'He was the son of John William Draper, a scien- 
 tist of eminence. Henry Draper was born in 1837, in 
 Prince Edward County, Virginia. He removed in 
 his youth to New York, where he remained the rest of 
 his life. For many years he was professor of various 
 sciences in New Y^ork University; but all his spare 
 time was given to astronomical studies, especially the 
 development of lunar photography. He died in 1882. 
 
 ' ' The great work initiated by Draper has not been 
 neglected by his countrymen,'' explained the Story- 
 teller. '^It is a credit to one of the newest of nations 
 that it has achieved so much for the oldest of sciences. 
 Another celestial photographer is Lewis Morris Euth- 
 erford, who, in 1858, began to devote attention to this 
 science. He had a telescope especially constructed to 
 make a photographic chart of the heavens. Although 
 he never accomiplished this project, his work marks a 
 distinct advance in lunar photography, and his pho- 
 tographs are renowned throughout the astronomical 
 w^orld. Since then, the Lick and Yerkes observatories 
 have developed largely this particular field of work. 
 
 ^* Another eminent American astronomer is George 
 William Hill, who has made notable contributions to 
 our knowledge of the moon, but his work, being con- 
 cerned with the mathematical side of the subject, has 
 made little popular appeal. But it is recognized 
 amongst astronomers; indeed, a gold medal was be- 
 stowed on him by the London Royal Astronomical So- 
 ciety. It is an American, Professor Simon Newcomb, 
 who has discovered much that we know about the mo- 
 tion of the moon. His international reputation may be 
 gauged by his election to the French Legion of Honor, 
 being the first American since Franklin to receive the 
 distinction, as well as to various scientific societies 
 all over the world. Professor E. H. Brown has also 
 
 21 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 made valuable contributions to this particular branch 
 of the subjecf 
 
 As the Story-teller continued his narrative, the 
 moon rose higher and higher. Its silvery light gleamed 
 on the window panes. 
 
 ^ ' Have we found out all there is to be known about 
 the moonf asked a listener. 
 
 *^Our human curiosity is still unsatisfied!" ex- 
 claimed the selenographer. **We want to know what 
 kind of life once existed on the moon ; what exists there 
 to-day; what those ^canals' really mean; what rela- 
 tion it has to the earth. And American scientists are 
 giving their lives to reveal these secrets. Perhaps, at 
 some remote time, Mother Earth, with her tidal dis- 
 turbances, had something to do with the moon. For 
 earth and moon have ever influenced one another. 
 
 *^We know the moon rules the tides. We are told 
 that the moon was once quite near the earth, and that 
 the tides have driven it farther and farther away. It 
 is still receding from us, and in the distant future — 
 perhaps some millions of years — ^it will get so far that 
 our whole life will be changed. ' ' 
 
 22 
 
THE STORY OF THE GEOLOGIST AND 
 HIS JOURNEYS ON THE EARTH 
 
 THE fourth night of the Story-tellers' carnival 
 found them seated about the great table. At the 
 head, in the place of honor, stood a bald-headed 
 man, with a rather flint-like face. Beside him was a 
 huge revolving globe. 
 
 ^ ^ To-night, * ' he said, curtly, ^^we are going to stay 
 right here on the earth. We have been soaring in 
 the heavens long enough. Now let us settle down on 
 this wonderful old earth of ours. Here we were born, 
 here we must live our little lives, and here we shall 
 die. However adventurous we may be, we have not 
 yet been able to travel beyond it. We cannot yet com- 
 municate with other worlds. Nay, the most advanced 
 science cannot tell us whether they are inhabited at 
 all, much less whether by beings similar to ourselves. 
 We may be like ants on our ant-hill, as a learned as- 
 tronomer has said, but still to the ant his ant-hill is 
 the most important thing in the world. ' ' 
 
 He patted the big globe lovingly with his rough 
 hand. 
 
 ^^We have heard the wonderful stories about the 
 sun and moon and stars," he said, turning toward the 
 astronomer, ^^ until we wonder for a moment how men 
 can concern themselves with the trivialities of daily 
 life; and then we come down from the clouds with a 
 rush and realize that our chief concern after all is 
 with dear old Mother Earth. 
 
 **I am a geologist,'' he explained. **I love every 
 rock on this magnificent earth. They tell me stories 
 3 23 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 more wonderful than the magic wands of the Fairy 
 Tales. And one of the secrets that the rocks have 
 whispered to me, I am going to tell yon now. It is 
 this: How old is Mother Earth! One of onr eminent 
 American scientists, Professor William Morris Davis, 
 of Harvard, computes that it is 60,000,000 years old, 
 basing his calculation on the ascertained time required 
 for certain geological processes. Professor Thomas 
 Gr. Chamberlin, of Chicago, goes as high as 400,000,000 
 years, and he is followed by many famous geologists. 
 M. Rosier, the French scientist, places the figure as 
 high as a billion.'' 
 
 The Story-tellers listened with rapt attention as 
 the geologist spoke. 
 
 ^'So our good old Mother Earth is no young, un- 
 sophisticated thing," he ventured, facetiously. *^She 
 is old enough to know what she is about. Now, what 
 is her weight? It has been calculated at about 6,100,- 
 000,000,000 tons. Suppose we wished, like Archimedes, 
 to move this enormous mass. We might build a 
 10,000 horse-power engine and place it on Mars. Then 
 we must keep it working for 70 billion years. At the 
 end of that time, we should feel somewhat discour- 
 aged, for the earth would have budged just one foot." 
 
 The listeners laughed at the absurd but illuminat- 
 ing idea. 
 
 ^^And, now," remarked the geologist, *^how many 
 of us are there in the family of Mother Earth? Ac- 
 cording to the last estimate she had over a billion and 
 a half children still living. This gives twenty-nine 
 persons to the square mile. It has been estimated that at 
 the death of the Emperor Augustus, nineteen hundred 
 years ago, there were only 54,000,000 persons living 
 in the world — the present population of Japan alone. 
 You can estimate from this what the population of the 
 earth may be a thousand years from now. Only about 
 
 24 
 
STORY OF THE EARTH 
 
 one-twentieth part of the world's inhabitants live in 
 large towns and cities ; nineteen-twentieths live in the 
 hundreds of thousands of scattered villages." 
 
 ^^What is inside of the earth!" asked an inquisi- 
 tive woman at the further end of the table. 
 
 ^^That is something for you to find out," replied 
 the geologist, tauntingly. ^' There are many in- 
 genious theories. One is that the earth is hollow and 
 contains another world, embracing all the features 
 familiar to us here. It is suggested that the entrances 
 of this underworld are at the north and south poles, 
 and that the Aurora Borealis is the reflection of a sub- 
 terranean prairie on fire, while the dust encountered 
 in the Arctic regions flies from subterranean vol- 
 canoes." 
 
 '^Do you really believe it?" asked the woman in- 
 credulously. 
 
 ^'Well," answered the geologist, *^I am neither 
 prepared to affirm nor deny it. One thing is certain — 
 the deeper one goes, the hotter it gets. So much has 
 been proved in mining. The temperature rises about 
 one degree for every sixty feet of depth. Of course, 
 it does not follow that this rate of increase continues 
 indefinitely. But it is generally agreed that the cen- 
 ter of the earth has a temperature of from 3,300 to 
 700,000 degrees. It is usually assumed, on account of 
 the enormous heat, that the interior of the earth con- 
 sists of some kind of fluid. However, many eminent 
 scientists contend otherwise, maintaining that it is as 
 solid as glass, or even steel. 
 
 **My friend, Camille Flammarion, the famous 
 French savant, recently suggested a plan for sinking 
 a shaft to the earth's center, with the help of the 
 standing armies of Europe. We should think they 
 would rather go to war. A spiral railway has also 
 been suggested, running on a sharp grade, with a 
 
 25 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 shaft a thousand feet in diameter. The project of a 
 submarine tunnel between America and Europe seems 
 quite feasible in comparison; especially when we con- 
 sider it is estimated that to sink a shaft only twelve 
 miles would cost $25,000,000; the distance to the 
 earth's center is 4,000 miles." 
 
 ''Could the interior heat of the earth be utilized!" 
 inquired the engineer who sat near the door. 
 
 ''It has been. suggested that it might be converted 
 into electricity," replied the geologist. "At a depth of 
 8,000 feet, boiling water is found; and at greater 
 depths the hardest substances would melt. But we are 
 warned that, should we draw off this heat by artificial 
 means, we should accelerate the cooling of the earth 
 and so hasten its dissolution ; that it would cave in and 
 consume us, with all our genius. 
 
 "We like to think of the stability of our planet 
 home," remarked the Story-teller, "but scientists re- 
 mind us that the earth has no fewer than twelve dis- 
 tinct movements. More than this, it wabbles occa- 
 sionally. One result of this wabbling is that the poles 
 are never in exactly the same spot for any very long 
 time. The North Pole shifts its position, sometimes 
 by a yard in a month, sometimes more. By the end 
 of six months, it has described an irregular semi- 
 circle. If Peary went back to the pole now, he would 
 probably have to shift his flag a few feet, if he wanted 
 it to stand on the exact position of the North Pole." 
 
 "What would happen, if the earth were to stop 
 moving suddenly?" 
 
 "I fear it would be a big jolt," said the geologist. 
 "It would be so big as to be beyond imagination. Cer- 
 tainly, everything on the surface of the globe would 
 be hurled into space. Not only that, but a heat would 
 be generated sufficient to turn the ocean into steam, 
 and to kill all life instantaneously." 
 
 26 
 
STORY OF THE EARTH 
 
 He turned to the globe and slowly revolved it on 
 its axis. 
 
 ^^ Beloved old Mother Earth is quite a substantial 
 body/^ he said, patting it gently. ^^The diameter of 
 the earth is nearly 8,000 miles; the circumference 
 nearly 25,000 miles. There are 52,000,000 square miles 
 of land, and 145,000,000 of water. It has remained for 
 American genius and courage to reveal many of her 
 secrets. It was the daring American explorer, Ad- 
 miral Eobert E. Peary, who discovered the North Pole 
 on the 6th of April, 1909, and the apex of the earth. It 
 was a Norwegian explorer, Koald Amundsen, who first 
 reached the South Pole, on the 14th of December, 1911. 
 A glance at the globe seems to show that the whole 
 earth has been traversed and parceled out. But there 
 is still enough to test human courage. It is roughly 
 estimated that about 7,000,000 square miles, nearly one- 
 seventh of the total land surface of the earth, is still 
 terra incognita — unknown ground. 
 
 *^What of the future? My good friends, our earth 
 is only in its prime. The great internal convulsions 
 and earthquakes and volcanoes, to which it is subject, 
 prove it to be still full of vigorous life. When these 
 phenomena cease to appear, we are warned that it v/ill 
 be the beginning of the end. There are no such catas- 
 trophes on the dead moon. The scientists give us the 
 comforting assurance that our planet has yet two and 
 a half billion years of life. How its inhabitants, at 
 their present rate of increase, will fare, we cannot 
 even conjecture. But may it all be fair with them; 
 may they, like us, enjoy the beauties and wonders of 
 this grand old world; and may they complete the 
 glorious brotherhood which we have only begun. ' ' 
 
 27 
 
THE STORY OF THE STATESMAN AXD 
 THE COUNTRY IX WHICH WE LIVE 
 
 THE familiar notes of a song echoed from behind 
 the closed doors. Londer and londer it rose, 
 until the melody, sweet and clear, rang ont on 
 the evening air: 
 
 "My country, 'tis of thee, 
 Sweet land of Liberty, 
 
 Of thee I sing; 
 Land where my fathers died, 
 Land of the Pilgrims' pride, 
 From every mountain-side 
 Let Freedom ring." 
 
 The library door swnng open, and a brilliant 
 scene lay before the vision. The room was literally 
 bnried in flowers. Over the arch hung an American 
 flag. The walls were draped with the national 
 colors — red, white and blue. 
 
 Standing in the center of an enthusiastic group 
 was an elderly gentleman of distinguished appear- 
 ance. His silk hat lay near-by on the reading table. 
 As he began to speak there was an intense depth of 
 emotion in his voice. 
 
 ^^I have been deeply interested,'' he said, ^4n the 
 wonder stories which my friends have related. They 
 have told us about the miracles of the heavens, which 
 have existed ages before mankind was created. I will 
 tell you an equally wonderful story about a miracle 
 which has existed but little more than a century and 
 which did not begin until nearly eighteen hundred 
 years after Christ appeared on earth. 
 
 28 
 
STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 
 
 ^^My story,'' he said, impressively, ^4s about our 
 wonderful republic — the world's first example of na- 
 tional self-government. Did you know that the United 
 States began the twentieth century as the largest re- 
 public in the world, in area, population, and wealth? 
 Do you know that within the states of our Union you 
 could place sixty Englands; that it would hold one 
 hundred Scotlands? Do you realize that this vast 
 territory of states would cover nineteen Japans, and 
 twelve Germanys ; that France could be lost in one of 
 its states? If you do, then you will agree with me 
 when I say that its development is the miracle of 
 modern civilization." 
 
 •'These graphic comparisons, of course, are based 
 on the area of the United States with their 3,616,484 
 square miles, and do not include the colonial posses- 
 sions of any of the countries?" interrupted a 
 geographer. 
 
 ''That is quite true," replied the speaker. "I 
 speak only of our brotherhood of forty-eight states 
 and do not include the colonies of our sister nations. 
 I refer only to them as a homogeneous people." 
 
 It may be well to state here that the distinguished 
 personage who was telling this story was a states- 
 man whose countenance is familiar to every American. 
 
 "It is the marvelous and consistent westward 
 march of this republic," resumed the statesman, "that 
 has forced the world's admiration. It has never be- 
 fore witnessed such a rapid spread of civilization as 
 that which has taken place in the New World. When 
 our first National Congress assembled in New York, 
 the center of population was said to be in the mid- 
 dle of Chesapeake Bay, about twenty-three miles from 
 Baltimore. About 110 years later, it had traveled 
 westward into the heart of Indiana, a distance of 523 
 miles ! When Washington became our first President, 
 
 29 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 lie was the chief executive over a region containing 
 little more than 800,000 square miles of land, many 
 small communities, and vast numbers of wild beasts 
 and aborigines. President Wilson, our twenty-eighth 
 president, presides over a dominion of wealth and 
 culture, cities and states, five times greater in area 
 than did the Father of our country. Down in the 
 great Southwest is a single commonwealth, Texas, 
 which could easily hold the six central American Re- 
 publics and still have room for the countries of Den- 
 mark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, and the 
 German principalities of Baden and Brunswick. Re- 
 member, this is only one of the forty-eight political 
 divisions of our nation. 
 
 *^Let us look at our country in another way," sug- 
 gested the Story-teller. ^'Suppose, for sake of illus- 
 tration, that another great flood inundated the world. 
 Suppose that only our own country should be saved 
 as a modern Mount Ararat of the earth. This, then, 
 would be the refuge of all the world's people, irrespec- 
 tive of color or race, language, sex, or age. I must 
 confess that we all would be slightly crowded, but still 
 there is area enough to give each individual more than 
 an acre on which to rehabilitate his fortunes. If our 
 Chinese and Russian friends desired a section of their 
 own, they could be accommodated within the area of 
 the thirteen original states which formed the begin- 
 ning of this nation. 
 
 **I have said that our republic is the richest in the 
 world," continued the statesman. **It has risen from 
 poverty. The world is now paying tribute to us for 
 the mighty Panama Canal, constructed by American 
 muscle and genius, and by $375,000,000 of American 
 wealth. But did you know that only a few decades 
 ago our government had to borrow from the states of 
 Maryland and Virginia the money with which to meet 
 
 30 
 
STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 
 
 the payroll of the builders of our National Capitol? 
 We have risen from a nation which produced hardly 
 enough supplies to feed its own people to a mighty 
 trading nation which now sends abroad annually pro- 
 ducts whose value exceeds that of any other nation. 
 Though our republic occupies only a twentieth part of 
 the civilized land area of the earth, it produces four- 
 fifths of its corn, two-thirds of its cotton, more than a 
 half of its petroleum ; it produces half of its steel, one- 
 third of its coal, one-third of its manufactured goods, 
 one-fourth of its gold, and one-fifth of its wheat. 
 
 *^The rise of the American nation is the wonder of 
 wonder stories. Within the span of the lives of people 
 still living, it has come forward like a young knight in 
 the tournament of nations. To-day, it is served by a 
 third of the world's railway systems, as well as by a 
 third of its telegraph wires. It distributes a third of 
 its mail matter, wields a third of its banking power, 
 and publishes more than a half of its periodicals. 
 
 * ^ The wealth of our nation is founded on its strate- 
 gic position,'' declared the speaker. *' Ships of ail 
 nations seek the seaports situated on our great coast- 
 line. If this coast-line were straightened out, it would 
 reach nearly half way around the earth. Our navi- 
 gable rivers, some 300 in number, if drawn out into 
 one continuous stream, would form a girdle around 
 the earth at the equator which would overlap itself by 
 at least a thousand miles. And then our mountains, 
 our glorious rocky barriers, what unsurpassed wealth 
 is stored in their bosoms ! There are only eight states 
 in our Union whose citizens would have to go out of 
 their boundaries to find an altitude of at least 1,000 
 feet above sea-level. There are thirty-three states and 
 territories wherein mountain crests loom more than a 
 half a mile above the sea. ' ' 
 
 ^^The rise of the American cities is a story of ro- 
 
 31 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 mance," continued the statesman. ^'Washington was 
 virtually the President of a vast farm. When he be- 
 came our first Chief Executive, there were forty 
 Americans living in rural districts to every one resid- 
 ing within cities of over 8,000 population. In our day, 
 the total population is about equally divided between 
 the urban and the rural districts. To-day more than 
 50,000 cities, towns, villages and hamlets make up the 
 American nation. 
 
 ^'I Y\^ill not tell you about the operation of the 
 government under which we live, for I understand that 
 you are soon to listen to a Congressman," exclaimed 
 the Story-teller. ^^But I would impress you with the 
 fact that the real greatness of our country lies neither 
 in its lands or riches. It lies in its citizenship and the 
 character and wisdom of the men whom we choose to 
 administer our laws. This nation must rise or fall on 
 the conduct and character of its men and women. We 
 must remember always that we stand before the world 
 as a great democracy ; we proclaim liberty and justice. 
 In our hearts must ever ring the immortal words of 
 Lincoln : ' It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the 
 great task remaining before us , . . that this 
 nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ; 
 and that government of the people, by the people, for 
 the people, shall not perish from the earth. ' ' ' 
 
 The statesman hesitated a moment. Then, out- 
 stretching his arms, he spoke fervidly. 
 
 *^My beloved fellow- Americans," he said, **my 
 day is nearly done. I belong to the passing genera- 
 tion. The republic which I have loved and served is 
 now in your hands. I appeal to you to hold the trust 
 sacred. May 3^ou guide this American Nation into the 
 new epoch when love and justice shall rule the world. 
 May the All-wise Providence give you wisdom." 
 
 32 
 
THE STORY OF THE CONGRESSMAN 
 AND GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE 
 
 THE messenger from the Government hurried 
 into the Story-tellers' Clnb. He bore a message 
 in an official envelope. The Librarian tore it 
 open and read its contents. 
 
 *^Good news!'' he exclaimed, turning to those who 
 had gathered about him. ^'The Government official 
 is on his way. He will be with us in a few minutes." 
 
 The arrival of the guest of the evening was attended 
 with much ceremony. He extended greetings from 
 the President and then proceeded to relate his story. 
 
 ^^My narrative," he said, ^'is the romance of the 
 business of government. It is a gigantic organization — 
 a huge machine to operate, which requires genius 
 equal to that of the greatest scientists. To operate 
 this business machinery requires more than a half 
 million Americans, who spend in a thousand ways 
 the huge sum of more than a billion dollars each year. 
 The balance of the total sum is distributed dowm 
 through the state, the county, and the city and town 
 governments in such a way as to bring the greatest 
 good to the greatest number. 
 
 *^What do you think every American pays on the 
 average for the comfort, convenience, and security 
 given him under America's modern civilization?" 
 
 He had gained the rapt attention of his auditors 
 from the beginning. 
 
 *^The insignificant sum of twenty-eight dollars a 
 year!" he announced. *^It sounds ridiculously small — 
 
 33 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 and yet the Americans together pay annually a sum 
 larger than that at which the United Kingdom values 
 her exported merchandise for twelve months. This vast 
 sum is gathered and distributed through a myriad 
 channels, the greatest of which is the national govern- 
 ment. Unlike the older governments, which are largely 
 mere collectors of taxes and wagers of war, our mod- 
 ern government aids its people in the creation of 
 wealth and the progress of culture. Its operations 
 range through a thousand phases; it conducts one of 
 the greatest corporations on earth — the post-office; 
 it is a patron of art. It is a builder of almost every- 
 thing, from a submarine boat, which, with its human 
 freight, crawls along the bottom of the sea, to weigh- 
 ing machines which register the millionth part of the 
 grain ; from flying kites to building mighty canals ; 
 from making maps of the seas, the mountains, or the 
 forests to coining money." 
 
 The government official raised his forefinger in 
 emphasis. 
 
 * ^ Fellow-citizens, " he declared, '^the world has 
 never witnessed such a Titanic business corporation 
 as the United States Government. No one mortal has 
 ever been invested with such tremendous power and 
 responsibility as is our President. Surrounding him 
 are the Cabinet members — the secretaries of State, of 
 the Treasury, of War, of the Interior, of the Navy, of 
 Agriculture, of Commerce, of Labor, and the Post- 
 master-General and the Attorney-General. In addition 
 to these are the Vice-President and the members of the 
 Senate and the House of Eepresentatives. Behind 
 these are the governors and lieutenant-governors and 
 legislatures of the forty-eight states and three terri- 
 tories. The state legislatures represent the towns in 
 each commonwealth. Each city, town, village and 
 borough has its own local government. 
 
 34 
 
STORY OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 ^^Let us see what this mighty host is doing in times 
 of peace,'' said the Government official. *^ First there 
 is the Department of State, whose Secretary is a po- 
 tential President of the nation — providing both the 
 President and Vice-President die during their terms 
 of administration. This great department maintains 
 archives that contain secret documents, which, if 
 spread for public gaze, would precipitate the whole 
 civilized world into turmoil and war. It conducts a 
 bureau of information for the manufacturer and the 
 merchant, which requires a corps of agents in all the 
 world's centers of industry to gather the trade needs 
 of each country. 
 
 ^^Then there is the Treasury Department, which 
 finances the nation. Among its manifold duties is 
 that of the money-maker; it is the storehouse of all 
 its reserve golden wealth. There was, in the year 
 Woodrow Wilson was elected to the presidency, enough 
 cash in the United States Treasury to equal the value 
 of merchandise which both France and Eussia ex- 
 ported to all parts of the world in the same year. Do 
 you realize what this department means to every 
 American! Consider what would happen if it closed 
 the doors of its mints and its treasuries! It would 
 disrupt and throw the whole commercial world into 
 panic. 
 
 *^We must visit the Department of War. Contrary 
 to its name, it is not wholly created as a destructive 
 force; it is also constructive in the highest sense of 
 the word. In times of peace, its highly trained officers 
 and men are devoting their time and ingenuity in a 
 large part to aiding the people. Its labors range from 
 improving the rivers and harbors of the nation to 
 digging the mighty Panama Canal, feeding the Indians 
 of Alaska and elsewhere, or rescuing citizens from 
 burning cities or flooded districts. 
 
 35 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 '^The Department of Justice fulfills the traditions 
 of its name. It has its hand in nearly all public and 
 sometimes private affairs. It guards the public 
 against fraudulent practices by corporations, banks, 
 and individuals. It extends its hand into the prisons 
 of the country to see that each prisoner receives 
 proper treatment consistent with the penal laws of 
 the nation. 
 
 ^ ^ The largest department of the Government is the 
 Post-office. It conducts one-third of the world's pos- 
 tal business, delivering its mail matter over more miles 
 than any other two nations combined. It has more 
 post-offices throughout the country than there were 
 dwellings in the two states of Wyoming and Nevada, 
 in 1910. Every dwelling within the thickly populated 
 District of Columbia could be replaced with the post- 
 offices of the United States. 
 
 ^^ There is something picturesque about the title 
 Navy Department. It conjures pictures of mighty 
 warships — there are more than three hundred belong- 
 ing to the United States Navy — and flashing guns. 
 But the Navy Department, like its brother department 
 of war, is not devoted to war alone. Its peculiar duties 
 range from setting the electric clocks of the nation each 
 noon to testing mariners' compasses and suggesting 
 new sea-routes. It warns sailors of the location of dan- 
 gerous derelicts and icebergs, the location of coal and 
 food supply depots, and even tells the trading skipper 
 where he is likely to find a suitable cargo for profit. 
 
 *^The duties of the Department of the Interior are 
 varied and unique. They range from making the lot 
 of the Indian much easier to granting patents for new 
 inventions, granting pensions and bounties, and re- 
 claiming the arid wastes of the nation. They include 
 selling land to homesteaders, clothing naked hillsides 
 with new forests, and supervising the education of 
 
 36 
 
STORY OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 the nation, as well as examining the quality of coal 
 and its most economical use in the home or in industry. 
 
 ' ^ Then there are the Departments of Commerce and 
 Labor, which show the American merchant or manu- 
 facturer where he can sell his goods to the best ad- 
 vantage abroad, and where he can buy them best and 
 cheapest. This information they impart partially 
 through the government's only daily journal, sent 
 broadcast to the miners, shippers, transportation, 
 manufacturing, fishery, and labor interests. Another 
 of the duties is to test the weights and measures of 
 the nation, and to establish standards by which an inch 
 can be divided into millionth parts, or by which ma- 
 chines will register a strain of ten million pounds. 
 
 ^^But it is in the Department of Agriculture that 
 perhaps the average American is most greatly in- 
 terested. Here everything that comes within the 
 scope of agricultural and animal industry is digested 
 and distributed throughout the nation. One bureau 
 of the department keeps benevolent watch over the 
 mariner by warning him of approaching storms and 
 detaining him in port until the storm has passed ; an- 
 other grows small fish, called ^fry,' with which to re- 
 stock the rivers and lakes of the country; another 
 sends, among other things, small microbes to the 
 farmer with which to inoculate the soil and thus in- 
 crease its fertility; another will send silk-worm eggs 
 to the prospective silk raiser, or will supply the agri- 
 culturist with predaceous beetles to eat the pestiferous 
 bugs ; another will test your soil and tell you what is 
 the best crop to grow thereon; and still another will 
 supply you with little bottles of antitoxin to cure your 
 pet animal of disease. 
 
 *^This will give you some idea of what your govern- 
 ment is doing for you every day at a cost of less than 
 eight cents a day to each individual. ' ' 
 
 37 
 
THE STORY OF THE RAILROAD— THE 
 FORERUNNER OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 SITTING- near one of the library windows, a digni- 
 fied gentleman had been attentively listening to 
 every word spoken by the Story-tellers. He had 
 frequently given approval by nodding his head. Ris- 
 ing, he leaned heavily against the table. 
 
 ^^ Never before in my life,'' he began impressively, 
 '*have I so fully realized the magnitude and the 
 beauty of the marvelous world in which we live and 
 work. In these interesting stories I have witnessed 
 the creation of the earth, the sun, the moon, and the 
 stars and heard of the conquest of the seas. But it 
 remains for my story to prove the miracle that makes 
 this great nation possible — the story of the rail- 
 roads." 
 
 The speaker stood erect with his hands clasped be- 
 hind him. 
 
 ^*The story of the railroads,'' he said, ^4s a story 
 of romance, romance founded on hard, cold fact. It 
 is the story of that modern miracle which, begun about 
 three generations ago, is to-day that annihilator of 
 space to which Macaulay no doubt referred. You will 
 recall that he said, * Of all inventions, the alphabet and 
 printing-press excepted, those inventions which 
 abridge distances have done most for the civilization 
 of the species.' Every American is aware that the 
 railroad does * abridge distances,' as he travels about 
 
 38 
 
STORY OF THE RAILROAD 
 
 the country in luxuriously appointed railroad trains 
 at the rate of sixty, seventy, or even ninety miles an 
 hour. 
 
 ^*I do not believe that the average American fully 
 appreciates what a mighty railroad system he has in 
 this country,'* continued the railroad magnate. 
 ** While the Story-teller was telling us about the vast 
 distances of the planets, I, unconsciously perhaps, be- 
 gan comparing them with our modern Ajnerican rail- 
 roads, and here is what I found. If all the main track 
 railways in the United States in 1910 were welded into 
 one continuous system, it would reach to and extend 
 a distance of 100,000 miles beyond the moon, which, 
 the selenographer told us, is some quarter of a million 
 miles away from our earth. Now let me present this 
 in a way that is probably more comprehensible to the 
 average person. If this main track railway system 
 were laid around the earth at the equator, it would 
 form nine tracks of equal length, over which nine of 
 the fastest engines, traveling at the topmost speed 
 ever attained (115 miles an hour) would complete the 
 circuit in about nine days. 
 
 *^0f course,'* continued the speaker, '*you realize 
 that the rails of a railroad are but a single item in its 
 equipment. Do you realize what mighty forests have 
 been cut down to supply the ties on which the rails 
 rest? If it were necessary to transport all these ties 
 to Europe at any time — there are about 900,000,000 of 
 them — ^it would require the services of the entire 
 United States merchant marine, sailing and steam ves- 
 sels included, and each ship would carry a cargo con- 
 sisting of 34,000 each — a respectable sized cargo, I 
 might add. And then the spikes which secure the 
 rails to the ties — ^there were enough in 1910 to supply 
 each living individual on earth with two apiece." 
 
 These startling facts presented so graphically and 
 
 39 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 by comparisons which they easily understood, amazed 
 the listeners. One asked: 
 
 ^^How many cars are there — I mean passenger and 
 freight cars?'' 
 
 The railroad man referred to some notes upon the 
 table. 
 
 ^'I find," he answered, ^'that there are enough to 
 give one to every inhabitant living in Norway; or 
 enough to form a grand pageant on the railway to the 
 moon which I mentioned a moment ago, allowing ten 
 cars to every mile of track. Of course this repre- 
 sents all kinds of cars. There are some cars which 
 we would not care to give away, as you will under- 
 stand when I say that modern passenger coaches cost 
 from $8,000 to $16,000 each, and that the luxurious 
 Pullmans sometimes cost as much as $30,000 apiece." 
 
 ^'Why, that is more than I charge for a model 
 suburban home!" exclaimed the architect. 
 
 The railroad magnate smiled, and then continued : 
 
 '^I think that from the few foregoing statistics you 
 will understand the magnitude of the American rail- 
 road. If not, I will state that it comprises one-third 
 of the world's entire railways, requires nearly two 
 million persons to operate it, carried passengers equal- 
 ing in number nearly a half of the entire population of 
 the earth in 1910, and in the same year paid dividends 
 which exceeded by more than $100,000,000 the amount 
 of money which the people of Switzerland had in their 
 communal and private banks." 
 
 The Story-tellers glanced at each other in astonish- 
 ment as these amazing facts were sketched with quick- 
 fire rapidity. The speaker then began on another 
 phase of the American railroads, saying: 
 
 *^A11 these facts are the more marvelous when we 
 consider that the railroad had its birth but about three 
 generations ago, beginning historically with the pio- 
 
 40 
 
STORY OF THE RAILROAD 
 
 neer steam railway stretching fifteen miles westward 
 from Baltimore, and in the same year that Webster 
 first published his dictionary (1828). There were other 
 railroads in the United States at that time, notably 
 the one in Massachusetts which, operated by horse- 
 power, drew granite from the quarries at Quincy to 
 the Neponset River. 
 
 *^In the light of present-day achievements, it is 
 curious to learn that the railroad was considered in 
 its beginning as something similar to a circus freak, 
 that few men were so venturesome as to admit that 
 it ever could successfully compete with canals, the 
 favorite of that day, for freighting purposes. It was 
 the state engineer of Virginia who solemnly declared 
 *that a rate of speed of more than six miles an hour 
 would exceed the bounds of prudence, though some 
 sanguinary advocates of railways extend this limit to 
 nine miles an hour!' Considering the appearance of 
 a railroad train of those days, we can hardly criticize 
 the Virginian's pessimism. Some among you prob- 
 ably remember your fathers' descriptions of the 
 early trains, appearing like a series of stage-coaches 
 mounted on grooved wheels and drawn by what re- 
 sembled the modern farmer's wood-cutting engine, 
 also mounted on wheels and shooting out of its blun- 
 derbuss smoke-stack a terrifying stream of flame and 
 wood ashes. 
 
 *^I doubt," said the railroad man, ^^if the average 
 American traveler, seated within an electrically 
 lighted car and virtually leaping across the continent 
 at lightning speed, ever considers what his grand- 
 parents had to put up with in the way of transpor- 
 tation before the birth of the railroad ; or that, before 
 the nineteenth century, mankind had to depend upon 
 their own feet, or the back of a horse, or, in some more 
 favored cases, upon a wheeled vehicle, to traverse the 
 
 41 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 earth. "When I say that when Napoleon hurried his 
 armies over the Alps just before the dawn of the 
 nineteenth century, he used about the same means of 
 transportation and did not exceed the speed made by 
 his illustrious predecessor, Caesar, over the same route 
 with his Roman army in the days preceding Christ's 
 appearance on earth, you will understand what the 
 railroad means to modem civilization. 
 
 **The benefits accruing to the Americans from their 
 railroads are too numerous and varied to enumerate. 
 When we reduce the time of travel between cities we 
 virtually are reducing the distance. At the begin- 
 ning of the American Revolution, it required about 
 thirteen days of laborious and perilous travel to go 
 from New York to Boston. In this time the modern 
 traveler could make the round trip between New York 
 and San Francisco and still have a week left over in 
 which to view either of the great cities. Then it re- 
 quired about thirty days to travel from Baltimore to 
 New Orleans ; to-day it is a journey of as many hours. 
 From Massachusetts to North Carolina the modern 
 train schedule is ^twenty hours,' instead of 'days.' " 
 
 The speaker's tones now became deliberate and 
 incisive, as he continued: 
 
 *' Nowhere on earth has the miracle of the railroad 
 been felt more than in the United States. It required 
 about two and a half centuries for American civiliza- 
 tion to extend inland from the Atlantic to the banks 
 of the Missouri River, virtually traversing the dis- 
 tance afoot, or at best, on horseback. But with the 
 aid of the railroad, after it had come into general use, 
 it swept on over the Missouri and within a few decades 
 had converted the forbidding wilderness to the west- 
 ward into a domain of prodigious wealth and culture, 
 carrying colonization to the shores of the Pacific. ' ' 
 
 42 
 
THE STORY OF THE EMPIRE BUILDERS 
 WHO AWAKENED A CONTINENT 
 
 HE looked strong enough to hold the earth on his 
 shoulders. Six feet tall, with a massive head 
 and a deep, gruff voice, his great chest expanded 
 as he spoke. 
 
 *^They call me an * empire-builder,' " he said. **I 
 claim no such distinction. I am a promoter, a pro- 
 moter of great schemes that sound like dreams but 
 suddenly burst into realities that astound the world. 
 
 * ^ My story, ' ' he continued, ^ ' is the tale of the Great 
 West. In it the forests become great cities ; the waste 
 lands pour out abundant riches; the desolate plains 
 become peopled by the multitudes. Out of a vast 
 Western wilderness, scorned by the greatest states- 
 men of the day, there has been wrought one of the 
 greatest of modern miracles. Darkest Africa held no 
 more forbidding dominion than lay beyond the banks 
 of the Missouri River in these United States a gen- 
 eration ago. It took bold spirits to dare to brave the 
 storms of ridicule when it was first suggested that the 
 rivers and mountains be spanned by steel rails. In 
 the year 1845, a year before the boundary between 
 the United States and British Columbia was settled, 
 a man named Asa Whitney petitioned Congress in 
 behalf of a steam road, closing his address with the 
 prophetic words : * You will see that it will change the 
 whole world.' 
 
 **This challenge aroused the ridicule of the states- 
 men. Senator Dickerson, from New Jersey, had in 
 
 43 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 a previous session caused the tabling of a bill which 
 favored making Oregon a state. ^It is absurd/ he 
 said. ^Why, a member of Congress traveling from 
 his home in Oregon to Washington and return, would 
 cover a distance of 9,200 miles, at the rate of thirty 
 miles per day. Allowing him forty-four days for Sun- 
 days, three hundred and fifty days would be consumed, 
 and the member would have fourteen days in Wash- 
 ington before he started home. It would be quicker 
 to come around Cape Horn or by Behring Straits, 
 Baffin Bay, and Davis Strait to the Atlantic, and so 
 to Washington. True, the passage is not yet discov- 
 ered, except upon our maps, but it will be as soon as 
 Oregon is made a state!' 
 
 ^^Do you know,'' ventured the Story-teller, **that 
 no one seemed to believe in the possibilities of the 
 great Western dominion of the United States? Even 
 those men who had penetrated the heart of the wilder- 
 ness had no encouraging words for it. We find the 
 doughty discoverer. Pike, for whom * Pike's Peak' was 
 later named, officially advising the government that 
 the region was incapable of cultivation,' and that per- 
 force Americans must confine themselves to the banks 
 of the Missouri and Mississippi. The Great West by 
 consensus of opinion seemed doomed to exile from 
 civilization. 
 
 *^But in all ages there are a few men with the 
 courage of their convictions. They launched an expe- 
 dition into the unknown region to determine suitable 
 routes for a * transcontinental railroad'! This private 
 exploration began in 1853 under the auspices of Jef- 
 ferson Davis, then the Secretary of War. Ten years 
 later Lincoln dispatched General Grenville M. Dodge 
 to take definite surveys for the Pacific railroad. There 
 were then only twenty-six and one-half miles of rail- 
 road west of the Missouri River. The government 
 
 44 
 
STORY OF THE GREAT WEST 
 
 was paying at the rate of $40 per ton for every hun- 
 dred miles to have supplies carted by wagon train to 
 army posts, and there were scarcely any settlements, 
 excepting those devoted to trapping or mining. 
 
 ^'The bloody battle of Chickamauga and Chatta- 
 nooga appalled the nation with its sanguinary cost in 
 1863. About that time, two bodies of workmen, one 
 in San Francisco and the other at Omaha on the Mis- 
 souri River, broke earth and began the great task of 
 laying the first transcontinental railroad through the 
 wilderness. The public was skeptical of success. The 
 financiers of the work were called foolhardy, if not 
 worse. Even the workmen on the western end of the 
 road had so little faith in the project that they de- 
 manded their day's pay before they would work. 
 
 *^ These discouragements were increased by the 
 awful truth that every man employed upon the work 
 was in danger of his life, day and night. The Indians 
 did not take kindly to the idea and did their best to 
 kill off the workmen and surveyors. A constant guard 
 of soldiers was required. The region for the most 
 part was destitute of timber or fuel, and these had to 
 be freighted by steamboat and wagon train. It was 
 a prodigious undertaking, putting American courage 
 to the test, as it never had been before. 
 
 *^Less than six years after the epochal work had 
 begun the miracle had been accomplished — the Great 
 Ajnerican Desert had been spanned. The East was 
 bound to the West in a union which was to yield vast 
 wealth and power to both. The scoffers ceased to 
 scoif, and the whole nation arose in jubilee. Some of 
 the larger cities devoted the historic day — May 10, 
 1869 — to a holiday of rejoicing. 
 
 ** There never has been another celebration like it," 
 exclaimed the empire-builder. Out on Promontory 
 Mountain there existed but a single gap in the line — 
 
 45 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 a gap of one hundred feet. Sturdy bodies of work- 
 men stood ready to lay the last rails. The builders 
 of the road, whose indomitable courage had made it 
 possible, gathered to witness the historic occasion. 
 Telegraph wires were connected so that the news of 
 the blows of the sledges could be flashed to all parts 
 of the United States simultaneously. 
 
 ** Three spikes of precious metal were selected to 
 close the connecting link; one was of silver, gold, and 
 iron from Arizona; another of silver from Nevada; 
 and the third of gold from California. Beside the 
 track stood President Stanford, president of the rail- 
 road and governor of California. In his hands he 
 held a silver sledge, ready to deliver the first stroke. 
 The second blow was struck by Vice-President Durant ; 
 succeeding blows were struck by distinguished guests, 
 until finally the spikes were driven home by the chief 
 engineers of the two roads. Two railroad engines, 
 which had been waiting for the welding of the tracks, 
 advanced, and the engineers joined hands with each 
 other as they came together. 
 
 ^^The nation could hardly restrain its joy. In San 
 Francisco the blows of the sledge were repeated by 
 strokes on the city hall bell, and the last blow was a 
 signal for the firing of a cannon from Fort Point. It 
 was a gala day for the Pacific metropolis, which had 
 thus been virtually lifted and placed within a three 
 days^ journey of the Atlantic coast, instead of three 
 months. Omaha was raised from a frontier post to a 
 great half-way point between the East and the West; 
 its citizens gave vent to their joy in monster parades 
 of all its civic organizations, while a hundred guns 
 boomed on Capitol Hill. Chicago held a procession 
 more than four miles in length. New York fired a 
 salute of a hundred guns, while in Philadelphia the 
 historic tones of the bells on Independence Hall rang 
 
 46 
 
STORY OF THE GREAT WEST 
 
 out the glad tidings. It was a great national event, 
 in which all the large cities joined in memorable 
 demonstration. 
 
 **My friends," continued the Story-teller, '*no man 
 at that time had any comprehension of the great 
 empire of wealth which was to arise on sand and 
 wilderness. It was hardly conceived that great cities 
 might spring up along the way. There was one ex- 
 ception: it was Asa Whitney, whose prophecy has 
 come true in the space of a few decades, and *the rail- 
 road has changed the whole world' in many respects. 
 It gave Europe a means to send its goods to the 
 Pacific coast. It opened an avenue for the silks and 
 spices of the Orient to reach the Atlantic states. It 
 served as a pattern for the great transcontinental 
 railroads which now exist across Europe and Asia, 
 and which are being built even through the heart 
 of Africa. 
 
 ^^But the greatest change came when the once 
 despised Great American Desert blossomed into the 
 great granary of modern civilization. Mighty com- 
 monwealths arose as if by magic. It will be remem- 
 bered that, when this territory was bought from 
 France for the sum of $15,000,000 in 1803, the states- 
 men raved for decades about the wicked extravagance. 
 Could they have looked through the curtain of the 
 future, and seen the great cargoes of produce being 
 brought out of this * wilderness,' their rantings would 
 have changed to paeans of joy. From the single state 
 of Nebraska, bordering on the Missouri Kiver, the 
 crop of alfalfa hay alone equaled in value in a single 
 year the amount of money Napoleon received from the 
 United States for the Louisiana Territory. 
 
 **Let us take a hasty tour through these states 
 west of the Missouri River and see what they are 
 doing to repay the price of their birthright. First on 
 
 47 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 the tour is Nebraska. Looking in her tax books, we 
 find that the real and personal property in this com- 
 monwealth is valued at $600,000,000 — and this is based 
 on a one-fifth valuation; in other words, Hhat region 
 of savages and wild beasts,' as Daniel Webster called 
 it, is worth three billion dollars. Next comes Kansas, 
 the treeless plain,' which in a single year produces 
 farm products and live stock valued at nearly 
 $500,000,000. Adjoining is Colorado, once the despair 
 of statesmen, which in the space of a half century has 
 disgorged from her beautiful mountains more than a 
 billion dollars in gold, silver, lead and copper; and 
 still, if all these mines were shut down, the state would 
 be independently rich in her agricultural products. 
 
 *^We will now visit the tier of states along the 
 north. We find Wyoming, seamed with coal veins 
 and saturated with oil, but still standing forth among 
 the Western States as a mammoth producer of agri- 
 cultural products and livestock, the former bringing 
 in a recent year ten million dollars more than the 
 whole Louisiana Territory cost the United States. 
 Utah is a modern garden spot on which flourish great 
 empires of sugar-beets, mammoth communities of bee- 
 hives, sweet scented forests of fruit trees, while out of 
 its bosom pour streams of gold, silver, copper, lead, 
 zinc, and coal, whose total valuation in one year 
 reached nearly twice the purchase price of the whole 
 * wilderness.' Then there is rugged Idaho, which 
 added in a single year nearly $100,000,000 to the wealth 
 of the nation. Along the Canadian border is Montana, 
 which digs from its bosom, and clips from its sheep, 
 each year a fortune valued at more than $75,000,000. 
 
 *^ Bordering the Pacific are three mighty common- 
 wealths. Oregon, whose name was long mentioned in 
 sarcastic terms in the National Congress, is to-day a 
 cornucopia pouring forth its wealth. The value of 
 
 48 
 
STORY OF THE GREAT WEST 
 
 the lumber in its forests is estimated at the colossal 
 figTire of $3,500,000,000. Oregonians tell you that 
 ^half the world comes to us for lumber.' Washington, 
 a still younger state, is able to exhibit an overflowing 
 exchequer. Her tax books show that in a recent 
 year she had a total property valuation of nearly 
 $800,000,000; she, too, is part of that ^rockbound, 
 cheerless and uninviting coast,' which Daniel Webster, 
 in a speech before the United States Senate, declared 
 to be ^without value.' The third and last of these 
 Pacific commonwealths, on our hasty journey, is 
 bounteous California. It would seem unnecessary to 
 recite the wealth of this state. Its taxable property 
 alone is estimated at $2,300,000,000; and it pours out 
 its riches in sums that stagger the imagination. 
 
 *^This is but a cursory glimpse of a part of those 
 commonwealths which lie west of the Missouri," said 
 the empire-builder in closing. ^^This is the dominion 
 which wise men once proclaimed to the world as 
 * worthless.' This is the region that was pronounced 
 from the seats of the mighty as a region of savages 
 and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and 
 whirling winds, of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs. 
 This, my friends, is the modern miracle of empire- 
 building. ' ' 
 
 49 
 
THE STORY OF THE STEAMSHIP AND 
 THE CONQUEST OF THE SEAS 
 
 A WEATHER-BEATEN old fellow in a blue uni- 
 form with gold braid sat in the big chair near 
 the fire. His face was bronzed by the winds, 
 and there was the odor of the salt sea abont him. 
 
 **Let "Qs hear from the steamboat captain!'' 
 shouted several voices. ^ ' Tell us the tale of the seas. '' 
 
 The captain smiled genially. 
 
 **I always like to hear you landlubbers talk,'' he 
 said, **but every word you say makes me prouder 
 than ever of the good old story of the seas. You may 
 talk about your wonders, but the miracle of miracles 
 is the great ocean greyhound. Without it, the na- 
 tions of the world would still be groping in compara- 
 tive ignorance, poverty and peril. With it, the world 
 has been remodeled, reformed and enlightened. To- 
 gether with that other great miracle, the railroad, it 
 has formed a girdle around the earth. It has linked 
 the continents so that man in safety and luxury can 
 circumnavigate the globe to-day in about the same 
 time it required post-riders to bring the news of the 
 Battle of New Orleans to Washington a hundred years 
 ago. It has, as if by magic, converted the great rivers 
 of the world from mere streams of running water into 
 vast throbbing highways of commerce and travel 
 which are building up the wealth of nations and in- 
 dividuals." 
 
 The captain raised his hand in gesticulation. 
 
 ^*If all the ships sailing in the merchant marine of 
 
 50 
 
STORY OF THE STEAMSHIP 
 
 the United States were formed for review/' he said, 
 ^' there would be a grand pageant of more than twen- 
 ty-six thousand vessels. More than half of them would 
 be propelled by steam. This vast fleet of ships would 
 have a combined gross tonnage or capacity of nearly 
 eight million tons. 
 
 ^^The steamship,'' continued the captain, *'has 
 proved the conqueror of the seas. G-reat leviathans, 
 measuring nearly nine hundred feet in length, dash 
 across the oceans at the rate of an express train. A 
 mighty fleet of luxurious floating palaces plies between 
 Europe and America at a. speed so great that a trav- 
 eler can eat a farewell lunch in London on Saturday 
 and dine in New York on the following Thursday. 
 Less than a century ago there was not a steamboat 
 afloat upon the open sea. Measured by the speed- 
 standards of to-day, America was nearly seventy 
 thousand miles away from Europe in the days of 
 Henry Hudson. Or in other words, in the time re- 
 quired by Hudson's Half Moon to sail from Amster- 
 dam to New York, a modern ocean liner could sail a 
 distance of nearly seventy thousand miles, or circle 
 the globe nearly three times. 
 
 **The story of man's early attempts to conquer the 
 seas is more interesting than fiction. He first pad- 
 dled across a stream on a log; later fastened two or 
 more logs together to form a raft; then he hollowed 
 out the log and made a ^dug-out.' Then came canoes 
 made of bark or skins stretched over a framew^ork, 
 and finally ships built by carpenters. The first use 
 of oars as power began in the earliest Egyptian ves- 
 sels, dating back to 1000 B. C. ; they had as many as 
 twenty-two oarsmen on each side of the vessel. Then 
 the Phoenicians added decks to their vessels. The 
 height of shipbuilding seems to have been reached 
 in the reign of Ptolemy Philopator, when tradition 
 
 51 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 tells about a forty-decked vessel, which registered 
 11,320 tons. Then sails were added by the Phoeni- 
 cians, to force the winds to relieve the muscles of the 
 men at the oars. 
 
 ^'In the twelfth century there came an impulse 
 which set the shipping circles agog, and the period of 
 exploration began. It was the discovery and general 
 adoption of the compass by Europeans. It is said, 
 however, that the Chinese were familiar with the in- 
 strument more than two thousand years before Christ. 
 With this wonderful little instrument to guide their 
 ships, the mariners became bolder and ventured out 
 into the mysterious oceans. This resulted in the great 
 discovery of the New World and other great voyages 
 of exploration. Then began the tide of immigration 
 into America. The voyage was one of peril, with 
 death, starvation and sickness always present. It was 
 a voyage which required on the average three months 
 of extreme hardship. 
 
 '^ Sails and oars served mankind well for many 
 centuries, but now his needs demanded a new motive 
 power. There were many weird and crude ideas sug- 
 gested. One was to adapt the treadmill to a boat, 
 worked by either man or beast and attached to paddle- 
 wheels slung over the side of the vessel. These at- 
 tempts to conquer the wind were met with storms of 
 disapproval. The good people declared vehemently 
 that it was sinful and ^ an insult to Divine Providence ' 
 to drive a vessel against mnd and tide. The inven- 
 tor's ideas were met with ridicule. 
 
 '*It remained for the Americans to solve the prob- 
 lem,'' said the sea captain. ^'Four patents were 
 granted to inventors before the nation was two years 
 old. The first of these was to John Fitch, who contrived 
 a crude steam vessel, appearing much like a many- 
 legged spider walking on water. His craft traveled 
 
 52 
 
STORY OF THE STEAMSHIP 
 
 up and down the Delaware River for three months in 
 1793 at the rate of thirty miles in thirteen honrs. 
 Eleven years later, Colonel John Stevens appeared 
 on the Hudson Eiver with a twin-screw steamer which 
 sped across the river at the rate of six miles an hour. 
 Four years later, he startled the world by launching 
 a paddle-wheel steamer and sailing through the open 
 sea from New York to Philadelphia — the first success- 
 ful attempt in the world of a steam driven vessel to 
 ride the boundless ocean. 
 
 ^^It was in 1807 that the event occurred which was 
 destined to point the way to the revolution of the 
 world's commerce as well as the world's navies. It 
 was in this year that the historic Clermont, the pro- 
 duct of the brain and energy of Robert Fulton, was 
 launched, amid jeers of ridicule and disbelief, at Cor- 
 lears Hook Ferry and began her momentous voyage 
 up the Hudson River to Albany. From stem to stern 
 she measured about 150 feet, and was ^a monster 
 moving on the water, defying winds and tides, and 
 breathing smoke and flame.' Her motive power was 
 furnished by a steam engine connected with paddle- 
 wheels hung over her sides. The Clermont per- 
 formed the miracle of traveling the 150 miles which 
 lay between New York and Albany in the remarkable 
 time of thirty- two hours. It would have required 
 seventy-five days for the Clermont to cross the Atlan- 
 tic Ocean. The fastest modern liner, six times as long 
 and six times as broad, carrying 480 times as much 
 freight and more than a thousand passengers, has 
 crossed the Atlantic in four days, ten hours, and fifty- 
 one minutes. 
 
 *^The world was slow in placing faith in a new 
 miracle of the seas. Five years elapsed from the 
 launching of the Clermont before the first steam- 
 driven ferry-boat crossed the Hudson between New 
 
 53 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 York and New Jersey; ten years before Boston saw 
 the first steamboat enter her harbor; eleven years 
 passed before the first steam vessel sailed from Buf- 
 falo through the Great Lakes to Detroit; and it was 
 twelve years before the first ship set forth npon the 
 world's first transatlantic voyage under the power of 
 steam. 
 
 ' * It was on the memorable day of the 26th of May, 
 in 1819/' continued the Story-teller, ^Hhat the steam- 
 ship Savannah, a sailing packet equipped with an en- 
 gine, boiler, and iron paddlewheels, slipped from her 
 moorings at Savannah, Georgia, and sailed down over 
 the horizon. Twenty-five days later, a fleet of three- 
 decked, wooden-sided and sail-propelled men-of-war 
 and stately merchant ships, cruising off the coast of 
 England, was startled at the apparition which ap- 
 peared in the waters before them. Through a set of 
 yellow sails came clouds of pitch pine and coal smoke. 
 The decks of the watching ships resounded with the 
 cry of *Fire!' When they read the signal flags of the 
 Savannah, they were nonplussed to learn she was not 
 afire, but was sailing under her new power — steam. 
 They watched her curiously as she slipped gracefully 
 by and headed in toward Liverpool. 
 
 * ^ The story of the ocean steamships is the story of 
 progress. Modern science has replaced the old wooden 
 sides with massive sheer walls of steel. The decks 
 have been increased in size and number until to-day 
 a modern ocean liner resembles in effect a modern 
 hotel, in which its passengers are transported from 
 deck to deck by elevators. The bows have drawn fur- 
 ther and further away from the sterns, until now the 
 whole vessel measures nearly a thousand feet in 
 length; if stood on end, one of them would overtop 
 the highest office building in the world. All the lux- 
 ury of the ages, as well as their necessities, has been 
 
 54 
 
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood. 
 
 FIRST VESSEL PASSING THROUGH GATUN LOCKS OF THE 
 
 PANAMA CANAL 
 
 On board is a party of notables, while thousands gathered on the walls 
 cheer the historic voyage. — See page 62. 
 
STORY OF THE STEAMSHIP 
 
 gathered and incorporated into the interiors of these 
 ships, until they are veritably floating cities made up 
 of all the splendor of ancient despots. 
 
 *^I say cities advisedly. There are hundreds of 
 communities in our nation whose total population 
 could be transported across the Atlantic in a single 
 one of the vessels whose passenger capacity is esti- 
 mated at over 4,000 persons. These passengers have 
 at their command all the comforts of home. One of 
 the latest ships has a chapel, in which religious ser- 
 vices are conducted, while theatres, stores, tailor 
 shops, gymnasiums, ballrooms, and a score of other 
 traces of modern life are to be found on nearly all our 
 ocean liners. 
 
 ^^No passenger need go hungry during a modern 
 voyage. A peep into its refrigerators and storerooms 
 will reassure him on this point. There he will find for 
 a single voyage over 100,000 pounds of meat and fish 
 of various kinds, 6,000 pounds of bread already made 
 and 70,000 pounds of flour and 1,000 pounds of yeast 
 with which to make more, if needed; nearly 150,000 
 pounds of fresh vegetables and fruits, not to mention 
 that which is preserved in thousands of tins and bot- 
 tles. In short, he will find here all the kinds of food 
 that civilized people eat, and in such quantities as to 
 stagger imagination. 
 
 **I need not continue the story of these huge float- 
 ing castles. In these days of wonders they no longer 
 excite bewilderment; but I cordially invite you all to 
 visit one of these ocean liners whenever you go to 
 any of our great American seaports. '^ 
 
 55 
 
THE STORY OF THE AVIATOR AND THE 
 SHIPS THAT FLY IN THE CLOUDS 
 
 THE steady pulsing of an engine vibrated through 
 the library. Its momentarily increasing throbs 
 drew several of the Story-tellers to the windows, 
 just in time to see a monster aeroplane flash by. 
 
 **An airship!^' they cried excitedly, and then be- 
 came silent as they watched its graceful flight, till it 
 settled to earth in a nearby field. They saw a man 
 leap from the machine and hurry toward their build- 
 ing. Soon the opening elevator door announced his 
 arrival, and almost immediately the library door 
 swung inward on its hinges. The aviator advanced 
 to the center of the room, smiling cheerily in response 
 to the jubilant greetings of the gathering. 
 
 ' ' Tell us about flying-machines ! ' ' they cried, and 
 then became silent as the Story-teller began. 
 
 ^'I can only tell you the first chapter, its begin- 
 ning,'^ said the speaker. ^^ Man's conquest of the air 
 dates from the year 1908, practically. It was in that 
 year that man stepped forth, as though from a chrys- 
 alis, with full-grown wings. It was then that he slipped 
 those fetters which had bound his feet to the earth 
 for countless ages, so that now he can consort with 
 the feathered creatures of the heavens; or he can 
 sport with the condor and the eagle in their mountain- 
 top aeries. 
 
 ^^ Though the areoplane is but five years old to-day 
 (1913) and only about three years old in its marketable 
 form, it is further advanced in practical value than 
 
 56 
 
STORY OF THE AIRSHIP 
 
 the automobile was after many years of use. Did you 
 know that there were 3,000 and more birdmen in the 
 world at the beginning of the year 1913? Did you 
 know that in France alone aviators soared through 
 air, in 1911, covering a total distance of 1,600,000 
 miles; that 12,000 passengers made these trips and 
 spent 30,000 hours of their lives unfettered in the un- 
 trammeled heavens? Can you wonder then when I 
 say that soon we all will be god-like creatures, en- 
 dowed with the power to fly from our homes to our 
 business places ; from our home cities to the neigh- 
 boring metropolis; from one state to another, and 
 from one country to a foreign clime? 
 
 ^'In fact, that is what is being done to-day. You 
 all remember reading of that business man who reg- 
 ularly flew over the waters of Lake Michigan from his 
 home to his office in Chicago. You probably have also 
 read of the great passenger airship lines which to-day 
 are carrying on the average of thirty passengers up 
 and down the valley of the Rhine in Germany, or over 
 the Black Forest, or from Kiel across country to the 
 Danish border and beyond to the North Sea. England 
 has established an aerial mail route delivery. A num- 
 ber of American business men, noted for their con- 
 servative operations, are planning a great aerial pas- 
 senger service between New York and St. Louis." 
 
 *' Didn't the ancients ever fly?" inquired one of the 
 audience. 
 
 ^ ' No, ' ' replied the aviator. * * They often imagined 
 themselves doing so, and their legends are replete 
 with tales of flying. There were the flying horses of 
 the sun, Juno's peacocks, Medea's dragon car, Pegasus 
 with his winged feet, Etana flying on an eagle's back 
 to the sun gods, and Arabis, who is supposed to have 
 made a flight on a magic arrow. It is said that Daedalus 
 escaped from the prison of Minos with his son Icarus, 
 
 57 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 the latter losing Ms life because of ^carrying too high 
 a sail. ' Bladud, an ancient king of Britain, is reputed 
 to have broken his neck while attempting a flight. 
 
 **The real conquerors of the air/' he continued, 
 **were the two American brothers, Orville and Wilbur 
 Wright. Just after the death of Otto Lilienthal, the 
 G-erman experimenter, who only partially succeeded 
 in building a heavier-than-air machine that would 
 float, these two Americans, then manufacturers of 
 bicycles, began to experiment, in 1898. Five years 
 afterward, the birds fluttering around the sand dunes 
 near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, were startled when 
 a machine flew from the ground, and a throbbing 
 motor carried the aviator a few hundred feet through 
 the air. The next years they spent in perfecting their 
 machine, and in 1908 the world was astonished to learn 
 that Orville Wright had made a successful flight, re- 
 maining in the air one hour and fourteen minutes. 
 That was the beginning of the successful aeroplane. 
 What Langley, Lilienthal, Sir George Cayley, Sir 
 Hiram Maxim, Francis Wenham, Chanute, Pilcher, 
 and scores of others had spent fortunes, and in some 
 cases their lives, to achieve, these two Americans 
 brought to success, and their names will stand in his- 
 tory as the pioneers." 
 
 ^^Who invented the balloon f inquired some one. 
 
 ' ' The Montgolfier brothers, ' ' was the reply. * ' They 
 sent up in France a sheep, a chicken and a duck as the 
 first passengers, in 1783. A month later, Pilatre de 
 Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes made an ascent in 
 Paris, and thus were the first human beings to arise 
 above the earth in a heavier-than-air balloon. George 
 Washington, then President of the United States, was 
 a witness of the first balloon flight in America. A 
 French aeronaut, Jean Pierre Blanchard, made the 
 ascent from Prison Court in Philadelphia, in 1793. 
 
 58 
 
STORY OF THE AIRSHIP 
 
 ^ ^ The dirigible balloon, ' ^ resumed the aviator, ' ^ re- 
 ceived its first public initiation in the year 1901, when 
 the young Brazilian, Santos Dumont, steered around 
 the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Three years afterward, 
 the American, Thomas S. Baldwin, made the first 
 American flight at Oakland, California." 
 
 ^'Will the airship ever be in universal use?" asked 
 one of the gathering. 
 
 ^ ' There is no doubt of it, ' ' energetically replied the 
 aviator. **Our most eminent scientists are predicting 
 a marvelous future for the human race with its air- 
 ships. We only have to look about us to see what they 
 are accomplishing to-day while the science is but in its 
 swaddling-clothes. A few years hence, the monster 
 German dirigible airships will have grown larger and 
 more numerous. The aeroplanes will have increased 
 in seating capacity and numbers, and the heavens will 
 resemble spring and autumn days while the birds are 
 migrating. Probably, like the birds, the passengers in 
 the airships, too, will be migrating to a more suitable 
 climate. One scientist has predicted that soon we will 
 be able to make excursions to the Arctic regions, the 
 North Pole perhaps, during the heated months of the 
 summer; or we can soar southward to the equator 
 when ice and snow have our land in their grip. 
 
 **One of the latest dirigibles, built by that famous 
 pilot of the air. Count Von Zeppelin, is built of a new 
 metal, dueralumin, a metal stronger and lighter than 
 aluminum, thus permitting more weight to be carried 
 in the airship. It resembles a whale more than a bird, 
 and is longer than the average American battleship; 
 some of his airships are more than 500 feet long. On 
 the top are wireless telegraph equipments and a con- 
 ning tower like on a submarine vessel, from which 
 the pilot can view the heavens as well as the country 
 underneath. Beneath the balloon is a keel-like cabin 
 
 59 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 wherein the passengers sit. In the bow of the cabin 
 the pilot stands navigating the vessel, while in the rear 
 is the stern motor car. Above the pilot and above the 
 motor, fastened half way to the top of the dirigible, 
 are the propellers, while the rndders and stability- 
 planes jnt ont from the stern of the airship. At the 
 bow are horizontal planes which guide the ship up 
 or down. The pilot 's car and the conning tower on the 
 top are connected by a shaft running between drums 
 of gas which fill the balloon proper and support the 
 airship in the air. 
 
 *^ These are the airships which one day will regu- 
 larly fly over land and sea, making their regular calls 
 at places, just as locomotives and steamships do to-day. 
 Some of them will be express trains, the passengers 
 alighting at way stations by means of aeroplanes 
 carried with the dirigible for that purpose. Individuals 
 will have their smaller machines, just as they have 
 their automobiles to-day, to tour the country in parties, 
 or to fly to the next town instead of boarding railroad 
 trains." 
 
 Incredulity was evident on some of the faces of the 
 Story-tellers. 
 
 '*That may sound like some phantasy of a fevered 
 brain," exclaimed the aviator, *^but it is not! Only 
 a few months ago one of the greatest problems of avia- 
 tion was solved. Before that day, aeroplanes had a 
 dangerous propensity to tilt in a strong wind. This 
 was overcome by applying the gyroscope to the ma- 
 chine, a miraculous contrivance which instantly rights 
 the airship when it shows the slightest indication of 
 tipping. Thus it was that that daring aviator from 
 France was enabled to turn head over heels while 
 flying in the air. And then for motive power! Our 
 great American wizard, Edison, is quoted as saying: 
 'If we could only harness the powers of radium we 
 
 60 
 
STORY OF THE AIRSHIP 
 
 would have an ideal motive force for the vessels of 
 the air. Any day some chemist may hit upon a cheap 
 way to extract radium from its base. Just think — 
 there is enough power in one handful of radium to 
 drive the Mauretania from New York to Liverpool ! ' • 
 
 **The world is tending toward universal peace — 
 the abolition of war. And one of the greatest heralds 
 of peace is the airship. It will make war too horrible 
 to exist further. There are to-day great aerial battle- 
 ships which are capable of carrying machine guns up- 
 ward more than a mile into the heavens, and while 
 describing a huge circle above the foe, or a city, at the 
 rate of fifty miles an hour are able to pour down a 
 very deluge of death. By their horrible ingenuity 
 nearly every shot will take effect. Or they can drop 
 bombs loaded with terrific high-power explosives and 
 lay waste a populous and wealthy city in less time 
 than it requires modern artillery to wheel its batteries 
 into action. Then the bird-like aeroplanes can hover 
 over the foe and by wireless telegraph send their 
 information to the commanding general." 
 
 **That," said the aviator, in conclusion, *'is the 
 magic of' the airship, the story of how man has chal- 
 lenged and conquered the law of gravitation itself.'' 
 
 61 
 
THE STORY OF THE CANAL BUILDEE 
 WHO SEVERED A HEMISPHERE 
 
 IT was a momentous occasion — this clear, crisp day 
 of the tenth of October. The Story-tellers were 
 
 gathered in the library to commemorate the event 
 that was to make the year of 1913 one of the most 
 historic in the annals of human achievement. 
 
 This was the memorable day when man was to per- 
 form his greatest of modern miracles; by his might 
 and will the Western Hemisphere was to be severed 
 into two continents; by the magic of American skill 
 and courage the waters of the two greatest oceans were 
 to rush together into perpetual wedlock. In com- 
 memoration of this triumph of man over Nature, the 
 Story-tellers had chosen this hour to listen to the 
 wonderful story of the Panama Canal. 
 
 The narrator was an eminent engineer. 
 
 **We have often heard,'' he said, *^of the seven 
 wonders of the ancient world; the towering Pyramids 
 of Egypt; the wonderful lighthouse, or Pharos, in 
 Egypt; the Hanging Gardens of Babylon; the beauti- 
 ful temple of Diana at Ephesus ; the statue of Jupiter 
 by Phidias; the sumptuous mausoleum of Artemisia; 
 and the bronze Colossus of Rhodes. 
 
 **We look back with awe and admiration at the 
 seven wonders of the Middle Ages: there we see the 
 stately Coliseum of Rome; the catacombs of Alexan- 
 dria; the great wall of China; the celebrated Stone- 
 henge on Salisbury Plain; the leaning tower of Pisa; 
 the porcelain tower of Nankin ; and the mosque of St. 
 Sophia in Constantinople. 
 
 62 
 
STORY OF THE PANAMA CANAL 
 
 ''It is interesting to contrast these with the won- 
 ders of the modern world : the wireless messages which 
 speak from the sea and air ; the telephone which hurls 
 the human voice across continents; the aeroplane in 
 which men travel through the clouds ; the phonograph ; 
 the motion pictures; the innumerable inventions that 
 are daily proving the genius of man ; the great scien- 
 tific discoveries such as radium, antiseptics and anti- 
 toxins, spectrum analysis, and X-rays ; and the gigan- 
 tic engineering achievements that typify our present 
 civilization. The stories of all these are interwoven 
 into the tales to which we are all listening. 
 
 **But my story,'* exclaimed the engineer, impres- 
 sively, ^'is more wonderful than all the ancient won- 
 ders combined. It is the Panama Canal, the greatest 
 of all the engineering conquests in the annals of man ; 
 a perpetual memorial to the American courage and 
 genius that triumphed where all other nations feared 
 to tread and where one, the most resourceful of all, 
 had gone down in defeat. 
 
 ''To-day," declared the engineer, **a new milestone 
 is erected in the march of civilization. It was only 
 this afternoon that President Woodrow Wilson leveled 
 the last barrier at Panama which held apart the surg- 
 ing waters of the Orient and the Occident. Seated 
 in our national capitol he pressed a button which 
 hurled an electric impulse from the shores of the 
 Potomac to the mighty Gamboa Dike, 2,000 miles away, 
 and released the furious power of 40 tons of dynamite 
 which hurled the barrier heavenward in scattering 
 clouds of earth and rock. 
 
 ' ' This awe-inspiring spectacle marked the culmina- 
 tion of nine years of herculean labor. Its thunder- 
 ing tones echoed around the world to announce the 
 practical completion of the most colossal wonder of 
 human creation. It proclaimed that the Americans 
 
 63 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 are the greatest miracle workers of all time, and it 
 placed the name of its chief builder, Colonel George 
 Washington Goethals, a native of Brooklyn, New York, 
 among those of the immortals. With his name, too, 
 will be inscribed that of his fellow miracle worker, 
 Colonel William Crawford Gorgas, the Alabamian who 
 drew the deadly disease fangs from the tropics so 
 that the workmen from the north could exist in the 
 jungles where they labored. 
 
 **This mighty achievement has been the dream of 
 four centuries. Two decades after Columbus landed 
 on Watling's Island in the New World, Balboa, having 
 discovered the Pacific, dreamed of a strait which would 
 lead from the Atlantic to the Sea of Cathay. Then 
 came, in 1520, Angel Saevedra with the startling and 
 visionary proposal to pierce the Isthmus of Darien. 
 But when Antonio Galvao proposed thirty years later 
 that a canal be cut through the Isthmus of Panama, 
 he brought upon his head the wrath of the Spanish 
 king, who then and there declared an embargo upon 
 such ideas under the penalty of death. It is said that 
 the reason was political. However, Spain had re- 
 considered its edict by the year 1821 and was about to 
 begin the task. Latin America revolted and drove 
 the Castilians from the Isthmus. 
 
 **The tropical isthmus of Panama has defied the 
 world!'* exclaimed the engineer. *'It drank the life- 
 blood of thousands of laborers under De Lesseps, the 
 French engineer, and it swallowed up more than 
 $260,000,000 in money and machinery. It was in the 
 epochal year of 1904 that a courageous band of Amer- 
 ican engineers swarmed down from the north to per- 
 form the miracle of cutting the Western Hemisphere 
 into two continents. Armed with huge steam shovels 
 and steam dredges, electric and compressed air drills, 
 sticks of dynamite and powerful cranes, carrying enor- 
 
 64 
 
STORY OF THE PANAMA CANAL 
 
 mous tanks of oil and petroleum to battle with, the 
 deadly mosquito whicli virtually had defeated the 
 French canal diggers, they began the long conquest of 
 nature and the elements. 
 
 ^^A paean of industry came up from the tropics, 
 drowning out the cries of scoffers. The full orchestra 
 of shovel and siren, of rending blasts and crumbling 
 mountains, silenced the criticisms. Under the leader- 
 ship of the gallant American engineers the workers 
 cleft the neck of the jungle land and slowly cut 
 their way from ocean to ocean. Two years before the 
 fondest dreams had predicted, there lay in the words 
 of Hudson Maxim: 
 
 *An ocean-way that cuts in twain a continent, 
 Hewn through the mountain's primal rock, 
 And through the shifting shale, the mire and mud 
 And fickle sand of marsh and swamp and plain ; 
 That lifts and bears the burdens 
 That the oceans bear in giant ships — 
 A half the freighted commerce of the world.' 
 
 **So it is,'' remarked the Story-teller, *Hhat to-day 
 the mighty Panama Canal changes the tide of com- 
 merce. It lessens the journey between the Orient and 
 North American ports by thousands of miles. It brings 
 San Francisco nearer to New York by 7,873 miles; 
 Yokohama by 3,768; Shanghai by 1,876 miles; Val- 
 paraiso by 3,747 miles, and Melbourne in Australia 
 by 2,770 miles. This mighty transformation brings San 
 Francisco and other Pacific ports 7,000 miles nearer 
 to Liverpool and Hamburg." 
 
 **How long does it take a vessel to pass from the 
 Atlantic to the Pacific through the canal?" inquired 
 one of the gathering. 
 
 ** About twelve hours," the engineer replied. **It 
 is a journey of about 50 miles. About 15 of these 
 
 65 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 lead through that part of the canal which lies at sea- 
 level, and the remaining distance through Gatun Lake, 
 Miraflores basin and the three sets of locks at about 
 80 feet above the surface of the oceans. 
 
 *^A ship following in the course of the setting sun 
 approaches through the Gulf of Mexico. Skirting a 
 huge two-mile breakw^ater which guards the entrance 
 of the canal, it enters a channel 500 feet wide and 41 
 feet deep. Scudding through Limon Bay, past the 
 red-tiled roofs of ancient Colon, on the left, the ship 
 heads direct through a low-lying garden of tropical 
 verdure lying on either shore. At the end of ^Ye miles 
 appear the mighty walls of Gatun locks, the most 
 stupendous concrete structure ever created. 
 
 ^^This is the first of the series of locks which will 
 lift the heaviest ship afloat up into the great Gatun 
 lake. Its portals are guarded by massive steel doors 
 7 feet thick, 65 feet wide, 82 feet high and weighing 
 nearly 600 tons each; yet they are balanced with such 
 exquisite nicety that one of them could be moved by a 
 hand thrust. Tremendous air-cushions help the mighty 
 gates to hold back the tons upon tons of water held 
 within the locks. 
 
 *^The gates swing open. The ship passes mthin 
 and is hidden from .sight. The massive doors close 
 again. While you are waiting for the inflowing water 
 to raise you to the level of the floor of the second 
 section of the locks, look about you upon the massive 
 walls. It is a huge basin of concrete, 1,000 feet long 
 and 110 feet wide in the clear. Beyond the huge wall 
 of concrete, on your left, is an exact duplicate of this 
 basin. This dividing wall is sixty feet thick, and built 
 into it at the top is the titanic machinery which oper- 
 ates the locks. Further on in your journey you will 
 see the man-made Niagara which supplies the power 
 in the form of electricity. Beneath the keel of your 
 
 66 
 
STORY OF THE PANAMA CANAL 
 
 ship is the floor of the basin, made of concrete and 
 as enduring as a mountain. 
 
 *'The ship begins to move. You look up in amaze- 
 ment. The doors of the second section of the locks 
 are swinging open. Your vessel, probably weighing 
 30,000 tons, has been magically raised 28 feet while 
 you were gazing in awe at the stupendous work of 
 your fellow-Americans. The miracle has been per- 
 formed — simply by allowing water to flow into the 
 basin. The second and the third lock section is a 
 duplicate of the first except that the doors are slightly 
 shorter and consequently weigh several tons less. 
 
 ^^What is this that greets your vision? Your ship 
 has been pulled by a powerful electric locomotive run- 
 ning along the concrete wall. At this instant it sails 
 out under its own steam into the 170 square miles of 
 Gatun Lake. Here on your left, looms a great artificial 
 hill — it is the gigantic Gatun Dam. The waters of the 
 lake are being passed off through a huge spill-way and 
 into turbine engines which create the power to operate 
 the machinery of the entire Panama Canal. This 
 mighty dam stretches for one and two-thirds miles, 
 looming 30 feet above the normal level of the lake, 
 and is 100 feet wide, except for a distance of 1,900 
 feet which is 375 feet wide. About 140,000 cubic feet 
 of water flow over the spillway every second. 
 
 ^'The lake itself, nestling under the green car- 
 peted slopes of the surrounding mountains, is large 
 enough to accommodate the entire United States Naval 
 fleet. Through this great inland sea, your ship will 
 speed under its own steam for a distance of 32 miles 
 until it reaches the closed doors of a single lock, the 
 Pedro Miguel, which will lower the vessel a distance 
 of thirty feet into Miraflores Basin. A short distance 
 beyond, the ship enters the first of the two Miraflores 
 locks and is lowered 27 feet into the second lock which 
 
 67 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 also lowers it another 27 feet. Then the mighty steel 
 doors are flung open. The ship is free to fly down the 
 five-mile avenue leading into Panama Bay, and out 
 into the waters of the Pacific Ocean.'' 
 
 **You make me feel as if I had been taking the 
 journey," said one of the Story-tellers. 
 
 ^^How many men did it require to build the canal?" 
 asked another. 
 
 *^At one time there were 40,000 employed," an- 
 swered the engineer. * ^ Fifty-eight hundred men were 
 employed in building the locks alone, and more than 
 57,000 tons of steel went into the manufacture of the 
 lock doors. The huge Gatun locks consumed 2,000,000 
 barrels of cement — and 5,000,000 barrels were used 
 in constructing all the locks and dams. Six million 
 rivets were driven in the construction work, while 
 212,514,138 cubic yards of earth, rock, mud and shale 
 were dug out to make way for the new highway of 
 commerce and travel. ' ' 
 
 **What did it cost?" asked some one. 
 
 **Not more than the sum estimated at the beginning 
 of the work — $375,000,000," remarked the engineer, in 
 conclusion. ^^It is a sum greater than Spain, Japan 
 and Sweden had in stocks of gold in the year that it 
 was opened. It is a sum over seventy thousand times 
 greater than that required by Columbus to dis- 
 cover the Western Hemisphere. And yet it is only 
 about the estimated wealth of a single American in 
 these days of stupendous fortunes. These are days of 
 colossal figures as well as tremendous achievements. I 
 dare not predict what the next step will be in this con- 
 quest of the universe." 
 
 68 
 
THE STORY OF THE BRIDGE BUILDER 
 WHO SPANS RIVERS AND CANYONS 
 
 A POWERFULLY built man stood by tbe li- 
 brary window. His gaze was directed toward 
 the spidery outlines of a mammoth bridge. Over 
 it flowed the throngs of trucks, carriages, automobiles, 
 electric cars and pedestrians. He glanced at the 
 pageant of steamships, schooners and ferry-boats 
 passing in the river beneath the span. 
 
 **That is one of the most inspiring sights in mod- 
 ern civilization,'' he said. **It represents man's con- 
 quest over Nature's barriers. That is the story which 
 I will tell you — the romance of modern bridge build- 
 ing. 
 
 ^^A half century ago, those monster bridges did 
 not, could not, exist. To-day these complex 1,000-foot 
 steel and iron spans demand the elaborate calculations 
 of the mathematician, the best skill of the chemist and 
 metallurgist, the keen judgment of the engineer, the 
 vast resources of the financier, and the mighty strength 
 of powerful engines and the weird ingenuity of mar- 
 velous machine-tools directed by trained mechanics. 
 Not the least requisite is the physical and moral 
 courage of the humble bridge builder. 
 
 * ^ In this generation you will find American bridges 
 in all parts of the world. They span deep rivers, lakes, 
 harbors and ravines. They weld cities and states, 
 cross international boundary lines, create and increase 
 commerce and level its barriers, modify despotic polit- 
 ical power, ameliorate social conditions, multiply 
 property value many fold, and save thousands of lives. 
 
 69 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ^^The secret of modern bridge building is the long 
 steel span, built to sustain without a tremor the weight 
 of a plunging express train as it dashes across a wide 
 river or deep chasm. This type of bridge dates from 
 about the beginning of our American Civil War. 
 
 ^^Who has not seen some of the mighty steel struc- 
 tures and wondered at the magic by which they were 
 thrown across swollen floods? Many of you have seen, 
 and probably ridden upon, that mighty pioneer struc- 
 ture which James Buchanan Eades thrust across the 
 Mississippi flood at St. Louis, without for an instant 
 interrupting the heavy river traffic, and before the 
 science of estimating weights and pressures as they 
 relate to bridges was fully understood. Just below 
 the dashing spray of Niagara's mighty falls is the 
 longest single span bridge in the world, appearing like 
 a huge steel rainbow supporting a roadway upon 
 its arch. That was the work of the greatest of all 
 bridge builders, John A. Roebling. The first Niagara 
 bridge was the first railway suspension bridge in the 
 world, and was built in 1855, when the world's greatest 
 engineers were declaring that it was impossible to 
 span the Niagara. Erecting two mighty masonry 
 towers on opposite banks, Eoebling slung four huge 
 steel cables across and from these suspended a road- 
 way and a railroad track 240 feet above the rapid. 
 
 ^^When the slender wire threads of the cables 
 threatened to give out, a new bridge was projected, and 
 this was the most marvelous feat of all. The new 
 structure, a steel arch bridge with its arches resting 
 on either shore, was actually built without disturbing 
 traffic for more than a few minutes at a time, and when 
 completed had been built around the old bridge. 
 
 **When you voyage up the historic and picturesque 
 Hudson River you pass under the famous cantilever 
 railroad bridge at Poughkeepsie, built in 1889. To 
 
 70 
 
STORY OF GREAT BRIDGES 
 
 erect the five mighty spans of this structure, the en- 
 gineers built five tiers of staging on the surface of 
 the river, which when completed appeared just like 
 a modern skyscraper before its dress of brick and 
 stone is applied. Crossing the Missouri River at 
 Omaha is the world's greatest drawbridge with a 
 single span of 520 feet, w^hile the longest fixed span 
 of the type known as truss span reaches across the 
 Ohio River at Louisville. 
 
 *^Out in the Rocky Mountains, where our Amer- 
 ican bridge builders have performed some of their 
 most magical work, is the highest bridge in the world. 
 And it is made of glass! That is, the floor of the 
 roadway is, so that the tourist may look down to the 
 seething waters 2,627 feet below. This is the bridge 
 in Colorado which crosses the beautiful Royal Gorge. 
 
 ^*In the heart of the city of Chicago there are 
 several queer looking bridges which at the approach 
 of a steamer along the Chicago River quickly rise, 
 just as the feudal baron's drawbridge did before his 
 castle. These are known as the ^rolling lift* bridge. 
 Though these huge spans weigh sometimes as much 
 as 5,000,000 pounds each they literally raise them- 
 selves to an upright position in less than a minute — 
 it requires powerful machinery to pull them down 
 again to form the bridge across the river. 
 
 ^'Even historic Albemarle Sound, in North Caro- 
 lina, has been bridged. Here a railroad span runs for 
 five continuous miles across the water between Eden- 
 ton and Mackey's Ferry. What the North Carolinians 
 have done, Californians are planning to repeat. They 
 are planning to join the cities of San Francisco and 
 Oakland with a monster bridge over San Francisco 
 Bay, to be nearly nine miles long. Anywhere you 
 travel throughout our land you will find the magic 
 structures of the bridge builders. They are made of 
 
 fi 71 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 iron or steel or of concrete. The largest of the con- 
 crete structnres in the world is that which our govern- 
 ment bnilt in the National Capital at a cost of $850,000. 
 It is known as the Connecticut Avenue bridge and is 
 1,500 feet in length. 
 
 ^'No other city in the United States has such tre- 
 mendous bridges as span the rivers about New York 
 City. Here still stands the famous old Brooklyn, now 
 accompanied by three other larger bridges, which John 
 Roebling completed in the year 1883. It has been a 
 faithful servant to the cities it joins. When the bridge 
 was twenty years old it was found that fifteen times 
 as many people passed over it daily as when it was 
 first erected. What it means to the cities is revealed in 
 the fact that, in the year 1904, more people passed from 
 shore to shore than live in the whole United States — 
 about 30,000,000 more. That meant a traffic for the 
 year of about 120,000,000. In a single day more peo- 
 ple passed over it than live in the state of Vermont, 
 or in Lisbon, or even in New Orleans. At one period 
 of the day 54,000 people crossed it in an hour's time. 
 For many years this was the world's greatest suspen- 
 sion bridge. To-day a greater structure stretches 
 across the same river between New York and Queens 
 which is, with its approaches, about three miles long 
 and hangs 140 feet above the water. It cost about 
 $20,000,000." 
 
 ^^ Which is the oldest bridge in the United States!" 
 asked one of the gathering. 
 
 *^The oldest metal bridge is the historic old Chain 
 Bridge at Newburyport, in Massachusetts, built, in 
 1792. That was thirteen years after Abraham Darby 
 built the world's first cast-iron bridge across the river 
 Severn, in England. His was an arch bridge, while 
 the Newburyport bridge was the t^^e known as sus- 
 pension. There is a great difference between these 
 
 72 
 
STORY OF GREAT BRIDGES 
 
 two types. The arch bridge is said to have been known 
 to the ancient Chinese, who built their structures of 
 wood. It was the Eomans who introduced the stone 
 bridge, applying the arch to it. Their first was the 
 famous Ponte de Eotto, or Senator's Bridge, built 
 about 127 B. C. The longest span arch bridge of 
 masonry ever built is the historic Cabin John bridge 
 in Washington, D. C, with a span of 220 feet. 
 
 *^If you should ever go to the Andean countries of 
 South America, or to the mountainous districts of 
 India or Africa, you will probably find bridges such 
 as our primitive ancestors had. They will be either 
 a single strand of strong ropes or twisted vines stretch- 
 ing across the ravine or river with two other ropes 
 about breast high. It is simply the acrobat's tight- 
 rope, except that you have the two side ropes to guide 
 and maintain your balance. The most primitive of all 
 you can find along any small stream, possibly in your 
 wood-lot, where a fallen tree trunk or series of stones 
 form a ford across the shallow streams." 
 
 73 
 
THE STOKY OF THE ENGINEER WHO 
 TUNNELS UNDER THE EARTH 
 
 OW would you like to plunge through the side 
 of a mountain f whimsically asked a Story- 
 teller. *^How would you like to drop to the 
 bottom of a river and skim along its bed for a mile 
 and more and emerge on the opposite shore without 
 wetting your feet? How would you like to travel 
 underground at the rate of thirty miles an hour be- 
 neath the heavy streets of a great city, under colossal, 
 skyscraping buildings I ' ' 
 
 The startling questions brought smiles of bewilder- 
 ment and incredulity to the faces of his listeners. 
 
 ^^ These feats,'' continued the speaker, ^^are not 
 fantastic dreams. They are actual possibilities in this 
 age of miracles. They are not the creations of magic 
 workers, but are the Titanic achievements wrought by 
 American engineers and tunnel builders. It is of the 
 romance of tunnel building that I will tell you. 
 
 *^ While we are assembled here to-night there are 
 scores of armies of these wizards piercing the hearts 
 of mountain ranges, or delving* beneath swollen floods. 
 They are fighting terrific battles with the elements in 
 their endeavor to drive a shaft through mountain 
 or river so that an hour or a few miles may be taken 
 from the time schedule of some transcontinental rail- 
 road, or to furnish the congested city's citizens with 
 a quicker method of traveling between home and office. 
 
 ^^ Modern mountain tunneling can be said to date 
 from the year 1856. It was in that year that a cour- 
 
 74 
 
STORY OF THE TUNNELS 
 
 ageous band of engineers and tunnel workers pitted 
 their strength and wits against the southern spur of 
 the Green Mountains in western Massachusetts. To 
 their aid they brought, for the first time in America, 
 electricity, nitro-glycerine, air compression, and power 
 rock drills. They divided into four armies, two start- 
 ing on either side of the mountain and two more dig- 
 ging down from the top in the center of the ridge. Six- 
 teen years later, the last smoke of the battle cleared 
 away^ and a yawning hole nearly five miles long led 
 through the solid rock. It was about twenty feet high 
 and wide enough to permit the laying of two railway 
 tracks. It had been a fierce battle and it had cost 
 nearly $11,000,000 in money. But it had made possible 
 that great railroad system now running between 
 Massachusetts and Troy, New York, by way of the 
 famous Hoosac Tunnel. 
 
 ^^That was the beginning. Since then more men 
 have joined the army of tunnel builders and they fear- 
 lessly attack the most unpromising project. They 
 have burrowed a tunnel through the mighty Cascade 
 Mountain range in northwestern Washington for a 
 distance of about three miles. They have cut through 
 the vitals of the Wasatch Mountains with a series of 
 tunnels whose combined length measures about fifty 
 miles. In southwestern Colorado they have tapped 
 the mountains by the famous Gunnison Tunnel, 
 through which a former underground river is made 
 to deliver its precious water to the surrounding val- 
 leys. In California the Big Bend Tunnel, two miles 
 long, drains the Feather Kiver. And now they are 
 just beginning, in 1913, the mighty task of driving 
 America's longest tunnel, six and a quarter miles long, 
 through the backbone of the Continental Divide in 
 Colorado. And when they have completed it, about 
 
 75 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 the year 1916, they will have wrought a saving of 64 
 miles in the railroad journey across the continent, and 
 23 miles between Denver and Salt Lake City, as well 
 as saving a 2,500-foot climb over the crest of the Eocky 
 Mountains. 
 
 ^ ^ You, of course, are all familiar with the marvelous 
 subterranean railway system of the American metrop- 
 olis, the greatest in the world. But do you know what 
 that system means in our modern civilization? Are 
 you aware that nearly a billion people are carried un- 
 derneath the city every year? Did you know that 
 there are to-day, in 1913, more than 85 miles of track 
 under New York and Brooklyn, and that within a few 
 years there will be four times as much more! The 
 pioneer genius of this mighty achievement was the 
 American, John B. MacDonald, and he spent nearly 
 $75,000,000 in building and equipping the present sub- 
 way. The new one will cost in the neighborhood of 
 $300,000,000.'' 
 
 ^^Is the New York subway the only one in the 
 country?" asked some one. 
 
 ''No," replied the speaker. ^'Boston has an ex- 
 cellent system. And Chicago has a unique under- 
 ground freight system underlying her business dis- 
 trict and covering more than fourteen miles. It is 
 designed to transport merchandise from warehouse to 
 store and from store to the railroad freight stations. 
 
 ''The greatest engineering feat of all was that 
 which the young Tennessee lawyer, William. G. Mc- 
 Adoo, magically performed when he drove his railroad 
 tubes underneath the Hudson Eiver, thus connecting 
 New York with New Jersey. For eight years he and 
 his engineers and 'ground-hogs' pitted their strength 
 against the swollen floods over their heads. Foot 
 by foot, occasionally stopping to plaster up the roof 
 of their tunnel where the river had torn through, they 
 
 76 
 
STORY OF THE TUNNELS 
 
 drove by hydraulic pressure a huge steel shield 
 through rock and silt, linking together the great steel 
 rings of the tubes as each two-foot section was cleared 
 away. It was a mighty battle, but in the year 1910 the 
 tunnel was complete and the first public train rumbled 
 from the heart of New York to the shore and thence 
 down under the great river and up again to the New 
 Jersey shore. 
 
 ^^Like New York, Boston's suburban influx every 
 day overtaxed her ferry service. Consequently, Bos- 
 ton has a tunnel a mile and a half long, reaching from 
 the city proper to East Boston and running beneath a 
 part of Boston Harbor. But one of the most unique 
 tunnel constructions connects the city of Detroit with 
 the Canadian city of Windsor. William J. Wilgus, an 
 American railroad expert, studied the peculiar prob- 
 lems presented by the Detroit Eiver, where nearly as 
 much traffic passes as does in the Suez Canal. He con- 
 ceived the idea of dredging a furrow in the river bed, 
 similar to that which the farmer plows across his 
 field. Then the tunnel tubes were made in sections, 
 appearing like that part of a stovepipe which enters 
 the chimney, flange and all. These were taken out on 
 floats to their proper positions and then lowered into 
 the furrow. Divers then descended and fastened the 
 sections together, while concrete was later poured into 
 the furrow, until the tubes rested in veritable solid 
 rock. 
 
 ''Like a growing plant, a city has to reach out 
 farther and farther, as it increases, for its water. Thus 
 New York to-day is taking its water from the Catskill 
 Mountains. These mountains lie on the opposite side 
 of the Hudson Eiver. The problem of conducting the 
 water across appeared easy until one far-sighted per- 
 son suggested the possibility of some foe in the future 
 
 77 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 being able to destroy any bridge or aqueduct erected 
 with a single stick of dynamite. Out of this possibility 
 grew the marvelous tunnel which carries the water 
 underneath the river to the further shore. It lies like 
 a huge syphon, in the form of the letter U, the per- 
 pendicular shafts delving through solid rock more than 
 1,000 feet below the river ^s surface. Then the lateral 
 shaft, also dug in solid rock, mostly granite, strikes 
 straight across the river to the other side and then 
 upward. On its journey to the distant city the Cat- 
 skill water travels through four other tunnels whose 
 aggregate length is about 15 miles, leading under the 
 Rondout, Walkill and Moodna rivers and under Cro- 
 ton Lake." 
 
 **Did the ancients build tunnels f inquired one 
 of the Story-tellers. 
 
 **Yes, and some of them are in existence to-day. 
 The art of tunnel building is one of the oldest of en- 
 gineering sciences. The Egyptians and ancient tribes 
 of India dug them to buiw their noble dead in. The 
 Assyrians built one under the Euphrates River, by 
 diverting the river through a tempoi'^ry channel and 
 returning it to its original bed when the tunnel had 
 been bricked in. But the greatest engineers of all were 
 the Romans. In this day you can still see their mighty 
 works. One is the hio'hwav tunnel leadino- under the 
 Posilipo Hills between Naples and Pozzuoli, 3,000 feet 
 long and with entrances 75 feet wide, the tunnel taper- 
 ing until at the center it is about 22 feet wide. But in 
 those days it required decades and generations to build 
 a short tunnel — to-day it is a matter of months and 
 
 years. 
 
 78 
 
THE STORY OF THE IHKIGATORS WHO 
 TRANSFORM DESERTS INTO GARDENS 
 
 AN is indeed the conqueror!" exclaimed a 
 powerful young fellow, with broad forehead 
 and deep, penetrating eyes. "But it seems to 
 me that the greatest of all his conquests is the triumph 
 over the deserts. Through the power of his brain 
 and brawn, he has brought to fulfillment the prophecy 
 of ancient times that Hhe wilderness shall blossom as 
 the rose. ' This is no longer a figure of speech — I have 
 seen it with my own eyes. 
 
 *^We are a great and free people," exclaimed the 
 Story-teller, "yet it is only a few years since two- 
 fifths of our territory was in the hands of an enemy. ' ' 
 
 "A few years!" echoed another. "You must go 
 farther back than that." 
 
 "No, sir," replied the first speaker, "not more 
 than ten years. And the enemy holds much of the 
 land still." 
 
 The audience looked mystified. 
 
 "The enemy," he said, "is Drought. And the 
 weapon with which he is being beaten back, inch by 
 inch, is Irrigation. There lay vast regions, extending 
 over the length and breadth of our Western states, 
 but they were waste and unproductive lands, owing 
 to the scarcity of water. Hqw was this lost empire to 
 be reclaimed? 
 
 "It was in 1902 that a gigantic scheme was set on 
 foot by the government for irrigating these arid 
 regions. A start was made with twenty-five projects, 
 
 79 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 involving in the aggregate over two and a half mil- 
 lion acres. 
 
 ''And then began the constrnction of those mag- 
 nificent works of engineering that stand as perpetual 
 memorials of American skill and enterprise. Of the 
 great dams that arose in connection with this rec- 
 lamation scheme, my friend the engineer will tell 
 yon some other time. One thought must have thrilled 
 the engineer, as he saw the giant structure growing 
 under his hands — ^what it meant to the surrounding 
 land: life instead of death, fecundity in place of 
 sterility, a panorama of fruitful fields and waving trees 
 replacing arid wastes. 
 
 ''What would be the feelings," exclaimed the 
 speaker with enthusiasm, "of a modern Eip van 
 Winkle, who had fallen asleep in the 'Great American 
 Desert' a dozen years ago, if he were to wake to-day? 
 He would behold a transformation appearing mirac- 
 ulous. Where had been a dreary expanse of arid 
 plain, stretching bare and treeless to the horizon, he 
 would behold fields of waving grain, countless fruit- 
 trees laden with their luscious burden, with prosperous 
 farm homes and villages lining silvery canals. 
 
 "In the region of the Truckee River, in Nevada, 
 was a lifeless desert, strewn with the bones of animals 
 and marked by the graves of countless emigrants, who, 
 on their long and toilsome journey to the Pacific, had 
 perished of thirst. It is now a region of smiling fields, 
 with prosperous cities springing up among them. Four 
 rivers have been linked together in a wonderful scheme 
 of irrigation, and their waters spread themselves 
 through all this land. 
 
 "The waterless valleys of California, through which 
 the weary gold hunters of '49 struggled, many to drop 
 and die of thirst almost in sight of their goal, have 
 
 80 
 
STORY OF IRRIGATION 
 
 become fair vineyards and orchards and gardens, 
 whose products find their way not only to New York, 
 but to far distant London and Paris. 
 
 ^' Think of what has been done in the Yakima Val- 
 ley, in the State of Washington, where a territory 
 of 350,000 acres has been reclaimed by the waters of 
 the great Sunny side canal. Or in the Shoshone Val- 
 ley, where a territory of 476,000 acres is watered to 
 a depth of one foot. 
 
 ^'What has changed the face of the * Great Amer- 
 ican Desert' in Kansas? A few years ago, as far as 
 the eye could reach, there was nothing but a dreary 
 expanse of flat, treeless prairie; there was hardly 
 any rain; hot winds swept the country. But it was 
 found that there was an abundance of water under 
 ground. Wells were sunk, and the water was pumped 
 into reservoirs by means of windmills. This wind- 
 mill method of irrigation is cheap and efficient. No 
 wonder the country for miles around is dotted with 
 windmills, each with its graceful sails revolving over 
 a reservoir, which waters from ten to twenty acres of 
 ground. Monster crops are grown and the yield of the 
 fruit trees is prodigious. Trees, indeed, grow on all 
 sides, where trees never grew before. 
 
 "But the magic of irrigation does more than this. 
 Unwonted delicacies in the shape of fish reach the 
 farmer's table from his reservoir, which also furnishes 
 ice for summer use. Pleasant recreation, too, 
 these reservoirs provide — boating in the summer, 
 skating in the winter. Was it a prophet that named 
 the once desolate center of a scene of desolation ^Gar- 
 den CityT' 
 
 "How is this irrigation done?'' asked the farmer. 
 
 "In the case of water obtained from the great 
 reservoirs," replied the Story-teller, "it runs into 
 
 81 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 canals, which in their turn feed a network of ditches. 
 Bnt there are smaller concerns, in which a few neigh- 
 boring farmers combine to bnild a ditch for themselves. 
 Such a one in a little valley on the Yellowstone River 
 is ten miles long, carries 50,000 gallons of water a 
 minute, and will irrigate about 6,000 acres. It took 
 about three months to complete, and the cost was $5 
 per acre. This ditch waters 6,000 acres, covered vfith 
 wheat and alfalfa. 
 
 ^^One of the finest ranches in Arizona is fertilized 
 by means of waste water pumped from a mine. This 
 was the idea of a miner, who bought a piece of arid 
 ground and connected it with the mine by means of a 
 flume. He was rewarded for his ingenuity by rich 
 crops of alfalfa and other good things. 
 
 ^^It is interesting to know that electricity has been 
 pressed into the service of irrigation and has proved 
 less costly and more efficient than the older methods. 
 An electrical pumping plant can be installed at a cost 
 of $4 an acre and is found to be more reliable. 
 
 '^ An important fact to remember in connection wdth 
 irrigation is that land watered artificially is much 
 more productive than land that receives only natural 
 moisture. The fact is that river water, with its silt 
 and sediment, is the finest fertilizer in the world. The 
 chemicals carried by one of the Arizona Eivers have 
 been valued at $6 per acre annually. 
 
 ''As I have indicated," continued the Story-teller, 
 *'this great work of reclamation has made substantial 
 progress. Two-thirds of the first scheme of twenty- 
 five projects is completed, at a cost of nearly 
 $80,000,000. When it is finished, it is proposed to 
 start on thirteen further projects, dealing with over 
 three and a half million acres. But, in addition, 
 7,000,000 acres have already been put under water by 
 private enterprise. But then we are only at the be- 
 
 82 
 
STORY OF IRRIGATION 
 
 ginning, so to speak, of tlie work, for it is hoped to 
 reclaim in time at least 30,000,000 acres. This would 
 give an 80 acre farm to each of 375,000 persons. 
 
 ^'Already the irrigation scheme has greatly affected 
 the population of the districts in question. Hundreds 
 of towns have arisen almost in a night. Some 700,000 
 farms were under irrigation in 1910. Everything has 
 been done to encourage settlers. They can buy land 
 by easy payments, of area sufficient to support a fam- 
 ily, and for the irrigation of which they have to pay 
 only the actual cost.*' 
 
 ^^Can you give us any figures as to the production 
 of these new farms f asked one of the audience. 
 
 ^^I can give you a typical instance," replied the 
 Story-teller. ^^A southern Idaho farmer has pro- 
 duced, per acre, on land that a short time back would 
 hardly grow a blade of grass, 133 bushels of wheat, 
 107 bushels of oats, 451 bushels of potatoes, 22 tons of 
 beets, a 165 gallon yield of sorghum cane, 70 bushels 
 of flint popcorn, 588 pounds of buckwheat, besides 
 other things. 
 
 *^ Remember, irrigation means insurance of a full 
 harvest every year. It means no crop failures, no 
 heart-breaking losses. It means certain, steady profit 
 all the time. Though the rains fail, the mighty reser- 
 voirs that imprison the everlasting flow of the rivers 
 never fail. 
 
 *'It is inspiring to think," said the speaker in con- 
 clusion, his eyes sparkling with enthusiasm, *^what 
 this blessing of irrigation means to the country. A 
 million new and prosperous American homes; the re- 
 lief of the congestion of the cities; billions added to 
 the wealth of the nation. This is what the magic of 
 irrigation has done and is doing, and it promises still 
 greater surprises for the future." 
 
 83 
 
THE STORY OF THE DAM BUILDER 
 
 WHO CONQUERS THE MIGHTY 
 
 WATERS 
 
 "^TT^HE dam builder!" shouted a chorus of voices. 
 
 _£ ^' Where is the dam builder? This is the mo- 
 ment for his story." 
 
 They gazed about the gathering, but no one seemed 
 to respond. 
 
 ^^Here he is!" called out a voice from the most 
 secluded corner of the library. ^^But he is a modest 
 man and prefers to tell his story later." 
 
 *^ Bring him forth!" demanded the Story-tellers. 
 '*A11 great men are modest." 
 
 A sinewy man, with disheveled hair tumbling over 
 his bronzed face, was finally propelled to the center 
 of the room. 
 
 *^ About all I can say for the dam builders," he 
 drawled, ^4s that they work like beavers." 
 
 The listeners quickly grasped the significance of 
 his statement. 
 
 *^It is, in fact, merely an instance of where men 
 caught an idea from the beaver and put it into practice 
 in their own scheme of life. Those wise little animals 
 gather twigs and tree branches to protect their homes. 
 The whole colony, starting their work from the middle 
 of a stream, weighing down the wood with mud and 
 stones, work indefatigably toward either shore until 
 they have constructed quite a respectable dam. Later 
 repairs and additions will, in course of time, often 
 bring the top of it to ^ve or more feet above the water 
 level. 
 
 84 
 
STORY OF THE GREAT DAMS 
 
 ^'They are wonderful engineers. The beaver 
 taught man how to curb rivers. To-day, however, the 
 pupil has outstripped the teacher in dam building. 
 Instead of the beavers ' wooden barriers, American dam 
 builders erect monstrous bulwarks of granite and con- 
 crete. Instead of a five-foot dam, our engineers rear 
 mighty walls sixty times higher and ranging across a 
 river two miles wide. The beaver builds his dam to 
 protect his home, while the American dam builder 
 builds his, not only for protection, but to flood arid 
 lands, or to store up water for a thirsting city, or to 
 create Titanic power with which to turn his industrial 
 wheels, and light and heat his homes. 
 
 ^^ America leads the world in great hydraulic en- 
 gineering achievements. The world's longest dam 
 curbs the mighty Mississippi where it flows through 
 the heart of our nation. It is a bulwark of adamant, 
 a worthy foe for the Father of Waters — I know for I 
 helped to build it, completing the task in the early 
 part of 1913. 
 
 '^Before we laid the mighty barrier of concrete 
 and stone across the river, this part of the Mississippi, 
 because of the Des Moines Hapids, was one of the most 
 dangerous for navigators. Our government had spent 
 $8,000,000 to build a canal that would subdue the 
 rapids, but in vain. To-day our great dam, stretching 
 between Keokuk, in Iowa, to the opposite shore, not 
 only floods these rapids with sufficient water to cover 
 their jagged spurs, but it backs up the river water for 
 a distance of 65 miles, thus forming a great inland 
 sea and generating about 300,000 horse-power of 
 electricity with which to light and heat, run the cars 
 and turn the factory wheels of cities lying within 150 
 miles of the dam. 
 
 **It is not the highest dam in the world," the 
 
 85 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 speaker added, ^'measuring only 57 feet from rock 
 bottom to the top of the dam, but its one and two- 
 thirds of a mile stretch makes it the longest. The 
 power-house alone, built into the dam itself, is more 
 than a third of a mile long." 
 
 ^^ Where is our highest dam?" asked some one. 
 
 ^'Out in Wyoming — that is, it was in 1913," he 
 added. ^'Our engineers are always building new ones, 
 and before the end of the year they may have erected 
 one that will be still higher. The Wyoming dam, the 
 Shoshone, is 325 feet high, or just half as high as the 
 tallest office building in the world. 
 
 ^^The modern dam builders," explained the Story- 
 teller, ^ ^ are men of great daring. They must have the 
 qualities of pioneers. They frequently find themselves 
 in the heart of primeval Nature, almost cut off from 
 civilization, and must blaze their own wagon roads 
 for the transportation of supplies and materials. 
 
 ^'That is what they did when they built the great 
 Shoshone dam. The road ran for eight miles and in 
 many places tunneled through the granite-ribbed 
 mountains. But the greatest problem was the torrent 
 of water plunging through the gorge they intended to 
 dam. Its sheer sides towered 2,500 feet above the 
 river and were only 60 feet apart. The river dashed 
 through the gorge like a mill-race, but the dam build- 
 ers captured and led it through a temporary channel 
 above the gorge. Then in the dry river bed they ex- 
 cavated a ditch 87 feet deep and 108 feet wide in 
 which to lay the foundations of the dam in solid rock. 
 On this foundation they piled the dam proper until 
 its top reached 238 feet above the bed of the river. 
 It was a stupendous task and consumed four years 
 of time, 90,000 tons of granite and 75,000 barrels of 
 cement. The last stone was laid in 1910. 
 
 86 
 
STORY OF THE GREAT DAMS 
 
 '^Did you ever hear of the dam that was built by 
 those Geronimo Indians who made the last vain fight 
 against the white man^s civilization? It is the mighty 
 Koosevelt dam, in the Salt River Canyon, in Arizona, 
 which rears a bulwark of granite 276 feet high. It is a 
 romance of civilization and will stand as an enduring 
 memorial to the united efforts of white men and 
 Indians. Like the Shoshone, it lay in the heart of a 
 wilderness, but it was sixty miles from the nearest 
 railroad, and this space of primeval forest and moun- 
 tains had to be covered with a wagon road. Behind 
 the dam to-day is a huge lake covering 16,329 acres. 
 If the water were let out, it would cover an area 
 greater than the state of Rhode Island a foot deep. 
 
 ^^For many years Colorado had the highest dam in 
 the world; that was the Cheesman, which blocks the 
 south fork of the South Platte River. Behind its 
 225-foot granite wall lie thirty billion gallons of 
 water, enough to quench the thirsts of all Americans 
 for a year, allowing a gallon a day for each person. 
 In the Catskill Mountains in New York there is an- 
 other great reservoir of water, equal in capacity to 
 Colorado's great storage supply. It is the Croton, 
 which is the second highest in America, being 297 feet 
 high. Boston gets a great part of her water from the 
 famous Wachusett reservoir, whose dam is 207 feet 
 high, which is equal to the average 16-story skyscrap- 
 ing building. 
 
 ^^Have you any idea how strong a dam must be?" 
 inquired the speaker, ^Ho hold 3,000 acres of water 
 thirty feet deep? An American dam engineer found 
 out, when he was called upon to stop the leakage of 
 the Sevier Bridge Dam, in Colorado. The gates con- 
 trolling the only outlet sixty feet below the water level 
 had broken and the water, valuable for irrigation pur- 
 ■^ 87 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 poses, was tearing through with a pressure of 4,000 
 pounds to the square foot. This had to be stopped, 
 and stopped quickly. When they tried to plug the out- 
 let mth sacks of stone, some of which weighed half a 
 ton apiece, they were hurled through the opening like 
 so many feathers. '^ 
 
 The dam builder paused, and glanced around the 
 gathering. 
 
 ''That was a task,'' he said impressively, 'Ho test 
 the courage and skill of any man. But, fortunately, 
 there was an American within call who was equal to 
 the task. 
 
 "This resourceful engineer had a solid beam of 
 concrete, reinforced with T-irons and steel rods, cast 
 in exact scientific form. This was placed across 
 the top of the tunnel, its ends resting in grooves cut 
 into the solid rocks at either end. From this beam 
 2 by 12 fir planks, with the narrowest side toward 
 the water, were forced down in the flood and fastened 
 together to form a grill. In front of this grill a can- 
 vas was sunk, secured to the bottom by a few sacks 
 of dirt, and thus the last trickle of water was effect- 
 ually stopped. Behind this barrier, the dam builders 
 crawled in perfect security and repaired the gates. 
 
 "Is not the story of man's control of water full of 
 wonders?" said the Story-teller, in conclusion. "Where 
 the element proved unruly, he has curbed it; where 
 it was needed, he has compelled it to come ; and when 
 he needed its power, he harnessed it. In each case, it 
 is by means of the dam that he has accomplished 
 his miracle. The dam, indeed, stands as a colossal 
 monument to man's subjugation of Nature to his re- 
 quirements. It is one of the proudest trophies of our 
 civilization." 
 
 88 
 
THE STORY OF THE OCEAN CABLES 
 THAT CONNECT THE CONTINENTS 
 
 THREE Story-tellers stood in a corner of the li- 
 brary. There seemed to be a disagreement on 
 some important matter. One of them was es- 
 pecially agitated. 
 
 ^^If it is true,'' he exclaimed, ^^why don't yon 
 verify itf" 
 
 ^'How!" inquired the perplexed man. 
 
 *^Why, by cable, of course," remarked the third. 
 
 *^ That's a good idea," remarked the man. *'I'll 
 do it." So, stepping to the telephone, he called up 
 the telegraph office, and in a moment had started an 
 important message on its lightning journey nearly 
 three thousand miles under the ocean from one hemi- 
 sphere to another. 
 
 ^* While I am waiting for my answer," he said, ^4et 
 me tell you the story of how it became possible to 
 flash these messages along the bottom of the seas. We 
 owe it to a fellow-countryman, Cyrus W. Field, to 
 whom the conception of the ocean cable came as a sud- 
 den inspiration. In the year 1850 he was talking with 
 his brother Matthew about the possibility of laying a 
 telegraph cable across the Straits of Newfoundland. 
 At that time, the cable had not been laid across the 
 English Channel, connecting France with England, and 
 the possibility of an ocean cable had not been dreamed. 
 Field, then a rich retired merchant, suddenly turned 
 to his brother and said, ^Why cannot America and 
 Europe be joined by cable!' 
 
 89 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ^^For some time Ms mind brooded over this great 
 idea, and in the meantime the cable joining England 
 and the continent of Europe had been laid. At last 
 Field wrote to Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, 
 and to Commodore Maury, the great hydrographer, 
 for their opinions on the practicability of such a pro- 
 ject as an Atlantic cable. Both the scientist and the in- 
 ventor sent him encouraging words. With these let- 
 ters. Field went to Peter Cooper and other prominent 
 financiers, whom he won over by his persistent en- 
 thusiasm. The first cable company was organized, and 
 Field went before Congress for authority for the un- 
 dertaking. The general opinion was that Field was 
 * wrong in his upper story,' for an ocean cable sounded 
 about as real as building a ladder from the earth to 
 the moon. 
 
 ** Field himself, from the moment he conceived the 
 idea, never wavered in his confidence that a two thou- 
 sand mile cable could be laid in water ranging in depth 
 from two to six miles, but there were a number of per- 
 plexing difficulties through which he could not see. It 
 was these difficulties that it took eight years to master 
 after the first cable ship began its work; and during 
 this period — from 1858 to 1866 — ^he bankrupted him- 
 self two or three times and wrecked three different 
 companies. 
 
 ^'It was in August, 1857, that the first momentous 
 step was taken in linking together the two hemispheres. 
 Two ships — the Niagara, an American naval vessel, 
 and the Agamemnon, of the British navy, left Valencia, 
 Ireland, in company, each carrying a section of the 
 first Atlantic cable. One year later — on August 18, 
 1858 — Queen Victoria sent the first cable message un- 
 der the Atlantic to President Buchanan. It was, very 
 naturally, an occasion of great international rejoicing. 
 This first cable had been laid from Ireland to New- 
 
 90 
 
STORY OF THE OCEAN CABLES 
 
 foundland; it was 2,000 miles in length, and it liad 
 cost Field and his company $2,000,000, and the cable 
 message of twenty words cost $100. 
 
 ** Field's dream was now an accomplished fact. 
 The Old World and the New had been brought to- 
 gether. But unexpected and heart-breaking trouble 
 arose. Even in the midst of Field's great personal 
 triumph, the cable suddenly ceased to work. No one 
 knew what was the matter, or how to find out, but the 
 calamity bankrupted the company. With indomitable 
 energy, Field set about to organize a new company, 
 but before he could succeed, the United States was 
 plunged into the Civil War, and he had to wait. 
 
 *^He chartered the Great Eastern, in 1865, and 
 began paying out a new cable from Ireland to New- 
 foundland. More trouble ensued. When the Great 
 Eastern had arrived within two hundred miles of New- 
 foundland, at one of the deepest points in the Atlantic 
 Ocean, the cable parted, and more than a million dol- 
 lars was lost in the sea. Even then, the indomitable 
 Field did not give up. The following year he sent 
 out the Great Eastern again to lay a new cable. At 
 last success was his. Not only was the cable laid, but 
 the cable that had been lost the year before had been 
 recovered. The engineers had learned many impor- 
 tant lessons.'' 
 
 *^What is the total length of the world's cables?" 
 asked some one. 
 
 *^ Enough," answered the Story-teller, *Ho reach 
 to the moon, with a trifle to spare. Since the first 
 working ocean cable was laid in 1866, more than two 
 hundred and forty thousand miles have been laid under 
 the seas, and every important seaport city on this globe 
 has cable connection with the rest of the world. The 
 $5.00 per word rate across the Atlantic from New 
 York to London is now less than 40 cents per word. 
 
 91 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 It costs on an average of about 90 cents per word 
 to cable the world over. 
 
 *^Tlie two longest ocean cables in the world are 
 the British cable from Melbourne to Vancouver, and 
 the American cable from San Francisco to Manila. 
 The latter is over 7,000 miles long and touches at 
 Hawaii, Midway Island, and the Island of Guam. It 
 connects all the American possessions in the Pacific. 
 
 *^By a recent invention, cable messages are now 
 transferred, without change of instruments, directly 
 over land wires. A cable message from London to 
 Chicago may thus be sent without relays. This has 
 greatly reduced the time of sending a message, as well 
 as the cost. 
 
 *'I may say, without fear of contradiction, that 
 within the last forty years no one agency has exerted 
 a greater influence upon the life of the world than has 
 the cable. It has revolutionized not only the methods, 
 but the emotions of international policies and diplo- 
 macy. The great minister, who used to sit in his cab- 
 inet undisturbed and figure and plan what he would 
 do with his country's enemies, now sits and watches 
 the words on a yellow tape-line that has made him 
 nervous and cautious. He is instantly affected by what 
 is taking place and by what he knows that others know, 
 for the time factor has been diminished to a minimum. 
 If, however, the cable has tended to restrain states- 
 men, it has sometimes been the means of inflaming the 
 man in the street, the international mischief-maker 
 and the jingo. 
 
 **Such opportunities would be vastly increased, if 
 a thousandth part of what passes on the wires, es- 
 pecially between statesmen and diplomats, were al- 
 lowed to leak out. Accordingly ciphers are always 
 employed in communication between governments and 
 their agents, whether in peace or in war. Recent his- 
 
 92 
 
STORY OF THE OCEAN CABLES 
 
 tory illustrates the value of secrecy in these matters. 
 When the Spanish-American War was brewing, the 
 Spanish Minister in Washington, Dupuy De Lome, 
 would himself write his cipher dispatches, break them 
 up, and file them at two or three different offices in 
 Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, to safe- 
 guard their secrets to his home government or to Gen- 
 eral Weyler in Cuba. But the spies of the United 
 States government soon mastered his code, and, when 
 they found that he called President McKinley Hhe 
 old fox,* the words spread like wildfire and did no 
 little to hasten the war. On the eve of that war, by 
 the way, the code for the United States Navy was 
 worked out. It is said to be the most complete and 
 efficient system ever devised; and it speaks well for 
 it that, during that war, none of the spies of the foreign 
 governments were able to master the ciphers. 
 
 **Who can estimate the effect of the cable on busi- 
 ness? Billions of dollars in the world's commerce now 
 depend directly upon the cable. Before the Atlantic 
 cable there was little or no business in international 
 stocks and Wall Street did not take its present com- 
 manding place in the financial world until the cable 
 enabled it to get into close touch with the London 
 market. Now there is daily over a hundred millions 
 of dollars' worth of business on the world's cables. 
 
 **Such, in few words," said the speaker, in conclu- 
 sion, **have been the results to the world of the enter- 
 prise and the dogged perseverance of Cyrus Field, 
 the pioneer of the cable. This epoch-making invention 
 has worked a silent revolution among men. It has 
 changed the face of the earth." 
 
 93 
 
THE STOKY OF THE ARCHITECT AXD 
 OUR GREAT SKYSCRAPERS 
 
 THE brilliant lights of the city flickered like 
 myriads of jewels in the night. The tall, ghost- 
 like forms of huge structures rose from the glow 
 of the streets into the dark, star-lit skies — ^massive 
 pyramids of stone, and steel, and brick. 
 
 ^'The marvel of marvels!" exclaimed one of the 
 Story-tellers, as he gazed at the vision that lay before 
 him like a dream city from some ancient legend. ''Man 
 has done some wonderful things, but his most colossal 
 achievement is this — the twentieth century city." 
 
 The Story-tellers gathered about the window and 
 looked out on the modern towers of Babel. The streets 
 looked like canyons lying deep between the gigantic 
 walls of masonry. The crowds passing through them 
 were like ants in comparison — and yet they had built 
 it with their own hands. 
 
 ''Let the master-builder tell us about it!" sug- 
 gested one of the onlookers. "Tell us how man has 
 defied the elements, how he has built stone by stone 
 until he pierces the clouds with his abodes." 
 
 "I often wonder," replied the builder, "where and 
 when it will end. We build our massive structures; 
 lightning' plays about their towers; the storms beat 
 against them; the earthquakes rumble beneath them. 
 And if perchance they fall, we throw them up again 
 greater and more daring than before — as if to chal- 
 lenge Nature. 
 
 "It is a story of romance and adventure," ex- 
 
 94 
 
STORY OF SKYSCRAPERS 
 
 claimed the master-builder. *^A great many years of 
 the world's history went by before man learned to 
 build. Very, very slowly he acquired skill enough to 
 provide a place of shelter for himself. We can imag- 
 ine his joj when he discovered that it was no longer 
 necessary for him to live in the cave — ^he could build 
 a hut. Then he discovered that he could erect a place 
 of abode with logs. One day he found that by erecting 
 a framework of beams and posts he could build a 
 house. What a great advance in architecture that 
 must have been. 
 
 '^This progress did not come in a year or in ten 
 years or even in a century. Inventions came slowly 
 in the early history of civilization. But from these 
 rude beginnings there came in time great develop- 
 ments. The Pyramids of Egypt still excite the won- 
 der and admiration of modern engineers. The Greeks 
 with their passion for beauty built far more lovely 
 if less enduring structures. The Romans introduced 
 the arch and erected stately edifices and vast theatres. 
 
 *^Then man seemed to lose his grip. He fell back 
 into the dark ages. Italy was overrun by Northern 
 tribes, whose needs were simple and whose ways were 
 savage. The art of building beautifully was gone, and 
 rude dwellings and temples replaced the majestic 
 structures of former days. Gradually, however, civil- 
 ization tamed the wild spirits of the conquerors. Out 
 of the chaos there emerged the architecture that we 
 know to-day as Gothic. The spires of a hundred 
 churches pointed skywards. There was a new awak- 
 ening to beauty, a new desire to build. 
 
 *^ Great cities sprung into existence, becoming more 
 and more crowded. Towards the end of the eighteenth 
 century men came in throngs, to the center of civiliza- 
 tion. A new problem began to develop with the years. 
 Where were all the industries, upon which depended 
 
 95 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 the greatness of these modern cities to be housed? 
 The builders of the Middle Ages had fashioned lofty 
 church towers only for the sake of beauty. Now it 
 was necessary to raise tall structures because there 
 was no room to spread them over the ground — they 
 must reach up toward the skies, where space is il- 
 limitable. 
 
 **The erection of tall structures was not wholly a 
 new idea. We read in the Bible that a group of wicked 
 men started to build a tower to heaven, but were 
 halted and punished for their presumption. Their 
 tongues were stricken with divers languages so they 
 might not understand one another's speech. But even 
 if this punishment had not overtaken them they could 
 not have proceeded very far. The winds would have 
 rocked and swayed their tower. The laborers would 
 have worn themselves out with the unbearable toil. 
 A great pile of stones the Tower of Babel might have 
 been, but hardly a habitable building. 
 
 **It remained for the Americans to dare to resume 
 this undertaking," exclaimed the builder. **Land was 
 becoming very scarce in great cities like New York, 
 Chicago and Philadelphia. Men saw the only way to 
 build tall structures was to use steel. So about 1880 
 a new era was inaugurated — and America became a 
 leader in a new kind of architecture. Huge skeletons 
 of steel were erected, and these supported everything 
 within and without ; about them were built the gigan- 
 tic walls of masonry. Tenants could not reasonably 
 be expected to climb ten stories to their offices, so 
 the elevator solved the next problem. 
 
 '* These huge buildings were first regarded with 
 doubt but soon they ceased to be an experiment and 
 the new age of the sky-scraper was ushered in. The 
 skylines of the cities assumed a majestic ruggedness. 
 Each builder strove to outdo the others. The twenty- 
 
 96 
 
STORY OF SKYSCRAPERS 
 
 story structure was soon overshadowed by the build- 
 ing of thirty stories. Soon came defiant structures of 
 forty and fifty stories. Where the race will end no 
 one dare predict. '^ 
 
 ^^The building of the sky-scraper is in itself a 
 miracle," exclaimed the Story-teller. ^'It does not 
 take hundreds of years and tens of thousands of men 
 like the Pyramids. It does not take decades. It is 
 only a matter of days. Day and night the toil goes on. 
 Drills burrow a hundred feet into the earth to reach 
 bedrock. A battery of derricks is put into place, huge 
 machines that lift tons and tons of steel with no seem- 
 ing effort. At midnight, when the streets are deserted, 
 mighty steel beams are delivered on ponderous 
 wagons ready to be used by the iron-workers. The 
 gaunt steel skeleton almost leaps into the air. After 
 the erection of every ten stories, the derricks are 
 raised. The relentless noise of riveting machines fills 
 the air. By sunlight one gang of men ply their trade ; 
 by electric light another gang continues. While the 
 upper stories of the framework are put into place, 
 stoneworkers and bricklayers are completing the lower 
 stories. 
 
 ^*It has been estimated that at times the work goes 
 on at the rate of a story a week. Is this not modern 
 magic? The framework of a large New York depart- 
 ment store containing 22,000,000 pounds of steel was 
 erected in only four hundred hours. To the glory of 
 the contractors be it said that as a rule these colossal 
 buildings are erected with almost no loss of life. The 
 laborers walk and work on narrow steel beams 600 
 feet and more above the sidewalk, but seldom fall. 
 
 * ^ The largest building in the world at this moment 
 is the Woolworth Building in New York, the city of 
 sky-scrapers. Its foundations are laid in its lowest 
 sub-basement 120 feet beneath the sidewalk, and its 
 
 97 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 flag floats 905 feet higher. It towers 55 stories high. 
 Forty-six million pounds of steel were used for its 
 skeleton; 17,000,000 bricks are mortared in its walls, 
 together with 2,500 square feet of cut stone and 7,500 
 tons of terra-cotta. The building contains 1,800,000 
 square feet of floor tiles and the same area of partition 
 tiles. There are twenty-six elevators each so made 
 that were it to drop from the top floor it would auto- 
 matically come to a gentle stop long before it reached 
 the bottom. 
 
 ^'The modern sky-scraper is a veritable city in it- 
 self, containing an actual population greater than that 
 of many flourishing communities. The tenant of one of 
 the great office buildings may live in his room year in 
 and year out and still enjoy all the comforts of life. 
 A restaurant on the top floor serves his meals. Down- 
 stairs there are stores of all kinds. There are news- 
 stands and even theaters. There are barbers in the 
 basement, and there are tailors and confectioners, 
 doctors and lawyers, brokers and bankers — all trades 
 and occupations within immediate call. Some of the 
 sky-scrapers have gymnasiums on the roof.'' 
 
 The Story-teller raised his voice to command atten- 
 tion. He pointed his finger in emphasis and in con- 
 clusion declared : 
 
 ^^The new buildings are not hideous creations. On 
 the other hand, they are inspiring to behold, full of 
 dignified beauty — the finest examples of architecture 
 in America. When we remember that some of the 
 great European cathedrals took six and seven cen- 
 turies to build, we will gaze with even greater wonder 
 upon these newer edifices, which spring from the earth 
 in a year.'' 
 
 98 
 
THE STORY OF THE MAN IN THE CAB 
 BEHIND THE LOCOMOTIVE 
 
 THE grand old man leaned on a gold-headed cane. 
 His hair and brows were whitened by many 
 years. His shoulders were slightly stooped, but 
 his voice was clear and strong. 
 
 ^^I have lived,'' he said, reminiscently, ^^ through 
 the mightiest age that the world has yet known. In 
 the span of this single life of fourscore years, I 
 have seen the world awaken from its slumbers like a 
 mighty giant and shake off the habits and customs of 
 the centuries. Knowledge, plenty, and beneficence 
 abound. The earth's dark and silent places of my 
 youth are now known and mapped, and are visited in 
 luxury and safety by the tourist. The things that in 
 ^^y boyhood only those of wealth could hope to own 
 or see are the common heritages of the modern 
 laborer." 
 
 The recollections of eighty years flooded the old 
 Story-teller 's memory. 
 
 ^^The world has been made over again since I was 
 born!" he exclaimed. '^It is a miracle — and the 
 miracle worker is the railway locomotive. I have seen 
 in my lifetime the many miracles the locomotive has 
 magically performed. I have seen it literally pick 
 up our western frontier along the Missouri and carry 
 it on its pilot to the beating surf of the Pacific. I 
 have seen it magically touch barren spots in the desert 
 and create populous and rich cities and farm lands. I 
 have seen it hurtle over or through mountain ranges, 
 
 99 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 or across deep roaring rivers or broad-bosomed in- 
 land seas, while drawing behind it palatial traveling 
 coaches laden with human freight. ' ' 
 
 The Story-teller smiled reflectively. 
 
 **I still remember the first steam locomotive I ever 
 saw," he said, reminiscently. ^*It was the first Amer- 
 ican made and operated engine, and had the name of 
 ^Best Friend.' It was in the year 1830 — of course I 
 was but a mere lad then — when I was visiting in South 
 Carolina. While walking along the highway, my boy- 
 ish curiosity was aroused by parallel rows of logs laid 
 down and supporting twin strips of timber on the top 
 of which strips of iron were fastened. I was aroused 
 from my speculations upon its nature by the shrieks 
 of twenty panthers, so it seemed, and was frightened 
 to witness what appeared to be, generally speaking, an 
 enlarged soda water bottle standing upright upon a 
 wooden platform which in turn was mounted on moving 
 wheels along the rails. It was bathed in a shower of 
 fire, smoke and cinders. Its designer was Adam Hall, 
 and it had been built at the West Point Foundry, in 
 New York City. 
 
 *^ Later," the speaker continued, **I learned that 
 this was not the first in the world. An Englishman, 
 George Stephenson, had in the previous year (1829) 
 run a race with his engine, the 'Rocket,' at Eainhill, 
 England^ at the speed of 30 miles an hour. Another 
 Englishman, Trevithick, had contrived a wonderful 
 machine, in 1803, with walking beams and cranks and 
 cogged gearings which stalked along the British high- 
 ways like a monster from Mars, if there are any, 
 clouded in steam and smoke and heralded by clanking 
 beams and bars. It was known as the 'grasshopper,' 
 and certainly resembled it. It indeed was a monster 
 and inspired terror wherever it went — and frequently 
 it went where it was not wanted. For instance, it 
 
 100 
 
STORY OF THE LOCOMOTIVE 
 
 one day ploughed tlirough a garden fence and up to 
 a toll bridge gate. 
 
 ** * Hello!' exclaimed Trevithick, who was driving 
 the machine. * Here's a toll gate — ^how much is there 
 to pay r 
 
 ^*The toll keeper stood, transfixed with horror and 
 speechless, in the midde of the road. 
 
 ** * What's to pay?' Trevithick demanded once 
 more. 
 
 *' *Na — na,' was the stammering reply. ^There's 
 naught to pay, de — dear Mr. Deevil! Ah-r-rr, do 
 drive on!' " 
 
 ^'I felt about the same as the toll keeper," said 
 the Story-teller, when laughter subsided, ^ ' when I first 
 saw a locomotive. And you probably would be as- 
 tonished at least if you had never seen or heard of 
 a locomotive and were suddenly confronted by one of 
 our modern monster engines, measuring over eighty 
 feet in length from tender to pilot, weighing some 
 750,000 pounds, and pulling 155 loaded fifty-ton ca- 
 pacity freight cars. 
 
 *^I still remember some of the comments of our 
 American people when the locomotive began to move 
 about our country. The oracles of the country grocery 
 store discussed its possibilities pro and con. One 
 enthusiast, bold enough to predict forty miles an hour, 
 was silenced by the vigorous protest: *Be ye a fool? Ye 
 never could live to ride like that. It 'd take yer breath 
 away. ' 
 
 ^^ About the time of the Civil War railway locomo- 
 tives became common sights all over our Eastern coun- 
 try — or I should say, uncommon in the light of these 
 days. Then the engine was the engineer's pet and 
 accordingly was decorated in curious fashion. One 
 engine running in New England had a frame of highly 
 polished steel, a cab decorated with mahogany and 
 
 101 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 solid walnut and cab windows of stained glass. The 
 drivers were painted red, and from the cab to the 
 sand box polished brass fittings glittered in the sun. 
 On the side of the headlight was painted the United 
 States coat of arms. Even the engineer was decorated 
 in a spotless suit of white duck, and looked much like 
 a yacht's captain. The engines in early days bore 
 names instead of numbers, and in the railroad round- 
 houses the names ^Andromeda,' ^ Venus,' 'Orient,' and 
 'Adonis,' are still recalled in reminiscence. 
 
 ''Great changes have been wrought in locomo- 
 tives," said the Story-teller. "Nowadays compressed 
 air rings the bell, sands the track ahead of the driving 
 wheels so they won't slip, and even operates the bar 
 which reverses the power of the engine. Recently an 
 automatic device has been created which will shovel 
 and stoke the fire, and another device has appeared 
 which enables the fireman to open the door to his 
 flaming furnace automatically. 
 
 "Of course, the greatest change has been in their 
 might. Recently one of our mighty locomotives hurtled 
 over its steel rails at the rate of a mile in half a 
 minute, or 120 miles an hour. Their length has grown 
 until, in the case of one engine operating on a Western 
 road, the boiler has been hinged by a flexible joint 
 so that it can go around a curve without upsetting. 
 Another, running on a Southern road, is so monstrous 
 that a small switching locomotive was placed within 
 its firebox — ^it weighed with its tender 376 tons. It 
 carries 12,000 gallons of water and 30,000 pounds of 
 coal. Such a machine as this will have more than 
 7,000 parts. 
 
 "Steam has proven one of man's greatest benefac- 
 tors. But in this age of marvels it would seem that 
 even steam must give way before the newer methods. 
 Already we have powerful electric locomotives which 
 
 102 
 
STORY OF THE LOCOMOTIVE 
 
 perform the work of steam-driven engines, and at a 
 lower cost of operation. Then recently gasoline loco- 
 motives have been introduced to the railway world, as 
 well as mighty oil-bnrning engines. In view of this, 
 who can say that steam will not follow in the footsteps 
 of the horse as a motive power in transportation f ' ^ 
 
 **How many locomotives are there in the United 
 States f asked some one. 
 
 ' * About 65,000 in 1913, ' ' the speaker replied. ' * And 
 they burn up in a yearns time about 150,000,000 tons 
 of coal to carry over a trackage of 250,000 miles 
 passengers to the number of 1,020,000,000 and freight 
 that weighs in the aggregate 1,818,000,000 tons. 
 
 **That is what our locomotives mean to us to- 
 day," said the octogenarian, in conclusion. *^How 
 long, do you think, could our great cities, our rural 
 districts, our mighty industries and vast commercial 
 interests exist without the tireless locomotive! I claim 
 that the locomotive carries modern civilization upon its 
 pilot. A few hours' cessation of its ceaseless energy, 
 and millions of people would be in idleness and want. 
 The wheat of the field, the produce of the farms, the 
 products of the factories would be useless and unprof- 
 itable. These steel machines must keep in never-ending 
 motion to sustain and strengthen modern civilization, 
 to banish distances, to spread the mails and knowledge 
 broadcast, to mold the whole land into a neighborhood 
 and make business a success." 
 
 103 
 
THE STORY OF THE JOURXALIST AXD 
 THE MAKIXG OF A XEWSPAPER 
 
 EXTEA! Extra! All about the ship sinking in 
 mid-ocean!'' 
 The startling message wafted into the library 
 through the open windows. One of the Story-tellers 
 leaped to his feet and disappeared through the door, 
 while the rest of the gathering sat in silence awaiting 
 his return. A lean and energetic man arose and crossed 
 to the library table. 
 
 *^This is the opportune moment," he said, in short 
 but illuminating words, ''for my story — the romance 
 of modern news gathering. I'll wager that less than 
 an hour has passed from the time that ship met with 
 disaster to the time that newsboy's cry aroused us 
 to the frailty of human life. If I am right I believe 
 you will grant me that our modern method of gather- 
 ing news is one of the greatest wonders of the genera- 
 tion." 
 
 "You win!" cried the returned Story-teller. "This 
 newspaper," waving the still damp sheet in his hand, 
 "says that a passenger liner crashed into an iceberg 
 500 miles off the coast of England about 58 minutes 
 ago." 
 
 This information visibly impressed the Story- 
 tellers. The first speaker, the editor, then continued: 
 
 "That is the marvel of the modern newspaper — 
 the way it gathers its news from all parts of the earth, 
 whether it is from Canton, Ohio, or Canton, China, 
 and spreads it before its readers in less time than it 
 
 104 
 
STORY OF THE NEWSPAPER 
 
 would take you to travel from your home to the tavern 
 where in olden times the news was passed by word of 
 mouth among the gathering/* 
 
 *^How can you do it?" exclaimed a voice. 
 
 ^'By means of telegraph, wireless and land and 
 submarine, or by means of telephone and the assistance 
 of a loyal army of correspondents thousands strong. 
 The telegraphs and telephones reach into every corner 
 of the civilized earth, and within easy reach of them 
 are the correspondents whose faculties are so highly 
 developed that it is said that they ^can smell a story.' 
 They are always on the alert for any bits of news that 
 may prove of interest to the readers who may be sit- 
 uated on the other side of the world. 
 
 * ' These men and women are supplying about 65,000 
 newspapers throughout the world with news — the 
 United States alone has nearly 25,000 which must be 
 constantly fed with the world's events. The growth 
 of the newspaper is a miracle, but it requires another 
 miracle, quick communication, to make it possible. The 
 first American periodical publication was published 
 but once — on September 25, 1690. Its publisher, 
 Richard Pierce, of Boston, was probably one of the 
 most unique editors this country has ever seen. He 
 dubbed his paper ^Public Occurrences, Both Foreign 
 and Domestic,' and requested the citizens of the tov/n 
 to send him the names of those persons who were re- 
 sponsible for the false rumors circulating through the 
 town, or in other words, it was his plan to print a list 
 each week of all the liars in Boston. The paper was 
 suppressed, it is needless to add. Then came the 
 paper which historians claim as the first regular Amer- 
 ican periodical, the historic Boston News-Letter, pub- 
 lished on April 24, 1704. 
 
 ''In the intervening two centuries the newspaper 
 has been revolutionized. No department has seen such 
 
 105 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 changes as has the news gathering end. The modern 
 era of news gathering dates from the birth of the tele- 
 graph and telephone and the ocean cable. Prior to this 
 the methods *of ' quick communication, ' the key-note of 
 a newspaper, wereby pony express, by carrier pigeons, 
 and later by railroad and fast sailing steamboats. 
 Many newspaper editors remember the sixty blooded 
 horses which ran in relays between Baltimore and 
 New Orleans to carry to Editor A. S. Abell the latest 
 news from the battlefields of the Mexican War, and 
 thus enabled him to supply the government with news 
 thirty hours before its own methods of communica- 
 tion could bring the same story. 
 
 ^'To-day we can get such war news as soon as it 
 happens, almost, from our correspondents who are 
 with the vanguard of one of the contending armies. 
 This news is not only sent to one newspaper, but is 
 distributed simultaneously through thousands of other 
 offices. That is the magic of our modern methods. 
 
 *^It was a group of Americans who conceived the 
 idea of a news gathering agency, in the year 1848. 
 To-day the American agencies are the greatest in the 
 world. A single one of these agencies gathers news 
 from all over the world at an annual expense of over 
 $3,000,000. It sends its news constantly, day and 
 night, to over 800 newspapers in the United States 
 at the rate of more than 300,000,000 words a year. 
 
 *'Let us peep into one of the agency's offices. It 
 is a clearing house of foreign and domestic occurrences. 
 Scores of exceptionally expert telegraphers are seated 
 at their desks and steadily sending out messages. A 
 man stands at the head of the room shouting out the 
 result of some football or baseball game, or any other 
 event, and the telegraphers send his story to the w^ait- 
 ing editors all over the country. At the other end 
 of the telegraph wire a receiver is taking the message 
 
 106 
 
STORY OF THE NEWSPAPER 
 
 on a typewriter. The latter can easily outstrip the 
 swiftest dispatcher, so the dispatcher condenses his 
 message into cryptic messages. The average person 
 could not read one of these. Let me give you an ex- 
 ample. ' ' 
 
 The editor thought for a moment and then wrote 
 the following and passed it among the gathering: 
 
 t scotus tdy dcdd 5 pw f potus dz n xtd — etc. 
 
 '^It looks like a Chinese laundry check,'' said one 
 of the Story-tellers. 
 
 *^This is what that message means to the telegraph 
 editor," said the speaker: 
 
 ^The Supreme Court of the United States to- 
 day decided that the power of the President 
 of the United States does not extend — etc' 
 
 ^' These agencies sometimes meet with great emer- 
 gencies when storms are sweeping our country. They 
 can not close up shop and wait for their v/ires to be 
 re-established — they must find a way to send their 
 news. During the great blizzard of 1888, all com- 
 munication was cut off between Boston and New York. 
 The news then was cabled to London and returned 
 to the American continent by way of Canso in Nova 
 Scotia, and from there to Boston, thus sending its 
 news for more than 7,000 miles to reach newspaper 
 offices situated only 233 miles away. 
 
 **So great has become the demand for news that 
 the methods of gathering local news have been rev- 
 olutionized. To-day the reporter on metropolitan 
 dailies receives his assignment from the city editor 
 over the telephone, possibly, or in the editor's office. 
 He hurries away with the editor's 'Get the story' ring- 
 ing in his ears — excuses do not pass in a newspaper 
 office. Probably a few moments later the reporter has 
 
 107 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 the story and then he darts for the nearest telephone 
 and tells the outline of the facts to the * re-write^ man 
 who composes the tale on a typewriter while the other 
 reporter, known as the ^leg-man,' scurries away on the 
 trail of another story to feed the voracious maw of 
 the printing press." 
 
 *^The newspaper," said the Story-teller, *4s one of 
 the most powerful agencies in our modern civilization. 
 It can sway the destinies of individuals or govern- 
 ments. This was recognized many years ago by the 
 Parliament of England. It was one of its members 
 who, while addressing his fellow-legislators, turned to 
 the newspaper gallery and exclaimed: ^ There is the 
 Fourth Estate. ' The three other estates, as you proba- 
 bly know, are the Lords spiritual, the Lords temporal, 
 and the Commons." 
 
 The editor paused and glanced at his watch. Pick- 
 ing up his hat and cane he moved toward the door say- 
 ing: 
 
 *^My time is up. It is time I began my trick on 
 the city desk where during the night while you folks 
 are sleeping the sleep of the just I will be listening 
 to all the pathos, the tragedy and humor of the world 
 which I must have ready for you when you come down 
 to your breakfast table in the morning. If any great 
 story * breaks' then I am liable to have you awakened 
 by the vigorous voices of the newsboys crying * Extra! 
 Extra!' " — the closing door drowned the remaining 
 words. 
 
 108 
 
THE STORY OF THE POSTMASTER AND 
 THE MARVELS OF THE POST-OFFICE 
 
 "T S there any one in the room who would like to try 
 1 to count up to 17,588,658,941?" 
 
 It was a man of middle age, with a gray mous- 
 tache and a bald head, who asked the question. 
 
 ^'Does no one wish to undertake this taskT' he in- 
 quired. 
 
 ^'How long will it takeT' asked an ambitious 
 woman, who was sitting on the red divan. 
 
 ^^Well,'' remarked the bald-headed gentleman, ^4f 
 you are quick at figures, you can probably do it in 
 something like 10,000 years." 
 
 **I fear I am too old to undertake it," retorted the 
 woman, facetiously. ^'But what has that to do with 
 your story?" 
 
 **That is the whole plot to my story," replied the 
 truthful romancer, *4t is the story of the post-office — 
 and that is the number of pieces of mail that were 
 hurled through our wonderful postal system during 
 this last year." 
 
 *^Hail to the postmaster!" exclaimed a dozen 
 voices. 
 
 '* Friends," remarked the postmaster, ^^you can have 
 no idea of the marvelous system that brings your mail 
 every morning. It is one of the most perfect demon- 
 strations of the genius of organization that has ever 
 been conceived and developed by the brains of men. 
 The sending and receiving of a single letter on sched- 
 ule time is alone no mean accomplishment. What, 
 then, does it mean to keep some 50,000,000 going and 
 
 109 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 coming every moment of the day — each in different 
 directions, crossing each other's paths, penetrating 
 every nook and corner of the land, hnt arriving almost 
 at the appointed instant? It is almost like legerde- 
 main — it literally snows letters into every town and 
 city in the United States every day. So enormous has 
 the system become that it forms the arteries of mnch 
 of the world ^s trade. "When the mails are delayed, the 
 whole business community is thrown out of gear. It 
 is not only the great endless channel for business 
 agreements and communications, but it is the pur- 
 veyor of joy and sorrow; it carries the tidings of for- 
 tune and disaster; it is entrusted with the responsi- 
 bility of breaking the news of birth and death; it is 
 the broad highway of love and marriage. 
 
 ^^This stupendous system of communication 
 through correspondence to-day requires 58,729 post- 
 offices, which it costs over $250,000,000 to keep in oper- 
 ation. It requires postmasters, carriers, and other 
 workers to send and deliver these communications. It 
 keeps railroad trains, horses, and automobiles going 
 day and night." 
 
 ^ ' How and when did all this begin — and where will 
 it endr' interrupted a listener. 
 
 ^^It began with an effort to meet the needs of the 
 people," quickly answered the postmaster, ''and it 
 has ended as a habit that demands more and more all 
 the time. During the first years in America, the 
 settlers experienced much difficulty in getting word to 
 each other. It was finally decided, in 1639, that all let- 
 ters brought from beyond the seas, or sent thither, be 
 left at the house of Eichard Fairbanks, in Boston. He 
 agreed to take care that they be delivered or sent ac- 
 cording to direction. Thus was started the first post- 
 office in the English colonies in America. Not until 
 1691, however, was there a regular American post. 
 
 110 
 
STORY OF THE POST-OFFICE 
 
 In that year a royal patent gave Thomas Neale con- 
 trol of the intercolonial post-office. The first Ameri- 
 can postmaster-general was Andrew Hamilton. He 
 established a system of mail transportation on May 
 Day, 1693. Through a system of relays of riders on 
 horseback and stage coaches, he succeeded in getting 
 letters safely through the wilderness from Ports- 
 mouth, New Hampshire, to Boston, New York, Phila- 
 delphia, Maryland, and Virginia. It was considered 
 a notable event when the New Yorkers and Virginians 
 started a weekly exchange of mails in 1717. 
 
 ^'The most famous of the early postmasters was 
 Benjamin Franklin, who became postmaster at Phila- 
 delphia in 1737. Some years later, when the nation 
 was being formed, Continental Congress appointed 
 Franklin head of an independent post-office at a salary 
 of $1,000 a year — a large income at that time. The 
 Post-office Department was officially established as a 
 branch of the government in 1794, but the postmaster- 
 general was not made a member of the President's 
 cabinet until Andrew Jackson's administration. Death 
 was the early penalty for robbing the mails. Letters 
 w^ere first conveyed in steamboats in 1813 ; the experi- 
 ment was regarded with the same feeling of wonder 
 which recently greeted the news that our own post- 
 office had enlisted the aid of the aeroplane. 
 
 *'It cost from six to twenty-five cents to send a let- 
 ter in the first days of the republic. The rate depended 
 on the distance that the post-riders had to travel. Let- 
 ters written upon a single sheet of paper could be sent 
 any distance not over thirty miles for six cents; not 
 over 80 miles for 10 cents ; not over 150 miles for 12^^ 
 cents; not over 400 miles for 18% cents; and greater 
 distances for 25 cents. So many letters were being 
 lost that Congress established the dead letter office in 
 1825, to which all lost letters could be delivered. 
 
 Ill 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 a 
 
 Every one who has ever collected stamps knows 
 that the first United States postage stamps were used 
 in 1847. They were of the 5 and 10 cent denomina- 
 tions and bore the likeness of Franklin and Washing- 
 ton respectively. The first railway post-office in the 
 United States was established in 1862. Stamped en- 
 velopes were introduced in 1863. Public letter boxes 
 were erected in that same year, and letters were de- 
 livered free in cities of 50,000 population. The money 
 order system was established in 1864. 
 
 *^But the master-stroke came in 1897, when the 
 whole country was benefited by the establishment of 
 the rural free delivery. What this change meant to 
 the farmer cannot be overestimated. It did away with 
 his oppressive loneliness and made him a part of civil- 
 ization. It brought the world's news to his door, and 
 gave him a larger view of life. I do not know of any- 
 thing that the United States could do for that small 
 amount of money that is doing as much good as the 
 free delivery. When rural free delivery was intro- 
 duced, 83 carriers were employed, who covered 1,843 
 miles daily. The cost of the service was $49,999.71. 
 Fifteen years later there were 42,199 carriers in this 
 branch of the service, covering 1,021,492 miles daily, 
 and the cost was $41,856,061. As I have told you in 
 the beginning of this story, more than seventeen bil- 
 lions of pieces of postal matter of all kinds passed 
 through the mails in 1912. There were 9,960,968,785 
 ordinary postage stamps issued, valued at $181,121,- 
 762.59. The postal cards numbered 909,411,045, which 
 were turned off by the government on presses that 
 print 144 cards per second — ^more than half a million 
 in an hour. Domestic money orders were issued to 
 the extent of 85,286,380, representing a value of $594,- 
 901,623.90; there were 3,708,773 international money 
 orders, amounting to $86,095,404. 
 
 112 
 
STORY OF THE POST-OFFICE 
 
 ^^The post-office grew with leaps and bounds. It 
 extended its wonderful service in every conceivable 
 direction. There were 75 post-offices in the United 
 States in 1789 ; there were 58,729 in 1912. The reve- 
 nue of the department was $7,510 in 1789 ; the revenue 
 was $246,744,015 in 1912. The sum of $1,657 was paid 
 in salaries to postmasters in 1789 ; the postmasters re- 
 ceived $28,467,726 from the government in 1912. 
 
 ^^The wonder story of the post-office has only be- 
 gun. Nearly every year some ingenious plan is de- 
 veloped to give the American people larger and freer 
 service. To-day the post-office is the people's bank. 
 It undertakes to keep money in safety for the wage- 
 earners. More than 300,000 people deposited $28,- 
 000,000 with the Postal Savings banks last year. This 
 is not all, for, in 1912, the post-office introduced the 
 great system known as the parcels post, which de- 
 livers packages at low cost in every part of the coun- 
 try. This innovation is one of the greatest public 
 services of the times. 
 
 **I cannot undertake to tell you here of the mar- 
 velous systems that have been created to help fulfill 
 these duties for the people'' said the Story-teller in 
 conclusion. ** Intricate machinery has been brought 
 into use ; mechanical devices have been invented. Mail 
 bags are shot through wonderful chutes at almost 
 lightning speed. Tunnels have been built under cities ; 
 underground railways have been constructed; letters 
 are hurled through automatic tubes by compressed 
 air. Soon, we may receive our letters from the skies, 
 for the marvels of man are beyond all human compre- 
 hension. We never know what man is going to do 
 next — ^until he does it." 
 
 113 
 
THE STORY OF THE INVENTOR AND 
 THE GENIUS OF THE PATENT OFFICE 
 
 ONE day the Story-tellers were engaged in 
 animated conversation, when an alert-looking 
 man, with bright, inqnisitive eyes, entered. 
 
 ^*A¥hat is all this discussion about f he asked, 
 smilingly. 
 
 ^'Oh, we were talking about inventions," some one 
 replied. ^^Some of us think that we could make for- 
 tunes if we could only put into practical shape the 
 ideas floating in our heads." 
 
 ^'Perhaps you might," he replied. *^0n the other 
 hand, you might not. The air is full of inventions, 
 good, bad, and indifferent. I may tell you that I am 
 an inventor myself, and, if you wish it, I will tell you 
 the story of the Mecca of inventors — the Patent Office 
 at Washington." 
 
 Unanimous approval was expressed, and the in- 
 ventor proceeded: 
 
 ^ ^ We are a nation of inventors — we are millionaires 
 in inventions- I mean that the Patent Office has re- 
 cently issued its millionth patent. Think of it — a mil- 
 lion patents, out of a total of three million for the 
 whole world! And this takes no account of about 
 10,000 patents granted before 1836, or of patents issued 
 by the colonial governments." 
 
 ^^Who got the millionth patent?" inquired one of 
 the party. 
 
 *^It was an Ohio man — Francis H. Holton," an- 
 swered the Story-teller, ^'for a non-puncturable auto- 
 
 114 
 
STORY OF THE PATENT OFFICE 
 
 mobile tire. Over 38,000 patents were granted out of 
 68,000 applications tiled in 1912 — and still they come! 
 What would the Commissioner of Patents of the year 
 1845 say to this? He reported the granting of 637 
 patents in a twelvemonth, making a total of 15,000, 
 and commented as follows : ^ It may with truth be said 
 that within a very short time human ingenuity will 
 have reached its limit.' If the good commissioner 
 could take a peep into the Patent Office to-day, he 
 would be very shy of putting any limit to American 
 ingenuity. ' ' 
 
 '^When was the first patent issued in the world!'' 
 asked a Story-teller of an historical turn of mind. 
 
 ''The first recorded patent," replied the inventor, 
 ''was issued in the fourteenth century by Edward III, 
 of England, and the nature of it was characteristic 
 of the times. It was granted to two friars and two 
 aldermen for an 'alleged discovery of the philosopher's 
 stone, ' or, in other words, of the secret of transmuting^ 
 baser metals into gold. I am afraid it would stand 
 no chance with our Patent Office, which, by the way, 
 has a standing rule barring any invention connected 
 with perpetual motion. 
 
 "The first patent ever issued to an inventor in 
 America was granted in 1646, by the General Court 
 of Massachusetts Bay, to Joseph Jenks, for an im- 
 proved scythe. We made a start, you will observe, 
 with something really serviceable. 
 
 *'The Patent Office dates practically from the First 
 Congress of the United States, in 1790. The patent 
 system was provided for in the federal constitution, 
 and Washington brought the matter before Congress 
 in his earliest address. A law was passed creating 
 a patent commission, consisting of the Secretary of 
 State, the Secretary of War, and the Attorney-Gen- 
 eral. The first patent was granted to Samuel Hopkins, 
 
 115 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 of Vermont, for a mode of manufacturing potash and 
 pearl-ash. 
 
 ^'A serious fire destroyed all the records and 
 models of the Patent Office in 1836. Every effort was 
 made to replace them, and work was commenced on the 
 present building, which is justly considered one of 
 the most beautiful public edifices in the country. In 
 the same year, the office of Commissioner of Patents 
 was created and later assigned to the Department 
 of the Interior. A second destructive fire burnt up 
 114,000 models in 1877. Nowadays, models are not 
 required, except where drawings are found inade- 
 quate. ' ' 
 
 ' ' How do you take out a patent ? ' ' inquired a young 
 lady sitting near. 
 
 ^' First be sure," replied the Story-teller, ^'that 
 your invention is of a useful character. Then you 
 must make a sketch of it, or have a photograph of a 
 model made, and write a description of it. You then 
 file your application at the Patent Office, either per- 
 sonally or by mail, paying a fee of $15. In return, 
 the government makes a searching investigation, in 
 order to ascertain whether your idea has been patented 
 before. Unlike the patentee in most foreign countries, 
 the American inventor can be reasonably sure of his 
 invention really belonging to him and being protected 
 by law. Should the government decide to issue the 
 patent, an additional fee of $20 is required. The 
 patent holds good for 17 years. 
 
 ^ ' The American passion for invention has succeeded 
 in making the Patent Office a big revenue producer, 
 and it has already a surplus of about $7,000,000 to its 
 credit. Needless to say, the inventions patented are 
 of every conceivable kind. The Patent Office puts 
 them under forty-three general divisions, which are 
 divided and subdivided again. This minute classifica- 
 
 116 
 
STORY OF THE PATENT OFFICE 
 
 tion facilitates the investigations made with reference 
 to each new application.'^ 
 
 *^In what field is the greatest number of patents 
 issued?" asked the engineer. 
 
 ^^In that of transportation," answered the inven- 
 tor. **But, to take a different classification, electrical 
 appliances take up nearly an eighth of the total num- 
 ber. Edison alone has taken out nearly a thousand 
 patents; needless to say, he is the champion patentee 
 of the world, with no one else within measurable dis- 
 tance. It sounds incredible, but not a day passes 
 that at least one application for an electrical patent 
 is not received, and more often the number reaches 
 twenty. A visit to the Patent Office forcibly reminds 
 us of the important part that electricity is playing 
 in our modern life. Many electrical inventions are 
 associated with farming, and indeed farm machinery 
 of all kinds is a favorite subject of the inventor." 
 
 *^I understand there is a lot of money in inven- 
 tions," remarked the banker. 
 
 *' Sometimes," replied the Story-teller. **It is es- 
 timated that one invention in twenty-five repays 
 the cost of taking out a patent. Some of the simplest 
 inventions pay the best. The metal plates worn on 
 the soles of shoes to protect them from wear brought 
 their inventor about a million and a half dollars in 
 a few years. Among the biggest fortunes ever made 
 from inventions were those that accrued respectively 
 from the glass bells hung over gas to protect ceilings 
 from being. blackened, and from simply putting emery 
 powder on cloth. More than a million dollars has 
 been earned by the gimlet-pointed screw, the inventor 
 of which was so poor that he trudged on foot from 
 Philadelphia to Washington to get his patent; the 
 roller skate brought in a similar amount. 
 
 **Some huge businesses have been built up on in- 
 
 117 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ventions. The manufacture of patented agricultural 
 implements alone represents a capital investment of 
 about $200,000,000. The investment in the sewing- 
 machine industry is $21,000,000. In electrical manu- 
 factures over $174,000,000 is invested. All these great 
 businesses are based on our patent laws — came out 
 of the Patent Office, as it were. 
 
 ^^The Patent Office has its humorous side. The 
 freak inventor is ever in evidence. I am not referring 
 to mechanical toys, many of which are extremely in- 
 genious and have brought large fortunes to their 
 originators; but to the products of fertile but cranky 
 brains. Such, for instance, as a device for inducing 
 sleep, in the form of a collar, which would seem cal- 
 culated to produce an eternal sleep. One man invented 
 a plow that could be used as a cannon, with what 
 object I cannot imagine. A remarkable architectural 
 freak was a house built in the shape of an elephant, 
 which was patented by a Philadelphia man.'^ 
 
 ''How do we compare with other countries in the 
 number of patents T' asked a Story-teller, with a taste 
 for figures. 
 
 ''It's just a case,'' answered the inventor, "of 
 America first and the rest scarcely in sight. Let us 
 take the figures for 1910, when 35,807 patents were 
 issued in this country. Germany came second, with 
 1,083, and England third, with 894. It is interesting to 
 go through the list, till we reach two apiece for Tur- 
 key and Costa Eica, and one each for Portugal, China, 
 and Chile. Of all the many things in which the United 
 States leads the world, this matter of inventions is 
 the most glaringjy conspicuous. We breathe in the 
 very air, as it were, originality and inventiveness, and 
 every day we are giving some new idea, great or small, 
 to the world." 
 
 118 
 
HURLING THE HUMAN VOICE ACROSS THE CONTINENT 
 
 Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, sending- the first direct 
 message from New York to Chicago. This magical little instru- 
 ment has revolutionized the whole world. — See page 129. 
 
THE STORY OF THE GREAT SEAPORTS 
 AND THE WORLD'S COMMERCE 
 
 THE heavens had opened and poured their tor- 
 rents upon the earth. Sudden gusts of wind 
 smote the library windows, and drove the fall- 
 ing rain in blinding sheets across the housetops. A 
 terrific gale whipped around the corners of the build- 
 ing. Lurid flashes of lightning rent the curtain of 
 night. Terrifying crashes of thunder voiced the anger 
 of the storm king. 
 
 ^^It is a bad night for our sailors/^ remarked a 
 Story-teller. 
 
 *'Not if their ships are resting in any of our mod- 
 ern harbors, '^ said a keen-eyed man. ^^We have spent 
 millions of dollars to prepare them against just such 
 storms as this.'' 
 
 **What is your profession?'' inquired one of the 
 gathering. 
 
 ^^I am a hydraulic engineer," replied the speaker. 
 **A builder of seaports and their modern accessories — 
 a soldier in the battle against the destructive ele- 
 ments. I, and many other Americans, erect bulwarks 
 for those cities which are threatened by tidal waves 
 and the like; and carve a way to the sea for those 
 which are barricaded by Nature." 
 
 The building shivered beneath a terrific blast of 
 wind. 
 
 **It was just such a night as this," he continued, 
 ^Svhen Galveston was wiped out in 1900, and at least 
 6,000 people were killed. That was a terrible cata- 
 9 119 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 clysm. But it can't happen again — that is the ro- 
 mance of hydraulic engineering. The elements tried 
 again to destroy the rebuilt city, in 1909, but in vain. 
 We had mastered them.'' 
 
 *^How?" ejaculated a voice. 
 
 ^^ Simply by walling in the city from the Gulf with 
 a four-mile concrete and granite sea-wall resting upon 
 subterranean piles and planks to prevent the sea from 
 undermining the wall. Then we lifted the city up out 
 of the path of danger, in some places elevating it as 
 much as 17 feet. It required a little more than a year 
 to build the wall, but, when it was finished, we had a 
 barrier as solid as a mountain, and it stood 16 feet 
 high and 16 feet wide at the base, while a boulevard 5 
 feet wide ran the whole length of the wall. We used 
 13,110 carloads of sand, crushed granite, cement, and 
 timber, and 100,000 tons of granite blocks, some of 
 which weigh a ton each, for the riprap before the wall. 
 The- cost was about $2,000,000. But it was money well 
 spent, for in 1909 it gallantly beat back the Gulf in an- 
 other Hurricane and saved Galveston from suffering 
 another $18,000,000 property loss. 
 
 *'To raise the city was a simple matter, in prin- 
 ciple. All buildings were raised on foundations to the 
 height required. Four monster steam-dredges went 
 out to sea and with powerful suction pumps drew up 
 sand from the bottom. Returning to the city's shore, 
 great flexible pipes were carried into the city, and the 
 dredges discharged their cargoes of sand and water 
 into the streets. When the water ran off, the sand 
 remained. Thus 17,000,000 tons of sand were poured 
 into Galveston. That is enough to make five pyra- 
 mids as big as the Egj^tian Cheops. You would have 
 to load every individual living in Europe with 100 
 pounds of sand each to carry this away in one trip. 
 
 **That is the way we rescued Galveston," said the 
 
 120 
 
STORY OF GREAT SEAPORTS 
 
 Story-teller. ''In addition we completed, in 1912, a 
 giant causeway connecting the city with the main- 
 land at a cost of $2,000,000. It is a beantifnl struc- 
 ture of concrete and steel, and its low arched bridges 
 resemble those 'moles' which the Eomans built to en- 
 close their harbors. It is nearly a half mile long, 
 and has a 100-foot lift bridge to permit vessels to 
 enter Galveston Bay. It combines a railroad system, 
 a roadway, and a promenade, and leads to beautiful 
 plazas at either end. Thus we rescued Galveston from 
 a debris-strewn sand pit and made it over into the 
 third greatest seaport in the United States. 
 
 ^'Did you ever hear,'' asked the speaker, **of the 
 American who drew the fangs from the mouth of the 
 Mississippi, and consequently made of New Orleans 
 the second greatest seaport in our nation? Few peo- 
 ple have heard of this magician. He is very modest, 
 even though he is one of the world's greatest hy- 
 draulic engineers and has constructed $100,000,000 
 worth of seaports and has added a billion dollars to 
 the commerce of the world. 
 
 ^'This man is Elmer Lawrence Corthell, a native 
 of New England and a grandson of the historic Com- 
 modore Lawrence who ^ would not give up the ship.' 
 Like his grandsire, young Corthell would not give up, 
 even though he labored for five years, and flood after 
 flood wiped away those jetties which he built. Per- 
 haps he was buoyed up by the words of James B. 
 Eads, his employer, who said: 'Congress gives me no 
 money till I get twenty feet of water. My reputation 
 as an engineer, my honor as a man, and the money of 
 my friends are all in your hands.' 
 
 "His plan was simple. He believed that, if he 
 could confine the waters of the river through one of the 
 three mouths between narrow dikes, the river would 
 carry away the alluvial soil that had choked up the 
 
 121 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 pass. He was right, as was proven when the steam- 
 ship Vulcan proudly steamed up Little Southwest 
 Pass on May 12, 1877, and thence into deep water with- 
 out having touched bottom. Eads' reputation and 
 money were saved, and Corthell became famous. 
 
 *'The world's greatest seaport, in point of value 
 of commerce, is the natural land-locked harbor of New 
 York. Its water-front is estimated at 748 miles, or a 
 distance equal to that between New York and Cincin- 
 nati. It had, in 1912, more than 350 miles of wharves 
 for the world's commerce to unload cargoes. 
 
 ** Nature provided abundantly for this vast fleet 
 of merchant-marine, but there was some room for im- 
 provement. One of the most remarkable engineering 
 feats was the making of the Ambrose Channel, which 
 lessens the journey to Europe by six miles. This is 
 cut through a bar in the Lower Bay and is 1,000 feet 
 wide, forty feet deep, and nearly eight miles long. 
 More than 100,000,000 tons of earth, mud, and sand, 
 an amount equal to a third of that dug from the Pan- 
 ama Canal, was taken out by dredges during the ten 
 years of operations, which cost about $4,000,000. If 
 that amount of material were dug out for an inland 
 canal fifty feet wide, fifteen feet deep, it would result 
 in a waterway nearly 500 miles long — a distance equal 
 to that between New York and Columbus, Ohio. 
 
 ^^ Millions of dollars have been poured into New 
 York Harbor for improvements to accommodate its 
 fleet of commerce carriers. In 1912, plans were laid to 
 spend $34,000,000 to subdue the treacherous rocks of 
 Hell Gate, so that ocean liners can come into port 
 through Long Island Sound, and to dredge the Hud- 
 son River so that 1,000-foot steamships can safely 
 navigate to their piers. 
 
 *^Our American engineers are wizards. They often 
 make islands where Nature forgot to put one, and they 
 
 122 
 
STORY OF GREAT SEAPORTS 
 
 make tliem more stable than some of her handiwork. 
 The government troops located on Governor's Island 
 in New York Harbor found their island too small; so 
 the engineers came along and bnilt on an addition of 
 stone and earth. It is not beyond a possibility that 
 New York will soon tire of having East River separ- 
 ating it from Brooklyn, and will then call in our Amer- 
 ican engineers to fill in this river, and thus join the 
 two cities, making Long Island an island in name only. 
 
 ^^The world has never witnessed such activity as 
 is now going on among our American seaports. Bos- 
 ton is spending $12,000,000 to improve her harbor; 
 Baltimore has spent $6,500„000 since her disastrous 
 fire on docks and piers ; the Southern states and cities 
 are also spending fortunes. Out along the Pacific 
 Coast our engineers are creating wonderful harbors. 
 Los Angeles will have spent before the year 1922 
 more than $13,000,000 to build up a 23-mile water- 
 front; at San Francisco, the state-owned docks are 
 being extended at a cost of $1,000,000 ; Oakland is put- 
 ting $3,000,000 into the municipal docks, while San 
 Diego is having her state docks improved at a cost of 
 $1,500,000. To the northward, Seattle and Portland 
 are putting touches to Nature's handiwork, so that 
 they can accommodate the flood of Oriental commerce. 
 
 **The hydraulic engineer is the magician of the 
 age," said the Story-teller in conclusion. *^With his 
 steam dredges and cranes, with his concrete, blocks of 
 granite, and steel beams, and with his great ingenuity, 
 he is changing the face of the ocean shores. Face to 
 face he engages in mortal combat with the raging ele- 
 ments, and subdues them so that our mariners, after 
 navigating the stormy seas, may find safe anchorage at 
 the end of the voyage." 
 
 123 
 
THE STORY OF THE TELEGRAPHER 
 
 AND HIS MESSAGES THROUGH 
 
 THE AIR 
 
 *' T T OW would you like to talk with the man in the 
 
 X X moonf inquired the next Story-teller, in pre- 
 amble to his story of the wonders of the tele- 
 graph. 
 
 His question was greeted with smiles. 
 
 ^*I admit,'* he continued ^Hhat modern civilization 
 has not yet achieved this miracle. But, if some of 
 the scientists here can only devise the method, I would 
 tell them where they can find sufficient material and 
 even more than sufficient. A single American telegraph 
 company had, in 1910, a sufficient length of wires 
 woven all over the United States to form three tele- 
 graph systems, allowing two wires to each, to reach to 
 the moon. Even then, there would be enough left to 
 wrap eight times around the earth at the equator. 
 Even this would not use it all, and the balance would 
 form a line from New York across Europe and Asia 
 and beyond to San Francisco. *' 
 
 ^^That would make a pretty long clothes-line, ' ' 
 spoke one of the feminine members of the gathering. 
 
 *^Yes, it would,*' replied the telegrapher. *'We 
 all know that there are about 100,000,000 people in our 
 nation ; but I do not believe you all know that, if these 
 telegraph wires were divided equally among the Amer- 
 icans, each one, irrespective of age or sex, would have 
 a clothes-line 837 feet long; or that this one company 
 had more telegraph offices in this country than there 
 were dwellings in the state of Nevada, in 1910; or 
 
 124 
 
STORY OF THE TELEGRAPH 
 
 that these telegraph offices receive and dispatch about 
 90,000,000 messages every year. 
 
 ^^That the telegraph is a modern miracle no one 
 will deny. Not the least miraculous feature about it 
 is its wonderful development. Born about seventy years 
 ago, it to-day stands as a mighty memorial to Amer- 
 ican genius, virtually holding together with its web of 
 copper wire the whole structure of modern civiliza- 
 tion. Its sensitive nerves stretch from city to city, 
 from hamlet to hamlet, wherever there is a pretense 
 of civilization and in many places where there is none, 
 welding the w^hole world into a common brotherhood 
 of intelligence. 
 
 '^You will recall that Great Britain's ruler, King 
 Edward, died at midnight of May 6, 1910. Did you 
 know that in New York the people on the streets read 
 of his death four hours before that time? Of course, 
 this is accounted for by the difference in time between 
 London and New York. Compare this with the ex- 
 perience of our grandfathers, and you have the story 
 of what the electric telegraph means to modern civiliza- 
 tion. In their generation. King William IV, great- 
 uncle of Edward, died coincident ally with the birth of 
 the electro-magnetic telegraph. The news did not 
 reach this country until about three weeks had passed, 
 though swift messengers carried the news to the sea- 
 side, from whence steamships raced across the Atlan- 
 tic as fast as they could. 
 
 **It is not necessary to say that Samuel F. B. 
 Morse was the inventor of the telegraph. His name 
 is a household word, and his achievement is related 
 in our schoolbooks. To tell the development of the 
 idea of the telegraph is to relate the history of civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 **Has there been any change in the telegraph since 
 Morse invented it?" a voice asked. 
 
 125 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ^^Not in basic principles," was the answer. "One 
 authority has said that ^the telegraph has probably 
 undergone less change in the course of its extension 
 and practical development than any other invention of 
 equal importance. ' When Morse began to lay his first 
 line between Baltimore and Washington by the aid of 
 the money which Congress appropriated, a shallow 
 ditch was plowed and leaden pipes, with the wires 
 laid within, were used for a mile or more; but there 
 were 4eaks,' and the plan was abandoned. To-day 
 this same plan is used in all large cities, but we call 
 them conduits. Where Morse planted his pipes, al- 
 most on the identical spot, are conduits containing 
 cables whose total capacity is equivalent to eight 
 hundred telegraph circuits in and out of the city. 
 
 "While Morse gave to the world the electric tele- 
 graph as a completed invention, other succeeding 
 geniuses, many of them Americans, have added new 
 features. One of these was multiplying the number 
 of messages sent over a single wire at the same time." 
 
 "Do you mean," inquired one of the gathering, 
 "that it is possible to send two messages over a single 
 circuit simultaneously?" 
 
 "The last improvement permitted the sending of 
 twelve messages over the same wire at the same time, 
 six in one direction, and six in the other. At the time 
 the survivors of the Titanic disaster disembarked 
 from the Carpathia, one telegraph office in New York 
 City alone handled in that day more than 715,000 
 words over its wires. 
 
 "The laying of the mighty Atlantic cable is a fa- 
 miliar story to the average American. It is this great 
 telegraphic agent which has literally swept away the 
 watery barrier to the conveying of information be- 
 tween the New World and the Old. Another of these 
 great v/izards is the wireless telegraph, a name syn- 
 
 126 
 
STORY OF THE TELEGRAPH 
 
 onymous with that of its inventor, Marconi. Seldom 
 is it the fortune of inventions to have such dramatic 
 baptisms as that which attended the introduction of 
 the wireless telegraph to an incredulous world. Every 
 one recalls how its mysterious electric spark leaped 
 out of the dark night from the deck of the foundering 
 Republic, when she was rammed by the Florida, in 
 1909, circled in eddying waves from the depths of the 
 sea to the Nantucket shore and to those vessels 
 equipped with wireless apparatus and within range of 
 its appeal, and how help was rushed to the sinking 
 ship in time to rescue more than a thousand lives 
 from a watery grave. 
 
 ^^That was but one of the many services it renders 
 to humanity ; as men become more acquainted with its 
 mysteries, it proves a greater boon to civilization. It 
 was only in the year 1913 that the world was again 
 astonished by its powers. Then the mighty govern- 
 ment station at Arlington, in the shadow of the na- 
 tional Capitol, had succeeded in sending and receiv- 
 ing a message from Italy on the Mediterranean. 
 
 *^Did you know that the modern telegrapher can 
 paint a portrait with a beam of light and an electric 
 spark, though the artist and his canvas are separated 
 by hundreds of miles?" was the next startling 
 question. 
 
 ^^Let us picture the wizard at work. He coats a 
 portrait with gelatin and etches it to show the outline 
 and features of the face, and then mounts it on a cop- 
 per backing. It then looks like the printer's half-tone 
 plate. This he fits to a cylinder of his phototelegraph 
 and turns on the electric current. A little needle 
 passes gently over the portrait, feeling out the fea- 
 tures much as the blind son traces the features of his 
 mother, and intermittently touching the copper back- 
 ing through the etched holes in the gelatin coating, 
 
 127 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 thus forming the electric circuit. At the other end 
 of the wire, say 100 miles away, the receiving instru- 
 ment is simultaneously painting an exact reproduc- 
 tion. Here in a darkened box is another cylinder, 
 wrapped around with a photographer's camera film. 
 Intermittently, the shutter of the camera-like instru- 
 ment opens and closes, in unison with the sending 
 needle as it completes the circuit, flashing a minute 
 beam of light upon the film to be photographed. As 
 the painting progresses, the dots form lines until 
 finally the features of the portrait stand forth in 
 faithful likeness to the original.'' 
 
 ^^ Wonderful!" exclaimed his listeners. 
 
 '^ There is another wonderful machine," continued 
 the telegrapher, *' which an American, Professor 
 Henry A. Eowland, demonstrated in 1900 at Johns 
 Hopkins University in Baltimore. It was the printer- 
 telegraph, a combination of the typewriter and the 
 telegraph. Four girls sat operating ordinary looking 
 typewriters, while an alternating-current dynamo 
 softly purred in a corner of the room. Another ma- 
 chine, apparently like a mechanic's lathe, was quietly, 
 and unaided by human hands, printing messages. In 
 another room in Philadelphia, 150 miles distant, a sim- 
 ilar scene was transpiring. These two outfits were 
 transmitting and receiving simultaneously over the 
 one wire eight telegraph messages, which the printing 
 machines were taking down at the rate of thirty-five 
 words a minute, printing them on paper, just as the 
 typist transcribes letters on a typewriter. This scene 
 marked the culmination of a half century's labor and 
 research on the part of inventors scattered all over 
 the civilized world." 
 
 128 
 
THE STORY OF THE TELEPHONE THAT 
 SPEAKS ACROSS THE CONTINENTS 
 
 THE telephone bell sounded its call. The eyes of 
 the Story-tellers turned to the little nickeled in- 
 strument standing on the library table. The 
 owner lifted the receiver. • 
 
 *^ Hello!'' he said quietly, and then listened. *^A11 
 right. We will wait. Good-bye.'' 
 
 **The telephone man," he explained to the Story- 
 tellers, **just 'phoned and said that he would be with 
 us within a few minutes." 
 
 *^That is a remarkable instrument," ejaculated one 
 of the gathering. ^^Its name, literally meaning 'a 
 voice from afar,' and taken from the Greek, I believe, 
 certainly applies to it." 
 
 **Yes, it certainly is wonderful. I read to-day that 
 it came from one of those accidental discoveries ; that 
 Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas 
 Watson, were experimenting with a multiple telegraph 
 in 1875 in Boston, when the latter, standing before one 
 of the telegraph instruments, suddenly heard Bell's 
 voice as though the speaker were at his elbow, though 
 actually he was in another part of the shop. They 
 investigated and were startled to find that they had 
 solved the principle of conveying speech by telegraph, 
 as they first called it." 
 
 **That is right," declared a voice, the telephone 
 man's, who had come into the room unnoticed during 
 the discussion. *^It is for that wonderful discovery 
 
 129 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 that Bell's name will ring down tlirough the ages. He 
 accomplished what hundreds of other scientists had 
 tried to do since Sir Charles Wheatstone, the English 
 scientist, began the pioneer experiments in the same 
 year that the first steamship, the Savannah, crossed 
 the Atlantic, 1819. I believe that all of you are 
 familiar with the development of the telephone, and, 
 as it is also a long story, I will confine my story to 
 the wonders of the telephone as it is to-day. 
 
 *^ First I will reveal the prodigious size of the sys- 
 tems, and then relate some of the services that it has 
 rendered to Americans. Our earth is not large enough 
 to allow adequate comparisons, so I will turn to the 
 heavens, where we see Mars' luminous rays of light, 
 something like 35,000,000 miles away from the earth 
 when it is nearest to us. Did you know that the tele- 
 phone wires radiating throughout the world are long 
 enough to reach to Mars and back to the earth again, 
 and that there would still be 6,000,000 miles left with 
 which to drape festoons to the moon? Of this the 
 United States has about one-sixth strung throughout 
 the nation, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from 
 the Gulf to the Canadian border. 
 
 ^'It was estimated, in 1912, that there were 
 12,500,000 telephone instruments in the world; the 
 United States had 8,400,000 of these, or about one to 
 every twelve Americans. Through these we carried 
 on about 12,500,000,000 conversations, or more than 
 a half of the entire world's telephone conversations. 
 It required nearly 150,000 men and women to keep up 
 the service and to answer that prodigious number of 
 ^Helios.' 
 
 * ^ Those of you who live in large cities probably do 
 not realize that telephone wires are still strung on 
 poles ; your wires are buried in conduits underground. 
 Each year a forest of over a million trees is leveled 
 
 130 
 
STORY OF THE TELEPHONE 
 
 to supply the poles we require for new systems and to 
 replace old poles. 
 
 ''I do not believe that the average American real- 
 izes what a tremendous grip the telephone has upon 
 his everyday life, whether social or commercial. It is 
 the medium by which contracts are made, evidence is 
 given in lawsuits, degrees conferred, and even political 
 speeches are delivered to voters. One of the most re- 
 markable sermons ever delivered was that by Dr. Rus- 
 sell Conwell, who had the Samaritan Hospital in 
 Philadelphia connected by telephone with his pulpit. 
 The receivers were in the hospital wards, and the 
 transmitters, equipped with megaphones, were over his 
 pulpit and the choir loft in the Baptist Temple. 
 
 '*The telephone has become almost as necessary to 
 the hotel as the beds therein. The one hundred largest 
 hotels in New York City have more than 21,000 tele- 
 phones, which carry on the average about 6,000,000 
 messages a year. Wliat is true of the hotels is also 
 true of the large stores. In some of them the Christ- 
 mas Eve messages hurtling into the stores have 
 amounted to as many as 3,000. 
 
 *' Wherever man goes, the telephone follows; in- 
 deed, it often precedes all but the pioneer. The river- 
 bank is strung with telephone wires, so that the lum- 
 ber-jack can inform his comrades when the floating 
 lumber jams. At the Quebec Tercentenary 4,000 
 actors moved across a 10-acre stage, following the di- 
 rections of a telephone. The movements of the Dragon 
 in Wagner's opera * Siegfried,' are directed by a tele- 
 phone from back of the stage. The foreman of build- 
 ers, working hundreds of feet in the air on the steel 
 girders of a rising skyscraper, is in constant telephonic 
 communication with them from his position on or near 
 the ground. When the Erie Eailroad faced bankruptcy 
 recently, E. H. Harriman picked up one of the hun- 
 
 131 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 dred and more telephones in Ms home, loaned the road 
 $5,000,000, and saved it at the eleventh hour. 
 
 ^'Modern business could not be conducted in its 
 modern proportions Tvithout the telephone. There are 
 in the New York Stock Exchange nearly 650 private 
 telephones, over which each of the brokers sends at 
 least 50,000 cryptic messages, involving millions of 
 dollars every twelvemonth. Think of what it means 
 to the modern ncAvspaper. One metropolitan paper 
 has twenty trunk lines and eighty telephones, over 
 which are dispatched 200,000 calls, and 300,000 more 
 are received, every year. It has revolutionized the 
 reportorial end of the industry : one reporter runs for 
 the news, and then telephones it in to another who 
 writes it ; some runners have even telephoned the story 
 direct to the type-setter who clicked it onto his ma- 
 chine without ever touching a pencil. 
 
 ^'The telephone has become as indispensable in 
 modern warfare as the artillery itself. Witness, in the 
 Eusso-Japanese War, the battle of Mukden, where 
 150 miles of telephone wire stretched across the field 
 between the 100-mile crescent of Japanese soldiers 
 storming the foe and the Japanese generals standing 
 miles in the rear, but directing the assaults as clearly 
 and accuratelv as though thev stood at the head of 
 their troops. 
 
 *'For every five telephones in the urban districts, 
 there are to-day three on American farms and in rural 
 districts. It is the farmer's best friend, not only so- 
 cially, but in a commercial sense. By it, one North 
 Dakota planter was able to plant and harvest 30,000 
 acres of wheat, keeping in touch with all operations 
 at any time of the day. Can you imagine his state of 
 mind, nerves, and body, if he had to carry his own 
 messages over this great ranch? That is but one in- 
 stance of what the telephone means in modern agri- 
 
 132 
 
STORY OF THE TELEPHONE 
 
 culture. Did you ever hear of the man who saved his 
 flock of sheep from death by telephoning to his herders 
 that a blizzard was coming ; of the man who roused his 
 neighbors and called them to the rescue of his burning 
 barns and house ; of the man who telephoned to deal- 
 ers in a neighboring city and was able to sell his stock 
 at a price estimated at hundreds of dollars more than 
 he could get in the local market? 
 
 *^You all recall the heroic telephone operator, a 
 girl, who warned the people near Folsom, New Mexico, 
 of the approaching flood and enabled them to escape 
 though she herself went down in the angry waters. 
 
 *^The telephone actually saved $3,000,000 to Colo- 
 rado fruit growers in 1909. Spring frosts are peren- 
 nial events there, as ever^^vhere else, but they prob- 
 ably mean more to the Colorado fruit grower, for 
 they come along just when his fruit is in blossom. One 
 genius conceived the idea of fighting them with 
 smudge-pots. The fruit growers bought 300,000 of 
 them in 1909 and distributed them where they would 
 do the most good, among the trees. A telephone wire 
 connected all orchards with the Weather Bureau. On 
 a certain day the dreaded message came: 'Get ready 
 to light your smudge-pots in half an hour. ' The word 
 was relayed to the neighboring towns, and from them 
 rushed a cavalcade of willing helpers, so that by the 
 time the last warning came from the Weather Bureau 
 station, 'Light up, the thermometer registers 29,' 
 the smudge-pots were ablaze, and the crops assured of 
 salvation." 
 
 ''Wireless telephony is to be the next great step!'' 
 exclaimed the Story-teller in conclusion. "We shall 
 soon hurl our voices on sound waves across the con- 
 tinents. It is sure to come!" 
 
 133 
 
THE STORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE 
 AND WOMAN'S EMANCIPATION 
 
 'HAT American invention has done the most 
 for the women of the entire world?" 
 
 The answer seemed to be on the lips of all 
 the listeners. 
 
 ^'The sewing-machine!'' shonted half a hundred 
 voices in nnison. 
 
 '^My problem was too easy,'' replied the speaker, 
 a motherly woman of middle age. ^^The sewing-ma- 
 chine is indeed the great benefactor of woman. I wish 
 that there were some way in which we could perma- 
 nently express our appreciation. 
 
 *^The story of the sewing-machine,'' continued the 
 speaker, *4s the story of humanity. No invention has 
 done so much to deliver woman from drudgery. No 
 one piece of machinery has done so much to deliver 
 her from her burdens, her seclusion, her serfdom. 
 Fifty years ago, more than half the people of Europe 
 and America went barefooted half the year. The sew- 
 ing-machine has changed all that — and it has pro- 
 longed millions of lives. It h^s broken up harems in 
 Turkey; it has lifted the veil from many feminine 
 faces in the Orient. There was always something in 
 a needle and a thimble that made woman cling like 
 a vine to a wall — a thimble is the symbol of shyness — 
 but the sewing-machine has given her self-reliance 
 and freedom. Indeed, without the sewing-machine, 
 the civilized world would in six months go naked, as 
 it would go hungry without the reaper. 
 
 134 
 
STORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE 
 
 ^ ' What is this wonderful machine that has changed 
 the habits and customs, and even the personal appear- 
 ance, of the people of the earth?. It is the product of 
 American genius and American skill. It took many 
 minds, and more than a hundred years, to invent and 
 perfect it. The history of no invention is more re- 
 plete with effort and disappointment. It is not known 
 how many men tried to construct and improve it, but 
 there have been at least 25,000 patents recorded on 
 the sewing-machine and its attachments In this re- 
 spect only the steam engine surpasses it. It was the 
 dream of early England, but it required America to 
 bring it into realization. A man called Weisthal con- 
 structed an extremely crude chain-stitching machine 
 in England in 1755. Another Englishman, Thomas 
 Saint, invented a crude machine in 1790. An English- 
 man, named Duncan, made a chain-stitch machine that 
 employed two hooked needles, in 1804. Then a French- 
 man, named Thimmoner, constructed a machine on the 
 principle of Saint, in 1830. The first lock-stitch ma- 
 chine was made in New York, in 1832, by Walter Hunt, 
 but he failed to perfect his idea or to have it patented, 
 and thus lost the credit and the fortune. 
 
 **It remained for one American, a farmer's boy, 
 to give the sewing-machine to a waiting world. His 
 name was Elias Howe, and he was born on a farm in 
 Spencer, Massachusetts, in 1819. He lived with his 
 father, working upon the land and in the grain mill, 
 until he was 17 years of age, and attended the dis- 
 trict school during the winters. Then he learned the 
 trade of a machinist. It was in 1846, when Elias 
 Howe was 27 years old, that he announced that he had 
 solved the problem of the sewing-machine. 
 
 * * This was the beginning of a remarkable career, in 
 which he fought and overcame many obstacles. He 
 constructed four machines and then went to England 
 10 135 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 to introduce them into that country. He sold out his 
 English rights to a corset manufacturer for a few hun- 
 dred dollars and worked in this man's shop with his 
 primitive machine. Two years later, he learned that 
 his patents were being seriously contested in Boston 
 and returned to that city. He was penniless, and for 
 months the inventor of the lock-stitch needle fought 
 with his back to the wall. He found it necessary to 
 resume his trade as a machinist to keep his family 
 from starving. Greedy inventors began to infringe 
 his patents, and expensive lawsuits kept him in pov- 
 erty for several years. It was not until 1854 that his 
 claims were firmly established and his patent rights 
 acknowledged. Then began the royalties that were to 
 be his reward. When the Civil War broke out, his 
 heart was stirred with patriotism, and he enlisted as 
 a volunteer. Honors began to pour upon him. He 
 was the recipient of many medals and the cross of the 
 Legion of Honor. Twenty years after his invention, 
 he was a millionaire, and his lock-stitch needle, though 
 apparently a very simple invention, has given him 
 rank as one of the world's greatest mechanical geniuses. 
 ** There are many interesting anecdotes about the 
 sewing-machine," remarked the Story-teller. **For 
 some years one of Howe's machines, geared with a 
 big wheel and mounted upon a small metal disc or 
 table, stood in the window of a shop in Milk Street, 
 Boston. It embodied the one principle that makes a 
 sewing-machine — the lock-stitch needle, the same 
 needle in principle that the best sewing-machines have 
 to-day. Every morning and evening there passed this 
 window a keen-eyed, middle-aged man, who invariably 
 stopped and studied the machine. This was John 
 Bachelder, a well-to-do Boston merchant. He was 
 quick to perceive what Howe's machine needed to 
 make it a wonder-worker. He sold his prosperous 
 
 136 
 
STORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE 
 
 business, set up a machine shop, and undertook to 
 build a machine that had a horizontal head-piece or 
 table, on which the material to be sewn was supported ; 
 Howe's bent needle was straightened into a perpen- 
 dicular one with an eye point; it was given a needle 
 plate, a continuous feed, and a device for pressing 
 down the cloth while in the vicinity of the needle — 
 five vital points. With these improvements, the great 
 American sewing-machine was on its way to perfec- 
 tion. 
 
 ^*A few more ingenious brains finished the great 
 creation. A few years later, an improvement was 
 added by Isaac Singer, a New York mechanic. Then 
 came A. B. Wilson, who practically completed the 
 leading principles of the sewing-machine. What have 
 been added since are minor features and improve- 
 ments. When Howe's patents ran out, the sellers re- 
 duced the machines from $100 to $70 ; when the Bach- 
 elder and other patents expired, the machines had 
 been reduced to $30 apiece. Both Howe and Bachelder 
 came near to starving at different times in their 
 careers. 
 
 ^^Thus the sewing-machine was evolved by slow 
 degrees and at the close of the Civil War its sale had 
 grown to a considerable business. It played its part 
 in making clothing for soldiers in the Union Army, 
 and a number of machines were smuggled across into 
 the Confederate lines. There were 86 establishments 
 in thirteen states, manufacturing sewing-machines in 
 1860, and the output was valued at $4,000,000. The 
 output had increased to $15,000,000 ten years later. 
 To-day there are 47 factories in the United States, 
 employing 20,000 workers, with an output of 
 $28,000,000. 
 
 ^^The sewing-machine has now encircled the globe. 
 Over ten million dollars' worth of machines are now 
 
 137 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 exported in a single year, nearly a fourth of these 
 machines going to Scotland alone. Of all the foreign 
 nations, only the Germans have succeeded in making 
 a machine that can compete with the American ma- 
 chine. One may now find an American sewing-ma- 
 chine in almost every civilized community on the 
 globe. The peasant in Eussia, the black mother in 
 Africa, the coolie in India, the almond-eyed ladies in 
 China — all have American sewing-machines to-day. 
 
 **But there is one thing that the sewing-machine 
 has failed to do," said the mother, sadly. ^*It has not 
 banished the 'sweat shop.' Hood's 'Song of the 
 Shirt' lives to-day in ten thousand city lofts. The 
 sewing-machine has given it a click, a groan, a roar, 
 and a rumble — but it has not driven the tragic spec- 
 tacle from our land. It remains for the American 
 woman to come to the rescue of her unfortunate sis- 
 ters and turn light and air, health and happiness, into 
 the workroom, so that the song of the sewing-machine 
 may be a song of joy!" 
 
 ''How can we accomplish this?" asked a woman, 
 who was listening intently. 
 
 The mother looked at her sympathetically. 
 
 "My dear," she said, gently, "by constantly appeal- 
 ing to the best that is in human nature to protect the 
 daughters who are to become the mothers of the new 
 generation; by warning this industrial world not to 
 forget its humanity ; and by demanding justice ! ' ' 
 
 The Story-tellers broke into applause as the 
 motherly woman sat down. 
 
 138 
 
THE STORY OF THE TYPEWRITER 
 THAT REVOLUTIONIZED A WORLD 
 
 A NEATLY dressed young woman, whose active 
 eyes swept her audience, told the next story. 
 ''What would you think,'' she asked, ''if 
 while walking through our streets, you were con- 
 fronted by a feminine army, an Amazonian army, 
 larger than that with which Wellington crushed Na- 
 poleon at Waterloo; or a host more numerous than 
 that which was mustered under the standards of the 
 French and Allies at Leipsic — said to have been the 
 largest gathering of armed troops on a modern Eu- 
 ropean battlefield f 
 
 "Do you mean to say that there are so many suf- 
 fragettes in our landT' inquired a listener in pre- 
 tended alarm. 
 
 The young lady smiled at the sally, and then con- 
 tinued : 
 
 "I presume there are; but I was not referring to 
 them. I was speaking of my fellow-women engaged 
 in the profession I represent, the operators of another 
 of modern civilization's great wonders — the type- 
 writer. 
 
 "A modern Jeanne d'Arc could recruit an army 
 the size of Wellington's from the ranks of the femi- 
 nine typists in New York City alone, at the beginning 
 of the twentieth century. Or she could have called 
 upon all the women operating typewriters in our na- 
 tion in the same year and have gathered an army 
 larger than both of those which fought at Leipsic. 
 
 139 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 Mark that I say feminine operators — there are legions 
 of men and boys who are not included in this esti- 
 mate. And also mark that this was in the year 1900 ; 
 there are many more of both sexes to-day. 
 
 * ^ Fortunately for the men we have no militant ten- 
 dencies,'^ she resumed. ^'We represent an army of 
 peace, and we literally support the whole business 
 structure upon our shoulders. That we have the 
 strength for our task I will show by the figures of a 
 statistician. This person has estimated that the aver- 
 age coal-heaver, during a full day's labor, lifts about 
 18,000 pounds. He also states that the average, and 
 apparently weak girl typist, when working constantly 
 through the day, exerts an energy, while pounding the 
 typewriter keys, which nearly equals that of the coal- 
 heaver, or an energy equal to nearly 16,000 pounds! 
 In that light, the feminine army I mentioned assumes 
 pretty formidable proportions. 
 
 ^ ' I do not believe the typewriting machine receives 
 the tribute that is its due. It has become such a fa- 
 miliar sight in American homes and business houses 
 that its wonders are frequently overlooked. The aver- 
 age American does not know, or at least has forgot- 
 ten, that it received its first public recognition at the 
 time we were celebrating our first hundredth national 
 birthday, in 1876. Practically, it is even younger than 
 that, for it is only during the past few decades that it 
 has been in general use. And still I claim that it cre- 
 ated as great a miracle, in its own field of human en- 
 deavor, as did the birth of the nation itself!" ex- 
 claimed the Story-teller. 
 
 The auditors smiled at what they considered exag- 
 gerated enthusiasm. 
 
 *^I will ask you one question," continued the young 
 lady, ^^and probably in your answer you will find the 
 reason for my claim. What do you imagine would 
 
 140 
 
STORY OF THE TYPEWRITER 
 
 happen to our business fabric, not to mention our 
 other phases of modern civilization which are depen- 
 dent upon the typewriter, if we were compelled to go 
 back to using pens and pencils to write out our cor- 
 respondence by hand? I, for one, believe that the 
 Postoffice Department at Washington would soon re- 
 duce its working force, and its receipts would dwindle 
 significantly; this is but one obvious effect. 
 
 ** Before you answer my question, if you can,'' 
 continued the Story-teller, *^let me tell you of an ex- 
 periment which our own Government conducted some 
 years ago, about the time our federal officers were 
 considering the use of the typewriter in their depart- 
 ments. The most expert wielders of the pen in the 
 Government employ were given 100 statute words to 
 copy in their most rapid time, and the same words 
 were given to an operator of the typewriter. The hand- 
 writers completed their task in about eight minutes — 
 needless to say that they worked their fastest — the 
 typist in less than two minutes. Of course," ex- 
 plained the young lady in apology, **that was several 
 years ago. To-day we have typists who have written 
 steadily for hours at a stretch at the rate of 115 words 
 in a minute. It is not necessary to point out, I be- 
 lieve, that the typewriter has miraculously speeded up 
 correspondence and a multitude of other business de- 
 partments, so that they now can perform eight times 
 the business that was possible during the reign of the 
 pen and pencil. That is one reason why I claim the 
 typewriter as a miracle. ' ' 
 
 **Then Bulwer-Lytton's old proverb that *The pen 
 is mightier than the sword' has been revised," inter- 
 jected a listener. 
 
 **Yes, that is true," replied the young lady. *^We 
 have substituted the word * typewriter' for the *pen,' 
 just as we have substituted the machine for the old 
 
 141 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 steel point. To illustrate just how far we have done 
 this, let me point out that, according to the Govern- 
 ment census of industries in 1909, for every establish- 
 ment producing steel pens there were fourteen manu- 
 facturing typewriters and their appurtenances; and 
 that, for every dollar represented by the steel pen pro- 
 duct annually, there were thirty-four in the typewriter 
 product. 
 
 ^' These estimates represent all kinds of typewrit- 
 ing machines, some of which border on wizardry. 
 There is the machine which writes in a bound book, 
 the typewriter traveling over the face of the pages 
 much in the manner of the pen; there is the kind 
 which, attached to a piano, automatically writes the 
 tune played, marking the notes, the rests, the bars, 
 and draws the lines of the scales just as the old-time 
 composer laboriously did with the pen or pencil ; there 
 is the machine so compact and adjustable that it can 
 be folded and carried in a man's pocket; there is the 
 machine which will write long columns of figures, an 
 invoice for instance, and will add or subtract the 
 items, printing the total instantly at the foot of the col- 
 umn when the operator presses a certain lever; a ma- 
 chine which writes in a cipher code a message that 
 only a twin machine, tuned to the code, as it were, can 
 translate; a machine, an ordinary typewriter, which 
 literally eats a perforated roll of paper, similar to 
 that used in player pianos, and automatically writes 
 form letters at a rate of about sixty words a minute ; 
 a machine which spurns to write letters but presents 
 its messages in syllables to save time. But of all these 
 marvelous machines, probably the most uncanny is 
 the telegraph typewriter, either wireless or land. 
 
 ^^The story of the wireless telegraph typewriter 
 sounds like the phantasy of a fevered brain,'' she 
 said. *^When this bit of magic was first given to the 
 
 142 
 
STORY OF THE TYPEWRITER 
 
 world, a visitor called at the offices of the inventor, 
 Hans Knudson, a Dutch scientist. The office was va- 
 cant ; on a desk stood a typewriter whose name is fa- 
 miliar throughout the commercial world; its only pe- 
 culiarity was that the keyboard was hidden beneath a 
 box, which was connected by wires with a case con- 
 taining a bewilderment of mechanism. Over this hung 
 what appeared to be an ancient umbrella, opened and 
 divested of its usual covering, the handle pointing 
 downward toward the machine. The visitor's puzzled 
 glances returned to the typewriter just as that ma- 
 chine began to operate and spell out before his widen- 
 ing eyes this message: *Be with you in a minute.' For 
 a moment he watched the paper on which the message 
 was written in ink, as though he expected it to return 
 to the spirit world from whence he thought it came; 
 but it still remained and, on examination, proved as 
 earthly as though the familiar typist had been present 
 and written it. ' ' 
 
 ^ ^ That machine surely is a marvel, ' ' exclaimed one 
 of the gathering, **but is it practical — can it operate 
 over long distances'?" 
 
 ^^It is just as practical as any great invention is in 
 its primary stage," was the rejoinder. ^^I believe you 
 will agree that when a machine, or any other kind of 
 invention, performs its allotted work and meets the 
 expectations of the inventor, then it can be called 
 practical. The range of this machine is only limited 
 by the range of telegraphy. Let us suppose a modern 
 telegrapher, sitting in New York, desires to send a 
 message to Chicago. He strikes, say, the letter A on 
 his typewriter. An electric impulse is generated, leaps 
 from the machine up through the office roof, and darts 
 to the mid-Western metropolis, where it locates the 
 office to which it is destined, enters, and then selects 
 the letter A on the proper typewriter, causing the 
 
 143 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 letter to print its outlines npon a waiting sheet of 
 paper without the aid of hnman agency excepting for 
 that operator seated in New York. And all this is 
 done in the time that it requires an electric spark to 
 leap between the cities. The message begun, it will 
 continue to the end, automatically turning the type- 
 writer cylinder as each line of words is completed, 
 just as though it were operated by a typist and with 
 about the same speed possible by the ordinary oper- 
 ator. The principle by which this wizardry is per- 
 formed is known as synchronism, that used in regulat- 
 ing the electric clocks of the nation." 
 
 ^^I presume," said one of the listeners, ^^that it 
 was a business man who first thought of writing by 
 machinery. * ' 
 
 ^^No," replied the young lady, ^^ literally speaking, 
 the business man stole the typewriter from the blind !" 
 
 An expression of incredulity passed over the face 
 of her inquisitor. 
 
 *^I do not mean to be harsh with the business man; 
 in fact, I admire him for taking the machine in its 
 crude state and later returning it to the blind in its 
 present perfected condition. The first writing ma- 
 chines were designed for those who were sightless. 
 
 ^^The American, W. A. Burt, made the first ma- 
 chine in our country about the time w^e were laying 
 our first railroads, but his machine proved imprac- 
 ticable, as did those of many of his followers. It was 
 the American, Charles Latham Sholes, who has the 
 honor of inventing the first practical machine, begin- 
 ning his work in 1868, and spending the following 
 eight years, before he was successful, in destroying 
 machines as fast as he found defects, until finally his 
 machine was introduced to the world in 1876." 
 
 144 
 
THE STORY OF THE INVENTOR WHO 
 IMMORTALIZED THE HUMAN VOICE 
 
 A WONDERFUL melody floated into tlie room 
 through the open window. The hearts of the 
 Story-tellers were thrilled ; tremulous sighs paid 
 homage to the unseen singer as the melody ceased. 
 
 ''Magnificent! Glorious! Wonderful!'* sounded 
 through the library in hushed tones. 
 
 "Who was thatf inquired an awed voice. 
 
 '^Caruso, the grand-opera singer/' announced the 
 man standing before the assemblage. 
 
 "Caruso," ejaculated the inquisitor, "why, I read 
 to-day that he was in Europe !" 
 
 "That is the wonder story which I am about to 
 relate," replied the Story-teller. "Mine is the story 
 of the miracle which has raised man to the planes of 
 immortality occupied by the Grecian gods. It is the 
 story of the wonderful talking machine. Though mor- 
 tal man may die, his voice lives forever through the 
 agency of this modern miracle. 
 
 "Did you ever hear of the man whose voice sang 
 his favorite song over his own body as it was laid in 
 the grave ; of the wife who touches a lever of this ma- 
 chine and again hears her husband's voice, though he 
 has been buried beneath the earth for years ; or of the 
 politician who swayed his audiences at a political 
 rally, though he himself was not present — to mention 
 a few instances of the marvels of the talking ma- 
 chine?" inquired the speaker. 
 
 "The inspiring notes of the world's greatest hu- 
 
 145 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 man song-birds and instrumentalists have been cap- 
 tured and locked within this miraculous machine — 
 Caruso, Patti, Calve, Tetrazzini, Sembrich, Paderew- 
 ski, Kubelik, and scores of others have given their 
 greatest masterpieces to the machine which will be pre- 
 served for future generations. Just to mention one 
 instance alone, a Parisian society gathers annually the 
 voice-records of the contemporary singers and musi- 
 cians upon imperishable records, and stores these in 
 air-tight metallic cases, within hermetically sealed 
 vaults which are not to be opened for at least one 
 hundred years. Americans are doing the same, and 
 also are gathering the folk songs and lore of the 
 Indians and negroes, as well as the epic legendary his- 
 tories of the Hawaiian mele chanters. Even the old 
 Norman language, as Tellefer spoke it while singing 
 his ^Chanson de Eoland^ at the battle of Hastings 
 in the eleventh century, has been preserved from the 
 pure dialect of an old patriarch, the last human being 
 able to speak it so purely, found in the British Isles. 
 
 **The talking machine is the messenger of inspira- 
 tion. Think what it would mean to the American to 
 hear the inspiring voice of Washington, as he bade 
 farewell to his officers of the American Eevolution ; or 
 the thrilling voice of Lincoln, as it swept out over the 
 battlefield of Gettysburg; or the patriotic voices of 
 Patrick Henry, or Henry Clay, or Webster, or Cal- 
 houn, as they swayed the destiny of the nation with 
 their magical utterances. Think what it would mean 
 to the modern student of opera-singing to hear the 
 liquid melody of Maliban, the world's greatest soprano 
 during her generation, or Mario, or of Eachel, the 
 French diva.'' 
 
 The imaginations of the gathering were stirred by 
 the suggestion. 
 
 **How old is the talking machine f" asked one of 
 the listeners. 146 
 
STORY OF THE TALKING MACHINE 
 
 ^'Less than three decades intervene between its 
 appearance in its practical form and to-day. Legend, 
 that untrustworthy historian, however, relates that 
 the ancient Chinese civilization, three thousand years 
 ago, used what they called 'talking boxes.' Pih Kwei, 
 the Chinese governor of Khang-tung, in 1858, told a 
 visitor this, saying that an old book related how one 
 prince of one of the Chinese states spoke into a ' curious 
 shaped box made of special wood, closed and sealed it, 
 and sent it by a trusty messenger, and how the recip- 
 ient, on opening, heard with his own ears the actual 
 w^ords and voice of the sender.' " 
 
 ''The Chinese seem to have been a wonderful race 
 centuries ago!" exclaimed one listener. 
 
 The speaker continued: "Even if this legend is 
 true, modern genius has vastly improved upon the 
 Chinese talking box, for with the twentieth century 
 talking machine it is only necessary to make the record 
 of the message and send it through the mails to its 
 destination, keeping the talking box at home ready 
 for more messages. 
 
 ''This modern miracle seems to have begun in 
 Eussia about the time Paul Jones was sailing in the 
 Bon Homme Richard during the American Eevolution. 
 It was at that time that the Imperial Academy of St. 
 Petersburg offered a prize to the genius who could 
 construct a machine that would record and reproduce 
 the vowel sounds of the human voice. The Eussian 
 Professor Kratzenstein won the prize with a very crude 
 instrument; probably the prize was given him more 
 in reward for his elaborate researches than for the 
 machine itself." 
 
 "I thought it was our American inventor, Thomas 
 A. Edison, who invented the phonograph," said one 
 of the Story-tellers. 
 
 "He did. He invented the magic 'box of wood, 
 
 147 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 mechanism, and mica,' as it lias been called, in the 
 same year — in 1877 — that Bell completed his tele- 
 phone. It was accidental, in a way, for he was work- 
 ing to perfect the sending instrument of the telegraph, 
 when he suddenly found that he had, almost uncon- 
 sciously, unearthed the secret for which scores of 
 Europeans had been striving for a century. Alexan- 
 der Bell and Sumner Tainter contrived the wax 
 record, using it on their machine, which they called 
 the graphophone, in the year 1885, eight years after 
 Edison's phonograph. Two years after the birth of 
 the graphophone, the European, Emile Berliner, pro- 
 duced the gramophone. ' ' 
 
 *^It is a wonderful instrument," said one of the 
 Story-tellers. ^^I frequently spend the evening in 
 listening to operas, orchestras, and military bands." 
 
 *^ There are other sides to the talking machine 
 which you probably are not aware of," was the re- 
 joinder. ^*It can be found in the business office, in the 
 hospital, in the study, or it may be found attached to 
 the telephone, or it may be concealed in the conspira- 
 tors' den. 
 
 *'Our banker friend is probably familiar with the 
 office talking machine, better known as the dictagraph. 
 It is the miracle of the commercial world, taking 
 accurately, beyond peradventure of doubt, the spoken 
 word and whispering it, slow or fast, into the ear of 
 the typist — and it will repeat exactly if the typist 
 misses a word. 
 
 ^^Even the occupation of the typist is threatened, 
 for another inventor has proposed to record the spoken 
 letter direct upon a piece of sensitized material, say 
 cloth, which can be folded and mailed, in place of the 
 written letter, and as cheaply, to be reproduced by a 
 corresponding talking machine. By this magical in- 
 vention the words of the sender are thus sent thou- 
 
 148 
 
STORY OF THE TALKING MACHINE 
 
 sands of miles, if necessary, and, when the message 
 arrives, the sender ^s voice will speak the message as 
 though he were there himself/' 
 
 *^ What is its use in the hospital?'' asked one of the 
 gathering. 
 
 **One of its uses is to record the breathing of the 
 patient at different stages of the disease, which the 
 physician can analyze in his laboratory. Or duplicate 
 records can be made and these sent to the medical 
 schools, to teach the student of that particular disease. 
 
 **In the study or schoolroom it teaches languages, 
 just as they are spoken by the master-linguists, who 
 probably made the record in their native lands, thou- 
 sands of miles away. 
 
 **You all probably recall how the San Francisco 
 dynamiters were trapped by the detectives ' dictagraph, 
 a combination of the telephone and the talking machine, 
 whose eavesdropping *ear' can be concealed in the 
 most unlikely places in a room and still transmit to 
 a distant point every sound made within that room. 
 
 **Then there is the telegraphone, the machine with 
 human intelligence, invented by the Swedish scientist, 
 Poulsen. This machine takes its messages on a sensi- 
 tized wire miles in length, and it will repeat them ver- 
 batim at command, or the messages can be wiped from 
 the wire simply by * shocking' them — that is, sending 
 through the wire a strong current of electricity. 
 
 **It was only a few years ago that the talking ma- 
 chine could speak only for about two minutes; in re- 
 cent years this has been increased to five minutes. A 
 Tacoman citizen, F. G. Goodale, has recently announced 
 that he has invented a record, similar to the film 
 used by moving pictures, which will record any length 
 of message." 
 
 149 
 
THE STORY OF THE MOTION PICTURES 
 AXD THEIR XEW REVELATIOXS 
 
 IEEPEESEXT the twentieth century historians 
 and the modern educators," said the next Story- 
 teller, a young man, as, with energetic steps, 
 typical of the American business man, he advanced to 
 the library table. 
 
 ''Mine is the art of faithfully and accurately re- 
 cording for posterity the happenings of our genera- 
 tion; not in cold words, which are open to partiality 
 and distortion; not in stilted sketches, which are fre- 
 quently base caricatures of the scenes they are sup- 
 posed to represent ; but in actual, living, throbbing, 
 and accurate visualizations of the scenes themselves 
 at the time they occur, revealing the movements of 
 every character involved, whether human or other- 
 wise. I represent the moving picture art and indus- 
 try." 
 
 The speaker's words had the undivided attention 
 of all his listeners, for each was more or less familiar 
 with his art, and many used his methods in their 
 lines of achievement. 
 
 *'I say, without fear of successful contradiction," 
 the speaker continued, "that we are the modern educa- 
 tors of the world. Disciples of our craft are located 
 in all parts of the earth, gathering representations of 
 the arts and the sciences, the education and the reli- 
 gions, the history and the drama, of the different races, 
 whether they be in the Orient or in the Occident. This 
 universal knowledge is scattered to the four quarters 
 
 150 
 
STORY OF MOTION PICTURES 
 
 of the globe, virtually bringing the whole world and 
 its activities into the home, wherever it may be located, 
 without the spectators having lost a minute in travel. 
 In short, I believe you will agree that we are the 
 wizards of modern civilization. 
 
 ** Though, as you know, the birth of moving pic- 
 tures is practically coincident with the dawn of the 
 twentieth century, its position in the arts is not a mat- 
 ter of conjecture. We have only to consider what it 
 would mean to our generation to have imperishable 
 records of the activities of the ancients to realize what 
 it will mean to future generations to take out of their 
 archives the imperishable films which we are making 
 to-day and storing in indestructible buildings and 
 cases. America and Europe both have combined in 
 this great boon to posterity. If the ancients had had 
 our moving picture machines at their command and 
 used them as we are doing to-day, we should be in pos- 
 session of some wonderful secrets. We should know 
 certainly how the Egyptians erected their mammoth 
 Pyramids, how the slaves constructed the Tov/er of 
 Babel, and possibly how those wise metallurgists tem- 
 pered copper." 
 
 **You say moving pictures began at the dawn of 
 the twentieth century," said a listener; **what is its 
 status to-day, in 1913 — ^how much money is invested 
 in the industry?" 
 
 **More money than Spain, or Japan and Switzer- 
 land combined, have in reserves of gold in their banks, 
 public treasuries, and in circulation," was the aston- 
 ishing reply. 
 
 **As you know," continued the speaker, **the 
 amusement side of the industry is in the ascendant 
 to-day, as it has been from the beginning. Just how 
 large this phase of the industry is can be revealed in 
 terms familiar to the banker. There are as many mov- 
 11 151 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ing picture houses in our country to-day, located in 
 nearly every community in the land, as there are 
 national, state, private, and savings banks. Probably 
 our military friend will tell us the largest army ever 
 gathered in the world's history, and thus help us to 
 more comparisons.'' 
 
 ** Xerxes is reputed to have had about a million 
 men, in all branches of his army, when he marched 
 against the Greeks, about 500 years before the begin- 
 ning of the Christian Era," was the reply. 
 
 *^It may interest you to know," resumed the 
 speaker, after thanking his informant, **that, if the 
 host of Americans who watch the moving pictures 
 every day were gathered into one body, they would 
 make ^ve armies the size of Xerxes'. And the amount 
 of money the American public spends annually is 
 sufficient to maintain the United States Army and its 
 Navy for a twelvemonth. 
 
 **The amusement furnished by the moving picture, 
 including some which have drawn upon the chronicled 
 history of the ancients and thus visualized scenes of 
 past days, is but one phase of our industry. Its others 
 are illimitable. Each day witnesses the entrance of 
 a new idea into the field. In the educational field it is 
 performing miracles. Moving pictures of the fish in 
 their secret haunts at the bottom of the sea have been 
 recorded; ferocious beasts and almost equally fero- 
 cious natives have been pictured in their habitats in 
 the jungles; battles have been faithfully recorded in 
 pictures, showing their chivalry and their horrors be- 
 yond peradventure of doubt; industrial processes, 
 such as the catching and packing of sardines, the manu- 
 facture of gigantic and mysterious machinery, the 
 preparation of food products, and a thousand other 
 modern achievements, have been photographed in 
 
 152 
 
STORY OF MOTION PICTURES 
 
 actual operation, showing faithfully every movement 
 made. 
 
 <<To give you an idea of the range of subjects re- 
 corded by the moving pictures, let me read a few titles 
 from a leading manufacturer's catalogue. These sub- 
 jects are available to the modern classroom educator 
 or the lecturer: ^Agriculture, biology, aeronautics, 
 animal life, bacteriology, biography, botany, entomol- 
 ogy, ethnology, pisciculture, geography, history, sociol- 
 ogy, industries, kindergarten studies, engineering, min- 
 ing and metallurgy, sanitation, microscopy, military 
 and naval maneuvers, natural history, ornithology, 
 pathology, medicine, surgery, railroading, religion, 
 topography, travel, zoology, civics, disease' — I think 
 that is sufficient. 
 
 ^^I have here a printed report of what the inven- 
 tor of the moving picture, Thomas A. Edison, our 
 American ^wizard,' said during the first days of mov- 
 ing pictures in reply to a skeptic's questions. He 
 said, ^In a few years every grammar and high school, 
 (he overlooked the universities), and every church in 
 the country, will have a moving picture machine in it. 
 I'll illustrate what I mean. You be the class, and I'll 
 be the teacher. The lesson to-day will be on Mada- 
 gascar. First, I'll throw a picture on the screen show- 
 ing the geographical relation of Madagascar to Africa. 
 Then we will have moving pictures of the principal 
 streets of the big towns. They will show just w^hat is 
 going on in those streets, whether there are trolley 
 cars and such things or whether it is an uncivilized 
 place. Then we might show a motion picture, say, of 
 a mountain range, taken probably from a railroad 
 train. Few persons remember such dry things as the 
 * principal products.' I would show pictures of the 
 products, and show how they are raised. In that way, 
 you see, I could teach more geography in fifteen 
 
 153 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 minutes than you can teach in fifteen days.' What 
 Edison said about geography is true of nearly every 
 other educational subject." 
 
 ^'I did not know that Edison was the inventor of 
 mo\dng pictures," said one listener. 
 
 ^'The consensus of opinion grants him that honor, 
 or at least, states that he produced the first practical 
 machine," replied the speaker. 
 
 ^*The whole world seems to have been levied upon 
 to bring it to the point where the American inventor 
 took it up. Even Lucretius, 65 years before Christ, 
 understood the basic principle of the science, tech- 
 nically described as the ^persistence of impression 
 made by light upon the retina of the eye.' The lay- 
 man knows it as the fact that the eye still sees the 
 light a fraction of a second after it has passed out of 
 the vision. This was the principle known to Sir John 
 Herschel when he asked his dinner guest, Charles Bab- 
 bage, if he could see both sides of a shilling at once. 
 He demonstrated this, to the astonishment of his 
 friend, by spinning the coin on the table and directing 
 his friend to look at it at a level with the spinning coin. 
 Babbage described the experiment to his friend, Doc- 
 tor Fitton, who carried it on and soon produced his 
 famous thaumotrope. This consisted simply of a card, 
 on one side of which the doctor drew the picture of a 
 bird, while on the other was that of a bird cage. A 
 silk thread was attached to the card, so that the latter 
 would spin like Sir John's coin. The result was 
 magical — the bird appeared, when the card spun, to 
 enter the cage. 
 
 * * To relate all the names of improvers of the mov- 
 ing picture machines and their devices would be a 
 great task. The professor of sciences in the Sorbonne, 
 in France, said: ^ There are scores of them, even hun- 
 dreds. To review their devices would be to deliver a 
 
 154 
 
STORY OF MOTION PICTURES 
 
 lecture on mechanics.' He mentioned a few of the 
 names of the devices which had been ^ christened in all 
 sorts of ways from the Greek, Latin, and in more 
 fanciful fashion still. Here are a few : Anarithmoscope, 
 chronophotographoscope, cinographoscope, cinograph, 
 cinoscope, hypnoscope, katoscope, ummographe, mut- 
 oscope, phantographe, and even mouvementescope.' 
 
 ^^Only a generation intervenes between Eadweard 
 Muybridge's battery of cameras which photographed 
 running horses and the modern ultra-rapid cine- 
 matograph, a machine which can accurately record 
 every moment of the swiftest bird or insect while in 
 flight. This machine is proving a great boon to science, 
 while another, the X-ray moving picture machine, will 
 even photograph the corpuscles of the blood as they 
 flow through the human, living body. Then there is 
 another machine which, utilizing the secrets of light 
 and color, produces Nature's most gorgeous hues 
 with accuracy so marvelous that the spectator almost 
 smells the new-mown hay, or the fresh buds of a bril- 
 liant plant. And there is still another, which our 
 friend the phonograph man will probably describe, 
 that combines the weird voice of the * speaking box' 
 with motion pictures, giving to the world actual talk- 
 ing-living pictures. 
 
 **This, gentlemen, is the story of the moving pic- 
 ture, which, from its very first appearance in practical 
 form, has had a career of less than two decades, but 
 has revolutionized our knowledge of the earth. Through 
 this wonderful invention we may sit at home and watch 
 the world's great events pass before our eyes. We 
 may witness the crowning of a king thousands of miles 
 away. We may gaze at the beasts as they roam through 
 the jungles. It is no longer necessary for us to go out 
 into the world — the world comes to us." 
 
 155 
 
THE STORY OF THE STREET RAILWAY 
 AND HOW IT LINKS OUR CITIES 
 
 ON this eventful night the Story-tellers were late 
 in arriving. A severe storm had raged through 
 the day, and the street car traffic had been de- 
 layed. 
 
 **I wonder," remarked one of the last arrivals, 
 **what we would do on a day like this if we did not 
 have street cars.'' 
 
 ^^Stay at home, as our grandfathers did,'' replied 
 one of the gathering. 
 
 **But what a tremendous loss in business!" ejacu- 
 lated another. *^What would the people do in our 
 large cities, if they could not get to their work?" 
 
 **Stop work entirely," answered the first speaker. 
 **Did it ever occur to you that, if we didn't have street 
 cars, we probably would not have many large cities? 
 The street car is the modern magician. It has threaded 
 its way through our thoroughfares ; it has united our 
 towns and cities; it has formed a gigantic network 
 over our states over which we may travel in nearly 
 any direction at any moment of the day to any desired 
 destination. It has done more than this — ^it has broken 
 down the barriers that so long held our towns and 
 villages in seclusion and has transformed them into 
 modem, progressive communities. It has linked them 
 to the great outside world and has made them an im- 
 portant part of it. 
 
 **Some of us can still remember the days when the 
 only way to get out of town was to walk or to take 
 
 156 
 
STORY OF THE STREET RAILWAY 
 
 the old stage coaches. Then came the omnibus to carry 
 us from place to place within town limits. 
 
 **The world's first street cars, running on rails, 
 appeared in New York, in 1831. Horses were still 
 used as motor power, but the omnibus gave way to a 
 sort of carriage that ran on rails. These rails con- 
 sisted of timbers resting on edge, the upper edge cov- 
 ered with a strip of metal. This line ran from Prince 
 Street to Harlem and was known as the New York 
 and Harlem Railway Company. The horses were dis- 
 placed by crude steam-engines, in 1832, but they were 
 so unreliable that in 1845 the horses were again em- 
 ployed. The horse car developed from this innova- 
 tion, till finally our grandfathers came to look at the 
 jolting, rattling, bobbing contraption as a great con- 
 venience. The idea was thus born in New York and 
 taken up by various other American cities, as well as 
 the cities of Europe. Philadelphia tried it first in 
 1857. The French called it *the American Eailway.' 
 
 *^The old horse bus did not die out, however. Horse- 
 drawn omnibuses were employed on Fifth Avenue, 
 New York, as late as 1905. In London, the first motor 
 bus appeared on the streets in 1907, and only after 
 that did the horse-drawn bus cease to be one of the 
 chief means of handling intramural passenger traffic. 
 In 1912 the last horse-drawn bus was taken off the 
 Parisian streets, motors having been substituted. 
 
 *'In some cases. Nature helped along the develop- 
 ment of the street railway. Some American cities, 
 notably San Francisco and St. Louis, were so hilly as 
 to make the ordinary railways almost impossible. 
 Other means were sought to propel cars, and, in 1873, 
 Andrew S. Hallidie equipped the Clay Street railway 
 of San Francisco with a cable-car system. A slot was 
 built between the two car rails, and in this a heavy 
 cable traveled along. The cars were equipped with 
 
 157 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 * grips' that could catch hold of this traveling cable, 
 and the vehicle was carried along with it. When it was 
 desired to stop the car, the grip released its hold on 
 the cable and the car ran Mead.' 
 
 **With the coming of the cable-car, people first 
 raised the now familiar cry, 'The horse must go.' St. 
 Louis, Chicago, Kansas City, Philadelphia, and New 
 York adopted the cable system. The last named city 
 had it installed along Tenth Avenue and other streets 
 for a distance of twelve miles. By 1894, there were 
 700 miles of cable-car railways throughout the United 
 States. But their many disadvantages, arising chiefly 
 from want of proper control, led to their abandonment. 
 
 **Now T am coming to a notable invention — the 
 elevated railroad. In 1872, what was regarded as a 
 
 * freak ^ railway was erected in New York. Its freak- 
 ishness lay in the fact that the rails were not placed 
 on the ground, but rested thirty feet or more above it 
 on an elongated or continuous bridge. This line ran 
 from Thirtieth Street to the Battery, being the first 
 of its kind in the world. Soon there were about forty 
 miles of elevated railroad on Manhattan Island alone. 
 People were slow in taking to this new method of 
 transportation, on account of its insecure appearance, 
 but gradually New Yorkers came to depend on it. Chi- 
 cago and Boston were the other American cities to 
 adopt elevated railroads. Paris, Liverpool, and Berlin 
 have also adopted the idea." 
 
 '^The first practical trolley car was run in Kansas 
 City in 1884. We are coming now to the real era of the 
 street railway — the era of the use of electric power. 
 Various attempts had been made to apply electricity to 
 vehicles for motive power. As early as 1836, a work- 
 man named Davenport had tried it in Brandon, Ver- 
 mont. His electric motor was crude, and his experi- 
 ment bore no fruit. But when the mighty genius of 
 
 158 
 
STORY OF THE STREET RAILWAY 
 
 Edison was brought to bear, success was assured. He, 
 in conjunction with Stephen D. Field, made some 
 experiments over a period lasting from 1879 to 1883, 
 and, at the Chicago Railway Exhibit held in the latter 
 year, they built a 1,500 foot system. To Richmond, 
 Virginia, however, belongs the distinction of being the 
 first city in the world to have on its streets a really 
 practical, as well as extensive, electric system of cars. 
 F. J. Prague installed 13 miles of electric railway 
 there in 1884. 
 
 '*The principle underlying the trolley-car is quite 
 simple. Each car is equipped with an electric motor 
 so arranged that it can set the traction wheels of the 
 car into motion. Electricity, generated in a central 
 power-house, is conducted along the line of the rail- 
 way by an overhead copper wire. A pole fitted with a 
 trolley keeps in contact with this wire, and so a con- 
 stant current of electricity flows to the car's motor and 
 continues its circuit back to the power-house through 
 the metal rails upon which the car runs. Since the over- 
 head wire often broke and in other ways proved in- 
 efficient, various methods have been devised to do away 
 with it. A * third rail,' i. e., a rail in addition to the 
 two traction rails, is now largely used to conduct cur- 
 rent to the motor. Sometimes this is placed under- 
 ground in a slot, as on the street railways of New 
 York. In 1898, the third rail idea was tried on the 
 elevated railway of Chicago and proved such a success 
 that it has there and on the other elevated railways 
 taken the place of the old locomotive. But cars now 
 bid fair to be self-propelling. Within the last five 
 years, Edison has made the storage battery reliable 
 and durable enough to run small cars, thus doing away 
 with the older plan of having a centrally generated 
 current supplying the whole line, and cars with such 
 equipment are now running in many American cities. 
 
 159 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 '^Now/' exclaimed the Story-teller, ''look around 
 and observe the magnitude of the operations of the 
 street railway. Since 1884, its growth has been as- 
 tounding. The larger cities are crossed and recrossed 
 by hundreds of lines that bring the two ends of town 
 together as if they were separated by blocks instead 
 of by miles. The increase in the number of miles of 
 track and the number of passengers carried has been 
 astounding. In 1890 there were 1,261 miles of track 
 in use by street railways using all kinds of power. 
 But in 1907 there were 23,059 miles of track being used 
 by electrically equipped systems alone, and the num- 
 ber of passengers carried by all the street railways 
 of the country in that year was 7,441,114,508. They 
 are cheap and efficient. In some cities, one can cover 
 a distance of twelve miles for fLve cents and without 
 changing cars. The aid that the electric car has given 
 to business is incalculable. By its means, not only are 
 the different parts of the city linked together, but 
 whole regions are connected. Where formerly it was 
 quite an event to leave town, the traveler being bound 
 by a cast-iron time-table, nowadays it very often 
 means nothing more than hailing a car, boarding it, 
 and being carried through to^^m and over country. 
 
 **The street railway system," exclaimed the 
 speaker, in conclusion, ''is America's gift to traveling 
 himianity. It has primarily proved of immense ad- 
 vantage to ourselves, who live in a country of vast dis- 
 tances. But from Petersburg to Capetown, from 
 Tokio to Rio de Janeiro, wherever, in fact, civilized 
 men foregather in large numbers — the street railway 
 is daily ministering to the necessities and the pleas- 
 ures of the people. ' ' 
 
 160 
 
THE STORY OF THE ELEVATOR AND 
 THE BUILDING OF GREAT CITIES 
 
 THE steel door closed with a clang. With a 
 breath-taking leap the little cage plunged up- 
 ward. In an instant the door opened again, and 
 a dozen people stepped out into the lobby of the li- 
 brary on the tenth floor. 
 
 ^^Did it ever occur to you/' exclaimed one of the 
 Story-tellers, ^^that if it were not for that wonderful 
 contrivance, called the elevator, we could not be sit- 
 ting here to-day in this building, that rises above the 
 streets like a modern Tower of Babel. It is the eleva- 
 tor that has made these great business structures pos- 
 sible. Without these steel cages, that plunge up nearly 
 a thousand feet and then fall again like meteors from 
 the sky, we should still be living on the ground in low, 
 sprawling structures that would require a whole state 
 to house the people of one of our large cities. It is 
 the elevator that has made it possible to erect mil- 
 lion dollar buildings on seventy-foot plots of land, and 
 has caused our cities to expand vertically instead of 
 horizontally. ' ' 
 
 The speaker was a real estate broker who has been 
 a prominent figure in the growth of our modern cities. 
 
 **The elevator is an American invention,'' he ex- 
 claimed. ^^Of course the germ of the idea existed long 
 ago. Elevators have recently been unearthed in the 
 palace of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill in Rome, 
 and relics of them have been found in the ruins of 
 Roman private houses. But it is strange to find that 
 
 161 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 the principle of the elevator has been known among 
 savages." 
 
 An expression of incredulity flitted over the faces 
 of many of the andience. 
 
 *^You may hardly believe it/' continued the Story- 
 teller, ^'but if you visit the Island of Timor, which 
 lies to the north of Australia, to-day, you will see 
 the natives going after honeycomb by means of a crude 
 kind of elevator. The bees build their nests on the 
 tops of tall trees, often seventy feet high, which have 
 no branches. The ingenious Polynesian cuts a few 
 yards from the tough stem of a creeper, and forms a 
 rope which he loops around the trunk of the tree and 
 his body. Then he jerks the loop a little above his 
 head, leans back, and begins walking up the tree. By 
 repeating the operation, he gradually gets to the top 
 and secures his beloved honeycomb. 
 
 *^The earliest elevator of modern times was that 
 constructed under the direction of the Empress Maria 
 Theresa in her palace at Schoenbrunn, near Vienna, 
 which was used by the great Napoleon wheii residing 
 there. In a letter to his wife, the Archduchess Maria 
 Louisa, he describes the contrivance as a small square 
 room, sumptuously furnished with red silk hangings 
 and suspended by strong ropes, with counterweights. 
 The Emperor mentions that, when he first entered the 
 * flying chair,' as it was called, he was asked how much 
 he and his two companions weighed, probably in order 
 to employ the proper counterweights, as it was dif- 
 ficult for the operator to stop at the right point, un- 
 less the weights were fairly equal. 
 
 ** Crude hoists have no doubt existed in all civilized 
 countries in all ages. But between the hoist and the 
 elevator of to-day, as perfected by American in- 
 genuity, there is as much difference as between the 
 horse-drawn vehicle and the electric train. 
 
 162 
 
STORY OF THE ELEVATOR 
 
 **The first American elevator was built by George 
 H. Fox, in 1850. It was operated by means of a ver- 
 tical screw, the butt carrying the cage. But the ^ father 
 of the elevator' is Elisha G. Otis, who, three years 
 later, exhibited an improved invention at the World's 
 Fair in the Crystal Palace in New York. Otis was 
 a Vermont farm boy, whose Yankee inventiveness had 
 first led him to improve agricultural machinery. He 
 became a successful carriage builder. His chief claim 
 to fame is the elevator. It was invented by him at the 
 age of forty-two. The year 1871 saw the first hydrau- 
 lic elevator. It held the field jointly with the steam 
 elevator, until the electric elevator came into use about 
 1888. 
 
 * * The principle of the elevator is a simple inversion 
 of a well-known law. A heavy load traveling through 
 a short distance will hoist a light load through a long 
 distance." 
 
 **Can you give us any figures as to the number of 
 elevators in use?" inquired one of the party. 
 
 '^"Well," replied the broker, ^^I can give you some 
 information concerning New York City, which uses 
 more elevators than any other place in the world. In 
 1909, there were, on Manhattan Island, about 9,000 
 passenger elevators and 12,000 freight elevators. At 
 the same date, there were, in the lower part of the 
 Borough of Manhattan, 26 buildings of 18 floors or 
 over, aggregating in total height about one and one- 
 third miles. These contained 116 express elevators 
 and 115 local elevators, with a total mileage of 4,400 
 miles per day and carrying a total of 615,000 pas- 
 sengers daily. This means that each elevator averages 
 19 miles a day. But some elevators in busy buildings 
 do their 10,000 miles a year, or more. In the highest 
 skyscrapers, which have a large complement of eleva- 
 
 163 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 tors, it is calculated that they take, between them, the 
 equivalent of a trip round the world every week. 
 
 ^'As to the number of persons using elevators, 
 such figures as are available are astonishing. It was 
 calculated that, in 1909, the elevators of New York 
 City were carrying six millions and a half persons 
 every day. A careful count was made one day in one 
 of the big skyscrapers, and it was found that 50,000 
 persons rode in the elevators in that building alone. 
 This is more than rode in all the street cars of Nash- 
 ville, Tennessee, in a single day. 
 
 *^You have all heard of the Woolworth building, 
 in New York City, the highest building in the world. 
 It has 28 elevators, and their safety was tested in 
 a novel manner. Their designer got inside one and 
 had it drop the whole distance of 676 feet as fast as 
 it could go. It attained a speed of two miles a minute, 
 but slowed down toward the end of the journey owing 
 to the air pressure, and reached its destination, with 
 its occupant in perfect comfort, stopping so slowly 
 as not to spill a glass brimful of water placed on the 
 floor." 
 
 ''Have elevators been materially improved since 
 their introduction?" inquired one of the auditors. 
 
 ''Evidently, you have never ridden in one of the 
 old-fashioned cars," replied the Story-teller. 
 
 "They were heavy, weighing when empty 6,000 
 pounds, out of all proportion to their utility, and their 
 fastest speed w^as 100 feet a minute. If they were in- 
 stalled in our modern skyscrapers, doubtless they 
 would serve lunches on the trip up, to tempt the people 
 from using the stairs. The present-day elevator is — 
 what we all know it to be. 
 
 "The cost of a modern elevator is $12,000 for the 
 initial outlay, and $1,200 per annum afterward. On 
 the other hand, the enormous quantity of time saved — ■ 
 
 164 
 
STORY OF THE ELEVATOR 
 
 which, as we all know, is money — I leave the statis- 
 ticians among you to figure out for themselves. 
 
 *^As with all great devices, there are varieties of 
 the elevator used for special purposes. Buildings in 
 course of construction are fitted with an elevating 
 apparatus for brick and mortar and other material, 
 which is kept busy all day long. The old hodcarrier 
 has been mercifully superseded in these days of 20 
 and 30-story buildings. Wheelbarrows, filled with 
 bricks and other materials, are rolled, two at a time, 
 onto these elevators, which shoot up to the highest 
 floor reached, where men are stationed to receive and 
 replace their load. 
 
 ^^But what do you think of an elevator that lifts 
 steamships? The first of this kind was put in service 
 at Petersborough, in Ontario, Canada. It is an enor- 
 mous structure, and well it may be, for it is required 
 to do the work of ^ve ordinary locks. It consists of 
 two steel basins or chambers, weighing about 400 tons 
 each and working up and down between guiding towers 
 125 feet high. One chamber, containing one or half 
 a dozen boats, may be raised by the weight of the other 
 chamber, which is loaded down by eight inches of 
 water. This giant elevator takes only twelve minutes 
 to do its work, from the time that the gates are lowered 
 at the bottom to allow the boat to enter until it leaves 
 the chamber above. 
 
 *^ Boston has a group of elevators of a very curious 
 kind. They run, not straight up and down, but in a 
 curved tube, and yet maintain a level floor all the time. 
 These are for the purpose of carrying passengers from 
 two platform floors in a railroad tunnel to a single 
 station above. You cannot tell that you are traveling 
 in anything but a vertical direction, unless you see 
 that the lines of the shaft appear all awry. ' ' 
 
 165 
 
WONDER STORffiS 
 
 *^Can you tell us anything about escalators T^ in- 
 quired a voice. 
 
 ^'The escalator/' replied the broker, "is coming 
 more and more into use. What was once regarded as 
 an amusement, or at best, a fad, is now seen to be of 
 real service. An escalator, I need hardly say, is a 
 moving staircase, which, though it lacks the speed of 
 the elevator, is very much less costly. For instance, 
 30,000 passengers can be carried up 21 feet for 60 
 cents. Escalators are already used on the subways 
 and elevated railroads, and wherever they are used 
 are undoubtedly popular. One of the largest is that 
 at the Pennsylvania Station, in New York City, which 
 connects an underground level with that of the street. 
 A department store at Philadelphia has one of the 
 earliest escalators erected, the one used at the Paris 
 Exposition of 1900. Another use is indicated by the 
 erection of eight escalators in a worsted mill at 
 Lawrence, Massachusetts, for its 6,000 employees.'' 
 
 *^I mentioned at the start," said the Story-teller, 
 *^that the elevator is essentially an American inven- 
 tion. It is so in its origin, and it remains so largely in 
 its manufacture. Wherever, under the influence of 
 American example, the elevator has come into use, 
 there may be found the American product. Of all 
 things, at least to such of us as live in cities, the ele- 
 vator has become one of the most commonplace; but 
 there is no doubt — and I hope I have indicated as much 
 in the course of this story — that it plays no small part 
 in the development of our civilization. 
 
 '*It is only a matter of a comparatively short time 
 before we shall have moving sidewalks in our great 
 cities. Such a project has long been agitated in New 
 York City." 
 
 166 
 
THE STORY OF THE AUTOMOBILIST 
 AND THE "HORSELESS AGE" 
 
 THE streets were thronged with people. The honk 
 of horns and the shriek of sirens warned the 
 pedestrians of danger at every crosswalk. The 
 thoroughfare was crowded with carriages, and cabs, 
 huge trucks, and delivery wagons — all weaving their 
 way along the asphalt pavements in endless procession. 
 And yet there was not a horse among them ; each was 
 driven by the explosive power of gasoline or the 
 wizardry of electricity. 
 
 The Story-tellers were waiting impatiently in the 
 library. 
 
 ''There will be no story to-night," exclaimed one 
 of them. ''A derailed car blocks the whole line, and 
 our guest cannot possibly get here.'' 
 
 As he spoke, the door swung open and a genial 
 voice cried: 
 
 ''Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. You must 
 pardon me for this slight delay. I live in the country, 
 about ninety miles away, and when I reached the sta- 
 tion in my village, I heard of the blockade and had to 
 return home." 
 
 The newcomer removed his fur coat, goggles, and 
 cap. 
 
 **We had given up the pleasure of seeing you to- 
 night," remarked one of the gathering. 
 
 *'I came on my own 'rail-less railroad,' " he 
 laughed, "the kind which the owner can take home 
 with him and lock up for his private use, or can send 
 12 167 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 it darting anywhere at his will, independent of steel 
 rails and time schedules. If it were not for my auto- 
 mobile, I probably would have had to remain at home. 
 When I heard of the blockade, I took out my motor 
 car and came here faster than I could by train. At 
 one time, when we were speeding over a smooth, 
 straight stretch of road, the speedometer registered 
 sixty miles an hour.'' 
 
 *^A mile a minute!" exclaimed some one. 
 
 ^ ^ That is only lagging along the road in these days 
 of frenzied speed," modestly replied the automobilist. 
 ^^Bob Burman, you know, sent his car for two miles, 
 in 1911, at the rate of 145 miles an hour, or a mile 
 in a fraction over 25 seconds. How would you like to 
 see him race the fastest locomotive on rails! Do you 
 know that, if he and an engine started from New York 
 City together in a race, the automobile would plunge 
 past Independence Hall in Philadelphia, 36 minutes 
 after the start — the engine would be 18 miles behind, 
 and it would take it 9 minutes longer to reach the same 
 spot?" 
 
 ^ * That is faster than any human being ever traveled 
 before!" exclaimed one of the gathering. 
 
 ^^But it isn't safe to predict," continued the auto- 
 ist, ^Hhat no human being will ever travel faster. Not 
 at the rate the automobile is being improved. And 
 you must remember that the American automobile was 
 practically only thirteen years old at that time. 
 
 '^The story of the automobile rivals the tales of 
 the old sorcerers. For many generations English in- 
 ventors strove to create a motor vehicle. I believe that 
 Sir Isaac Newton, the discoverer of gravitation, was 
 the pioneer, about 1680. All kinds of crude machines 
 appeared. They were so dangerous that English au- 
 thorities prohibited such vehicles on the highway, un- 
 less they were preceded by men carrying red flags, 
 
 168 
 
STORY OF THE AUTOMOBILE 
 
 and even then they were restricted to four miles an 
 hour. 
 
 ^^The first steam tricycle, fired by coal, appeared 
 in the streets of Paris, in 1892. The inventor was M. 
 Leon Serpollet. The first motor vehicle race took 
 place between Paris and Bordeaux, in 1899, The win- 
 ning car traveled at the rate of 14 miles an hour, to 
 the astonishment of an incredulous world. On Thanks- 
 giving Day of that year, Chicagoans gathered in the 
 slush and snow to witness the first public endurance 
 run in America. The winner successfully circled Chi- 
 cago, and the feat created great enthusiasm through- 
 out the country.'' 
 
 **Was that the beginning of the horseless age in 
 America?" asked one of the audience. 
 
 **No," exclaimed the automobilist. **The last vol- 
 unteer in the Civil War had scarcely reached his home 
 from the battlefield when our inventors began their 
 experiments. Their results were often startling. Most 
 of them applied their motive power to bicycles or the 
 like. One of the most successful was by a man named 
 Roper, of Roxbury, Massachusetts. But the real 
 American automobile era did not begin much before 
 the year in which we went to Cuba to conquer the 
 Spaniards — in 1898. 
 
 ^^The growth of the automobile industry has been 
 one of our twentieth century marvels. Six million dol- 
 lars were invested in the business about the beginning 
 of the century. Twelve years later it had multiplied 
 to $450,000,000. For every dollar invested in Amer- 
 ican capital, one cent of it is in the automobile indus- 
 try. There were 2,500 persons actually employed in 
 about thirty establishments in 1899; there were more 
 than 85,000 employed in more than 400 establishments 
 in 1912. If you count all persons who are affiliated 
 with the industry, in the capacities of salesmen, demon- 
 
 169 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 strators, and the like, then you would have an army 
 numbering a quarter of a million. 
 
 * ^ It was said that there were 3,500 cars in our coun- 
 try about twelve years ago. So rapidly did they in- 
 crease that to-day there are more than 850,000, or 
 about eighteen times as many as there are passenger 
 coaches on our American railways. These tignires are 
 constantly changing, at the rate of about 200,000 new 
 cars every year, four-fifths of which it is said are sold 
 to Americans, the rest being sold in foreign countries. 
 
 ^^If one American owned all the cars in the coun- 
 try, or at least the money that was spent for them, he 
 would be the world's money king — ^he would have 
 about $850,000,000. 
 
 ^ ^ What has the automobile actually done for Amer- 
 icans? It has worked a new revolution, greater in its 
 results than war. It has brought health, wealth, and 
 pleasure ; it has made the tourist familiar with the out- 
 of-way places of the world, as no railroad could pos- 
 sibly do. It has inaugurated a new spirit of travel 
 and thereby greatly increased knowledge. It has built 
 up the small towns ; it has taken people out to the fresh 
 air of the country, instead of crowding them into the 
 heart of the congested city. It has greatly increased 
 property values. It is a factor in science ; the doctor 
 finds it invaluable when hurrying to save a life; the 
 hospital sends out its auto-ambulances. The fireman 
 uses it to carry himself and his apparatus to the fire. 
 The parcels postman uses it to carry his heavy bundles. 
 The shopper utilizes it in her trips to the stores. The 
 visitor to a city finds taxicabs awaiting him at the 
 station to convey him through the crowded streets to 
 a hotel. There are auto police wagons and auto com- 
 mercial trucks o Auto freighting cars carry the pre- 
 cious metals from Costa Eica's mountain-tops to her 
 seaports. California auto trucks carry borax out from 
 
 170 
 
STORY OF THE AUTOMOBILE 
 
 Death Valley. There are auto street-sweepers, auto 
 handcars, and even auto chapels, from which mission- 
 aries preach the Gospel to those who cannot attend 
 church. 
 
 ^^The automobile is thirty times more efficient than 
 the old mule team. It can haul a load of 100 tons to 
 a distance of 100 miles in twenty hours. Furthermore, 
 it is much cheaper than horses. One freighting com- 
 pany which formerly used horses or mules, saves an- 
 nually $100,000 on an initial investment of $30,000. 
 
 ^ ' The automobile is doing our farming to-day. Its 
 first test was in plowing; it showed that horses cost 
 $3.68 an acre, steam power $4.08, and gasoline motor 
 power $1.97 each acre. An auto plow can do as much 
 work in one day as a two-horse team can in six. The 
 marvelous little auto tractors pull the plow, the har- 
 row, the planting and the mowing machines. 
 
 '*The automobile has proven the farmer's friend. 
 One-fourth of the automobiles sold to-day go to farms 
 west of the Mississippi. In Egypt it turns up the 
 desert in the very shadow of the Pyramids. 
 
 ^^But one of the greatest of boons that the auto- 
 mobile has rendered to civilization is the demand for 
 good roads. During its comparatively short career, 
 it has changed the whole highway systems. Not mil- 
 lions but billions of dollars are being expended in 
 building great highways that weave their way through 
 the continent like a huge spider's web. 
 
 ^^The automobile has come to stay," exclaimed the 
 Story-teller, placing his goggles over his head. *^It 
 will become more and more general in its use until the 
 peoples of the earth are darting from place to place 
 in these veritable houses on wheels. Even when the 
 airship lures us into the clouds, the automobile will 
 remain the master of the land." 
 
 171 
 
THE STORY OF THE FIRE FIGHTERS 
 AND THE CONQUEST OF FLAMES 
 
 THE clang of gongs rose from the roar of traffic 
 in the streets. The Story-tellers rushed to the 
 windows of the library. On the pavement below 
 could be seen a huge engine plunging through the 
 crowds toward a tall building, shrouded in smoke. 
 
 ^'Fire!" shouted the gathering throng. '^Fire! 
 Fire!'' 
 
 ^^Do you know,'' remarked one of the Story-tellers, 
 as he gazed at the scene, ''that the story of fire and fire- 
 engines is even more thrilling than the tales of war!" 
 
 "It is war," suggested one of the onlookers, "war 
 against man's greatest enemy." 
 
 "Quite true!" exclaimed the Story-teller, "and I 
 will tell you how man has fought through the ages 
 to conquer it. 
 
 "It is an old story. Fire began the fight and had 
 its own way for a very long time. History tells us 
 of many disastrous conflagrations in ancient times, 
 but says little of any efforts made to combat them. 
 People found that throwing a bucketful or two of 
 water on a fire had little effect, unless it was a very 
 small fire. 
 
 "So things went on, until the idea came to some 
 bright mind of some kind of machine for pouring water 
 on fires. It was an Alexandrian Greek, most likely 
 Ctesibius, who, about 200 B. C, devised a double cylin- 
 der machine, which worked by an alternate motion and 
 threw jets of water. You know Alexandria was the 
 
 172 
 
STORY OF THE FIRE ENGINE 
 
 most up-to-date city of that time, and it^s pretty safe 
 to look there for anything worth while in the way of 
 science and invention. I wish w^e had some account of 
 the first fire at which the pump of Ctesibius was used. 
 No doubt, it was a proud day for him, supposing that 
 it worked well and that it wasn't a very big fire. Any- 
 way that machine was, without doubt, the distant and 
 humble ancestor of the modern fire-engine." 
 
 ^^A far cry!'' laughed one of the audience. 
 
 ^'Yes, indeed,'' responded the Story-teller. ^'But 
 we mustn't ^despise the day of small things.' The 
 * syphon,' as the cylinder machine was called, was a 
 great improvement on the mere bucket. Anyway, no 
 appreciable improvement was made on it for about 
 1,800 years. 
 
 '^In fact, it was not till the beginning of the seven- 
 teenth century that we find what we may call a real 
 fire-engine. This was at Nuremberg, in Germany. It 
 was a large machine, ten feet by four, required 20 
 men to work it, and threw water to a height of 80 feet. 
 By the end of the century, improvements were made. 
 An air chamber was added, designed to cause a con- 
 tinual flow of water, and an ingenious Dutchman, Jan 
 Van der Heide, introduced leather hose and a contriv- 
 ance for lifting the water to the engine. 
 
 ^^At last the steam fire-engine was introduced. 
 After many earlier attempts, more or less successful, 
 the ^steamer' was constructed in a greatly improved 
 form by Mr. Hodges in New York, in 1841. It was 
 self-propelling, threw to the height of 166 feet, and 
 made 120 revolutions a minute. 
 
 '^ Could you believe that this innovation met with 
 great opposition? Whenever a ^steamer' made its ap- 
 pearance at a fire, there was sure to be a crowd of 
 hand-firemen who tried to interfere with their work 
 and sometimes caused serious trouble. Their objec- 
 
 173 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 tion to tlie new engine arose chiefly from their hatred 
 of discipline and method, which it involved. For a 
 time the reactionaries prevailed, and the new machine 
 was put out of commission. 
 
 ^'But they were destined to meet more than their 
 match. There was a man in Cincinnati, Moses Latta, 
 who had not only the ingenuity of the inventor, but the 
 courage of the pioneer. He constructed a really suc- 
 cessful engine, with one front and two rear wheels; 
 it had two horizontal cylinders and weighed 22,000 
 pounds. Curiously, it required four horses to supple- 
 ment its own power. Water could be thrown in seven 
 minutes 225 feet through two, four, or six lines of 
 hose. 
 
 '^ Latta was warned to prepare for trouble, if he 
 persisted in bringing out this engine; it was even in- 
 timated that his life might be in danger. He was a 
 short man, of slight physique, but under this exterior 
 was hidden an indomitable soul. To every remon- 
 strance he only replied : ' I shall build it ! When it is 
 finished, it will be heard from at the first fire, and woe 
 to those who stand in its way!' The trial came one 
 night, in 1853, when a great warehouse in Cincinnati 
 took fire, which threatened to spread devastation 
 around. The new engine thundered along to the scene 
 and soon had the fire under control, although the hose 
 was cut by some malicious person and had to be re- 
 paired. 
 
 ^'The ^ Joe Eoss,' as Latta 's engine was called, had 
 a tragic end nearly six years later. It blew up at an 
 exhibition, killing the engineer on the spot and injur- 
 ing others. But it was soon followed by others, and 
 the reign of the modern fire-engine had definitely com- 
 menced. 
 
 "One engine, built in Boston, had a remarkable ex- 
 perience. It was superannuated after a time and sold 
 
 174 
 
STORY OF THE FIRE ENGINE 
 
 for junk. It was bought by a man living at St. Charles, 
 Illinois, and when a fire in that town proved unman- 
 ageable, the old engine was brought out as a last re- 
 source. In spite of a cylinder head blowing off, it 
 checked the flames and saved the town — and this when 
 it was thirty years old! 
 
 *'Now we come to the present era,'* continued the 
 Story-teller — *Hhat of the auto engine. The splendid, 
 dashing fire horses, that were the delight of our child- 
 hood, are almost a thing of the past. To take a typical 
 instance. New York City has 126 auto engines in use; 
 and it is unlikely that any more horses will be pur- 
 chased. Any day now we may see the last fire horse 
 pull up at a fire. 
 
 * * Needless to say, the type of fire-engine now in use 
 in our large cities is the most powerful fire-fighting 
 apparatus in the world. They are capable of throw- 
 ing 1,300 gallons of water a minute. The danger of 
 any possible mishap is guarded against by special pre- 
 cautions. They are fitted with corrugated tires, so 
 that they may turn or swerve as they will without 
 skidding ; and the steering gear is specially devised for 
 any emergency. 
 
 ^'The auto fire-engine is a money saver. The 
 money spent on feeding the fire horses of Greater New 
 York would buy six of the finest auto engines; that 
 spent on horse-shoeing would add another fiye; and 
 the harness bill would bring the total up to fourteen. 
 What may be saved in property through the speedier 
 service cannot be estimated, however, vaguely. These 
 engines make 18 to 20 miles an hour in crowded streets. 
 And some of them carry a supply of water which may 
 be thrown, if necessary, five minutes before the hose 
 connections are made. ' ' 
 
 ^^When was the first fire brigade organized?'' in- 
 quired one of the party. 
 
 175 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ^'If we go back to ancient history," said tlie Story- 
 teller, *^we find that the Emperor Augustus, early in 
 the first century, established a body of men in Rome 
 for the purpose of fighting fires, which were only too 
 frequent in that city. In the Middle Ages, various 
 towns assigned this duty to certain municipal olSicers. 
 But the modern fire brigade dates only from the early 
 part of the nineteenth century. 
 
 **If you look back across the years you will see the 
 devastating flames wiping out cities at tremendous cost. 
 There is ancient Rome, all of whose buildings were com- 
 pletely destroyed in 64 A. D. Constantinople was almost 
 completely destroyed three different times, two of the 
 conflagrations costing more than $145,000,000. Moscow 
 was completely gutted twice, once in 1383, and again in 
 1812, when the citizens set it ablaze rather than have it 
 fall into the hands of Napoleon. London was swept in 
 1666 at a loss of $60,000,000, and twice in the nineteenth 
 century at a loss of $27,000,000. Smyrna fell before 
 flames in 1796 at a loss of more than $50,000,000. 
 
 *^Our nation has suffered severely from fires. New 
 York lost 600 buildings, valued at $20,000,000, in 1835. 
 Boston lost property valued at over $100,000,000 in her 
 great fire of 1872, while Chicago lost nearly twice as 
 much in her memorable catastrophe of 1871. Balti- 
 more burned for two days in 1904 and lost buildings 
 which covered nearly 140 acres. San Francisco's total 
 loss probably exceeded a half billion dollars. 
 
 *^The annual loss by fire in the United States," 
 the speaker concluded, *^is about $220,000,000. What 
 it would be without our splendid fire-engines would 
 be almost impossible to estimate. The service of the 
 fire-engine to civilization is simplv incalculable." 
 
 176 
 
THE STORY OF THE CHEMISTS WHO 
 CREATE OUR POWERFUL EXPLOSIVES 
 
 THE building quivered on its foundations; the li- 
 brary windows rattled. Fear blanched the faces 
 of several of the Story-tellers. One of them 
 peered out of the open window as though looking for 
 signs of a thunderstorm — but the stars were twinkling 
 genially in a clear sky. 
 
 *^What was thatf cried a hushed voice just as 
 a dull rumble resounded through the room. 
 
 **That was a miracle," replied a sober-faced man, 
 smiling at the evident anxiety of his friends. ^^It was 
 the miracle of modern civilization. Out in the moun- 
 tains in the distance some son of sunny Italy, prob- 
 ably, has just touched a button and released an earth- 
 quake to shake down the rugged hills so that a rail- 
 road train may soon plunge through the rocky bar- 
 
 rier. ^ ' 
 
 ^'Oh, blasting,'' said one of the gathering, with 
 evident relief. 
 
 ^^Yes," replied the speaker. ^' Man's new method 
 of combating Nature's barriers — ^his greatest servant 
 in the creation of our modern edifices, our mighty 
 engineering achievements, and in the destruction of 
 his foes. 
 
 ^* Gunpowder is so commonplace to-day that, in re- 
 turn for a few cents, we can buy enough to send our- 
 selves into eternity. But did you realize that mankind 
 fought its wars even up to thirteen centuries after the 
 dawn of Christianity without its aid? Perhaps I 
 
 177 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 should add that the Chinese are said to have known a 
 substance similar to gunpowder. Authentic history 
 says, however, that the sturdy Europeans, bearing the 
 Cross, had partly completed their last Crusade in the 
 thirteenth century before the Arabians became the 
 first to equip their soldiers with a gunpowder sub- 
 stance — some historians say about the year 1280. 
 Whatever the source, one fact is certain : the English 
 marched to war equipped with their first gunpowder 
 in the year 1346, and crushed the flower of French 
 chivalry with the new agent of destruction at the battle 
 of Crecy. 
 
 "Gunpowder reigned supreme for ^ve centuries. 
 But in this time scores of chemists were battling ^dth 
 Nature in the endeavor to create new forces. The first 
 improvement over the original gunpowder is now his- 
 torically marked by the name of Berthollet, the French 
 chemist who discovered a method of refining it. 
 
 "There are great quantities of g-unpowder and 
 other high explosives being manufactured in our coun- 
 try every year. They are constantly being transported 
 about the country, through cities from the mills to the 
 arsenals, and to the great engineering sites and other 
 localities, where their mighty power is utilized in a 
 hundred different ways. The great Panama Canal 
 could never have been built without the power of high 
 explosives." 
 
 "How much gunpowder do you chemists produce 
 in a year's time in the United States?'' inquired a 
 lover of statistics. 
 
 "If you include the value of all other explosives," 
 said the Story-teller, "as our government statisticians 
 do, then their value is more than $40,000,000." 
 
 He paused for a moment while he consulted a book 
 on the table. 
 
 "That means," he resumed grimly, "an amount 
 
 178 
 
STORY OF EXPLOSIVES 
 
 nearly twice that of all the coffins, burial boxes, and 
 undertaker's supplies used to bury the dead in this 
 country during an entire year. 
 
 **A juggler of figures, '^ he continued, *^has esti- 
 mated what that amount of explosives would mean if 
 gathered for one shipment. It would require a solid 
 train of freight cars, each carrying thirty tons, long 
 enough to cover the entire street railway lines in the 
 states of Nevada, New Mexico, and South Dakota. It 
 would make a gigantic and awe-inspiring mass, weigh- 
 ing over 30,000,000 tons. What would happen to the 
 earth if this mass were exploded! I dare not predict, 
 but when we remember that it only requires a few 
 pounds to blow up the mightiest battleship afloat or 
 to raze the tallest building ever erected, then we 
 have an inkling of what would happen to our planet. ' ' 
 
 ^^What part have American chemists taken in gun- 
 powder?" one of the listeners asked. 
 
 ^^A wonderful part," replied the Story-teller. 
 *^They are to-day the world's leaders in the art of 
 turning chemicals and other substances into destruc- 
 tive forces. It would require many nights to relate 
 their romantic experiences. 
 
 ^'The adventures of the Du Pont de Nemours, the 
 distinguished French royalists, who came to America 
 and laid the foundation for American supremacy in 
 the great science of powder-making, is one of the most 
 vital chapters in our national history. These friends 
 of King Louis XVI declined the offers made by Na- 
 poleon and came to the new republic of the United 
 States. Here they established in Wilmington, Dela- 
 ware, the industry that furnished the powder with 
 which we have fought our great patriotic wars — and 
 through these victories have made this nation one of 
 the world's greatest powers. Moreover, it is to one of 
 these nation builders, Lamotte Du Pont, that America 
 
 179 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 owes the distinction of giving to the world the mighty 
 force known as ^blasting powder/ the substance which 
 has prepared the way for the building of the great 
 dams, irrigation plants, bridges, tunnels, cities. 
 
 *^I wish that my time would allow me to tell you 
 the whole story of these men of epoch-making achieve- 
 ments. I would like to tell you how Colonel Rodman 
 created the powder known to the world's armies and 
 navies; how Charles E. Monroe produced what is 
 known as homogeneous smokeless powder, composed 
 of a single chemical substance, and many other equally 
 interesting tales. 
 
 ^^But I can say only a few words about one of the 
 most vigorous personalities in this generation — the 
 reincarnation of a Viking king in modem times. If 
 you could go with me into the lakes and hills of New 
 Jersey, I could take you to a delightful village on the 
 shore of one of these lakes. 
 
 ^'As we knock on the door of a home, beautiful 
 in its surroundings and its private life, we would be 
 greeted by a man who looks as though he came out of 
 an old Viking castle. His massive head is crowned 
 with heavy white hair ; his frame is built like a struc- 
 ture of steel ; his voice is deep and strong, and withal, 
 there is a gentleness to this man of terrible explo- 
 sives — for we stand face to face with Hudson Maxim, 
 the first inventor to solve four of the most important 
 problems in the development and use of our explo- 
 sives; first, the smokeless powder; second, the high 
 explosive bursting charge for armor-piercing pro- 
 jectiles ; third, the safety-delay-action detonating fuse 
 for exploding high explosive projectiles; and fourth, 
 the harnessing of a high explosive compound to make 
 it burn without explosion as a motor fluid for driving 
 a turbine. 
 
 ^'Many are the tales that could be told about this 
 
 180 
 
STORY OF EXPLOSIVES 
 
 giant in body and brain, who came out of the Maine 
 woods as a youth and mastered not only many of the 
 hidden secrets of Nature, but literally shook the earth 
 with the substance which he called ^Maximite.' 
 
 ^ 'Let me tell you of some of the commonest miracles 
 these chemists perform. One of them takes a handful 
 of cotton — old rags or paper would serve nearly as 
 well — and treats this with a little nitric acid. K you 
 were in his laboratory when he does this, you would 
 not understand what a wonderful transformation had 
 taken place, for the cotton would still be merely cot- 
 ton to the uninitiated. But to the chemist it has become 
 the most powerful of destructive agents— the explo- 
 sive known as gun-cotton. A few pounds of it, you will 
 recall, was sufficient to tear the heart out of the battle- 
 ship Maine and send it with its crew to the bottom of 
 Havana harbor. 
 
 **If you only knew it," continued the speaker, 
 ''each of you, some time during the day, uses this 
 demon incarnate in some manner or form. Here is 
 again where the wizardry of the chemist is exemplified. 
 Did you know that gun-cotton, under another name, 
 stalks through our streets at all hours of the day, 
 draped about our ladies in the form of artificial silk; 
 or holds up her hair, in the form of hair combs and 
 ornaments ; or graces her feet in the form of imitation 
 leather. 
 
 *'You cannot escape it in modern civilization. It 
 makes the home a veritable volcano. The celluloid 
 comb, brush and mirror resting on the dressing table 
 contain sufficient gun-cotton to blow the house to 
 pieces; the music room contains in the keys of the 
 piano sufficient destructive force to annihilate any 
 occupant of the room; and the writing table with its 
 blocks of correspondence paper — gun-cotton and 
 camphor — is a veritable potential submarine mine. 
 
 181 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 *^For the benefit of our friends gathered here, I 
 might say that every time you cut or burn your hands, 
 and treat the wound with medicated collodion, the 
 wound is covered with pure gun-cotton. After the 
 ether has evaporated there is sufficient gun-cotton left 
 to instantly amputate your entire hand, if the chemist 
 had not treated the substance beforehand and thus 
 removed its ^ power.' '' 
 
 The speaker paused. 
 
 **Let me say a few words about the story of dyna- 
 mite,'' said the chemist. ^'It is one of tragedy, sub- 
 lime perseverance and courage. It begins with the 
 creation of nitroglycerine in the form in which Sobrero 
 gave it to the world, the handling of which was vir- 
 tually equivalent to suicide. To-day it is as harmless 
 as a friction match, when it is handled as it should be, 
 which is no more than a human being demands. For 
 this we are indebted to that English scientist whose 
 benefactions to the world of science did not end here, 
 but still continue after his death in the form of the 
 famous Nobel prize. This man, Alfred Nobel, fought 
 a mighty battle with the explosives, which once blew 
 up, killing his brother and a collaborating chemist, 
 crippling his father for life, and razing the building 
 in which they worked to the ground. From this holo- 
 caust young Alfred miraculously escaped uninjured 
 to carry on his experiments until he had created the 
 wonderful modern dynamite. 
 
 *^ These are some of the more important high ex- 
 plosives which the genius of man has wrested from 
 Nature and combined into forces which rival those of 
 the earth's volcanoes. To-day, they are the abject 
 servants of man, ready to be converted into raging 
 forces, or to serve in the quiet affairs of daily life. ' ' 
 
 182 
 
THE STORY OF THE GOLD MINER WHO 
 DIGS NUGGETS FROM THE SOIL 
 
 "A /f"Y story,'' said the Story-teller, standing in the 
 I y J_ center of the library, a picture of perfect phys- 
 ical manhood, *4s of that miracle which has 
 lured the generations. You have all read of it and 
 have been fascinated by its power. It has demolished 
 and created nations. 
 
 ^'It lured Hercules into the dragon-guarded garden 
 of the Hesperides; Jason and the Argonauts to the 
 shores of the Black Sea; the Phoenicians into Spain; 
 the Romans into Britain. Columbus braved the perils 
 of an unknown sea for it; Cortez and Pizarro con- 
 quered Mexico and Peru in its name ; Britons traveled 
 to the far south in Africa to capture it ; Yankees over- 
 ran California in search for it ; Americans traveled to 
 the Frozen North — " 
 
 The speaker's meaning suddenly dawned on several 
 of the listeners, and their voices rang out in chorus : 
 
 ^^Gold!" 
 
 *'That is the magic word," said the Story-teller. 
 '*It has rung out in all parts of the world, in all kinds 
 of languages, and its echoes resound down the corri- 
 dors of time. It has been the tocsin which has gath- 
 ered greater armies than any battle-cry ever uttered. 
 It has steeled brave hearts to the discovery of new 
 worlds, and it has strengthened other brave spirits into 
 populating those worlds with marvelous cities and 
 rural empires. 
 
 *^In this generation we see gold on every side. You 
 
 13 183 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 can find it in myriad forms in the arts and industries — 
 in the artistes pigments, on milady's fingers, or, it may 
 be, flashing back the sun's rays from the lofty height 
 of a state capitoPs tower. Authorities have estimated 
 that about one-sixth of the gold mined enters into the 
 arts and industries, the balance being divided up into 
 gold coins and bullion. Billions of dollars worth of 
 gold have been lost. It is one of the mysteries of the 
 ages where it has gone. It is suspected that much of 
 it has disappeared into the Mahometan ^graveyards 
 of gold.* These are the secret hoarding-places of the 
 Moslems, who sell their crops and wares for gold and 
 secrete it 
 
 * ^ Gold is a coquette. It lurks in nearly all parts of 
 the world in great abundance. But its disguises are 
 multifarious, and it only lets its hiding-place be known 
 when the increase of population absolutely demands 
 its power. Thus, with our increased population, there 
 is more gold in the world to-day than there ever was 
 before. From the discovery of America to the year 
 1911, $14,308,237,000 worth of gold had been wrested 
 from the earth's treasure haunts. Pure gold of that 
 value would weigh about 23,725 tons. If it could all 
 be gathered and formed into a pillar 20 feet in diame- 
 ter, the top would reach within about 25 feet of the 
 crown on the Statue of Liberty. 
 
 **Our National Treasury is a veritable gold mine 
 itself. There is a fortune greater than King Solomon 
 ever took out of his mines in Ophir. Twelve hundred 
 tons of the precious metal are stored there and in the 
 Sub-Treasury in New York's financial district in bags 
 like so much salt." 
 
 ^^Was gold always the money standard?" inquired 
 a listener. 
 
 **No," replied the Story-teller. **The cave-men 
 probably knew of its existence but did not consider it 
 
 184 
 
STORY OF GOLD 
 
 any more valuable than the shiny quartz. It is said 
 that it was the Egyptians who first used it to orna- 
 ment their women, teaching the art to the Greeks, 
 1,400 years before the dawn of the Christian Era. It 
 was the use of it for ornamentation that probably 
 suggested its use as money. You will remember that 
 the great lawgiver Lycurgus forbade his Spartans to 
 use it in either form. 
 
 * ^ Gold and silver have always fought for supremacy 
 in the money marts. From ancient times until the 
 seventh century, both gold and silver were standard. 
 Then silver assumed the ascendancy until about the 
 thirteenth century, when gold again stood beside silver, 
 and both metals became standard. During the period 
 immediately following the American War for Inde- 
 pendence, gold forged ahead and became the standard 
 all over the world. 
 
 *^The consequent demand for gold brought on a 
 crisis. The world was in the grip of a gold famine. 
 The golden hoards of the Incas and Montezuma had 
 dwindled into a comparatively small stream. The 
 Bank of England was rocking on its foundation, hav- 
 ing more than once suspended specie payments. Emi- 
 nent economists were predicting another *Fall of the 
 Eoman Empire. ' Then, like Moses in the desert, gold- 
 seekers in California and in Australia magically 
 touched the golden rocks, and, like two reservoirs 
 bursting through their dams, two floods of gold 
 poured out over the world. Its dazzling sheen changed 
 the whole face of industry, altered the course of com- 
 merce, shifted masses of people, and reversed the 
 movement of prices. 
 
 **It was the dawn of the * Golden Age,' which to- 
 day holds us in its thrall. The world has never wit- 
 nessed such a rush as followed the discovery of gold 
 in California, in 1848. I was one of the modern 
 
 185 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 !A.rgonauts, known to every school boy and girl as the 
 American 'Forty-niner.' Its scenes are still fresh in 
 my memory — how San Francisco was emptied of its 
 adult population, and these gold-seekers were joined 
 by others from all parts of the world. Two years 
 after James Wilson Marshall found his epochal nug- 
 get in John Sutter's mill-race along the Sacramento 
 River, there were 100,000 of us gathered on the gold- 
 fields, which ranged for 600 miles and covered 8,000,000 
 acres. We took out $50,000,000 in that year with our 
 crude pans and cradle rockers, and five years later 
 exceeded that sum by $15,000,000. 
 
 ' ' What we did then is being done to-day, and more, 
 for in 1911 California produced over $19,000,000 worth 
 of gold and still leads all other American goldfields, 
 even Alaska and Colorado, the El Dorados of the later 
 generations. The modern miner has revolutionized 
 gold mining. We, with our pans and cradles and 
 sluices, could only take that gold which lay on or near 
 the surface of the earth or in streams. The modern 
 miner delves into mountain sides with his electric and 
 compressed air drills, often penetrating for thousands 
 of feet. 
 
 ' ' The lure of gold is still in my blood. It called me 
 to the Western gold-fields recently, where I saw the 
 modern miner in operation. In some places I found 
 them squirting immense and powerful streams of 
 water against a hillside like firemen subduing the 
 flames. This is the hydraulic method of mining, which 
 washes away the gravel and dirt and exposes the gold. 
 In another district I found them digging gold just as 
 the coal miner does. Deep shafts lead into the bowels 
 of the earth, and from these there are tunnels branch- 
 ing out. Huge timbers brace the walls and roofs, and 
 the miners were drilling holes in the walls with electric 
 and compressed air drills. There ore was carried to 
 
 186 
 
STORY OF GOLD 
 
 the shaft opening in motor cars and thence up the shaft 
 in buckets or 'skips.' This is what they called 'quartz' 
 mining. Then the ore was taken to the stamp mills 
 to be crushed into a fine powder, after which it was 
 treated with acids and electric currents, put through 
 wonderful machinery, until it came out in the form 
 of bullion, ready to be shipped to the mints. 
 
 ''I also found the methods of the 'forty-niners' 
 in vogue in some places. Men were picking over the 
 gravel and washing the ' pay-dirt ' in pans and cradles, 
 while others were washing it in troughs, which we used 
 to call 'sluices.' One of the men told me that up in 
 Alaska they dredged the bottom of the rivers and 
 streams with huge dredging machines, such as you 
 find cleaning out the bottom of your harbors. 
 
 "As you know, gold is found either in nuggets or 
 in grain form. The largest nugget ever dug up is 
 said to have been found at Dunolly in Australia, and 
 was significantly named 'Welcome Stranger.' It 
 weighed 2,217 Troy ounces, nearly two hundred 
 pounds, and sold for $52,000. One of the most beauti- 
 ful specimens ever dug up was the mass of gold and 
 quartz — ^in which the gold ran in threads, wires, lumps, 
 and sheets — found near Sydney, New South Wales. It 
 stood ^ve feet high, and was one foot wide, and six 
 inches thick. 
 
 "But all the gold is not on land. The sea is full 
 of it. It is estimated that in every ton of sea-water 
 there is nearly a grain of gold. If you could invent," 
 said the Story-teller, in conclusion, "a method to ex- 
 tract this gold, you would have a fortune whose value 
 it would be impossible to begin to estimate." 
 
 187 
 
THE STORY OF THE SILVERSMITH 
 WHO WORKS IN PRECIOUS METALS 
 
 "T SPEAK in behalf of the democrat of the precious 
 J[ metals/' said an aged and bent man, whose hair 
 had turned gray over the artisan's work-table. 
 **It is silver. For every ounce of gold in the world to- 
 day, there are nineteen of silver. From the day that 
 Columbus first landed in the New World to the day 
 that China became a republic, enough silver had been 
 mined throughout the world to make 2,488 four-cylin- 
 der compound locomotives of the 1911 type, or more 
 than 300,000 tons of metal. If this had been sold 
 on the market at present-day commercial valuations, 
 it would have brought about four billion dollars. Its 
 coinage value would have been more than fourteen 
 billion dollars, or enough to pay the funded debts of 
 Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and Mexico, as they 
 were estimated for the year 1912. 
 
 * ^ Silver is the democrat, ' ' repeated the Story-teller, 
 *^and gold is the aristocrat of the precious metals. But 
 silver is accepted in circles where gold, because of its 
 greater value, cannot enter. You will find it in nearly 
 every American home. What family is there to-day 
 without its silver knives, forks, and spoons; its silver 
 brushes, combs and hand-mirrors? 
 
 ^^ Silver performs miracles that gold, owing to its 
 chemical nature, cannot duplicate. In the art of 
 photography, it faithfully paints exact images upon 
 the printing paper. It performs feats of magic in 
 medicine, in association with other chemicals. It is 
 
 188 
 
STORY OF SILVER 
 
 one of the surgeon ^s best friends. When the human 
 arteries and like organs break down, it replaces them 
 and carries on their functions quite as well as the 
 human tissue. And it will carry the electric spark 
 further and more easily than any other known metal. ' ' 
 
 *^What country produces the most silver?'' asked 
 one of the listeners. 
 
 ^* Mexico/' replied the silversmith, ^^with our 
 United States crowding it close for the honors. At the 
 rate our production is increasing, we will soon lead 
 the world. Did you know that the American conti- 
 nents, North and South, supplied nearly five-sixths of 
 the world's silver in the period commencing on the 
 day Cortez conquered the Aztecs and ending in 1912? 
 Before the discovery of America, silver was as scarce 
 as gold. But when the silver floodgates of the New 
 World were opened, it became so abundant that its 
 value deteriorated, until to-day 16 ounces of silver 
 is considered equal in value to one ounce of gold. 
 It costs as much to produce 16 ounces of chemically 
 pure silver as it does one ounce of gold. 
 
 ^ ^ To transport the silver mined every twelvemonth 
 in the United States would require a train of nearly 
 200 freight cars, and the shipment would weigh about 
 6,300 tons. If you should read the shipping tags on 
 these cars, you would probably find that 110 of them 
 were destined for the silver and other industrial shops 
 in our country. The balance would be distributed 
 among the mints and the seaports for shipment to 
 foreign lands." 
 
 ^^When was silver discovered?" inquired one of the 
 gathering. 
 
 **No one knows," was the answer. ^' Man's knowl- 
 edge of this useful metal was old even in antiquity. 
 The earliest known record of a producing silver mine 
 tells of Hannibal, of Carthage, as far back as 200 B. 
 
 189 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 C, taking out 300 pounds of silver from his mine 
 every day for many years. His mines were located at 
 Gruadalcanal, at the foot of the Sierra Morena, in the 
 province of Cordova, Spain, and consisted of horizon- 
 tal tunnels extending miles into the mountain. Legen- 
 dary history carries it further back than that, telling 
 of the famous Pontic city of Alybe where silver 
 abounded. Ancient Hebrew tribes described it under 
 the name of Keseph. 
 
 ' ' Silver is usually found in combination with other 
 metals, such as lead, copper, and gold, and is mixed 
 with various other chemicals and minerals. Frequently 
 it has been found in its pure state, some specimens 
 having weighed several hundred pounds. Many of you 
 will recall that, a decade after the California gold rush, 
 the world was again startled by the discovery of an- 
 other El DoradOj this time in Nevada and consisting 
 largely of silver. Its name, the Comstock Lode, was 
 a household word for many years. It was almost a 
 pure vein, about four miles long and 3,000 feet at its 
 widest point. From the day of its discovery until the 
 year 1890, a period of thirty years, it produced about 
 $200,000,000 worth of silver, and about $140,000,000 
 worth of gold. In the year 1912, Nevada had again 
 assumed the leadership in the production of silver in 
 our country, with Montana and Utah close seconds. 
 These three states produced in that year nearly a 
 third of our total supply. 
 
 ^^Out in our Western mountains are sturdy Amer- 
 ican miners, forcing the earth to yield up its precious 
 metals. You cannot exactly call them 'silver miners,' 
 for they are digging for copper, or lead, or even gold, 
 in which the silver will be found and from which it 
 will be taken out as a by-product. This is true of a 
 majority of the American mines to-day. And when 
 they have dug the ore and brought it to the surface, 
 
 190 
 
STORY OF SILVER 
 
 its subsequent treatment is virtually the same as that 
 in recovering gold. It passes through a powerful rock 
 crusher, whose teeth chew rocks as large as a man's 
 body into pebbles, and then to the stamps, where it 
 is powdered to almost a dust. Then it is roasted, 
 and the silver separates from the other metals. Here 
 the silver follows a course of its own, passing through 
 amalgamating pans charged with quicksilver, with 
 which it unites after being freed of other impurities. 
 Then the mass, called ^amalgam,' goes to a retort and 
 is heated until the quicksilver passes off in a vapor. 
 But the quicksilver is not lost, for one genius con- 
 ceived the idea of directing the fumes against water 
 which literally freezes it — and again it is quicksilver. 
 The silver remains in the retort and, when cooled, is 
 the chemically pure silver of commerce. 
 
 *^ Another method is to put the crushed ore through 
 a smelter, just as the iron-maker does. When the ore 
 has become almost a liquid, resembling lava, the 
 precious metals sink to the bottom of the furnace, and 
 then the silver is freed from its other constituents by 
 breaking up the mass. 
 
 *'Down in Mexico, that marvelous silver store- 
 house, ancient methods are still in operation in many 
 districts. The ore is crushed in a pit resembling a 
 modern fountain and basin. Heavy blocks of porphyry 
 are drawn by mules or horses around the basin, crush- 
 ing the ore as they revolve. Water is added fre- 
 quently, and, when the ore has been reduced until 
 the mass looks like thin mud, it is shoveled out, and 
 sulphate, of copper added. Several gangs of worn- 
 out horses or mules then are driven back and forth 
 through the mass to knead it, an operation occupjdng 
 the best part of a day. Next day, salt is added and 
 kneaded into the mass by the horses, and two days 
 later pure quicksilver is throwm in, and again the 
 
 191 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 horses take up their weary task, continuing at it for 
 about fifteen clays. After this, the mass is wheeled 
 to troughs, where rapid streams of water wash away 
 the clay, leaving the silver and quicksilver, which are 
 placed in canvas bags, most of the quicksilver running 
 through the bags. What remains is drawn out in 
 vapor through heating in a retort. This method is 
 hard on the feet of the horses, but, strange to say, the 
 average Mexican peon can wade around in the puddle 
 for days and never suffer any injurious effects. 
 
 **This is the method employed by our southern 
 neighbors, and the one by which they produced for 
 many centuries about a third of the world's total 
 supply. ' ' 
 
 ^' Which of our United States did you say leads in 
 the production of silver?" asked one of the Story- 
 tellers. 
 
 ^'Nevada, led in 1912, having held first position for 
 two years. Her production was valued at about 
 $7,000,000; the second producer is Utah. There has 
 been a great rivalry among some of the western states 
 for the leading honors. Montana was first for two 
 vears, until superseded by Nevada. Colorado led in 
 1907. '^ 
 
 *'Is silver confined to the Western states?'* 
 
 *^No. It is found in practically all our states, 
 though not in quantities or form which would pay to 
 mine it. There are three states in the South — Georgia, 
 South and North Carolina — which have mined silver. 
 Is it surprising that the old adage should have become 
 familiar: ^ Every cloud has a silver lining!' " 
 
 192 
 
THE STORY OF THE COPPER MINER 
 WHO CRUSHES FORTUNES FROM 
 
 ROCKS 
 
 ""TXO you want to get rich, quick?'* inquired the next 
 I J Story-teller. A whimsical smile lighted his 
 weather-beaten face. 
 
 ** Yes !*' eagerly responded a chorus of voices. The 
 gathering seemed unanimous. 
 
 ^'Then get your ships and grappling irons, and we 
 will raid the bottom of the seas. There lies a king's 
 ransom, more than $1,000,000. Not in sunken galleons, 
 but in the 200,000 miles of copper wire forming our 
 ocean cables. Divided among all of us — there are a 
 hundred present — each will have $10,000. If that is 
 not sufficient, then we will turn to the American tele- 
 phone, telegraph, trolley and power wires. Here we 
 will find $20,000,000 more in copper.'' 
 
 *'But how are we going to carry it away to our 
 cave?" asked one potential pirate. 
 
 ^^Ah! there's the rub," replied the miner. Turn- 
 ing to the railroad man he inquired: *^How many 
 freight cars are there on American railways, and how 
 many tons will each carry?" 
 
 ''More than 2,000,000 in 1911, and each is estimated 
 to carry about 33 tons at full capacity," was the 
 answer. 
 
 ''Good!" exclaimed the miner. "We will raid the 
 railways and commandeer every eighth freight car to 
 carry our 8,000,000 tons of copper to our haunt. If 
 we are not caught, then we can turn to other sources 
 
 193 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 for more. Tlie world is full of it. Wherever you find 
 electricity, you will find copper. And wherever there 
 is a brass article, a kettle, or an African's nose-ring, 
 there also is copper. It is on the bottom of ships ; in 
 the eaves-troughs on our buildings; in our medicines, 
 and even in our blood. 
 
 *^Up in the State of Michigan, man has come nearer 
 to the center of the earth than anywhere else. Here 
 a copper mine shaft penetrates more than 5,000 feet 
 and is the doorway to a vast subterranean city having 
 more than 200 miles of streets, which are lighted by 
 electricity. Electrically propelled cars and elevators 
 carry the * citizens' of this city under ground, while 
 electric and compressed air drills carry on their indus- 
 try. What is being done in Michigan is true of many 
 of our Western states, notably Montana and Arizona, 
 though the mines in the latter regions are not quite 
 so deep as these ancient Lake Superior mines. You 
 know it was this district which lured the first French 
 explorers from Quebec, when America was being 
 settled. 
 
 ^^ There are more than 80,000 copper mines and 
 smelters in the United States, and we are producing 
 more than 1,000,000,000 pounds of copper every year. 
 We get nearly a third of this from the Arizona mines, 
 with the Montana mines standing second. Altogether, 
 the copper mines of the United States yield more than 
 half of the world's total supply. These mines are pro- 
 ducing every 24 hours more copper than was mined in 
 a twelvemonth just prior to the American Civil War. ' ' 
 
 **When was copper first discovered?" inquired one 
 of the Story-tellers. 
 
 **No one knows," said the speaker. **We do know, 
 though, that it was used for weapons and implements 
 of industry before iron. And we also know that the 
 ancients knew how to temper copper, an art that was 
 
 194 
 
STORY OF COPPER 
 
 lost in some dark niche of the ages and has not been 
 discovered again even to this day/^ 
 
 ^^Is copper ever found unmixed with earth and 
 rockr* inquired a listener. 
 
 * * Yes, ' ' replied the miner. * ^ But woe be to the mine 
 owner that does find it in pure or native state. It 
 spells failure immediately, as more than one mine 
 owner has discovered. ' ' 
 
 The listeners showed and expressed their surprise. 
 
 **Pure copper,*^ continued the miner, *' cannot be 
 dug out, and it will not yield much to blasting. To 
 mine it at all requires cutting by cold-chisels, and the 
 cost of such operation is far in excess of the value of 
 the metal. ' ' 
 
 ^^How do you mine copper T^ was the next question. 
 
 ** About the same as you would coal or iron. The 
 cleaning methods are about the same, except that we 
 break the ore up into smaller pieces by huge and power- 
 ful stamps, or hammers. There are three methods of 
 extracting the copper from the adulterations. One 
 method is to roast it, called calcination, to remove the 
 arsenic and antimony. Next, it is melted, or smelted, 
 to a mixture of copper and iron. In this condition it 
 is known as * matte.' This is next melted with coke 
 to remove the iron, and then we have the copper of 
 commerce. The second method is known as the *wet.' 
 The impure ore is soaked and washed around in acids 
 which absorb the copper. Then the acids are distilled, 
 until only the fine copper remains. 
 
 ^^The third method is that called * electrolysis.' In 
 this method the crushed ore is placed in vats or pans, 
 containing poles of an electric current. The attendant 
 turns on the current, and, as though by magic, the cop- 
 per separates from the mass and flies to the electrodes, 
 coating them in pure copper until the process is com- 
 plete. 
 
 195 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 *^Iii recent years the copper miners have adapted 
 the Bessemer furnace and converter to their * matte' 
 of copper, as it appears in the dry process. Roughly 
 speaking, this consists of blowing great draughts of 
 air through the molten mass, literally blowing out the 
 sulphur and also keeping the mass in a molten condi- 
 tion. It requires 4,000 cubic feet of air every minute 
 to thus treat forty tons of matte. 
 
 **The Bessemer process has revolutionized the cop- 
 per industry. Hours have become minutes, so to 
 speak, and acres have become square feet. To-day 
 copper ore fed into a furnace in the morning can be 
 shipped as 99 per cent, pure metal by evening. The 
 old-time methods required about four days. The old- 
 time roasting stalls and furnaces, covering many acres, 
 have shrunken to a Bessemer furnace and converter 
 covering a plot about 25 by 100 feet and capable of 
 producing 1,000,000 pounds of copper a month. By 
 the old methods, one ton of ore required a full day's 
 labor; by the new processes one day's labor reduces 
 four tons of ore to fine metal. ' ' 
 
 * ^ Copper has so thoroughly entrenched itself in our 
 affairs that it has become indispensable. It stands in. 
 the foreranks of our industrial pageant." 
 
 196 
 
THE STORY OF THE COAL MINER WHO 
 FINDS FUEL IN THE EARTH 
 
 THE miner stood watching the combined efforts 
 of two Story-tellers to open the library window. 
 For many weeks it had been closed, and now 
 was virtually sealed. They gave way to the powerful 
 man who advanced. Placing one hand against the 
 upper sash, the newcomer easily raised it, though it 
 protested in shrill squeaks. 
 
 ^^You are a strong man!'' ejaculated one of the 
 crestfallen men. *^ Where did you become so power- 
 fuir' 
 
 *^In the bowels of the earth,'' was the startling 
 reply, '* digging for ^buried sunshine.' " 
 
 ^^ Buried sunshine?" exclaimed the questioner. 
 ^^ What is that?" 
 
 ^^Coal," was the succinct answer. **You all, no 
 doubt, are familiar with the hypothesis of the origin 
 of coal — how the mammoth ferns and club-mosses of 
 the Carboniferous Age gathered the sunbeams, storing 
 the carbon they brought to them, and finally were sub- 
 merged during the writhings of the forming earth 
 under masses of sand and rock and silt. 
 
 *^Thus God, in His beneficence, deposited in our 
 little planet His sunbeams, so that when our earth 
 had become one of varying climates and seasons (in 
 the Carboniferous Age there were no seasons or 
 changing temperatures), man would have a fuel to 
 warm his body and to assist him in his mighty achieve- 
 ments. 
 
 197 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ^^Tlie abundant forest trees supplied the ancients 
 with sufficient fuel, so they did not bother with coal. 
 Twelve centuries after the birth of Christ, mankind 
 began to use such coal as could be found in England 
 and a few other civilized countries. Americans did 
 not begin their great coal industry until about the 
 dawn of the nineteenth century. Coal had been 
 known long before then; Father Hennepin had acci- 
 dentally discovered it along the banks of the Illinois 
 Elver in 1679; forty years later, a Virginia boy dis- 
 covered some in his native state, and a Pennsylvanian 
 hunter, by the name of Ginterj found some under an 
 up-rooted tree. Its first use was discovered by Oba- 
 diah Gore, who burned some in his smith-forge in 
 Wiikesbarre in 1769, and Judge Jesse Fell used some 
 in a grate to heat his room in 1808. This was the 
 genesis of the American coal industry. 
 
 *^ At the first centennial of the American coal indus- 
 try, dating the beginning from Judge Fell 's discovery, 
 there were more men and boys rescuing * buried sun- 
 shine ^ in the United States than there were Americans 
 earning their livelihoods as teamsters, hackmen, dray- 
 men, and the like. The coal they mined was estimated 
 to have a retail value of more than $2,000,000,000, 
 The coal they had dug in the preceding decade of 
 years was estimated to be sufficient to cover the states 
 of Connecticut and Rhode Island with a layer one foot 
 deep, with a few hundred thousand tons to spare. 
 
 **Did you ever notice a coal-driver block the wheel 
 of his cart with a lump of coal as big as your doubled 
 fist? There is enough energy stored in that lump to 
 hurl his cart to destruction. That lump, if it weighs 
 exactly one pound, contains enough sunshine-energy 
 to lift 47 tons 100 feet in the air in the space of a 
 minute; it is capable of running an electric car, filled 
 to capacity with passengers, for a distance of two and 
 
 198 
 
STORY OF COAL 
 
 a half miles at the rate of twenty miles an hour ; or it 
 would propel a train of six ordinary coaches and a 
 heavy Pullman and sleeper one-sixth of a mile at the 
 rate of twenty-five miles an hour. 
 
 *'You have said that I am strong," modestly said 
 the miner. ^'Did you know that the one-pound lump 
 of coal could perform in one minute all the work that 
 five men like myself could accomplish in eight hours'? 
 It would require the united efforts of 2,800 men to 
 accomplish as much work in a minute as the lump of 
 coal can do. 
 
 ' ' That is the magic of coal. By its magical power 
 we are enabled to live through frigid climates and sea- 
 sons, to erect monstrous structures, and to journey 
 to all parts of the earth, either by land or sea. 
 
 * ^ Coal mining is a battle of giants, human and ele- 
 mental. Man is the general, and electricity and com- 
 pressed air make up the ranks in this warfare. If you 
 should visit our great Pennsylvania coal districts, I 
 should advise you to enter the elevator cage and 
 descend to the bottom of the main shaft. One mine 
 is more than a thousand feet below the surface. Here 
 you will step out into a vast subterranean house, 
 divided up into corridors, which lead to various rooms. 
 Along these corridors, kept ventilated by huge fans 
 and connected with terra firma and with each other 
 by telephone systems, rumble what appear to be minia- 
 ture electric trains, conveying the coal to hoisting 
 buckets. On the return trip, one of these electric 
 engines will carry you into the depths of the mine, 
 whose intense darkness is partially relieved by the 
 patent lamp upon your cap. Arriving at the working 
 face, you will find the miner, operating an electrically 
 driven machine, whose series of knives set upon an 
 endless chain gash and tear at the coal vein. In an- 
 other room, you will find another miner drilling holes 
 14 199 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 in the face with a compressed air machine, making 
 ready for the blasting charges. Probably as you at- 
 tempt to enter another room, a miner will suddenly 
 appear out of the darkened depths to warn you of a 
 blast. His comrade pushes a button of an electric 
 battery, and the electric impulse darts along the wires 
 into the mass of blasting powder. A mufiQed roar and 
 tumbling earth tell their own story. If you are 
 curious, you will follow the men as they return to the 
 room. When the leader motions you back, do not fail 
 to obey. Probably much to your astonishment, you 
 will see him lift over his head, as he advances alone, a 
 tiny bird-cage. Within that cage is a canary bird. 
 This little feathered creature holds a high position in 
 modem coal mines. By his unfailing instincts he will 
 detect the presence of the deadly fire-damp infinitely 
 quicker than a human being, and thus he has saved 
 hundreds and thousands of lives in our coal mines. 
 
 *^When you return to the surface, follow a load 
 of coal as it is sent to the breakers to be broken into 
 marketable sizes and cleaned. First it passes through 
 the screen made up of bars about six inches apart to 
 another screen whose openings are about three inches 
 apart. It is on these screens that the coal is cleaned, 
 boys picking out the slate and other foreign elements. 
 Then it passes onward, being alternately run through 
 rollers to be broken up into small sizes and then to 
 screens to be cleaned. When it emerges, it is in vari- 
 ous forms familiar to the housewife, the furnace man, 
 and the engineers. The story of coal is the story of 
 progress." 
 
 200 
 
THE STORY OF THE IRON MINER WHO 
 
 TAKES WEALTH FROM THE 
 
 MOUNTAINS 
 
 "T 7ULCAN lias come to earth!" whispered one of 
 V the Story-tellers, as a mighty man rose and 
 stepped to the center of the library. 
 
 ^*My story is that of iron,'' were his opening words, 
 confirming the conjecture of the whispering Story- 
 teller. **It is one of the most wonderful of the earth's 
 natural treasures. You can trace its presence in every 
 phase of life. The food we eat has been cooked in iron 
 utensils. The clothes we wear have been made by iron 
 machinery. The houses and offices we live and work in 
 have been built by and of iron. Our vehicles, over 
 land or sea or in the air, are made of iron. In fact, it 
 is everywhere — in your veins, in the satin ribbon, it 
 tinges the rosy skin of the apple. 
 
 ^'Iron has always existed," continued the iron- 
 worker. *^When it was first discovered, or who was 
 the discoverer, is unknown. The story stretches back 
 into the dim twilight of man's existence, where 
 shadows and realities are inextricably mingled. Amid 
 these shadows stands forth the figure of Tubal-Cain, 
 turning iron into agricultural instruments and weapons 
 of war, hundreds of years before the Flood swept the 
 earth, and about six generations after Adam. Many 
 centuries later, we find Og, king of Bashan, sleeping 
 upon an iron bedstead ; and still later we find that the 
 Israelites have been promised, as especially desirable, 
 a land whose stones are iron. We see that the bridge 
 
 201 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 builders of Babylon fastened huge stones together 
 with bands of iron, fixed in place by molten lead. 
 
 ^*When history becomes history, and not mere con- 
 jecture, we find frequent evidence of the use of iron. 
 We also find that it was held as too valuable a metal 
 for ordinary uses. King Og's bedstead being consid- 
 ered the height of luxury, just as a bedstead of gold 
 would be to-day. Therein lies th^ magic of my story. 
 By the wonderful methods we have of mining the ore 
 and of refining it until it is suitable for our purposes, 
 we of the modern generations can produce a metal for 
 the most humble uses much cheaper than any other 
 ordinary metal. Who to-day would consider wearing 
 a necklace or a ring of iron, as did some of those 
 ancient belles? 
 
 *^Pure iron is never found in the ground. It only 
 exists, except in the case of the balsam rocks of Green- 
 land, in the heavens. A fireball hurtles across the sky 
 and drops to earth. It is a meteor. Thousands fall 
 aight and day and on examination are found to con- 
 tain a large proportion of pure iron. The iron of 
 commerce looks not unlike rich, red earth, being, in 
 varying cases, a mixture of iron and earth, carbon, 
 sulphur, or oxygen. 
 
 ^^Iron mining has flourished in more than half of 
 the commonwealths forming our United States at 
 some time during their history. As one deposit was 
 exhausted, or as a new and richer deposit was dis- 
 covered, the miners moved onward. To-day the center 
 of the industry rests around Lake Superior, and the 
 State of Minnesota is counted the greatest producer. 
 We American iron-workers — there are about a million 
 of us engaged in all branches of the iron and steel 
 industry — produce about a billion dollars' worth of ore 
 every year, or more than a third of all mined through- 
 out the world. 
 
 202 
 
STORY OF IRON 
 
 ^^Iron mining methods vary, according to the 4ay' 
 of the ore. You have all seen the modern steam- 
 shovel, that over-grown grocer's sugar-scoop, operated 
 by steam, tearing away the earth in great mouthfuls. 
 That is the machine which we use when the ore lies on 
 or near the surface. If you should look down into 
 some of the Lake Superior 'pits,' you would see the 
 miners at the bottom as though they were pigmies. 
 Or over at another range, notably that near Vermillion 
 Lake, you would find a deep shaft extending more than 
 1,000 feet into the bowels of the earth, where the 
 miners are digging out hard ore and sending it to the 
 surface in huge buckets. Or, in another part of this 
 district, you will find human moles burrowing under 
 the earth in what greatly resembles a rabbit's warren. 
 Then they blow this up with blasting powder. 
 
 ''Great ore-ships take most of the ore from the 
 mines to the iron and steel centers, where it passes 
 through the smelting process. Pittsburgh is to-day 
 the largest center in the world. There you will find 
 mammoth furnaces — great cones, lined on the outside 
 with masonry and on the inside with steel jackets, 
 between which a constant flow of water passes. They 
 stand ninety feet above the ground, and at their tops 
 are conical caps, also kept cool by circulating water. 
 Through these the ore is dropped into the fiery inte- 
 rior, whose heat averages about 550 degrees. As the 
 gases generate, they pass oif to an engine which 
 utilizes them to heat the blast of the furnace. The 
 fierce flames melt the ore, separating the dross from 
 the iron. The latter passes out through one side of 
 the furnace into sand channels to cool into 'pigs,' 
 while the dross, or 'slag,' passes out in another direc- 
 tion. This is the iron that you will find in myriad 
 forms in everyday life, in your telephone, or tea-kettle, 
 mowing machine or locomotive. 
 
 203 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ''Smelting is the magician of the iron industry. 
 Even the Romans used the ancient method, the 'air 
 bloomery/ consisting merely of a pit dug in a hill. 
 Many generations later, English iron-workers found a 
 Roman 'clinker' heap in the Forest of Dean, and this 
 supplied them with enough material to keep twenty 
 furnaces busy for nearly 300 years. Even when Spain 
 was the center of the world's iron industry, a crude 
 hearth and bellows, known as the Catalan furnace, be- 
 cause the industry was carried on in Catalonia, was 
 their means of purifying the iron ore. The bloomery 
 endured until the latter part of the eighteenth century. 
 The first Virginians used them, when they made the 
 first attempts in America, in 1619, to manufacture iron. 
 
 "In these old-time methods, the ore and fuel were 
 put together in the furnace. Charcoal was the only 
 fuel which did not leave impurities in the finished 
 iron. In the year 1784, Henry Cort, an Englishman, 
 discovered the puddling process, a method which sepa- 
 rated the fuel from the ore during smelting operations, 
 thus permitting almost any kind of fuel to be used. 
 The evolution of the furnace was gradual. From an 
 open hearth whose blast was cold air, it has changed 
 to a conical shaped furnace with a closed top, and the 
 gathering gases are made to burn again beneath the 
 blast pipes, thus heating the air of the blast. 
 
 "To-day we have around Lake Superior huge 
 mining industries, which, together with their trans- 
 portation facilities, represent a cash investment of at 
 least $500,000,000. This district, producing enough ore 
 whose value is sufficient to pay the interest on our 
 public debt for two years, is the world's greatest pro- 
 ducer, yielding more than double that of any other 
 mining district on earth." 
 
 204 
 
THE STORY OF THE OIL DRILLER WHO 
 TAPS THE EARTH FOR RICHES 
 
 " TT^ VERY-ONE has heard of Aladdin and his won- 
 j[2j derful lamp and listened to the story of the Ori- 
 ental magician who did so many strange things 
 with his wand," said the next Story-teller — a man 
 who had traveled the whole world over — ^'but I will 
 tell you a tale more wonderful still, and the strangest 
 thing about it is that it is true. It is about oil — the 
 very same kind of oil Aladdin burned in his lamp. 
 
 *^It is an old story, but few people really know 
 aboui it. It began millions of years ago, when the 
 earth was created. There were earthquakes and vol- 
 canoes. Places where the sea once rolled were lifted 
 up into mountain peaks. Mighty lakes, covered for 
 ages with all kinds of plants and trees, were sub- 
 merged under soil and rock. Then a great decompo- 
 sition set in. Where all this vegetable matter was 
 covered up, gases were generated, liquids oozed out, 
 and pools were formed. Then, after years and years, 
 the peculiar liquid that we call oil began to make its 
 appearance here and there, like the fresh water 
 springs we see in the country. 
 
 *^The Greek historian Herodotus tells of the 
 famous oil pits of Anderrica, near Babylon, 484 years 
 before Christ. In the first century of the Christian 
 era, another famous man, named Diocondes, relates 
 how the ancient city of Agrigentum, in Sicily, was 
 lighted and heated with oil. After this, news of the 
 discovery of an oil well was heard from time to time 
 
 205 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 in the different parts of Europe. The Japanese 
 boasted of their 'burning water' in the seventh cen- 
 tury. The famous oil springs of Baku, in Russia, were 
 the talk of the civilized world in the thirteenth century. 
 
 ' ' The first to tell of the discovery of oil in America 
 was Sir Walter Raleigh, in 1595. It became legendary 
 that the New World was rich in oil. A well at Barke- 
 ville, Kentucky, ^delded such great quantities of oil in 
 1820 that on one occasion it overflowed to the Cum- 
 berland River and seemed to 'set the river on fire.' 
 It was not until 1853 that an American suggested the 
 idea of using oil to light our homes. Far-seeing men 
 saw in this idea a royal road to fortune. The first 
 oil company was formed and failed. The first man to 
 be successful in mining the mineral was E. L. Drake, 
 who came upon it through an accident. A couple of 
 workmen were drilling at Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, on 
 the 28th of August, 1859; they suddenly felt their 
 tools drop into an underground cavern, sixty-nine feet 
 down. The following day oil was 'struck.' This was 
 the beginning of our modern oil industry. ' ' 
 
 "When I talk about oil," said the Story-teller, 
 reminiscently, "I am always reminded of the stories 
 of how the East Indians touched the ground with their 
 wand, and flames sprang up from the earth. The mod- 
 ern expert going forth to-day to find the oil, unguided 
 by the witchery of Indian magic, does greater feats 
 than were ever dreamed of in the wildest lore of 
 Araby. Armed with nothing save an accurate knowl- 
 edge of rock formation, he goes into dreary wastes 
 and barren hillsides. Pointing to the ground, he tells 
 the workman that here must be put his drill — for here 
 is the oil hidden in the bowels of the earth. The 
 workman, wondering, does as he is told. A big beam, 
 70 feet high and 20 feet at a wooden base, is reared 
 over the spot. A locomotive with twelve or fifteen 
 
 206 
 
STORY OF OIL 
 
 horse-power is installed, and the work is begun. As 
 certain as the snn rises, oil is ^struck.' The method 
 employed for drilling is the same that is used for ar- 
 tesian wells. The drilling not only locates the oil, but 
 also helps, with the aid of natural gas, to bring it to 
 the surface. One well to every five acres is the usual 
 number drilled. Explosions of nitro-glycerine torpe- 
 does release soil where there is no gas pressure. The 
 oil is pumped into wooden tanks, from which it is con- 
 veyed through pipes to the distilling stations. 
 
 *'The first means of transporting Pennsylvania oil 
 was by storing it in wooden casks and floating them 
 down the Allegheny Eiver. Later, four miles of pipe 
 line were laid by Samuel van Sykle at Titusville, 
 Pennsylvania. To-day, there is a vast network of 
 25,000 miles of pipe lines stretching all over the coun- 
 try. Laden oil trains rush across the continent, with 
 their long trains of cars. Steamships ride the waves 
 with their tanks full, to answer the call of China and 
 Japan and far-away New Zealand for their supply of 
 American oil. 
 
 '^When the crude oil is first taken out of the 
 ground, it is offensive to the smell and varied of color. 
 It is then distilled at the depots from which it had 
 been conveyed from the wells. Fraction by fraction, 
 the mighty stores in the great wooden-shaped reser- 
 voirs are purified. From this crude oil we get our 
 benzine and naphtha, which are used by freezing ma- 
 chines and all kinds of motors ; our kerosene for light, 
 lubricating oil for machinery, and vaseline for me- 
 dicinal purposes. 
 
 ''The value of oil to humanity can only be esti- 
 mated by its multitude of uses. 
 
 ''And I am going to astound you," continued the 
 Story-teller. "Do you know that enough oil has been 
 taken out of the bowels of the earth, right here in the 
 
 207 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 United States, to form a tank line around the globe — 
 not once but a hundred times ? If all the barrels of oil 
 taken from our American soil could be lined up to- 
 gether, it would take 500 cities the size of Manhattan 
 Island, New York, to hold them. It would keep a 
 light burning in the Statue of Liberty for billions of 
 years. Over 265,000,000 barrels of petroleum (forty- 
 two gallons each), are produced annually in the world. 
 The United States leads with about 167,000,000 bar- 
 rels a year. 
 
 ^^ Truly the story of oil is a wonderful one. No 
 novelist has ever lived whose imagination was so fer- 
 tile as to prophesy even in fiction the growth of this 
 industry, which is but a little over a half century old. 
 The plain story of oil becomes more wonderful with 
 every passing year, as it brings its reports of new 
 fields and new springs exporting their millions of gal- 
 lons of oil into the vast storehouses of man. Lastly, 
 it has created colossal fortunes and made John D. 
 Rockefeller the richest man in the world. 
 
 ^^The story of how, through the genius of oil, a 
 country boy has become the richest man in the world 
 is far more romantic than the tales of knighthood. It 
 is a story of frugality, thrift, courage and persever- 
 ance which culminates in the picturesque figure of an 
 aged gentleman spending his patriarchal days in be- 
 stowing almost incalculable gifts on humanity. The 
 real story of oil is the life-story of John D. Rocke- 
 feller and his benefactions which have made possible 
 the organization of the American system of higher 
 education under the General Education Board, the 
 establishment of such institutions as the University of 
 Chicago, the founding of the Rockefeller Institute for 
 Medical Research, and innumerable other benefactions 
 that are contributing to the uplift and happiness of 
 the human race, ' ' 
 
 208 
 
THE STORY OF THE WELL DIGGER 
 WHO CONQUERS THE NATURAL GASES 
 
 *'/^^NE day not long ago,'' began this Story-teller, 
 \^ a man who appeared to be a mechanic, ^ ' I was 
 walking along through the country. Suddenly, 
 I saw huge pillars of flame leap from the earth, shoot- 
 ing hundreds of feet into the sky. For a moment they 
 seemed to die away and then again great tongues of 
 white flame burst from the earth and seemed to lick 
 the sky. 
 
 ^^I stood spellbound," exclaimed tlie speaker, ^* un- 
 til some one near by told me the secret of this magnifi- 
 cent spectacle. It was natural gas. 
 
 ' ' The story of this ' eternal flame ' leaping from the 
 bowels of the earth in many parts of the world begins 
 with the myths of the ancient fire gods. For thou- 
 sands of years the ancient records of China and Japan 
 have told of this wonderful vision. But it was in Italy, 
 in 1226, that we first hear of its being used as a means 
 of artificial light and heat. Then it seems to have 
 been forgotten, for practically nothing more is heard 
 of it until the seventeenth century, when a country 
 squire, rambling through the forests in England, acci- 
 dentally came across a vein of the product. In the 
 nineteenth century gas was found in other parts of 
 Europe. 
 
 ^ ' The startling phenomenon of this mysterious gas 
 bursting from the ground was first witnessed in the 
 United States in 1821, by the villagers of Fredonia, 
 New York, but the occurrence passed without further 
 
 209 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 agitation. Thirty-eight years later, in 1859, the pres- 
 ence of gas was detected in great quantities in Penn- 
 sylvania. Little was known of its value^ however, so, 
 to prevent combustion of the oil, the natural gas was 
 conveyed to a safe distance and burned as a nuisance. 
 
 '^The great awakening to the usefulness of this 
 * dangerous vapor* came in 1872, when it was conquered 
 by the genius of man in Pennsylvania and forced to 
 go to work for him. It was found that, imprisoned 
 in the great stone caverns of the earth, are millions 
 upon millions of gallons of petroleum. This oil throws 
 off powerful gases which, when released, are forced 
 by compression through the porous rock to chambers 
 in the earth. A drill, mounted on a beam about 
 seventy feet high and twenty feet at the wooden base, 
 is used to puncture the gas vein. The natural gas 
 rushes to freedom with an average pressure of 200 
 to 600 lbs. to the square inch. There was recently a 
 case in Pennsylvania where the recorded pressure was 
 800 to 1,000 pounds. The gas is then conserved in a tank 
 and directed into iron pipes. Meters measure the gas 
 and it is conveyed in all directions to light the homes 
 and to generate heat and power in the factories. *' 
 
 ^^How much of this gas is there in the earth T' 
 asked a listener. 
 
 *^It is beyond all human dreams," replied the Story- 
 teller. *^ There are yet new regions to be found; new 
 fields to be explored. Day after day the storehouses 
 of the earth are giving up new supplies. An idea of 
 its vast volume can be judged only by the waste which 
 occurs in the United States alone by accidentally punc- 
 turing gas veins and allowing the vapor to escape. A 
 million cubic feet of natural gas is escaping every day 
 in Oklahoma. The value of this for a single year is 
 $7,500,000. The fuel value of it is equal to 1,250,000 
 tons of the best bituminous coal. The waste is still 
 
 210 
 
STORY OF GAS 
 
 more deplorable in Louisiana where the means of heat 
 are wasted in the air and the people are paying for 
 coal which must be brought from a distance. The 
 wastes in but three states made a grand total of 
 $23,000,000 worth of natural gas lost forever, 
 
 ^'No one can estimate the possibilities of natural 
 gas,'' concluded the Story-teller. '^They are beyond 
 calculation. Millions of homes will no doubt be lighted 
 in the future through this medium of Nature's hot 
 breath; thousands of factories will be run with the 
 power it creates. Electricity will probably rely upon 
 it for its generation. And the entire machinery of 
 the country may be controlled by its supply. It will 
 do away with germs and dust, bringing cleanliness to 
 home and factory; it will lighten work, and as a result, 
 prolong life by preserving health. The ^miracle' of 
 fire leaping from the ground has come as a new evi- 
 dence of the incalculable riches that remain hidden in 
 the heart of the earth. 
 
 ^'Though Nature has richly endowed this earth 
 with natural gas, man has found it expedient to make 
 his own. His methods are various. I will explain 
 one of them to you. 
 
 ^^The gas-maker creates coal gas by burning bitu- 
 minous coal in furnaces which have no outlet excepting 
 those through which the gas fumes pass into a con- 
 denser. This resembles the interior of a water-heater, 
 with a net-work of pipes through which water flows to 
 cool the gas and congeal the tar. Next it is led to the 
 scrubbers, cast-iron cylinders in which the gas is given 
 a shower bath of water to cleanse it of ammonia, sul- 
 phur compounds and other impurities. Then it passes 
 on through purifying boxes, filled with either lime or 
 *iron sponge', and is then sent on to the great storage 
 tanks from which it will be fed out to the people to 
 turn night into day. ' ' 
 
 211 
 
THE STORY OF THE FOUNDRYMAN 
 AXD THE GIAXT KXOWX AS STEEL 
 
 "rir^HIS is the day of giants — there is no denying 
 
 J[ the truth. We see them wherever we turn our 
 
 eyes — giants that step from flaming furnaces 
 
 and stretch their enormous frames over valleys and 
 
 rivers, or snort fire from their nostrils, or float on 
 
 the waves like sea monsters.'^ 
 
 The man who spoke was somewhat of a giant him- 
 self; he stood nearly seven feet tall, head and shoulders 
 above the Story-tellers who surrounded him. 
 
 '^I came here direct from a blast furnace," he said, 
 gruflly. *^My business is to turn huge kettles of molten 
 metal into far leaping steel bridges, towering steel 
 sk^^scrapers, deep steel tunnels under the earth, steel 
 greyhounds of the ocean, steel engines running swiftly 
 across continents on steel tracks. 
 
 ^^I am a worker in a steel mill. I watch the molten 
 masses of iron daily transformed into that greatest 
 of metals — ^yes, greater than gold and silver — the 
 metal that is the backbone of our modern civilization. 
 First we had the Stone Age; then the Bronze Age; 
 then the Iron Age; this is the Steel Age.'* 
 
 ^^Was steel known to the ancients f inquired some 
 one. 
 
 ^^Undoubtedly," replied the Story-teller. ''Da- 
 mascus, that hoary old city of the East, was famous 
 for its sword blades. So finely tempered were they 
 that they could cut through floating gauze, and, if 
 bent to a right angle, would fly back to their original 
 
 212 
 
STORY OF STEEL 
 
 shape. Toledo, too, the Spanish city, was for centuries 
 renowned for its blades. The ancient Romans used 
 steel extensively for their armor and weapons. In- 
 deed, it may be said that, down to comparatively re- 
 cent times, almost the sole use to which steel was put 
 by mankind was in producing the accessories of war. 
 
 ^^But in these times the amount of steel used for 
 warlike purposes is only a fleabite compared with that 
 employed in the arts of peace. Take the case of the 
 railroads alone. At the present moment, the rails laid 
 throughout the length and breadth of the United 
 States represent a weight of 70,000,000 tons, whilst 
 the engines in use total nearly 5,000,000 more." 
 
 **What is it that causes this magic transformatipn 
 of iron into steel?'' asked a listener. 
 
 **Just a bit of carbon," replied the giant; **a min- 
 eral found in various forms, sometimes as soot or 
 charcoal, at other times as a diamond. ' ' 
 
 He drew a small knife from his pocket and opened 
 the blade. 
 
 ^'Just take away a hundredth part of that blade," 
 he said, ^*and you can't cut that pencil." 
 
 '^What do you mean?" asked the other, in sur- 
 prise. 
 
 ^^Well, that knife is made of steel, and steel is just 
 99 parts iron, one part carbon. It's the carbon that 
 gives it the qualities of steel." 
 
 **How is steel made?" asked one of the audience. 
 
 **The molten iron," replied the speaker, *4s run 
 onto a train of ladles, whose locomotive draws it to 
 the open-hearth department of the steel works. There 
 air is blown through it by what is called the Bessemer 
 process. Or it is poured into a kind of oven and sub- 
 jected to a fierce heat. Then it is poured into a gigan- 
 tic ladle, capable of holding fifteen to twenty tons, 
 which is swung by a crane to a position just above a 
 
 213 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 train of ingot molds placed in little trucks on a rail- 
 road track. Through a hole in the hottom of the ladle 
 the steel is poured into each mold, filling it to the 
 top; and, when it has cooled sufficiently to stand, the 
 molds are stripped off, and there are the ingots — 
 massive blocks of steel, six feet high, a^d a foot or 
 more thick, and still red-hot. 
 
 ^^Then the little train moves on to the soaking 
 pits, where an overhead crane, with a pair of jaws like 
 huge ice tongs, seizes each ingot and lowers it into a 
 pit, where its temperature is equalized, the surface 
 being warmed by a 'gas flame, whilst the inner part 
 cools down. It then goes to the roll-tables, where it 
 is squeezed into shape, according to the use for which 
 it is designed. 
 
 ^ ^ What happens then 1 ' ' exclaimed the Story-teller. 
 ^'It is sent forth to perform its mighty mission in 
 the world. Forthwith it takes a myriad forms of use- 
 fulness. It girdles the earth with railroads. It lines 
 the huge buildings of our cities. It builds up the ma- 
 chinery of the factory. It prints the newspaper. It 
 fills the surgeon's case. It ploughs and reaps the har- 
 vest of the world. It moves the giant vessel over the 
 ocean. It makes the world's clothing. Is there any- 
 thing of importance in the affairs of men in which the 
 great magician. Steel, does not have a part? 
 
 *^A11 this wondrous story dates from yesterday. 
 A century ago, steel played a hardly greater part in 
 our lives than in those of our primeval ancestors. At 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century, about 35,000 
 tons of steel were made annually in Great Britain, then 
 the greatest producer in the world. It produced six 
 and a half million tons in 1911. But the United States 
 has quadrupled that figure, with 24,000,000 tons out 
 of the world's output of 58,000,000. We lead the 
 world not only in production, but in the use of steel. 
 
 214 
 
STORY OF STEEL 
 
 ^'When Bessemer, an Englisliman, suggested Ms 
 new process for making steel, in 1855, from cast iron 
 without fuel, lie was laughed to scorn. But Americans 
 were quick to see the possibilities of the invention, 
 and the production of steel by the new process in- 
 creased by leaps and bounds in this country. How as- 
 tonishing this progress has been is shown by the fact 
 that, at the opening of the twentieth century, the 
 United States was producing steel to the value of the 
 total production of all the gold mines of the world. 
 
 *^But to-day! Let us try to get an idea of the 
 magnitude of the present annual product of steel in 
 the United States — which is five times the total pro- 
 duction of the world twenty years ago. Suppose that 
 for one year the country could spare from its ordinary 
 use all the steel produced and devote it to ornamental 
 purposes. It would make a magnificent colonnade of 
 pillars 4,150 on each side, 20 feet in diameter and 100 
 feet high. Or, if we preferred it, we could build one 
 colossal column, 100 feet in diameter, and pile it up 
 higher than the loftiest peak in the world. '^ 
 
 ^'Is there not a great difference in the various 
 qualities of steel?" inquired some one. 
 
 ^^A very great difference," answered the steel- 
 worker. ^ ' The same quality used for building a bridge 
 would not do for making a razor. The value varies 
 from about $35 to about $300 per ton. The quality 
 depends on the quantity of carbon present, which is 
 slightly less in the cheaper kinds. 
 
 *^In the old days," exclaimed the speaker, ^* steel 
 was used in destroying human life — that was almost 
 its sole use. In these times, it is employed for protect- 
 ing and preserving human life. Even in the case of 
 a great railroad accident, the disastrous effects are 
 minimized by the use of steel cars. And here should 
 15 215 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 be mentioned one of the most beneficial purposes to 
 which steel has been applied — the construction of 
 great buildings. It has proved its worth in the pres- 
 ence of fire and earthquake. In the great Baltimore 
 fire, the framework of the steel buildings stood un- 
 scathed, even when exposed to the full severity of the 
 conflagration. An even more convincing illustration 
 was provided in the San Francisco earthquake, when 
 the tall, steel-ribbed buildings stood practically int-act, 
 after enduring shocks which threw everything around 
 them to the ground. And tests made of steel corrosion 
 show that the life of such buildings is practically as- 
 sured for generations. 
 
 ''The strength of steel is phenomenal. The num- 
 ber of strands in a steel rope an inch in circumference 
 varies from 40 to 400, and a strand as large as a 
 knitting needle will require a ton weight to tear it 
 apart ! 
 
 ^'As America has become the empire of steel, so is 
 Pittsburgh its capital. Around it, stretching in every 
 direction in a huge circle, is a net work of steel-making 
 towns. Steel has multiplied the population of Pitts- 
 burgh by ten during the past 50 years and has doubled 
 it during the past twenty. It has made more million- 
 aires, and more quickly, than any other industry." 
 
 '^What of the future?" said the Story-teUer, in con- 
 clusion. ^ ^ I have no doubt that we shall see even more 
 remarkable developments in the future. And, so long 
 as America is at the head of the steel industry, it will 
 lead the world. ^The nation that makes the cheapest 
 steel,' said Andrew Carnegie, ^has the other nations 
 at its feet.' Steel has come to be the basis of all 
 material progress, and our civilization is built, as it 
 were, upon a framework of steel." 
 
 216 
 
THE STORY OF THE FARMER WHO IS 
 THE FOUNDATION OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 THERE was considerable excitement at the Story- 
 tellers ' club on the evening of this stoiy. It 
 had been rnmored that a wonderful tale w^as to 
 be told. Suddenly, a man of magnificent physique 
 arose. His powerful figure was clad in plain clothes 
 of good texture. Except for his rugged and bronzed 
 countenance, he appeared like the old-time American 
 statesman — the type that has been seen so frequently 
 in the halls of Congress. 
 
 **I am a farmer," were the introductory words 
 which brought surprise to the faces of the gathering, 
 for he was far from what their imagination had pic- 
 tured the ordinary farmer to be. 
 
 *^A modern American farmer," he added. **It is 
 about modern American farming methods that I am to 
 tell you to-night — a story of magic — the wonder story 
 of that art which is the foundation of all human life. 
 
 ^'I do not believe," he resumed, ^*that it is neces- 
 sary for me to point out that without the farmer you 
 could not live — the ages have proven that. But do you 
 city folks realize what a vast army of Americans it 
 requires to keep your bodies alive? The government 
 officials recently counted all Americans who were en- 
 gaged in gainful occupations. They found that of all 
 the groups of industry there was none which had a 
 membership equal to that of farming. They found 
 that, not counting our babies and children under ten 
 years of age, we are more numerous than the entire 
 
 217 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 population of Persia, or of Argentina and Bolivia to- 
 gether — ^we number something like 10,000,000. 
 
 ^^Do you know that about half the entire land area 
 of this country belongs to the farmer? Do you know 
 that he has cut up this vast domain into nearly 
 6,000,000 farms which in 1910, together with all its 
 equipment, represented an investment of about 
 $41,000,000,000? What this vast area really means 
 can be better illustrated by comparing it with some 
 well known countries. It is many acres larger than 
 all of Argentina, and it is eleven times larger than 
 Italy; it is six times larger than France, and seven 
 times larger than Spain. 
 
 ^'The average American farm, including improved 
 and unimxproved land, covers more ground than do 
 some of our small cities. Out in the great West, how- 
 ever, there is a single wheatfield, and I do not know 
 that it is the largest in our country, which alone covers 
 more ground than does the city of San Francisco. 
 
 *^The United States is said to be the wealthiest 
 nation of the earth. She holds her head proudly above 
 the others, but if you look to see what her feet are rest- 
 ing upon you will find the farmers' piles of produce. 
 Every twelve months the American farmer is produc- 
 ing nearly ten billion dollars' worth of crops. Figura- 
 tively speaking, when our nation stands on our annual 
 com crop, the rest of the world, all nations included, 
 measure about to her knees. By standing on either 
 our cotton, wheat, oats, or tobacco, she still looms 
 above the rest of the world." 
 
 ^^Will you tell me," interrupted the manufacturer, 
 *^how this is possible when Americans are leaving the 
 farms for the cities, as I understand they are!" 
 
 ^'That is true," replied the Story-teller. **But 
 have you also noticed that our nation, even without 
 these helpers, is producing larger crops than it ever 
 
 218 
 
STORY OF AGRICULTURE 
 
 did in all its history! The answer is — scientific agri- 
 culture. That is the miracle, made possible by educa- 
 tion and machinery. A century ago, when the old- 
 time methods were in use, 97% of all Americans were 
 from necessity tillers of the soil. 
 
 ''They had to be — ^the alternative was starvation," 
 he added grimly. * ' Then a bushel of wheat in the bag 
 represented about three hours of human hard labor. 
 To-day, by our modern methods, such a bag represents 
 about ten minutes. It is through this fact that we can 
 supply your mills and banks with employees, and still 
 produce banner crops. 
 
 ''The progressive American agriculturist of to-day 
 must have as liberal an education as any worker in 
 the nation. He must be an agricultural chemist, an 
 engineer and mechanic, a bacteriologist. He must un- 
 derstand eugenics as they apply to his stock, rural 
 economics, horticulture, soil physics, agronomy and 
 thremmatology. That last is the science of breeding 
 new kinds of plants, as well as animals. 
 
 *'The ancients practiced and appreciated agricul- 
 ture, or husbandry, as they liked to call the science. 
 It was Cicero who made Cato say; 'The home of a 
 good and industrious husbandman is stored with 
 wealth, and nothing can be more beautiful, nothing 
 more profitable than a well cultivated farm.' Wher- 
 ever you go throughout our nation you will find flour- 
 ishing farm lands circling round cities and towns. 
 There you will find great fields of growing grain, 
 heavily burdened orchards of fruit, trim and scien- 
 tifically arranged farm buildings; modern suburban 
 homes lighted by electricity, (as are the farm build- 
 ings), heated by modern methods, equipped with the 
 latest housekeeping devices, connected with neighbors 
 and cities by telephone wires, which also radiate 
 throughout the whole farm, connecting the owner with 
 
 219 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 all points of Ms field of operations. You may meet 
 the farmer and his wife and children speeding along- 
 macadamized highways in high-power automobiles, 
 the children destined for a modernly equipped school 
 where they study the science of agriculture as well as 
 the studies of the city student, the wife probably doing 
 her social calls, while the farmer continues onward to 
 sell his crops in the city. 
 
 *^ If you get off your train and go out to that model 
 farm you noticed, you probably will find one worker 
 putting blue litmus paper into the ground to find out 
 if the soil is sour; or another may be knocking half 
 the apples off from the trees, so that the remaining 
 fruit will be of better quality. In the cow barn another 
 may be spreading raw phosphate to be put in the soil 
 to assist the plants and grains to grow. Out in a field 
 a worker is spreading a coating of soil, brought from 
 another field, to inoculate the poorer soil with bacteria 
 and help the legumes to flourish. That thundering 
 noise you hear is the dynamite exploding or subsoiling 
 the earth so that the roots of the crops can penetrate 
 further into the earth and get nourishment that other- 
 wise would be forever cut off from them. 
 
 *' These are a few of the scientific methods which 
 have enabled the modern farmer to perform that 
 miracle of * making two blades of grass grow where 
 one grew before.' Let us turn to the reports of the 
 Agricultural Department, that wonderful institution 
 which is spreading its knowledge and beneficence 
 among the farmers, and find out what the actual re- 
 sults have been during the last decade. They relate 
 that the yield of corn per acre all over the country 
 has gained on the average more than 7 per cent, and 
 wheat over 9 per cent. There are many more items 
 but these will illustrate what scientific methods mean. 
 You must bear in mind that these figures are for only 
 
 220 
 
STORY OF AGRICULTURE 
 
 one decade, and that preceding decades showed a pro- 
 portionate increase, ever since the close of the Amer- 
 ican Civil War when agriculture began to receive the 
 attention of scientists. Since that time the bushels 
 to an acre of some staples have increased from 30 
 to 60. 
 
 **The farmer is about the only inventor who does 
 not keep his discoveries for profit to himself alone. 
 Owing to this fact the world is able to test its cows' 
 milk productivity through Babcock's testing machine; 
 is able to grow the navel orange which William Saun- 
 ders brought into the country, and the Wealthy apple, 
 said to be the best of apple seedlings, which cost Peter 
 Gideon, of Minnesota, his last $5 for seeds (even while 
 he had to make a coat out of a pair of trousers and a 
 vest) ; or the wonderful Minnesota 169 wheat which 
 Willet M. Hays created by crossing wheats, when em- 
 ployed in the Minnesota experiment station, and which 
 to-day has added 15% to the wheat crop in a decade. 
 It was Wendelin Grimm who gave alfalfa to America 
 after having brought it from his native home in 
 Bavaria ten years before the Civil War broke out. 
 The Alabaman, James F. Duggar, was the discoverer 
 of the modern method of inoculating soils, and he pub- 
 lished his conclusions in bulletins which were so well 
 distributed throughout the land that there is scarcely 
 any modern American farmer who does not under- 
 stand how to transfer good soil to poor. The names 
 of these benefactors to the farmer and the nation are 
 legion. 
 
 **One of the greatest givers is the government it- 
 self, through the Department of Agriculture. In a 
 recent year its directing official figured up what the 
 department had actually accomplished, in dollars and 
 cents, for the country. It reached the tremendous 
 figure of $231,859,000, counting just those larger items 
 
 221 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 wkich could be estimated, and they ranged through all 
 branches of agriculture. 
 
 ''It was estimated that for frost, cold wave and 
 river-rising warnings, the Weather Bureau saved the 
 country $25,000,000. The Bureau of Soils, which 
 shows the adaptation of soils to crops, methods of 
 handling soils, and studying the alkali problems, 
 totaled about $9,000,000. The money spent for the 
 destruction of farm pests, coyotes and wolves, and 
 other animals which endanger crops, and also for 
 encouraging certain birds worth having, is conserva- 
 tively estimated by the Bureau of Biology at $3,000,000. 
 For introducing the Australian ladybird to eat the San 
 Jose scale, not to mention the work on the black scale, 
 cotton insects including the boll weevil, and the insects 
 which prey on general crops, the Bureau of Entomol- 
 ogy claimed $5,000,000. The Bureau of Plant In- 
 dustry claimed $29,000,000, mentioning as its largest 
 item the introduction of Durum wheat. The largest 
 bureau is that of Animal Industry, and it claimed 
 over $50,000,000, distributing its claims through tick 
 eradication, subduing pleuro-pneumonia, dairy in- 
 vestigations, new treatment of milk fever, dipping 
 sheep for scabies, inspecting cattle-ships, and inspect- 
 ing meat. Then there were the Good Eoads Office, 
 which aids in the building of new and repairs old roads 
 throughout the rural districts, and the Forest Service 
 for maintaining forest reserves, thus preserving stream 
 flow and indirectly bringing the rain in needed sea- 
 
 sons." 
 
 i f 
 
 What are the agricultural experiment stations 
 I have heard mentioned? " inquired one of the listeners. 
 ''You might call them the outposts, or scouts, of 
 the Agricultural Department," was the answer. 
 "There are about sixty in the United States, located 
 in every state and territory, and they are units of the 
 
 222 
 
STORY OF AGRICULTURE 
 
 Agricultural Colleges which you also have heard 
 about, no doubt. Michigan claims the honor of first 
 establishing an agricultural school, providing for one 
 in 1850, making it a part of her second state constitu- 
 tion. Seven years later, Justin S. Morrill, the father 
 of American Agricultural Colleges, introduced a bill 
 to the House of Eepresentatives to endow the Land 
 Grant Colleges which Congress had established. 
 
 ^^Connecticut claims the first experiment station. 
 These are the stations that raised scientific agricul- 
 ture from theory to practice. The results of the ex- 
 periments are published in bulletins and sent to the 
 farmer. They will test the soils submitted and advise 
 the farmer the best crops to grow, or how to increase 
 the fertility of the soil so as to increase the yield per 
 acre. What is true of soil is also true of any part of 
 a farm or its products. When a new plant suitable 
 for growth in America is found in any distant clime — 
 and the Department of Agriculture maintains a large 
 corps of expert agriculturists to comb the earth for 
 these plants — it is first tried out in experiments and 
 if practical the information is sent broadcast. I men- 
 tion just one instance to illustrate what this service 
 means. A man sends word to the department that 
 his land, bordering the overflown banks of the Great 
 Lakes, is too wet to grow anything. Back to him comes 
 a package of seeds adaptable to his soil, with instruc- 
 tions on how to plant and raise them. It is the duty 
 of the government to foster agriculture, for the farmer 
 after all is the foundation of our civilization. ' ' 
 
 223 
 
THE STORY OF THE SUGAR GROWER 
 OX THE SOUTHERN PLANTATIONS 
 
 'TT^HIS is an age of luxury as well as wonders," 
 
 _£ exclaimed a man in a broad-brimmed hat. 
 
 ''Things that only the rich could afford a few 
 
 years ago are now within the reach of even the poorest. 
 
 "'I am a plantation owner," he said. ''I raise 
 sugar cane in the South. Do you know that a few 
 generations ago sugar was an extravagant luxury? 
 Families that had sugar for use on their tables had 
 the same claim to affluence that the modern automo- 
 bile-owning family has to-day. Much tea was used 
 in Colonial America, as we know from the part it 
 played in the Eevolution, yet nearly every bit of that 
 tea was swallowed unsweetened, except in some rare 
 instances among the wealthy, or where maple sugar 
 was used. 
 
 "But look on the tables of the American people to- 
 day!" exclaimed the sugar planter. ''We Americans 
 are now consuming nearly 4,000,000 tons of sugar a 
 year. The world's annual output is about 12,000,000 
 tons. More than 7,000,000 tons are obtained from 
 beets. Few persons realize how the industry has gone 
 through an evolution which has made sugar the cheap, 
 clean, and commonplace commodity it is to-day. This 
 evolution has been brought about by the application 
 of modem ideas to the machinery and chemistry in- 
 volved in extracting sugar from the plants and in the 
 methods of refining the raw product. 
 
 224 
 
STORY OF SUGAR 
 
 * ^ It is truly a wonder story, ' ' continued the planter. 
 **It was centuries ago that the sweet properties of the 
 cane were first discovered by the people in India. This 
 knowledge was brought to the European, who, when 
 he came to the New World, brought both the knowledge 
 and the plant with him. It was first introduced in San 
 Domingo, in 1503, and from there was carried to the 
 other West Indian islands and to the mainland. 
 
 *' Sugar cane is a species of grass that thrives in 
 tropical and semi-tropical countries and grows to a 
 height of from five to fifteen feet. The cane was first 
 cut with hand-knives and carted to mills, where it was 
 ground by primitive methods. Animals and even hu- 
 man beings were used to do the turning of the stones. 
 After the grinding had been carried out, the gummy 
 substance which had been squeezed out of the cane was 
 strained through cloth and then boiled in open recep- 
 tacles. 
 
 '^The first sugar mill to be established in this 
 country was that of Etienne de Bore. The cane had 
 been introduced in Louisiana, in 1751, by the Jesuits, 
 and thrived there fairly well. De Bore's mill was 
 erected not long afterward on what is now the site 
 of the city of New Orleans. To-day the extraction 
 and refining of sugar, as well as the growing of the 
 cane, constitute one of the most important industries 
 of that part of the South. 
 
 ^ ' Nowadays the cutting of the cane is done by ma- 
 chines, which leave a stubble after they go over a 
 plantation, and this stubble grows until a whole new 
 crop develops. The cut stalks are piled in heaps, each 
 of which lies on a rope, so that it is only necessary 
 to tighten this rope and fasten it to a hoisting ap- 
 paratus to place the pile on a wagon or in a railway 
 car„ It is thus carried to a mill. 
 
 ^'The modern mill contains sets of two, and some- 
 
 225 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 times three, rollers. The heaps of stalks are slid into 
 the machinery to pass through the first roller and then 
 on to the others. Each roller squeezes juice out of 
 the cane, and it is this juice which contains the sugar. 
 Even the crushed stalks do not go to waste, for they 
 are used as fuel. In recent times a ^shredder' has 
 been introduced in mills to slice the stalks before they 
 pass into the first roller so that they can be crushed 
 more easily. The crushed stalks are now * macerated' 
 as they pass between one set of rollers and another; 
 that is, they are saturated with hot or cold water so 
 that all of the sugar may be pressed out. 
 
 ^^ Steam mills came into use in the first half of the 
 nineteenth century, a Mr. Coiron being the first man to 
 adopt the idea. From that time on, the mills have 
 grown in size and effectiveness, so that by 1900 there 
 was exhibited at the Paris Exposition a sugar mill 
 that was capable of crushing three hundred tons of 
 sugar cane a day; but the latest mills can crush 
 from nine to twelve hundred tons in twenty-four hours. 
 American inventiveness has, of course, helped to make 
 this possible. Jeremiah Howard patented a device 
 for the regulation of the feeding of the stalks into 
 the first roller in 1858. This patent operates so as to 
 have both sides of the roller working evenly and also 
 prevents foreign substances, such as stray pieces of 
 wood or iron, from entering. The primitive open 
 receptacles have given way to the modern multiple- 
 effect evaporator, an invention of Morberto Relleux, 
 who first put it into use at New Orleans, in 1840. He 
 discovered the important fact that, the shorter time 
 the juice is exposed to heat, the less loss there is of 
 sugar. The time required has been cut down by carry- 
 ing out this evaporation in vacuum pans, an idea first 
 put into practice by Mr. E. C. Howard. 
 
 *^ Before sugar is fit to be placed on our tables, it 
 
 226 
 
STORY OF SUGAR 
 
 must be refined, and the refining is often done miles 
 away from the sugar mills. There are great sugar 
 refining factories in and about New York City, and to 
 these hundreds of thousands of tons of raw sugar are 
 brought yearly from foreign mills as well as those in 
 the southern part of our own country. The refining 
 of sugar is carried out by various heating processes. 
 Bone-black is used to take from the raw material its 
 characteristic brown color. 
 
 ^^The modern wonder in sugar," exclaimed the 
 planter, *^is the passing of the old-time sugar cane 
 plantation. Within the last fifty years the world has 
 ceased to be dependent entirely on sugar cane for its 
 supply of sugar, methods having been devised for ob- 
 taining the commodity from the sugar beet. That 
 vegetable was first found to have sugar possibilities 
 by a German scientist, named MargrafP, in 1747, and 
 the first man who was able to extract the sugar in 
 reasonable amounts was another German, Karl F. 
 Archard, who did so in 1801. 
 
 **But it was an American who finally produced 
 sugar from beets, and made it practical for commer- 
 cial purposes. His name was David Lee Child. He 
 gave it his attention in 1840. The brothers Genert 
 set up a beet-sugar mill in Chatsworth, Illinois, in 
 1863. There are now more than seventy beet-sugar 
 mills in this country. 
 
 ^'The extraction of sugar from beets involves a 
 method somewhat different from that used in the case 
 of cane. The beets are soaked in water, cut into thin 
 slices, and put into a battery of twelve or fourteen 
 tanks. All this is done by machinery and scarcely 
 requires the touch of a human hand. The slices of 
 beet are treated to a hot water bath. When the water 
 from this bath is drawn off, it carries with it much of 
 the sugar that is contained in the slices ; the little that 
 
 227 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 remains in them is obtained by pressing tlie slices with 
 machinery. The water holding the sugar is pnt 
 through a process of evaporation, concentration, and 
 refining, similar to that employed in handling the 
 juice from sugar cane. 
 
 *^The nation that consumes the most sugar,'' said 
 the speaker, *^is the one with the greatest muscular 
 energ}^ We Americans have the reputation of eating 
 more candy than any other, and, excepting England, 
 are regarded as the greatest consumers of sugar. If 
 all the sugar eaten in our country was distributed 
 equally it would allow about 83 pounds to each man, 
 woman, or child, irrespective of race or color, for a 
 year's supply. England puts most of her sugar, said 
 to be distributable among her people at the rate of 100 
 pounds to each, in making jam. Thus, inasmuch as we 
 eat her jams, we also help England to consume her 
 sugar. 
 
 ^^Have you any idea what a tremendous monument 
 of * sweetness' the sugar we consume in a year would 
 make if we could pile it together?" inquired the 
 Story-teller. 
 
 No one ventured a guess, so the speaker answered 
 himself. 
 
 **It would make a pyramid, whose base would be 
 about 750 feet square and its crest would overtop the 
 Washington Monument by nearly 100 feet. Or it 
 would be more than 150 feet higher than the Pyramids 
 of Cheops in Egypt. 
 
 **This," remarked the sugar raiser, **is only the 
 merest idea of the wonders of the little grains of sugar 
 that we drop into our foods to give them the sweet- 
 ness that our tastes demand." 
 
 228 
 
THE STORY OF THE LUMBER MAN 
 AND THE GIANTS OF THE FOREST 
 
 A BURLY, red-faced man entered the library and 
 sank down heavily in an easy chair. ^^If it 
 weren't for ns fellows,'' he said, glancing 
 around, ^^ you'd all have to sit on the floor, only there 
 wouldn't be any floor to sit on. 
 
 ^^I'm a lumber man," he explained. *'I spend my 
 life in the forest, cutting down the trees that later 
 make their appearance everywhere in a thousand dif- 
 ferent forms. I am one of a large body of workers 
 who try to satisfy the insatiable demand of the people 
 for wood, and yet more wood. Do you know that 
 about one-fourth of the whole country is covered by 
 forests 1 But at one time they covered more than half 
 as much again. They once had a stand of 5,200 bil- 
 lion board feet of mercantile timber. But we're cut- 
 ting down the trees three times as fast as they grow. 
 
 ^*Here are some figures for you. We are taking 
 from our forests every year 20 billion cubic feet of 
 wood — enough to give 200 feet to every person in the 
 country — ^valued at about a million and a quarter dol- 
 lars. We use in a single year 90,000,000 cords of fire- 
 wood, nearly 45 billion board feet of lumber, 148,- 
 500,000 ties, 1,750,000,000 staves, over 125,000,000 sets 
 of heading, nearly 300,000,000 barrel hoops, 3,400,000 
 cords of native pulp wood, 165,000,000 cubic feet of 
 round mine timbers and nearly 1,500,000 cords of 
 wood for distillation. 
 
 <<The great drain on our forests made by the re- 
 
 229 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 quirements of various industries, especially paper and 
 railroad ties, lias rendered necessary the creation of 
 national forest reserves, to the extent of over 85,000,000 
 acres, in which measures are taken against fire and 
 trespass and for the conservative use of the forests." 
 
 *^Is the loss from forest fires very great!'' asked 
 some one. 
 
 "Yes, indeed," replied the lumber man. "Some- 
 times $300,000,000 worth of damage has been done in 
 the course of one month." 
 
 "Tell us," cried another, "how you set about cut- 
 ting down trees." 
 
 "Well," answered the Story-teller, "most of the 
 work is done by hand. Two * axemen' cut stepping 
 notches in the bark, which is maybe a foot thick, and 
 about ten feet from the earth they fasten two spring- 
 boards, on which they stand, their huge double-bladed 
 axes in hand. It may be a giant fir that they have 
 selected, 250 feet high and 30 feet in circumference 
 at the bottom, but about seven feet thick at this point. 
 By slow degrees, a notch three feet deep is made, and 
 then the long, double-handled saw comes into play. 
 When the tree is cut through sufficiently, the saw is 
 withdrawn, and wedges are placed in the notch. * Watch 
 out below!' the men shout. There is noise of creaking 
 and rending — and crash falls the tree, striking the 
 earth with a hollow roar. 
 
 ^ ' The next step is to cut the tree up into logs — say, 
 six feet through and thirty-six feet long. A tree such 
 as I have described will yield from 15,000 to 18,000 
 feet of good lumber, besides shingles, lath, and fire- 
 wood, worth from $250 to $400. But some of the 
 giants of the forest, such as the redwood tree, which 
 range from ten to fifteen feet in diameter, are quar- 
 tered by explosions of gunpowder. 
 
 "The logs are then dragged by a donkey-engine 
 
 230 
 
STORY OF LUMBER 
 
 over a 'skidway,' or pathwa}" of short timbers, until 
 the main ^skidroad' is reached, after which they are 
 carried to a mountain railroad. They are left at a 
 level landing-place, where the logs are loaded on a 
 dozen or more cars and so dragged to the saw-mill. 
 
 *'0r they are floated down upon the rivers all the 
 way from the forest to the distant mill, near which 
 piles are driven into the bed of the river, and a kind 
 of pen formed to hold the logs as they arrive. They 
 are then drawn from the water by an endless chain, 
 raised onto skids by means of a lever, fastened to a 
 log carriage and taken to the saw. 
 
 ^*We have now arrived at the saw-mill," exclaimed 
 the Story-teller — **that great accessory of our civil- 
 ization. Without the saw-mill, it is no exaggeration 
 to say that our modern life could not go on. Imagine 
 our trying to convert by hand the enormous output of 
 the forests into the myriad forms in which wood is used 
 in every department of human activity! 
 
 ^^The first saw-mill in this country was set up, in 
 1634, at Piscataqua Falls, in Maine. Soon they began 
 to multiply, to meet an ever increasing need, until, in 
 1909, there were 40,671 establishments, employing 
 nearly 700,000 persons, with a capital of $1,176,675, 
 and the production value of over half a billion dol- 
 lars. A hundred years ago, there were 2,541 mills, 
 dealing with about 93,000,000 feet. 
 
 ^^The circular saw employed in these mills is 
 driven by engines ranging from 25 to 100 horse-power 
 and is capable of sawing from 20,000 to 100,000 super- 
 ficial feet per day. It is a disk of steel, with a toothed 
 edge, mounted on a shaft which is turned round by 
 gear wheels, or by belts operated formerly by the 
 shaft of a water wheel, but nowadays by a steam en- 
 gine. Band saws are also used, consisting of two 
 broad-faced wheels mounted one above the other, over 
 16 231 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 which a continuous band of steel, forming the saw, 
 works with a continuous motion. The saAV can cut 
 from 40,000 to 80,000 superficial feet of lumber per 
 day. 
 
 ^'When the water power Avas employed for the 
 mills, the curious circumstance was noticed, that the 
 saws turned out more work by night than by day, 
 about in the proportion of ten to nine. Old millmen 
 maintain that the ^song' of the mills by night differs 
 widely from that heard in the daytime. No satisfac- 
 tory explanation has been found for this, though some 
 ascribe it to the extra heaviness of the water at night. 
 
 *^A saw-mill is usually built on the banks of a river 
 or pond and is quite simple in construction, consisting 
 of a saw floor and log deck built about ten feet above 
 the level of the water. The arrangement of the saws 
 varies according to the size of the timber to be cut. 
 In handling logs of great thickness, two saws are 
 used; whilst four are required for dealing with the 
 giant productions of California. 
 
 **The wood leaves the saw-mill in various forms — 
 planks and boards of varying sizes; laths, which are 
 thin strips four feet in length; and shingles, used for 
 roofing purposes. Where does it all go? Or, rather, 
 where does it not go? 
 
 **In 1911, we exported to foreign countries over 
 $92,000,000 worth of wood and articles manufactured 
 from it. In other words, after providing for our own 
 needs, we sent abroad about a dollar's worth for every 
 inhabitant of the (continental) United States. Twenty 
 years earlier, in 1891, we exported about $28,000,000 
 worth ; sixty years earlier, in 1851, the value was only 
 a little over four million dollars. 
 
 ** Wherever you go, you will find the products of 
 the great American forests — in the flagstaffs of Euro- 
 pean palaces, in the masts of the royal yachts, in the 
 
 232 
 
STORY OF LUMBER 
 
 timbering of South African mines, in the ties of Chi- 
 nese railroads. Nansen^s famous ship, the Fram, was 
 built of Oregon fir, and its stout timbers resisted the 
 pressure of ice-floes without opening a seam. This 
 wood is in demand by shipbuilders all over the world. 
 
 ^*In 1871, three-fourths of the timber now stand- 
 ing was publicly owned; now four-fifths of it is pri- 
 vately owned. During the intervening period, its 
 value has increased ten, twenty, and even fifty-fold, 
 according to local conditions. Forest tracts that sold 
 for $2.50 an acre a few years ago are now worth from 
 $100 to $200 an acre. 
 
 **The lumber business is full of romances of in- 
 dustry. Take the case of C. A. Smith, the lumber 
 king of the Northwest, who came to the United 
 States, in 1852, a poor Swedish boy of fourteen. His 
 establishment at Camden Place, Minneapolis, covers 
 nearly 100 acres, and he employs over 1,200 people. 
 Or the case of Frederick Weyerhaeuser, a penniless 
 German boy, who started life in this country as a 
 worker in a saw-mill, later made money in Wisconsin, 
 and became one of the wealthiest men in the country. 
 These are only two typical cases of immense fortunes 
 made out of this industry. 
 
 **But the chief wonder associated with lumber is 
 the transformation of Nature's woodland gifts, be- 
 stowed on us in such lavish profusion, into so many 
 and various objects of use and beauty. From the for- 
 est to the saw-mill, from the mill to the factory, from 
 the factory to a million shops and homes, we trace the 
 operations, step by step, of one of the greatest ele- 
 ments of our civilization.'' 
 
 233 
 
THE STORY OF THE RAXCHMAX AXD 
 A GLIMPSE IX THE ABATTOIR 
 
 "1^ /TY tale/' said the sliort, fat man, with a beam- 
 1 V i i^o face, "is three tales — the tale of the cow, 
 the tale of the hog, the tale of the sheep — 
 and how they all lose their tails. 
 
 "It is the story of the great ranches and the stock- 
 yards and, incidentally, how a continual stampede of 
 cattle finds its way to onr dining-room tables. ' ' 
 
 "My story, ^^ explained the ranchman, "is not ex- 
 actly a pretty one — it is a story of appetite rather 
 than intellect. "We are still a *meat devouring' peo- 
 ple. On our great ranches to-day, awaiting the whim 
 of onr hunger, are over 60,000,000 head of cattle, 
 58,000,000 swine, and 52,000,000 sheep and lambs— 
 quite a delicate little luncheon. Their value exceeds 
 $2,000,000,000 ; so it is rather an extravagant luncheon 
 after all. To drive this 'living dinner' into our din- 
 ing-rooms requires more than 1,700 slaughter houses 
 and meat packing establishments, employing about 
 110,000 men, women, and children. To spread them 
 out on platters for our fastidious tastes, costs another 
 fortune spent on cooks, waiters, and other accessories 
 of modern civilization. 
 
 "The story of man's unappeasable appetite, and 
 how it has taxed his inventive genius to create ma- 
 chinery and contrivances to feed him, is one of the 
 twentieth century miracles. In the old days the 
 butcher was not only the man who sold meat over the 
 counter, but he was also the man who slaughtered the 
 
 234 
 
STORY OF THE ABATTOIR 
 
 animals that furnished his meat. Nowadays most 
 butchers handle only cuts of meat in retail shops ; the 
 killing and preparing is done by machinery in large 
 plants called * abattoirs/ a French word denoting 
 * killing place.' France was the first country to have 
 these modern *meat handling' plants. During the 
 reign of Napoleon I, a commission was called together 
 to consider the question of ^slaughtering animals for 
 food/ with the result that, in 1818, six abattoirs were 
 built and put into operation in Paris; these six are 
 still in use. 
 
 *^We can all remember the scenes of the old 
 slaughter-houses. Hogs, sheep and cattle were driven 
 through the streets of cities. They traveled in from 
 the country over miles of dusty roads. Arriving at 
 their destination, they were driven into the pens ad- 
 joining the various slaughter houses and there gave 
 up their lives to appease the hunger of the people. 
 Things had reached a bad state in towns by the first 
 of the nineteenth century. The abattoirs established 
 in France proved to be so much better than the other 
 methods that the new idea was soon adopted all over 
 Europe. In America the adoption came later, for here 
 the greater part of the population still lived in the vil- 
 lages where meat was provided from day to day in 
 small quantities. 
 
 *'It was not until 1860 that the need for abattoirs 
 was felt in America. The West had developed into 
 the greatest meat-providing region in the whole world, 
 and foreign countries were importing our beef. As a 
 central market was needed, the abattoirs were located 
 in the stockyards in Chicago, and soon became the 
 most important, the largest, and the best equipped in 
 the world. 
 
 ** To-day millions of heads of cattle, hogs, and 
 sheep are sent to Chicago alone. They are forwarded 
 
 235 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 in airy cars, they are watered and fed during trans- 
 portation, and only the healthier animals are selected 
 for slaughter. Chicago stockyards spread over more 
 than 500 acres of ground. Huge abattoirs have been 
 erected in Kansas City, Omaha, and many other cities, 
 until to-day it is one of the great American industries. 
 
 *^I will not describe operations in these abattoirs. 
 It is sufficient to say that, if man must eat his fellow- 
 animals, they are as humane and painless as in- 
 ventive genius can make them. Wonderful machinery 
 transforms these animals almost instantly into beef, 
 pork, and mutton, which is hurried on refrigerator cars 
 to the homes of America and across the seas to the 
 peoples of this earth. In large abattoirs 20 to 40 ani- 
 mals are handled each minute. The dispatch with 
 which this work is done is remarkable. Altogether, 
 the squad which performs it numbers as high as 200 
 men. A government inspector is included in these, 
 and it is his duty to see that no unhealthy meat is 
 passed. The handling of hogs is carried out almost 
 entirely by machinery. 
 
 ^'The whole system is worked at marvelous speed, 
 and every care is taken to insure health. Not a single 
 part of the body goes to waste. In bovines the hair is 
 made up into hair used to 'set' plaster. From the 
 bones they prepare glue, bone meal, and phosphate 
 fertilizer. The hoofs are used to make buttons, combs, 
 and fertilizer. From the shins, buttons, handles, gela- 
 tine, glue, and nitrogenous fertilizers are prepared. The 
 horns are used to make combs, buttons, ornaments, 
 and fertilizers containing potassium and nitrogenous 
 compounds. Tallow is prepared from the stomach. 
 The hide is converted into leather of varying qualities, 
 the hair from certain parts being used in the manu- 
 facture of felt. Glue, grease, and fertilizers are also 
 obtained from the hides. The bladder, after it has 
 
 236 
 
STORY OF THE ABATTOIR 
 
 been properly treated, can be used to make receptacles 
 for paints, putty, and kindred materials. The gall is 
 so prepared as to furnish certain compounds of value 
 in medicine, and the blood is converted into foods for 
 animals, as well as into fertilizer. The interior fat 
 can be used as a basis for manufacturing oleomar- 
 garine, and also tallow, oil, soap, glycerine, and grease. 
 
 *^ Inventive genius also finds treasures in the bodies 
 of hogs and sheep. The stomachs of hogs, for instance, 
 furnish a substance in the producing of pepsin. The 
 products of certain glands of both hogs and sheep 
 have certain curative powers used in making drugs. 
 From big bristles scrubbing-brushes and similar 
 coarse brushes are made. Neatsf oot oil, calf -skin, and 
 axle grease are among the other various b^^-products 
 of abattoirs for which there is a sale. It is thus seen 
 that each part of the body of an animal has its use. 
 
 **The higher development of abattoirs has rested 
 entirely with America. Countless patented inventions 
 have helped to make them what they are, and the 
 brains of many men have worked out the problems. 
 These large abattoirs have enabled America to outstrip 
 all rivals in the amount of meat furnished to the world. 
 The United States produced 3,059,000 tons of beef in 
 a single year. The nearest rival, Russia, produced 
 1,546,000 tons in that year; while the third highest, 
 Argentina, produced 985,000 tons in the same period. 
 American beef is used all over the world, being ex- 
 ported in cold storage or in tin cans. Only American 
 ingenuity and inventiveness have made this possible. 
 Therefore, whether pleasant or unpleasant, we must at 
 least recognize that the abattoir is one of the great 
 wonders of the times." 
 
 237 
 
THE STORY OF THE REFRIGERATOR 
 AND THE MAGICAL ICE 
 
 "TTTEiAT invention do you think lias the greatest 
 W effect on the cost of living!" 
 
 It was a middle-aged woman, a house- 
 keeper, who asked the question, but it was a big, 
 brawny, red-faced man who answered it in one word. 
 **Ice," he shouted, and there was decision in his voice. 
 
 ^^And the refrigerator!" added the woman. ^^ With- 
 out these we would hardly know how to live. Take 
 them away from us to-morrow, and there would be 
 a great scarcity of foods; their cost would double al- 
 most instantly, and we would be in danger of famine. 
 
 ^^We can never compute the great debt we owe to 
 ice," continued the housewife. ^^It is one of the great- 
 est benefactors of the human race. With the develop- 
 ment of the idea of the refrigerator has come many 
 blessings to mankind. The length of the 'season' for 
 many foods has been indefinitely extended; the price 
 of foods has been held more closely in control ; health 
 has been protected. It allows us to indulge in per- 
 ishable delicacies from faraway places. It makes it 
 possible for us to carry fresh food and cool drink on 
 the ocean or across the desert. We may keep milk 
 cold; germ diseases may be held in check; danger may 
 be averted; and the sick in hospitals need no longer 
 gasp for breath on a hot sultry day. As the preserva- 
 tion of ice and the manufacture of it are modern in- 
 ventions, the question is, how did the world get along 
 without it for thousands of years? 
 
 238 
 
STORY OF THE REFRIGERATOR 
 
 ^ ^ When Greece and Rome were in their glory, snow 
 was packed in great pits to be preserved through the 
 warm months. During the reign of Henry III, in Eng- 
 land, in the sixteenth century, the selling of snow and 
 ice was a profitable trade. The first ice cut in America 
 from frozen ponds and shipped as an article of com- 
 mercial value was sent from New York to Charleston, 
 South Carolina, in 1799. 
 
 ^^The real beginning of the ice industry was in 
 1805, when Frederick Tabor, of Boston, shipped a 
 cargo of 130 tons to the West Indies at a loss of 
 $4,500. His courage did not fail him. He had implicit 
 faith in his idea. So he kept persistently at it until, 
 in 1812, he secured from Great Britain a monopoly of 
 trade with her colonies in the West Indies. This was 
 only the beginning. Three years later he secured a 
 similar monopoly in Havana from Spain. This was 
 extended until the ice trade with southern countries 
 became a great and profitable industry. Far-seeing 
 men entered into the business. Ice-houses sprang up 
 in every part of the country. American ice was in- 
 troduced into London and soon found its way into 
 nearly every section of the world. Ponds and lakes 
 became as valuable as small mines. Inventive genius 
 began to devise ways to cut these frozen lakes into 
 cakes and sell them to the people. Machinery was in- 
 vented to cut and haul it; horses were used to draw 
 it ; elevators were installed to lift it into huge storage 
 plants. The ice-plow was invented in 1839; many in- 
 genious tools were created. Millions of tons, worth 
 millions of dollars, were harvested." 
 
 Hesitating here a moment, the Story-teller turned 
 to a pitcher on the table and poured out a glass of 
 water, in which was floating a small piece of ice. 
 
 ^*But the real wonder story began," she exclaimed, 
 **when some wizard suggested that there was no good 
 
 239 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 reason for waiting' for the weather to make our ice, 
 when we could make it ourselves at any time we needed 
 it. So we began to manufacture ice. This had long 
 been a dream of the inventors in England and Ger- 
 many. The tirst American to secure a patent for an 
 ice-making machine was one Jacob Perkins, in 1834. 
 Twenty years later Professor A. C. Twining, of New 
 Haven, Connecticut, patented an ice machine and put 
 it into active operation in Cleveland, Ohio. It produced 
 1,600 pounds of ice in twenty-four hours. It seemed as 
 though every American inventor now went to work to 
 devise some magic scheme for making ice. Nearly 4,500 
 patents have been issued in the United States on ice- 
 making contrivances, until to-day ice is made by 
 steam and electricity. At the beginning of the twen- 
 tieth century there were nearly 800 establishments, 
 with a capital of over $38,000,000, making ice in this 
 country. They were employing over 8,000 workers, 
 who were producing $14,000,000 worth of manufactured 
 ice every year. 
 
 ^^Men are never content with their achievements,'^ 
 remarked the narrator. ^^They could not rest until 
 they had invented some kind of a contrivance to keep 
 ice in every home. So they devised the ice-box or the 
 home refrigerator, which was literally placed beside 
 the cook stove. This soon became the place of storage 
 for all foods until to-day nearly every home in America 
 has its refrigerator filled with ice throughout the hot 
 summer months. 
 
 *^ Necessity is the mother of invention, and soon 
 refrigerators were placed on railroads and steamships. 
 Eefrigerator cars were built to carry perishable foods 
 across the continents. They were first operated in 
 1867 between Chicago and New York to transport meat 
 which must be kept fresh and sweet. This has since 
 become a great industry in itself. In these modern 
 
 240 
 
STORY OF THE REFRIGERATOR 
 
 times, when delicate fruit is carried by train across a 
 continent and over wide oceans, when great ocean 
 steamers have to provide fresh meat and vegetables 
 for thousands of people during a long sea voyage, the 
 refrigerator has become a prime necessity. The great 
 ocean liners not only contain huge refrigerator rooms, 
 but manufacture their own ice while on the ocean." 
 
 But the listeners would not let her stop. A half 
 dozen voices cried out : * * Tell us how artificial ice is 
 made ! ' ' 
 
 ^*The modern method is akin to that of freezing 
 ice-cream, ' ' replied the housewife. ' ^ The water, which 
 later will appear as ice, is boiled, distilled and cleansed 
 in a most thorough manner to free it from all impuri- 
 ties. Then it is led into rectangular cans which are 
 able to hold about 300 pounds. These cans are placed 
 in tanks for a freezing bath for about 48 hours. The 
 tanks contain a brine solution and are lined with scores 
 of pipes through which is flowing liquefied ammonia. 
 The cold brine converts this liquid into a gas. This 
 evaporation congeals the water into ice. When the 
 process is complete, along comes a traveling hoist 
 which picks up the can of ice, dips it for an instant into 
 a tank of hot water, to loosen the hold of ice on the 
 can, and deposits the glistening cake of ice in the 
 storage room whose temperature is never higher than 
 30 degrees above zero." 
 
 ^*I could tell you endless anecdotes," concluded the 
 Story-teller, * ' but I think that you will now agree with 
 me that ice is one of the modern wonders." 
 
 So saying, she took a long drink of ice-w^ater and 
 sat down. 
 
 241 
 
THE STORY OF THE CANNERIES AND 
 THE TASK OF FEEDING THE WORLD 
 
 (( 
 
 "|\ /TY journey has brouglit me across the conti- 
 
 nent,'^ remarked the traveler, as he opened 
 his tan leather bag. 
 
 ^^I came,'' he said, with a slight drawl to his 
 words, *^to tell you the story about this ." 
 
 He withdrew a small, round object, familiar to 
 every onlooker. 
 
 *'I know," he laughed, ^Hhat this despised little 
 thing is not treated very well by most of us. It is 
 knocked about and hammered, and finally has an ig- 
 nominious burial on the garbage heap. But when we 
 become better acquainted with what it is doing to help 
 us live, we may treat it with more respect." 
 
 He exhibited an ordinary, dilapidated tin can. 
 
 *'The story of the tin can," he began, ^4s the story 
 of vast orchards, burdened with luscious fruits, saved 
 from decay; rich crops and ripening gardens brought 
 to our tables; fish from our streams carried to all 
 parts of the earth; the products from the dairies car- 
 ried into the cities. It is this despised little can that 
 has solved one of the world's greatest problems. 
 
 *'The preservation of food has always been a trou- 
 blesome problem," said the Story-teller. **It was be- 
 cause Europe needed spices that trade routes were 
 first opened with the Orient. These spices were used 
 for preserving food, especially meats, and were in 
 great demand. It was to find a new route to the spice 
 market in the Far East, that Columbus sailed on his 
 
 242 
 
STORY OF THE CANNERIES 
 
 epoch-making voyage in 1492. The discovery of Amer- 
 ica was due, to a large extent, to the problem of pre- 
 serving food. 
 
 ^'It was a Frenchman who first devised a new 
 method that was better than even the application of 
 spices. Nicholas Appert, in 1810, tried placing food 
 in air-tight bottles and jars. His experiments proved 
 to be successful. Appert 's invention proved to be 
 most important. Napoleon I. bestowed a gift equiva- 
 lent to $2,400 upon the inventor, who, after receiving 
 it, devoted it to further inventive ideas, only to see it 
 lost along with his other wealth. His idea was taken 
 to England and there patented. Though Appert 
 never received any monetary benefit, it was a profit* 
 able thing across the Channel. 
 
 *^But, as in many other things, it was not until 
 America began to direct its inventive genius to the 
 principle of preserving foods that it became a great 
 industry. The first American to experiment with this 
 problem was Ezra Daggett. In the year 1825, he was 
 putting up lobsters and fish in hermetically sealed jars 
 and carrying on quite a trade in conjunction with his 
 son-in-law, Thomas Kensett. He found a serious dis- 
 advantage in using jars, however. The glass was 
 heavy, and broke very easily, entailing heavy losses. 
 He and several others began searching about for a 
 substitute for glass. Some one — ^no one knows ex- 
 actly who — ^hit upon tin, and soon two partners, 
 Charles Mitchell and William Underwood, began the 
 experiment of putting up foodstuffs in tin jars, which 
 were called ^Tin Canisters.' This name was finally 
 to be shortened to *tin can.' In England, however, the 
 word ^can' was soon dropped, and the English to-day 
 speak of * tins' of milk or * tins' of meat. 
 
 *^The tin can has had a very stormy life. In the 
 old days it was hand-made. A tinker first had to take 
 
 243 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 a large piece of sheet tin ; on this he drew out the size 
 and shape he needed to make a can. Then with a pair 
 of shears he cut this portion out. Then he curved it 
 till it formed a hollow cylinder. He kept it in that 
 form by laboriously soldering the edges together. It 
 was then necessary to design a bottom. This was cut 
 from sheet tin and soldered on. The food was placed 
 in the can; then the top was fashioned and fastened 
 in the same way. A good tinker by working hard 
 could turn out probably fifty of those cans in a day. 
 
 ** American inventive genius came to the rescue. 
 Allen Taylor, who was then a partner of Thomas Ken- 
 sett, invented, in 1847, a machine which would turn 
 out finished tin cans. This was the real beginning of 
 the little receptacle that has since played a great part 
 in the story of progress. The canning industry now 
 moved along at a trot, but was soon to travel at a gal- 
 lop. Jellies, fruits, and vegetables soon began to find 
 their way into cans, whereas only fish, lobsters and 
 meats had been canned previously. With the great 
 rush of people to the newly discovered gold deposits 
 in California, there was an enormous demand for 
 canned food. The new products formed the basis of 
 Dr. Kane's Arctic exploration during the same year. 
 From that date all such expeditions were supplied 
 with canned food, and it is no overstatement to assert 
 that the ^tin can' really made possible the discovery of 
 both the North and South poles. 
 
 **The *tin can' helped fight the American Civil 
 War. Military authorities were quick to appreciate 
 the value of supplying troops with food in such con- 
 venient form. The Franco-Prussian War, in 1870-71, 
 also depended largely on canned food. By that time 
 almost every kind of food was being canned. The can- 
 ning of milk was first tried by Gail Borden, just pre- 
 vious to the Civil War. This he did by condensing the 
 
 244 
 
STORY OF THE CANNERIES 
 
 milk and mixing it with sugar first. When many 
 awoke on a March morning in 1888, and found them- 
 selves snowed under by the now memorable * Great 
 Blizzard,' they discovered that all milk trains and 
 w^agons were stalled by snow drifts. A rush was made 
 to grocery stores for condensed milk, and this strange 
 circumstance was what really first awakened the 
 housewives to the advantages of canned foods. Hence- 
 forth, they were to be used in homes, as well as in 
 armies and on shipboard. By the early nineties, 
 canned goods had ceased to be novelties and had as- 
 sumed the dignity of being necessities. 
 
 ^'The Calif ornians were among the first to see the 
 economic value of the Hin can.' They began to plant 
 vast orchards on which were raised tons of oranges, 
 grapes, cherries, peaches, apricots and olives. These 
 edibles must be placed in the hands of consumers in 
 the East before they began to perish. And how were 
 they to be sent in good condition to Europe? The *tin 
 can' solved the problem, and Calif ornian fruits began 
 to find their way into every part of the world, where 
 they were enjoyed months and years after leaving 
 their ranches. No longer is money lost by having the 
 surplus of the crops decay. The meat packers, too, 
 met a similar problem by using the can. 
 
 ' ^ The output of canned food in America has grown 
 to such proportions that to-day one finds American tin 
 cans in the wildest and most remote parts of the 
 world. The American tin can is said to be one of the 
 first things discovered by exploring parties breaking 
 through regions where man has never before set foot. 
 Be that as it may, it is nevertheless true that the trails 
 of these exploring parties consist principally of a 
 wake of tin cans. 
 
 *^ There are more than $50,000,000 invested in can- 
 neries throughout the United States. An output 
 
 245 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 worth more than $85,000,000 is being produced an- 
 nually. Not only fruits, vegetables, fish, meats and 
 milk are canned nowadays, but also soups, extracts, 
 butter, lard, tobacco and all other commodities which 
 spoil if exposed for long periods to air or dampness. 
 Thousands of persons are employed in the industry. 
 
 ^'The tin can is now to be found on Greenland's 
 icy mountains, on India's coral strand, in the new 
 towns of Alaska, in the old towns of Asia, in the Afri- 
 can jungles and the Australian deserts — wherever you 
 find the American flag to-day, there you will find the 
 tin can — one of the world's greatest benefactors." 
 
 *^^\niat does it cost us to feed the world?" asked 
 one of the gathering. 
 
 '^That is an almost impossible question to answer," 
 replied the narrator. *^The quantity consumed and 
 the price paid for that quantity differs in different 
 parts of our country as well as in different parts of the 
 world. However, I can give you some figures in rela- 
 tion to what we Americans pay for food, and from 
 those you can draw your own conclusions as to the rest 
 of 1,500,000,000 people scattered over the world." 
 
 Opening a book that lay on the table, the narrator 
 began to figure with pencil and paper. 
 
 <<The government statisticians tell us," he said, 
 **that the average American working-man's family 
 pays about $374.75 each year for his food, and also 
 that this average family consists of 4.7 persons. Thus 
 we find that each individual's share of the cost is about 
 $80 a year, or 22c a day. Figuring on that basis, then 
 we discover, theoretically, of course, that the 100,- 
 000,000 Americans pay about $780,000,000 a year for 
 their food, or about $22,000,000 a day. This rate per 
 person if applied to the peoples of the world would 
 mean that it cost the tremendous sum of $128,000,- 
 000,000 a year to keep us alive." 
 
 246 
 
A MODERN MIRACLE WORKER AMONG THE FJLOWERS HE- 
 CREATED 
 
 Visit to the gardens of Luther Burbank, the wizard who makes fruits and 
 
 grains according to his own desires. He changes the color and 
 
 shape of plants ; he takes the thorns from the cactus, the 
 
 seeds from berries, and creates new vegetables 
 
 to please new tastes. — See page 253. 
 
THE STORY OF THE FISHERMAN AND 
 HIS WONDERFUL FISHERIES 
 
 THE man in tlie yellow oiled coat looked rather 
 out of place among the Story-tellers. There 
 was the scent of the sea about him. 
 
 *^ Suppose," he began, ^Hhat you should see a pro- 
 cession of huge wagons, each drawn by four horses, 
 coming toward you. Suppose you were told that this 
 procession was over 3,000 miles long and reached 
 across the continent. Suppose you were told that — ." 
 
 ^'What is this," interrupted one of the listeners, 
 *'a fish story?" 
 
 *^That is just what it is," replied the man in the 
 yellow coat, ^'it is a fish story — and every word of it 
 is true. It would require this procession of wagons 
 to hold the *fish catch' for a single season in the United 
 States." 
 
 *^When we talk about fishing," said he, **we gen- 
 erally think of a day^s outing rod and line along 
 some running stream. Now, as a matter of fact, fish- 
 ing is one of the world's greatest industries. If all 
 other food supplies failed, we could still live on fish- 
 ing. It may be difficult for you to believe it, but the 
 value of the fish taken from the seas, lakes, and rivers 
 of the earth last year was about equal to the value 
 of the gold taken from all the world's mines, or nearly 
 $500,000,000." 
 
 **It is, indeed, a fish story!" ejaculated one of the 
 hearers. 
 
 *^ Wait a moment," exclaimed the fisherman, **I 
 17 247 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 have not yet begun. Suppose you were to see a pro- 
 cession of over 60,000,000 pounds of crabs crawling 
 into our American cities ; beMnd them are coming over 
 16,000,000 pounds of lobsters; and behind them about 
 4,000,000 eels— what would you think?'' 
 
 The library was now resounding with laughter. 
 
 * ^ Give us a good one ! ' ' shouted one of the Story- 
 tellers.'' 
 
 ^'All right," replied the fisherman. ** Suppose we 
 were all to go to a church sociable and find two billion, 
 three hundred and thirty-three million, nine hundred 
 thousand oysters in the stew!" 
 
 **The prize medal is yours!" called out a half 
 dozen voices. **Our hats off to the fisherman!" 
 
 **My friends," he remarked, when the laughter had 
 subsided, ^^ every figure I have mentioned is exact. I 
 have only told you the numbers of crabs, lobsters, eels, 
 and oysters caught in the waters of the United States 
 in a single year. Our country produces more fish than 
 any other nation in the world. The annual catch here 
 is valued at more than $70,000,000. It gives employ- 
 ment to 215,000 persons, while 800,000 more are de- 
 pendent on it for a living. Other food supplies may 
 fail us but our supply of seafood seems to be assured. 
 
 ** Moreover," continued the fisherman, ** fishing is 
 not only a huge industry, but it has come to be a great 
 science. It is known as pisciculture — the science of 
 breeding fish for food purposes. From the earliest 
 times there have been but three ways of securing 
 fish — catching them with hook and line, trapping them 
 near shore, and getting them with nets. To-day we 
 fish with horses and steam-engines on a stupendous 
 scale. We have 'trawl lines' — to which are attached 
 from ^ve thousand to fifteen thousand hooked lines. 
 The main line is fitted with both floats and sinkers so 
 that parts of it are deep down in the water while 
 
 248 
 
STORY OF THE FISHERIES 
 
 other parts are nearer the surface. One of these trawls 
 can be spread over several miles and catches fish at 
 all depths. Steam has been applied to fishing, as it 
 has to every other industry, and now from our shores 
 go hundreds of * steam travelers' which are able to 
 drag these gigantic lines and nets over miles of water. 
 
 **So thoroughly have these inventions done their 
 work that, as early as 1870, there arose the danger 
 that the fish of the sea would soon be exhausted. Con- 
 gress was asked to do what it could to conserve the 
 general stock of sea fish. From all over the country 
 came reports that streams which had been plentifully 
 provided with fish were entirely depleted. As a re- 
 sult, a Fish Commission was appointed, in 1891. 
 
 *^The experts discovered that the situation was 
 extremely critical," remarked the fisherman. ^^They 
 found that we are a fish-eating people; that our fish- 
 ermen had entered so enthusiastically into their work 
 that but one thing remained to be done — ^we must enter 
 immediately into pisciculture. 
 
 *'So we did!" he added. *'We began to raise fish 
 as we do cattle or corn. We went into the business 
 of fish culture; that is, the breeding of fish. This 
 branch of science had been discovered as far back as 
 1763, when Stephen Jacobi, an army officer in West- 
 phalia, discovered that fish could be artificially prop- 
 agated. The first official recognition that the science 
 of pisciculture received was when a government sta- 
 tion was established in Alsace, in 1850. But it was 
 with its introduction into America that it was first 
 put on a practical footing and was developed, until 
 the United States became the unrivaled master of it. 
 To-day foreign nations frankly admit our supremacy. 
 
 ^^Fish culture is a wonderful process. It is one 
 of the modern miracles. It not only breeds fish, but 
 transfers them from their native to foreign waters. 
 
 249 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 The first accomplishment, breeding, is brought about 
 by mixing roe and the milt taken from male fishes. The 
 mixture is placed in receptacles and treated just as it 
 would be in the natural course of events. The water 
 is supplied at a temperature necessary for the hatch- 
 ing of the eggs, and it is composed of the ingredients 
 they require. This same care is exerted when the 
 fry is hatched and continues to be applied till the fish 
 are old and strong enough to take care of them- 
 selves. As they grow to be ^fingerlings,' then * year- 
 lings,' and finally adults, they are transferred from 
 tank to tank, supplied with fresh or salt water, ac- 
 cording to their natural habitat, and are given the 
 food they need. 
 
 *^The transferring of fish from one sea to another 
 is an interesting event. It is done while they are 
 young or still in the egg. In the former stage they are 
 placed in railway cars or on boats which are equipped 
 with tanks containing running water at given tem- 
 peratures. The Fish Commission has four railway 
 cars thus fitted up and also has two steamboats, the 
 
 * Albatross' and the ^Fish Hawk,' as well as the 
 
 * Grampus,' a schooner employed in this work. Fish 
 eggs are shipped in square boxes. A layer of moss is 
 placed on the bottom. Above this comes mosquito net- 
 ting and eggs in turn, and the layers are so piled 
 till the box is filled. 
 
 ^* Wonders have been done with fish culture. Now 
 for the first time in his history, man is breeding marine 
 animals as well as land animals. It has been extended 
 to the treatment of lobsters and oysters. Shad, which 
 were native only to eastern waters, were brought to 
 Sacramento Eiver; they throve and spread until the 
 whole Pacific Coast, from the mouth of the Sacra- 
 mento to Alaska, has become stocked with this fish. 
 Trout, that were native to America, have been *trans- 
 
 250 
 
STORY OF THE FISHERIES 
 
 planted' successfully into Japanese waters. Salt water 
 smelts have been used to stock fresh water ponds 
 and lakes. Black bass have been shipped to Europe, 
 there to become acclimated and to thrive. Pickerel 
 have been brought to New Hampshire ponds, which 
 had never contained the species. Eastern waters have 
 been tilled with striped bass brought from the west. 
 
 *^The breeding of fish has met with miraculous suc- 
 cess. Cod have been ^planted' by the fish culturists 
 until there is an abundance of them. There are thirty- 
 four hatcheries located in different parts of the coun- 
 try to facilitate this work. More than 1,000,000,000 
 eggs are ^planted' in the United States each year. The 
 science of pisciculture is one of the most fascinating, 
 most wonderful, and most useful known to man. And 
 the United States Fish Commission has been chiefly 
 responsible for it. Its importance may be understood 
 when one considers that, for less than $250, trout to 
 the number of 1,000,000 may be raised from the egg, 
 
 *^I will close my fish story," said the fisherman, 
 ^^by giving you some more interesting figures. The 
 largest * catch' of fish in the last report to the gov- 
 ernment, is that of menhaden, a species of herring — 
 394,776,000 pounds were taken from our waters in a 
 single year; the ordinary herring came second with 
 125,050,000 pounds; then came cod with 110,053,000; 
 salmon with 90,418,000 ; alewives with 89,978,000 ; had- 
 dock, 59,988.000. There were 27,641,000 pounds of 
 shad; 15,247,000 pike perch, 12,103,000 mackerel; 
 12,024,000 trout; 7,646,000 bluefish; 3,313,000 black 
 bass. Think of trying to do this with the old-time 
 method of the solitary fisherman and a rod and line! 
 Modern fishing is done by machinery — it is both a 
 great science and a great industry.'' 
 
 251 
 
THE STORY OF THE MODERN WIZARD 
 
 WHO CREATES FRUITS AND 
 
 FLOWERS 
 
 " T N my story, I am going to take you to a veritable 
 J_ land of enchantment. We shall see familiar 
 fruits and flowers change under the hand of a 
 modern magician. Poor, stunted fruits will grow 
 large and luscious before our eyes. Despised weeds 
 are transformed into lovely flowers ; useless plants be- 
 come nourishing food for man and beast; scentless 
 flowers acquire sweet odors ; colors are changed ; trees 
 shoot up with unwonted speed; varieties of fruits 
 are multiplied indefinitely, as if by a magic wand." 
 
 It was a horticulturist who spoke, a man who had 
 come to the Story-tellers club direct from the new 
 *^ Garden of Eden," to tell them of its wonders. 
 
 ^ ' Is this a fairy tale 1 ' ' inquired the school teacher, 
 incredulously. 
 
 ^*It is more wonderful than any fairy story ever 
 conceived by the imaginations of men," replied the 
 horticulturist, *^ because every word of it is true. It is 
 a record of sober fact. You may go to this land of 
 enchantment and greet the wizard face to face. I will 
 tell you where to find him. 
 
 **0n the western coast of the United States, in 
 that land of the Sunset, which we call California, there 
 is a little village hidden away in banks of roses, not 
 far from the edge of the giant rosewood forests. The 
 village is called Santa Rosa. In this village there 
 lives a man, a strange, wonderful man, who, at the 
 
 252 
 
STORY OF HORTICULTURE 
 
 time of this story, is sixty-four years of age. He was 
 born on the other side of the continent, in Massachu- 
 setts, in 1849, of English-Scotch ancestry. As a boy, 
 he attended the common schools and local academy, 
 and then went to work in a plow factory. This life, 
 however, did not interest him, and he decided to be a 
 market-gardener. This decision gave to the world a 
 new genius, a youth, who, not satisfied with fruits 
 and vegetables and flowers that grew in his garden, 
 decided to force Nature to change them to meet his 
 demands. Thus it is that Luther Burbank, the Amer- 
 ican scientist, is performing miracles that would have 
 caused him to be burned for witchcraft not many gen- 
 erations ago. 
 
 **The first of Burbank's miracles," exclaimed the 
 Story-teller, *Hook place when he was twenty-six 
 years old. He then created a new potato, different in 
 shape, size, and taste than any ever before seen. Two 
 years later, in 1875, he moved to California and set- 
 tled amid the grape vineyards and fruit orchards of 
 Santa Eosa. Here he started his experimental farms 
 that have become a veritable wonderland — a haunt of 
 botanical romance. The workshop was worthy of the 
 workman. The volcanic qualities of the soil, and the 
 genial but not excessive warmth of the climate, render 
 it an ideal place for the wizard of a new * kingdom of 
 flowers.' 
 
 *^As soon as you approach his house, you are con- 
 fronted with evidences of his wonderful powers. 
 There is a row of tall trees bordering the street and 
 casting a grateful shade. What are they? Walnut 
 trees? Yes, but you never saw their like before. They 
 are Paradox walnuts, so called by their producer, and 
 were obtained by crossing an English with a Cali- 
 fornia walnut. But they are different from either 
 parent. They grow faster than any other tree in the 
 
 253 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 temperate zone. And their wood is hard, firm, and 
 beautifully colored, fulfilling all the needs of the cabi- 
 netmaker. 
 
 **Did it ever strike you that the shells of the wal- 
 nut might with advantage be thinner and easier to 
 break? Burbank thought of this and determined to 
 do it. By careful selection, he planted the nuts with 
 the thinnest shells, and eventually obtained the requi- 
 site thinness of shell. The first to profit by this ex- 
 periment were the birds and squirrels ; so he patiently 
 reversed his process. He literally made the walnut 
 over again. He took the tannin out of it and so im- 
 proved its flavor. Then, he increased the output of the 
 trees, so that they give an annual crop of 400 pounds. 
 He turned his attention to the chestnut tree. It had 
 been taking it from 10 to 15 years to arrive at ma- 
 turity. Burbank forced it to bear fruit 18 months 
 after it is planted. 
 
 *^But it was when this discoverer of a new science 
 turned to the re-making of the * fruit kingdom' that 
 its marvelous possibilities were demonstrated. He 
 called into being new fruits for the use of man. He 
 gave the old fruits increased size and improved flavor. 
 He created a stoneless plum, and many other strange 
 things he did with this fruit. Think of a tree from 
 which it was necessary to strip 22,000 plums, in order 
 that it might not overbear! Think of the bitter wild 
 beach-plum changed out of all resemblance to its for- 
 mer self into a sweet fruit, with branches three and a 
 half feet long! 
 
 ^^Then he began to * invent' new fruits. He liter- 
 ally 'married' the plum to the apricot and gave birth 
 to the *plumcot,' with a delicious flavor of its own. 
 If you do not care for this. Dr. Burbank will give you 
 a plum that tastes exactly like a pear, or another that 
 smells like a nosegay. The apple orchard was trans- 
 
 254 
 
STORY OF HORTICULTURE 
 
 formed by the new magic. He has trees growing as 
 many as 400 different varieties. He can show you 36 
 apples, which all grew from the seed of one apple, 
 and no two of which are alike. The cherry changed 
 its flavor under the direction of the scientist; the 
 prune, the strawberry, the raspberry — whatever fruit 
 falls under his spell becomes changed. He is the first 
 man to produce an absolutely new species of fruit; 
 this is the primus berry, which was produced by cross- 
 ing the native Calif ornian dewberry with the Siberian 
 raspberry. The new fruit is quite unlike either parent 
 in form, color, and taste, 
 
 *^But the greatest achievement of all," exclaimed 
 the horticulturist, *^was the re-creation of the cac- 
 tus — in which it was robbed of its thorns. Where all 
 other vegetation had deserted the soil, there the cac- 
 tus flourished, armed with formidable spikes, and its 
 leaves filled with spicules. Burbank took the cactus 
 in hand. Not only did it lose its thorns, but it became 
 a succulent and nutritious plant, excellent as forage 
 for cattle and bearing a delicious fruit for human con- 
 sumption. It is dijBficult to estimate what this discov- 
 ery means. The new cactus grows in desert regions 
 as freely as the wild variety. Not only cattle, sheep, 
 and horses, but hogs, chickens, and geese thrive on it. 
 
 ^^It is estimated that by means of this new cactus 
 the deserts of the earth could be peopled, and the 
 present population of the world doubled. Already 
 some plantations are producing from 120 to ,140 tons 
 of spineless cactus, enough to keep four cows per acre 
 for a year. And it is found that the milk supply of 
 cows so fed is very largely increased. Further, this 
 wonderful plant has liquid properties, so that animals 
 fed on it require little or no water. 
 
 **The spineless cactus will reclaim millions of 
 acres of desert waste. It will add untold millions to 
 
 255 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 the wealth of the country. And it has benefited not 
 only this country; communications from all over the 
 world have been received regarding it. Far-off India 
 is looking for it to banish its age-long curse of famine. 
 
 ^^Many interesting anecdotes might be told about 
 this wizard in the flower gardens,'^ said the Story- 
 teller. ^^He is particular about perfumes. He did 
 not like the acrid smell of the dahlia, so he made it 
 breathe the fragrance of the magnolia. One day, he 
 detected a faint odor from a bed of scentless verbenas, 
 but could not locate it. A year later, he found the 
 plant that gave forth the smell and carefully planted 
 its seeds. Each year such as retained the odor were 
 chosen, and in time the verbenas acquired a rich fra- 
 grance, resembling that of the arbutus but double its 
 strength. Burbank has not yet made a blue rose — he 
 says that he has not had time — but he has a blue 
 poppy. Who would recognize in the gorgeous Shasta 
 daisy, with a blossom from ^ve to seven inches in 
 diameter, the humble and despised field daisy? The 
 wonder-worker pitied the little flower and raised it to 
 its present high estate. He has wrought similar 
 changes with many wild flowers. 
 
 ^ ^ The day may come when the milliner will be able 
 to deck her creations with real flowers. Our wizard 
 already has evolved a flower that keeps fresh and fra- 
 grant, when plucked, for an indefinite period. This 
 floral marvel was once a worthless weed of the Aus- 
 tralian bush, and it now bears the name of the Aus- 
 tralian Star. He has turned his magic limelight on 
 the waving pampas-grass, with its decorative plumes, 
 and changed its hues from white to pink. 
 
 ^*But the wonders of the new science have only be- 
 gun. Dr. Burbank has calculated the result of the 
 creation of new corn, wheat, barley, and oats, which 
 would produce one grain more to each ear. It would 
 
 256 
 
STORY OF HORTICULTURE 
 
 mean an annual gain, without effort or cost, to the 
 country, of 5,200,000 bushels of corn, 15,000,000 
 bushels of wheat, 1,500,000 bushels of barley, and 20,- 
 000,000 bushels of oats. Or, if one additional potato 
 were grown on one plant, we should have 21,000,000 
 extra bushels of potatoes. As a matter of fact, the 
 Burbank potato has added $20,000,000 to the wealth 
 of the UTnited States. And the scientist is actually 
 doing far more than he postulates. He is now grow- 
 ing corn 16 feet high, instead of the ordinary height 
 of about 8 feet; he is producing 32 ears to the stalk, 
 instead of the ordinary average of barely two. 
 
 ** Wonder upon wonder," said the Story-teller, 
 ** bursts forth under the magic hands of the improver 
 of plants,' as Dr. Burbank modestly prefers to be 
 called. He produced, for instance, an * aerial potato' 
 which, finding itself in strange environment, sought to 
 hide beneath the plant's broad leaves. 
 
 *'How was that possible? Simply by grafting a 
 Burbank potato on a ponderosa tomato plant. The 
 result is his famous *pomato,' which grows above the 
 ground in all shapes, sizes and colors. He combined 
 the peach, apricot and almond — and produced a lus- 
 cious fruit inclosing an edible nut in place of the ordi- 
 nary peach pit. He created the white blackberry, and 
 then crossed it with a raspberry and evolved the 
 ^paradox berry,' an oval, light red fruit of superior 
 quality. 
 
 *^I wish I had time," exclaimed the horticulturist, 
 **to tell you about all the marvels he has created 
 among the flowers. I will mention a few. There is 
 the virgin white Watsonia which bears not the slight- 
 est tinge of any other shade and is the purest white in 
 Nature. Roses have been increased in size, color and 
 fragrance; an entirely new color has been brought 
 forth in the wild California poppy ; the .gladiolus has 
 
 257 
 
WONDER STORffiS 
 
 been taught entirely new habits, flowering around the 
 entire stalk like a hyacinth instead of in its old habit 
 of growing on one side of the steam; the amaryllis 
 has been brought up from a blossom of two or three 
 inches to nearly a foot in diameter, while thousands of 
 foreign and tropical flowers have been domesticated 
 and brought to perfection, growing in profusion in 
 gardens of the temperate regions. 
 
 *'But how have all these wonderful results been 
 achieved? By forty years of patient, scientific study 
 and experiment. They are the result of indefatigable 
 labor. Dr. Burbank's material embraces an average 
 of a million new plants a year. He may use from half 
 a million to a million plants for a single test, and per- 
 haps reject them all, except two or three. He allows 
 none to survive unless they approve themselves to his 
 severe and practiced judgment. Incidentally, it may 
 be mentioned that he has spent a quarter of a million 
 dollars of his own money on these experiments. 
 
 *^The future holds great things in store for us," 
 said the horticulturist, in ending his story. '^But the 
 greatest of all, it seems to me, is this wonderful dis- 
 covery in plant organism which allows us to create 
 new plants and foods at will. It may ultimately 
 change the appearance of the face of the earth." 
 
 258 
 
THE STORY OF THE BIOLOGIST WHO 
 DISCOVERED THE SECRET OF LIFE 
 
 "T^ 4rY good friends," said the tall, slender man, 
 
 IVjL with professional address, as he scanned the 
 
 faces of the Story-tellers, **is there a man or 
 
 woman among us who honestly desires to grow oldf 
 
 He waited for an answer — ^but only silence greeted 
 the strange query. 
 
 ** Beautiful as is old age, when accompanied by its 
 richness of memory and crowned with years filled with 
 good deeds, it is seldom that we meet any one who 
 really likes to grow old after he has reached middle 
 age. From the earliest times, poets have sung lamen- 
 tations over departing youth and approaching old 
 age, and men have caught eagerly at anything that 
 suggested escape from the inevitable. 
 
 *^I am a biologist,'' he explained. ^^ Naturally we 
 are much interested in this problem of old age. What 
 is life? Why does the human machine wear out, no 
 matter how carefully it is handled? Must it follow 
 the apparently universal rule of growth, maturity — 
 then decay and death? Is there no way of postponing 
 the inevitable end?'' 
 
 The speaker contemplated the effect of his ques- 
 tions. 
 
 **My answer is this," he continued; ^4f there is a 
 secret way to prolong human life, we will find it ! At 
 this moment hundreds of skilled men are working in 
 their laboratories over the miraculous processes of 
 
 259 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 life. But it is of only one of them that I can tell you 
 in this story. 
 
 ^^In a Somber building on the upper East Side in 
 the city of New York, can be found a man just en- 
 tering middle life. His dark complexion tells of his 
 Old World ancestry, and he speaks with a foreign 
 accent. It was this man, an American by adoption, 
 who brought to America, for the first time, the great 
 Nobel Prize for medical research, in 1912. To this 
 distinguished biologist. Dr. Alexis Carrel, whose skil- 
 ful experiments in the Rockefeller Institute for Medi- 
 cal Research have given our country a foremost posi- 
 tion in the scientific world, every American should 
 feel indebted. 
 
 ^^Let us make his acquaintance. He was born at 
 Sainte Foy les Lyon, France, on the 28th of June, in 
 1873. He was graduated in medicine at the Univer- 
 sity of Lyons. At the age of 32, in 1905, he took up 
 his residence in the United States, and has become a 
 member of various learned bodies in this country. It 
 was at the Rockefeller Institute that his great work 
 really began, when he undertook to solve the problem 
 of senile decay or old age — which simply means the 
 wearing out of the tissues that form the real sub- 
 stance of the bodily organs. 
 
 ^^One day, not long ago, this young biologist as- 
 tounded medical science by taking the living tissues 
 from the body of an animal, and making them live 
 outside. Not only live — but grow. Moreover, this 
 growth he can regulate, increasing or decreasing it, 
 or stopping it altogether. In his laboratory, I have 
 seen tissues that have been living in glass jars and 
 test-tubes for more than 16 months. He can, by means 
 of a certain process, make them grow more rapidly 
 than tissues that have just been removed. If this 
 were applied in surgical practice, by the way, wounds 
 
 260 
 
STORY OF HUMAN LIFE 
 
 and other injuries would heal in about a tenth of the 
 time that they usually take. 
 
 **It is a wonderful discovery, this artificial culti- 
 vation of tissue. The biologist takes from a chicken, 
 or cat, or dog, small pieces of heart, kidney, liver, 
 skin, or bone. He then feeds them with a minute 
 quantity of blood plasma and places them in an incu- 
 bator heated to the temperature of the body from 
 which they have been taken. 
 
 **What happens? Up to a very short time ago, the 
 answer of everybody, from the most learned biologist 
 to the most ignorant peasant, would have been: ^Well, 
 of course, these pieces wither and die.' But wait a 
 while ; let us watch them. In a few hours you will see 
 something. A kind of bluish haze begins to surround 
 some of the specimens, and a granulation appears at 
 the edges and surfaces. Then new cells begin to take 
 form. We see life in the making — and a great deal of 
 it we can see without the aid of the microscope. These 
 tiny pieces of animal structure are multiplying after 
 their kind; heart is producing new heart; kidney is 
 growing kidney ; and so on. And this process is going 
 on much the same as in a living body, the rapidity of 
 growth varying with the age of the animal from which 
 the tissue has been taken. 
 
 **Very remarkable have been the experiments with 
 the heart. There is something uncanny in the sight 
 of a chicken's heart beating on a microscope slide — 
 or rather, two fragments of heart, the smaller one 
 beating at the rate of 120 pulsations a minute, and the 
 larger at the rate of 92. This went on for three days, 
 after which the pulsations diminished. Dr. Carrel 
 treated the two pieces, and soon had them beating 
 more furiously than ever. In the end, they united and 
 literally *beat as one.' " 
 
 *^Can he make an animal live after it is dead?" 
 
 261 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 interrupted the physiologist, who was listening in- 
 tently. 
 
 ^^That is quite a novel question," laughed the biol- 
 ogist. ^^It sounds somewhat contradictory, but Dr. 
 Carrel seems to have answered it affirmatively. At 
 least, he kept a cat alive in sections after it was dead 
 as a whole. He took its various organs, put them into 
 his incubator, and applied artificial respiration." 
 
 '^What did he see?" 
 
 ^^He saw life going on just as if the animal were 
 alive. The heart was beating regularly, the stomach 
 was digesting, the intestines and kidneys were work- 
 ing. This astonishing performance continued for ten 
 hours. 
 
 **It was shortly after this that Dr. Carrel as- 
 tounded the medical scientists by declaring that 4f it 
 were possible to transplant immediately after death 
 the tissues or organs which compose the body into an- 
 other identical organism, no elemental death would 
 occur, and all the constituent parts of the body would 
 continue to live.' " 
 
 **Does that mean that some day there will be no 
 death?" asked a perplexed woman. 
 
 * ^ It means that the human body may be kept alive 
 and youthful much longer than is the case to-day. 
 The various organs can be kept alive, and able to ex- 
 ercise their functions, if provided with the necessary 
 food and heat, for a very long period. Not long ago, 
 a Parisian surgeon was called to operate on a man 
 whose eye had been injured by quicklime. A few weeks 
 before, he had cut out the eye of another patient, who 
 was suffering from glaucoma. This eye he carefully pre- 
 served, treated with a special solution, and placed in 
 an ice-chest. The second patient is now able to see 
 through a portion of this eye, grafted onto his own. 
 
 **The science of life is being solved," exclaimed 
 
 262 
 
STORY OF HUMAN LIFE 
 
 the biologist. '^Dr. Carrel has revolutionized the sur- 
 gery of the blood-vessels. By his discoveries he has 
 enabled the surgeon to treat the internal organs with 
 almost as much freedom as is exercised in handling 
 the external skin. And, further, he has shown that 
 organs can be translated from one body to another. 
 He recently removed a kidney from one cat to another. 
 and the organ began to perform its functions even 
 before the whole of the operation had been concluded. 
 Already these experiments have been extended to hu- 
 man beings. A few months ago, a man had his main 
 artery and jugular vein interchanged to advantage. 
 Another man had an injured knee-joint replaced by 
 one from a dead person. There is no end to the possi- 
 bilities suggested by operations of this kind. 
 
 **One day, not long ago, Dr. Carrel performed a 
 miracle. At least, he performed an act that must be 
 regarded as the greatest of miracles. In other words, 
 he seemed to raise the dead. He washed the defunct 
 tissue of a dead person and fed it with a special kind 
 of elixir, called * embryonic juice.' It revived into 
 vigorous life ; but, after a time, it got very sick again. 
 It was cured, but the cure was by no means perma- 
 nent. One tissue in Dr. CarrePs laboratory has been 
 snatched from the jaws of death 95 times. 
 
 **The problem of old age is near its solution. The 
 three great questions will soon be answered: What is 
 death? Why do we die? Need we die at all? It is 
 now generally accepted by scientists that death is the 
 result of * cellular suicide.' In other words, the cells 
 of the body create certain substances that ultimately 
 destroy them. What these substances are, or may be, 
 no one yet knows. We live in an age of wonders. The 
 superstition of one age may become the scientific ac- 
 complishment of another. We live to learn!" 
 
 18 
 
 263 
 
THE STORY OF THE PHYSIOLOGIST 
 AND THE MIRACLE OF MAN 
 
 AN old man, whose deep-set eyes, nearly hidden 
 by gold-rimmed spectacles, and drawn face be- 
 spoke a life devoted to scientific research, ad- 
 vanced slowly to the table. 
 
 **If, as the poet says," he began, in low, measured 
 accents, *^ Hhe proper study of mankind is man,' then 
 I have been engaged during a long life in a study 
 eminently proper to our species. '* 
 
 Various inaudible guesses were made as to the pro- 
 fession of the speaker, who continued : * * I am a physi- 
 ologist, or in other words, a student of the human 
 body. It is the researches of such men that have re- 
 vealed that exact knowledge of every portion of the 
 human frame which has rendered possible the intelli- 
 gent treatment of disease and injury. We may there- 
 fore claim some share in the progress of human en- 
 lightenment and in the amelioration of human suffer- 
 ing. ' ' 
 
 Subdued applause greeted this statement, and the 
 physiologist resumed: *^It was said of old that *we are 
 fearfully and wonderfully made'; and, indeed, the 
 human body is the most wonderful piece of Nature's 
 handiwork. But we do not fully appreciate the per- 
 fection of the human mechanism until we take it to 
 pieces, and then, as it were, build it up again. This 
 anatomical process, so essential to the science of physi- 
 ology, was not always practicable, on account of the 
 
 264 
 
STORY OF THE HUMAN BODY 
 
 excessive reverence for dead bodies which prevailed 
 in ancient, and, to some extent, in mediaeval times. '^ 
 
 *^ Could you tell us, sir, when human dissection 
 was first practiced?^' asked the doctor. 
 
 ^^In the third century before Christ," replied the 
 Story-teller, *^at the Alexandrian School, then the in- 
 tellectual and scientific center of the world. Con- 
 siderable advance was made in anatomical science, 
 although some of the views propounded at that time 
 sound curious to us. Dissection was practiced in many 
 of the mediaeval universities, and the famous Frederick 
 Barbarossa, German Emperor in 1215, ordered that 
 no one should practice surgery without a practical 
 knowledge of anatomy. But the prejudice against dis- 
 section still lingered in some quarters, and in the six- 
 teenth century Vesalius, who may be called the father 
 of modern physiology, was denounced as an impious 
 madman. He was, however, vindicated by the Uni- 
 versity of Salamanca, which solemnly pronounced dis- 
 section to be lawful. The invention of the microscope 
 shortly afterward made possible the achievements of 
 modern physiological science. 
 
 ^'What is a manf continued the physiologist, 
 raising his voice. ''Of exactly what does this won- 
 drous human mechanism consist? 
 
 ''You may be surprised to hear the answer. We 
 will take an average man weighing 150 pounds. He 
 is made up of a large variety of substances. What is 
 the recipe for making a man? 
 
 "Take 3,649 cubic feet of gas, 10 gallons of water, 
 a balloon-full of hydrogen, 1,200 eggs, enough iron to 
 make four tenpenny nails, enough fat to make 75 
 candles, and the phosphorus from 8,000 boxes of 
 matches ; add about a pound of sugar and six teaspoon- 
 fuls of salt — and you have a man! 
 
 "His heart weighs from 8 to 12 ounces and meas- 
 
 265 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ures 5 by 31/2 by 2% inches. It is surely the most 
 hard-worked of human organs. It beats about 72 times 
 a minute, while it performs its task of pumping 22% 
 pounds of blood every minute, or 16 tons per day. 
 
 *^ Order is heaven's first law! The proportions of 
 the human figure are strictly mathematical. The 
 whole figure is six times the length of the foot; the 
 face is one-eighth and the hand one-tenth of the whole 
 stature; the chest is a fourth; from the top of the 
 chest to the highest point of the forehead is a seventh. 
 The height is equal to the breadth with arms extended. 
 
 ^^The physically perfect man, according to an 
 eminent authority, should weigh 154 pounds. His 
 heart should beat 75 times a minute, and he should 
 breathe 15 times a minute. In 24 hours he would 
 vitiate 1,750 cubic feet of pure air to the extent of 
 one per cent, and should therefore have 800 cubic feet 
 of well ventilated space. The same authority gave no 
 rule as to a man's height and breadth, which vary 
 considerably not only in individuals, but in nation- 
 alities. There is little doubt that diet affects the 
 height of men. The tallness of the Kentuckians and 
 Tennesseans is ascribed to the lime in the water which 
 they drink, as that of Scotsmen to their oatmeal." 
 
 The speaker paused for a few moments, as if to col- 
 lect his thoughts, and then continued: 
 
 ^'Each organ of the body has its special value, 
 but we may say that the brain is the most important 
 organ of all, and this, because it is the organ of thought 
 and of sensation. Psysiologists have naturally given 
 special attention to the subject of the brain. And here 
 I wish to speak of the researches of a great American 
 physician, Edward Anthony Spitzka. 
 
 ^'He was born in New York, in 1876, and was edu- 
 cated in the College of the City of New York. He 
 took up the study of anatomy, especially that of the 
 
 266 
 
STORY OF THE HUMAN BODY 
 
 brain, in which his investigations have been of an ex- 
 haustive character. I may mention that he examined 
 the brain of Czolgosz, the assassin of President Mc- 
 Kinley.'' 
 
 **Is it true, professor,'' inquired one of the ladies, 
 *Hhat a woman's brain is smaller than a man's?" 
 
 ^^Yes," replied the physiologist; ^Hhe brain of the 
 average woman is about ^ve and a half ounces lighter 
 than that of the average man. But it does not follow 
 that woman is mentally inferior to man. Dr. Spitzka's 
 researches have taught us that something besides the 
 size of the brain must be taken into consideration, 
 as we shall see later. 
 
 **Let us watch this great physiologist at work in 
 his laboratory at Jefferson College, Philadelphia. He 
 has before him a number of large glass jars, filled with 
 a transparent liquid, containing brains of various 
 sizes, lying on wads of cotton. Each brain has been 
 very carefully removed from the cranium, and is im- 
 mediately weighed. It is then placed in a mixture of 
 formalin and water, which prevents shrinkage. When 
 it becomes sufficiently hardened, the examination com- 
 mences. Wearing rubber gloves, the scientist takes 
 the brain from the solution and peels off the mem- 
 brane. He next separates it into its principal parts, 
 each of which is measured and weighed. These pro- 
 cesses are of vital importance, for it is by comparison 
 of the various details that conclusions are reached 
 as to the mental caliber of individuals. 
 
 ^'If this were indicated merely by the weight of 
 the brain, we might well be surprised at the figures 
 given by Dr. Spitzka regarding a hundred eminent 
 persons, whose brains were examined after death, 
 Tourgenief, the Eussian novelist, heads the list with 
 2,102 grams. Edward Olney, the American mathe- 
 
 267 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 matician, has 1,701; George Francis Train, 1,525; 
 Daniel Webster, 1,518; Walt Whitman, 1,282. 
 
 '^One of the heaviest brains ever weighed (1,900 
 grams) belonged to an English briclanaker. Few brains 
 exceed 1,780 grams; and, of sixty more or less illus- 
 trious men, only seven are in this class — Schiller, 
 Abercrombie, Bismarck, Cuvier, Tourgenief, Crom- 
 well and Byron. 
 
 ''You have no idea,'' continued the speaker, ''of 
 the wonderful complexity of the human brain. We 
 may compare it with a vast telephone system, with 
 about nine billion wires connectino- with a central of- 
 fice from which messages are flashed to every part of 
 the body. When the mind is deranged by accident or 
 disease, this telephone system is crippled and num- 
 bers of the wires do not work. 
 
 "In the lower animals the brain is apparently not 
 so essential as in man. The experiment has been 
 tried of removing the frontal lobes from cats and 
 monkeys, and it seemed to make little difference to 
 them. A frog has been kept alive eight months after 
 its brain had been entirely removed. The only dif- 
 ference seemed to be that it would not take food on its 
 own account, but w^ould swallow it, if placed in its 
 mouth. 
 
 "I would say in conclusion that there are many 
 questions concerning the brain yet unsolved. The 
 many freaks of memory and the exhibition of inex- 
 plicable faculties, oftentimes as a result of injury to 
 the head, will doubtless receive some day a satisfactory 
 explanation. We must expect to find a number of 
 things difficult to explain in connection \\ith an organ 
 of that most wonderful of faculties — human thought." 
 
 268 
 
THE STORY OF THE OllNITIIOEOGlST 
 AND THE BIRDS OF THJ^: AIR 
 
 A SUDDEN burst of song from the feath(3red oc- 
 cupant of a cage overhead caused every head to 
 turn in its direction. A young man, who seemed 
 to combine in his impressiv(j countenance tiie thouglit- 
 ful asp(;ct of the student witfi the re(in(;d air of the 
 artist, exclaimed, ^^That reminds me of my story.'' 
 
 *'0h, yes, the story of the birds. Do tell it!'' cried 
 out a dozen voices. 
 
 ^'It's an endhiss story," replied the young man. 
 **I liavo taken up ornitliology, or the study of birds, 
 as my lif(;vvork, and (iV(?ry day I find new marvc^ls in 
 it. I feel that the longest life is all too siiort for it. 
 
 *^I may be an enthusiast, but I can't imagine any- 
 thing in creation more fascinating than birds. Their 
 inexhaustible vari(ity, their exquisite beauty, their 
 wonderful power of song, their marvellous instincts — 
 these all combine to constitute a multifold and in- 
 definable charm. 
 
 ^* Birds have played a prominent part in legend and 
 folk-lore. We are all familiar with the eagle of Jove, 
 the owl of Minerva, and the sacred ibis of the Egyp- 
 tians. We know about Noah's dove of peace. We 
 remember how that lover of animals, St. Francis, 
 preached to the })irds. W(} have read the story of the 
 planting of the hundred eyes of Argus in the pea- 
 cock's tail. 
 
 **But, to come from poetry to prose, do you real- 
 ize the economic value of our feathered friends?" 
 
 269 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 The farmer, who was seated near the speaker, 
 grunted his incredulity. 
 
 ^'My friend," said the ornithologist, turning to 
 him, *^ without the birds, you could grow nothing — no 
 corn, no wheat, no fruit. It is true that they eat some 
 of your produce, but you should not grudge them that, 
 when you remember how relentlessly they prey upon 
 your deadly foes, the insects. Why, if it were not for 
 the birds, the insects would crowd us off the earth! 
 
 **Even the much maligned birds of prey are found 
 to be beneficial. The increase in the pest of rats, each 
 one of which costs twenty-five cents a year in the food 
 he eats, is attributable to the habit of shooting owls 
 and hawks. Owls feed almost exclusively upon rats 
 and mice. In the West the decrease in the number 
 of eagles is supposed to be the cause of the increase 
 in the pest of prairie dogs. Nearly all the hawks — 
 with the exception of Cooper's and the sharp-shinned 
 hawk — ^prey upon field pests and only descend upon 
 the chicken-roost under temptation. ' ' 
 
 *^What makes the birds sing!" one of the ladies 
 asked, impulsively. 
 
 ^^A very natural question," replied the Story- 
 teller. *'It has often puzzled people how creatures 
 with such tiny throats can produce such piercing and 
 magnificent notes. The fact is. Nature has provided 
 the song-birds with a special vocal organ, with which 
 the throat and the tongue have nothing to do. So 
 that they are all Pattis, or rather, I should say, 
 Carusos (for only the male birds sing), without train- 
 ing or effort. Of these songsters the most famous is 
 the nightingale, which has not found its way to our 
 shores. It sings only at night, and the effect of its 
 thrilling song in the hush of midnight (as it has been 
 my good fortune to hear) is indescribable. 
 
 270 
 
STORY OF BIRDS 
 
 ''I must not forget to speak of the vision of birds, 
 wMch in many cases is of extraordinary power. We 
 have all heard that the eagle, unlike ourselves, can 
 gaze at the sun without flinching. It is wonderful to 
 see a vulture descend on carrion unerringly from a 
 great height, or a fly-catcher dart from a distance upon 
 the smallest insects. 
 
 ^ ^ But birds are credited with a sixth sense, by which 
 they direct their course for long distances without the 
 guidance of landmarks. And this brings me to speak 
 of one of the most interesting facts in connection with 
 birds — their migrations.'' 
 
 The audience began to show increased attention. 
 
 The ornithologist continued: ^^Only a small mi- 
 nority of birds migrate, and they mostly exchange a 
 northerly climate for a southerly on the approach of 
 winter. About the same time each year they congre- 
 gate and start their journey along a recognized route; 
 the old males lead, the females coming next, and last 
 the young birds. They will go for a thousand miles 
 or more ; the fact that they find their way unerringly 
 has led to the supposition of a sixth sense. Did you 
 know that swifts return, year after year, from a dis- 
 tance of 1,800 miles, not merely to the same locality, 
 but to the very nest which they had occupied!" 
 
 *^Are there any American names among eminent 
 ornithologists r ' inquired some one. 
 
 **0h, yes," was the emphatic reply, **not to speak 
 of the early work of Mark Catesby, Alexander Wilson, 
 Charles Lucien Bonaparte and others, who can over- 
 estimate the debt which ornithology owes to John 
 James Audubon? Born at Mandeville, in Louisiana, 
 about 1780, he began, in 1827, the publication of his 
 monumental work, ^ Birds of America.' It appeared 
 in 87 folio parts, containing 435 plates with 1,065 
 figures. This work went through a number of editions, 
 
 271 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 and the first edition is now very valuable. We must 
 not forget, too, the important contributions of Spencer 
 Fullerton Baird, who lived from 1823 to 1887, and the 
 practical work done by Joel Asaph Allen, the present 
 Curator of Birds and Mammals at the Museum of 
 Natural History, New York. 
 
 ^^But if you want to study birds far better than in 
 books, you should pay a visit to the flying cage in the 
 New York Zoological Park. It is the largest and 
 finest aviary in the world. The birds themselves hardly 
 realize any deprivation of freedom when they find 
 themselves amongst forest trees with wide spreading 
 branches under a cage of wire, 55 feet high, 75 feet 
 wide, and 150 feet long. There is a large pool of 
 water, in which aquatic birds of every kind — herons, 
 pelicans, flamingoes, ducks, and geese — disport them- 
 selves. The smaller birds perch in the trees or walk 
 on the banks of the pool. 
 
 ^' There is also a spacious birds' house, for use in 
 cold weather. Here also are kept permanently, in a 
 series of cages, blue herons and other species whose 
 quarrelsome habits debar them from the society of 
 their fellows. For it is a sad truth that the famous 
 line * Birds in their little nests agree' must be taken 
 with much qualification. It is amusing to watch the 
 little disagreements that are constantly arising even 
 among the better-mannered birds. And sometimes — 
 I have noticed it with the pelicans — they indulge in 
 horseplay and try to frighten one another. 
 
 ^^Our feathered friends are, for the most part, 
 great gluttons. A young bird will consume more than 
 its own weight of food in a working — or rather, eating- 
 day. A plover was seen to eat an average of 200 lo- 
 custs and similar large insects a day. You will notice 
 that birds seem to be always eating, at least whenever 
 they get the chance. The fact is, that all this food 
 
 272 
 
STORY OF BIRDS 
 
 is necessary for sustaining their high temperature 
 and great bodily activity. 
 
 ^^I have spoken of the infinite variety of birds. Let 
 us consider for a moment two extreme types. There 
 is the ostrich — the giant of the bird kingdom — taller 
 than a man, weighing 200 pounds; it can kick like a 
 horse, and run as fast as an express train. Then there 
 is the humming-bird, hardly larger than a good-sized 
 bee, with its exquisite, vari-colored plumage, glitter- 
 ing like a living jewel in the tropical sun — surely the 
 most beautiful object in creation. 
 
 ^'Yes, birds certainly possess what the poet calls 
 *the fatal gift of beauty' — literally fatal to the birds 
 that are hunted for their plumage. The white heron 
 has been almost extinguished in this country, owing 
 to the shooting of it for the plumes — which appear 
 only during nesting time — and the consequent death of 
 the young by starvation. Sport, too, takes its deadly 
 toll. Of the countless millions of passenger pigeons 
 that swarmed throughout the country in Audubon's 
 time, only seven were known to exist recently — three 
 in the Zoological Garden at Cincinnati, and four in a 
 collection of living birds in Milwaukee. But I am glad 
 to say that bird reservations have now been established 
 in many parts of the country, particularly along the 
 coasts of the Southern States, where colonies occupy 
 whole islands during the breeding season, having 
 learned that they are there safe from attack. Reserva- 
 tions have also been established along the line of mi- 
 gration through the Middle States as well as in Oregon 
 and Washington. It is confidently anticipated that 
 within a few years more birds will have ceased to be 
 objects of persecution and will be, instead, carefully 
 protected everywhere in America.'' 
 
 ^ ' Are there any birds that cannot fly at all ? " 
 
 ^^Yes," answered the ornithologist. ^^The kiwi of 
 
 273 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 New Zealand, which is on the verge of extinction, has 
 no wings. Ostriches and some other large birds have 
 no wings worth mentioning. Yon see, in treeless 
 regions these birds have taken to the ground entirely 
 and in the course of time the organs of flight have 
 gradually degenerated through disuse. A curious case 
 is that of the penguin, a large, Antarctic sea-bird. Cir- 
 cumstances forced him to find his food in the sea ; and 
 his wings serve him to swim, instead of to fly. 
 
 ^^ 'The flight of a bird in the air' was reckoned by 
 the Wise Man as one of the great mysteries of 
 Nature, and, indeed, it is a wonderful thing. For ages 
 men have admired the ease and grace with which the 
 bird soars upward and onward through the heavens, 
 and lately have taken to emulating it, calling the new 
 science of air-travel, aviation, from the Latin word 
 for a bird. The bird's wing, which serves for model 
 in our serial flights, is a marvelous specimen of 
 Nature's handiwork. The wings differ greatly in size 
 and power, according to the needs and habits of their 
 possessors. That giant of oceanic birds, the condor, 
 has wings that reach an expanse of nearly twelve feet." 
 
 *'How many different kinds of birds are there?" 
 inquired one of the audience. 
 
 ^' About thirteen thousand," replied the Story- 
 teller. 
 
 ''Now, my story is told," he said, ^'but I will add 
 that all bird-lovers are pleased with the new law which 
 forbids the importing of aigrettes, made from the 
 plumes of the osprey, the white heron and the bird of 
 paradise. Millinery will suffer, but the long practiced 
 cruelty to these magnificent birds will cease. 
 
 274 
 
THE STORY OF THE BOTANIST AND 
 THE KINGDOM OF PLANTS 
 
 THE banker entered the library, with a fine orchid 
 in his button-hole. It attracted the attention of 
 one of the party, a middle-aged man, whose 
 studious expression was tempered by humorous 
 twinkles in his eyes. 
 
 ^^An Arethusa hulhosa/' he remarked, ^*one of six 
 thousand or more species. Now, as a change after 
 counting money, you might count the seeds in it!'' 
 
 The banker smiled. 
 
 ^'Well," said the other, ^'you might find yourself a 
 millionaire in seeds. Some of these orchids have as 
 many as a million and three-quarters." 
 
 ^^It's the botanist!'' cried out several voices. ^'Go 
 ahead with your story." 
 
 ^'Well, ladies and gentlemen," began the botanist, 
 '^I will try to tell you something of the studies to 
 which I have devoted the best part of my life. The 
 science of botany is comparatively modern; but the 
 observation of plants began when ^the Lord God put 
 man into a garden to dress it.' 
 
 ^'You need not possess any technical knowledge to 
 love and admire beautiful plants and flowers. It was 
 not his scientific attainments, but his innate love of the 
 beautiful in Nature, that led the great Linnaeus to fall 
 down on his knees and thank God the first time he 
 saw Scotch heather. 
 
 *' Nowadays we can view the entire floral pano- 
 rama without going far from our own doors. And 
 
 275 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 here I wish to say that I am proud as an American 
 and gratified as a scientist that our nation provides, 
 in its splendid botanical collections, such unequaled 
 opportunities for its people to study the plant life of 
 every country under heaven! 
 
 *'Only yesterday,'' he continued, *^I was walking — 
 for the thousandth time — through the Botanical Gar- 
 dens of New York, and was impressed anew with their 
 beauty and splendor. The spaciousness and natural 
 charm of the grounds, the richness and variety of the 
 exhibits, and the architectural beauty of the buildings, 
 all combine to constitute a veritable botanical paradise. 
 
 * ^ The whole world has been ransacked to stock this 
 place. Its agents have been distributed at one time in 
 regions as distant from each other as England, Porto 
 Eico, Bolivia, Newfoundland and Sumatra. In the 
 beautiful palm house may be seen magnificent speci- 
 mens of palms of many varieties, shoots of bamboo, 
 banana trees, with their golden fruit, and other prod- 
 ucts of the tropics. Outside are growing the seaweeds 
 of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland." 
 
 *^How many different kinds of plants are there 
 in the world f asked one of the audience. 
 
 *^We estimate about two hundred thousand 
 species,'' replied the Story-teller. *^You must remem- 
 ber that we include not only fruits, vegetables, flow- 
 ers, shrubs, and trees, but also fungi, lichens, mosses, 
 and such things. 
 
 ** You may think," continued the botanist, *Hhat the 
 line of demarcation between plants and animals is 
 very clearly marked and that their mode of life is 
 essentially different. But wait a minujte. Look at our 
 familiar friend, the sponge, who has managed to scrape 
 into the animal kingdom" — the zoologist smiled and 
 nodded assent. *'Well, there are plants that excel him 
 in responsiveness and general intelligence. Plants eat, 
 
 276 
 
STORY OF PLANT LIFE 
 
 breathe, and sleep ; they can see ; they travel, by land 
 and sea; they suffer sickness; they bore for water; 
 they trap insects; sometimes they get angry and — .'' 
 
 Here a roar of laughter from the audience inter- 
 rupted the speaker. 
 
 **I fear, ladies and gentlemen," said the Story- 
 teller, *Hhat you are incredulous. I can assure you 
 it's all true. You may think it funny that plants should 
 sleep. Why, every child has seen the daisy fold its 
 petals at nightfall, in preparation for its night's rest. 
 On the other hand, the field camomile prefers to drop 
 its petals and fold them closely about the stalk. Some 
 plants, as the crocus and hyacinth, sleep through the 
 winter. 
 
 ^'As to plants seeing, the only point in dispute 
 is whether they are conscious of what they see. Science 
 has demonstrated the fact that they have eyes, by 
 reproducing, by means of photography and the micro- 
 scope, the visual impressions made on them, includ- 
 ing objects at various distances, and even persons and 
 houses. It's rather startling to think that, when you 
 consider yourself quite alone, you are under the ob- 
 servation of hundreds of inquisitive eyes — that an 
 apple tree is gauging you or a Virginia creeper is 
 eyeing you up and down! 
 
 **IIave you heard of walking ferns? They produce 
 fronds, which, after tapering to a dainty tip, drop to 
 the ground and take root as a new plant. It is true that 
 they don't walk very far, but form a community, 
 linked together by a thread-like chain. Some plants 
 send suckers underground, which appear later as sep- 
 arate plants. Others emigrate to distant parts. The 
 seeds take passage on birds or animals, or they swim 
 over the water. They do this, as men do, to better 
 their circumstances. They don't like their neighbors, 
 or are dissatisfied with the local food supply. Needless 
 
 277 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 to say, weeds are great travelers. Most of the weeds 
 which plague the farmer in this country were immi- 
 grants, with no fear of deportation before them." 
 
 ^'Did you not say that plants actually suffer?" 
 asked the doctor. 
 
 **Why, doctor," answered the botanist, *4f you 
 ever saw the coughing bean in one of its paroxysms, 
 you would consider it a subject for your professional 
 attendance. When dust settles on its lungs, it gives 
 a mighty cough, turning red in the face with the effort, 
 and out flies the dust. But a still sadder sight is a 
 plant suffering from fever. I wonder whether any of 
 the ladies present, when slicing an onion, ever think 
 that it exhibits two of the most characteristic symp- 
 toms of a feverish person; that is, its temperature 
 rises, as much as three degrees, and its breathing be- 
 comes more vigorous. The fever reaches its height 
 in about 24 hours and abates in four or ^ve days. 
 That is, if the onion survives. 
 
 **Now, I will give you," resumed the Story-teller, 
 after the laughter had subsided, *^some further in- 
 stances of the manifestations in plants of a power akin 
 to intelligence, to say the least. Plants are great 
 drinkers, and they will go to any length, literally, to 
 obtain water. One thirsty turnip got the tip of its 
 root into a crack in a field drain, and the tip grew 
 six feet in its effort to get at the water. 
 
 *'Some plants are very sensitive; others are too 
 sensitive and are thoroughly ill-tempered. The sweet- 
 pea, when its tendrils are touched with a stick, takes 
 no notice at first, but after a time the tendril begins to 
 twist around the stick. But a Virginia creeper is ir- 
 ritated at once, and the adhesive pads on its tendrils 
 fasten tenaciously on any object that touches them. 
 
 ^'You are doubtless aware that plants depend 
 largely for their fertilization on the insects which 
 
 278 
 
STORY OF PLANT LIFE 
 
 carry the pollen from one flower to another. White 
 clover will present a full, round head to the visiting 
 bee, as if to invite him to a share of the pollen, but 
 will fold down a floret, from which it has been trans- 
 ferred, as if in warning that the stock is exhausted. 
 
 *^The main food of plants consists of nitrogenous 
 substances which they take from the soil^ but some 
 plants prefer a stronger diet. Our own country fur- 
 nishes a notable example of this in the * pitcher plant,' 
 which has a predilection for insects and displays a 
 diabolical ingenuity in capturing them. Each of its 
 leaves is supported on a long stalk, which below ex- 
 pands into a cavity, capable of holding half a pint or 
 more of fluid. At the top of the pitcher is a tempting 
 display of honey, and the unwary insect, whilst seek- 
 ing it, sinks into the depths below, where it is duly 
 digested by the greedy plant. 
 
 **Then there are cannibal plants that never forage 
 for themselves, but live off their neighbors. Notable 
 among these is the dodder vine, which chokes its ar- 
 boreal victim and drinks its life-blood." 
 
 The speaker paused. *^Tell us some more about 
 plants,'' cried a young lady. 
 
 *^Why, I could go on till doomsday," said the 
 botanist. **I could tell you of an Indian tree that 
 gives you an electric shock when you touch it; or of 
 the Asiatic star tree, that shines like a lighthouse; 
 or of the ^compass plant' of our own country, by feel- 
 ing whose leaves you know where you are; or of an 
 African lily, that will warm your room like a stove. 
 
 *^ There is no end to the variety and wonder of the 
 botanical world. I am satisfied if I have awakened in 
 any of my hearers some little interest in studies which 
 have become the absorbing passion of my life." 
 
 19 
 
 279 
 
THE STORY OF THE PHYSICIAN AND 
 HIS FIGHT AGAINST DISEASE 
 
 A DISTINGUISHED-LOOKING man, with a Van 
 Dyke beard, entered the library hurriedly. He 
 laid his black leather case on the table, and pulled 
 off his gloves, 
 
 ^^My business," he said, *4s fighting death. It is 
 the age-long battle of the ' survival of the fittest. ' The 
 great conqueror wields his sword over the human race, 
 while we drive him back with our drastic methods of 
 warfare. To me, it is the noblest of all fights.'' 
 
 ** Which wins in the end?" asked one of the Story- 
 tellers. 
 
 ** Death!" replied the speaker, an eminent physi- 
 cian, * ' death is the final victor. All that our skill and 
 genius can do is to parley and reconnoiter, and finally 
 surrender. 
 
 ^*But the story of medicine," continued the 
 doctor, *^is the greatest story that the world has ever 
 revealed. Hourly we are forcing disease to retreat; 
 daily we are extending the years of men's lives. The 
 time may come when men will pass away only because 
 they have fulfilled their duties on earth and there is 
 no good reason for them to longer remain here. Then 
 death will be the great desire of the human heart; 
 it will be, not the woe, but the ambition of the human 
 race. It may be many eons before we can reach this 
 high estate in our civilization, but we are now mak- 
 ing tremendously rapid progress. 
 
 '^The science of medicine was in its infancy only a 
 
 280 
 
STORY OF THE PHYSICIAN 
 
 hundred years ago,'' said the physician. ** Barbers 
 still practiced surgery, and it was said, in tribute to 
 the great English surgeon, Hunter, that he had made 
 gentlemen of doctors. The only discovery of per- 
 manent value before the days of Hunter was that of 
 vaccination against smallpox, which Jenner established 
 in England. 
 
 **But the world owes a great debt to this country 
 for the part which it has played in the development 
 of medical science. America has a long range of illus- 
 trious names in medicine, dating back to Dr. Wootton, 
 who went to Virginia in 1607 as Surgeon-Greneral of 
 the London Company, and Dr. Eussell, who was with 
 Captain Smith in his exploration of Chesapeake Bay 
 during the following year. Many physicians migrated 
 to America during the seventeenth century. In 1636 
 the Assembly of Virginia passed a fee bill for surgeons 
 and apothecaries. The fees were often paid in to- 
 baco, lead, powder, and wampum. 
 
 *^ During the seventeenth century, a popular book, 
 sold in 1677 by John Foster, of Boston, was pub- 
 lished, entitled *A Brief Eule to Guide the Common 
 People of New England How to Treat Themselves 
 and Others in the Smallpocks or Measles.' The Rev. 
 Cotton Mather was one of those who helped to spread 
 the practice of inoculation against smallpox, and, after 
 the introduction of vaccination, its use became speedily 
 universal throughout the country. 
 
 *^The principles of Hahnemann, who originated 
 homeopathic medicine, were early incorporated in a 
 homeopathic college at Philadelphia, and undoubtedly 
 led the reaction against the excessive use of drugs. 
 
 *^I come now to the greatest American triumph in 
 the medical field, which followed the discovery of the 
 bacterial nature of infectious diseases — the abolition 
 of yellow fever. The ravages of this disease along 
 
 281 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 the American littoral are frightful. In 1840 it slew 
 69 per cent of the garrison of Georgetown, British 
 Guiana. In 1898 nearly 95 per cent of all those at- 
 tacked in Eio de Janeiro died. The mortality aver- 
 aged about 40 per cent during mild epidemics. 
 
 *'Here was a foeman worthy of the steel of the 
 American doctor. With characteristic energy he threw 
 himself into the fray. In the year 1881 Dr. Charles 
 Finlay, of Havana, put forward the suggestion that 
 yellow fever might be due to the conveyance of a 
 bacterial organism through the bite of a mosquito, in- 
 stead of its arising spontaneously from marsh gases. 
 He picked the stegomyia fasciata^ or ^ tiger mosquito' 
 as the agent. Experiments proved this to be a prob- 
 ability. Mosquitoes were fed on yellow fever patients 
 and then allowed to bite healthy persons, living under 
 sanitary arrangements in a camp, and the disease 
 developed in these. In the year 1900 an American 
 commission was appointed to investigate the subject. 
 The experiments were repeated with a like result, 
 while it was shown that healthy persons, sleeping in 
 the blankets used previously by yellow fever patients, 
 but not exposed to mosquito bites, failed to contract 
 the disease. The germ was found to be small enough 
 to pass through a porcelain filter. It incubated for a 
 period of twelve days after being taken into the body 
 of the insect, and was then capable of infecting man 
 for nearly two months. 
 
 **A curious fact was shown in this connection, ex- 
 plaining why healthy persons can often pass through 
 infected regions with impunity during the daytime, 
 but not at night. The female mosquito, which is the 
 culpable party, requires a meal of blood three days 
 before laying her eggs. During this period she bites 
 during the night and day; after depositing the eggs, 
 she bites only at night. Hence, since the germ re- 
 
 282 
 
STORY OF THE PHYSICIAN 
 
 quires twelve days to develop in the mosquitoes body, 
 it is conveyed only by night in a condition which will 
 enable it to transfer the disease. 
 
 *^In February, 1901, Major W. C. Gorgas, chief 
 sanitary official of Havana, issued an order for the 
 cleaning up of the city. All receptacles holding 
 water — in which the mosquito larvae develop — were 
 required to be kept mosquito-proof with screens. 
 House-to-house inspection was begun; oil was poured 
 on all pools of stagnant water ; breeding grounds were 
 drained; hospitals and houses containing yellow fever 
 patients were screened, and infected places were fumi- 
 gated with pyrethrum powder. At the end of a twelve- 
 month, no further cases of yellow fever developed 
 within the city. There was one death during 1907, and 
 the report issued in April, 1910, showed the city of 
 Havana to be entirely free from the disease. An out- 
 break in New Orleans, in 1905, was promptly sup- 
 pressed, a medical staff of fifty doctors being rushed 
 to the scene. 
 
 **But it was in connection with the work of the 
 Panama Canal that the most notable victory was won. 
 I do not hesitate to say that only our medical science 
 rendered that gigantic scheme possible of accomplish- 
 ment, and you will understand this when I tell you 
 that the mortality amongst the workmen had been 
 from 60 to 70 per thousand, until the American sani- 
 tary officers took charge. In 1908, three years had 
 elapsed since the occurrence of a single case of yellow 
 fever there. The same methods have been adopted 
 by the progressive South American nations, with 
 similar satisfactory results. 
 
 ''In 1848, Dr. Josiah Nott ascribed the cause of 
 malaria to the anopheles mosquito. The same methods 
 that have abolished yellow fever have been followed 
 in this case, with the same results. Though most of 
 
 283 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 the work has been accomplished outside the limits 
 of the United States, America can here, too, claim that 
 an American inaugurated the work. 
 
 '' Another triumph of American medical skill has 
 been in the discovery that the dread scourge of trop- 
 ical dysentery is due to the presence of the amoeba 
 in drinking water. The Philippines have been largely 
 freed from this ailment in consequence. This by no 
 means exhausts the list of our triumphs. Within the 
 past five years much has been learned about the ^hook- 
 worm,' and hundreds of thousands of sufferers from 
 its infection in our southern states have been cured. 
 
 *' Among the latest work along the line of bac- 
 teriological research must be mentioned, that done by 
 Dr. Simon Flexner at the Rockefeller Institute, New 
 York. To him and his fellow-workers are due the 
 discovery of the cause of spinal meningitis and in- 
 fantile paralysis, both of which diseases seem likely 
 to be permanently cured by the anti-toxins which have 
 been invented. 
 
 *'In 1910, there were 155 medical schools in the 
 United States and Canada, ^vith 23,927 students. 
 Nearly all of them offer facilities of the first order 
 for the training of physicians and surgeons. The 
 center of medical research is now admittedly America. 
 
 ''Such,'' said the physician in conclusion, his face 
 glowing with enthusiasm, "is a brief review of what 
 medical science is doing for the world. But all our 
 achievements are but stepping-stones to greater 
 things. Is there any limit to our advance in the cam- 
 paign against the dread ministers of Elug Death — 
 pain and disease ? To give health to all, to exterminate 
 human suffering — such are the ends to which we ^ysi- 
 cians devote our lives." 
 
 284 
 
THE STORY OF THE SURGEON AND 
 HOW HE SAVES OUR LIVES 
 
 CONSIDERABLE interest was aroused among 
 the Story-tellers by the entry into the library 
 of a tall, clean-shaven young man, clad in a long, 
 white robe. In his hand he held a piece of shining 
 steel. 
 
 ^ ' This little instrument ! " he exclaimed, in ringing 
 tones, holding up a scalpel — the surgeon's tool, 4s 
 doing, I maintain, more for humanity than anything 
 else in the world. It is saving innumerable lives every 
 hour of the day. It is curing thousands of pain and 
 deformity. It has sent millions rejoicing on their way 
 in renewed hope and vigor.'' 
 
 A murmur of applause ran round the room. 
 
 ^^As I have indicated," continued the speaker, *^I 
 am a surgeon. Surgery is one of the most ancient 
 of sciences. It was practiced to some extent by the 
 Egyptians some 1,500 years before Christ. From time 
 immemorial the Hindus have performed operations 
 of various kinds. The Greek physician, Hippocrates, 
 in 460 B. C, summed up in a masterly work, 'The 
 Laboratory of the Surgeon,' all that was known of 
 surgery at that time. After him, little advance was 
 made in surgery down to modern times. 
 
 *'It is when we come to the surgery of the present 
 day that we realize its blessings. The old-time sur- 
 geon had to inflict temporary pain, with a view to 
 permanent relief; but the introduction of anaesthetics 
 has rendered operations painless, and I am proud to 
 
 285 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 say that in this field of research our fellow-country- 
 men have particularly distinguished themselves. Not 
 only has the human race been spared an incalculable 
 amount of suffering, but medical science has been 
 enabled to develop to such a degree that practically 
 no part of the human organism exists which cannot 
 now be made the subject of exploration. Deep-seated 
 tumors, abdominal ailments whose occurrence formerly 
 meant certain death, can now be treated with almost 
 positive assurance of a simple and quick recovery. 
 
 ^^Anaesthetics were not entirely unknown to the 
 ancients. But such as they had were only adopted 
 here and there at different epochs. It remained for 
 the discovery of ether and chloroform to make the 
 use of anaesthetics universal. 
 
 ^^In spite of the discovery of nitrous oxide, or laugh- 
 ing gas, and various experiments with ether, anaes- 
 thetics remained scientific curiosities until, in 1844, Dr. 
 Plorace Wells, a dentist of Hartford, Connecticut, un- 
 derwent the extraction of a tooth while under the in- 
 influence of nitrous oxide. He announced the benefit 
 of his discovery to the public. Meanwhile, two years 
 before. Dr. Crawford W. Long, of Georgia, had re- 
 moved a tumor from a jawbone painlessly, with the 
 use of ether. Dr. Long hesitated, however, to make 
 use of his discovery; and, on September 30, Dr. W. 
 T. G. Morton, a Boston dentist, who had worked under 
 Wells, announced the discovery of ether. In October 
 of that year, he administered ether to a patient upon 
 whom an operation was performed by Dr. John C. 
 Warren at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Had 
 the administration resulted in the death of the patient, 
 the whole history of anaesthetics might have been dif- 
 ferent. But the operation was triumphantly success- 
 ful. The news quickly reached England, and, by the 
 
 286 
 
STORY OF THE SURGEON 
 
 end of the year, the use of ether in operations was 
 firmly established. 
 
 *^In the month of November, 1847, Sir James Simp- 
 son, a Scottish physician, on the advice of Wildie, a 
 chemist of Liverpool, made some experiments which 
 gave chloroform to the world. This completed the 
 trinity of anaesthetics. In Europe chloroform is pre- 
 ferred; in America ether. Each has its advantages. 
 Chloroform is indicated for slight operations, for 
 which nitrous oxide is not productive of a sufficiently 
 deep state of anaesthesia; ether for prolonged ones. 
 The after results of chloroform are less unpleasant, 
 and it is administered by preference at the extremes 
 of life. 
 
 ^' Since the period indicated, the improvements have 
 all been in the direction of administering ether and 
 chloroform. About the year 1876, it was found that the 
 asphyxiating sensations which these substances (par- 
 ticularly ether) produce, could be minimized by ad- 
 mitting oxygen at the same time through a valve, and, 
 particularly in starting anaesthetization with nitrous 
 oxide. 
 
 ** During the present year (1913), an advance has 
 been made on the previous methods of administering 
 anaesthetics, which seems likely to prove of the great- 
 est benefit to surgery. The inventor of this process 
 is Dr. Crile, an American surgeon. His discovery con- 
 sists in recognition of the fact that, while anaesthetics 
 destroy consciousness of pain, they do not abrogate 
 the shock. The brain feels the operation, though it 
 does not translate it into terms of physical suffering. 
 Dr. Crile 's method is to cut off all connection between 
 the brain and the seat of the wound, by a local applica- 
 tion. It is believed that by this process many opera- 
 tions, which would otherwise result fatally, will be 
 performed with safety. 
 
 287 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ''Nearly thirty years ago, a remarkable discovery 
 was made by Dr. Corning, of New York. This con- 
 sisted in the indnction of general insensibility to pain 
 (analgesia) without the production of unconscious- 
 ness, by the injection of cocaine into the spinal column. 
 Under this process the patient, while wide awake and 
 conscious, can undergo operations of the first magni- 
 tude without any sensation of the cutting. But this 
 method did not come into general use. It was found 
 that the temporary paralysis induced by it might be- 
 come permanent. In 1904, Fourneau introduced 
 stovaine for the same purpose. 
 
 ^* Among the most celebrated of American sur- 
 geons of an older day are Valentine Mott, Ephraim 
 McDowell, and J. Marion Sims. Many of the triumphs 
 of surgery were achieved by American practitioners, 
 particularly in the ligature of the larger arteries 
 for the cure of aneurism. At a later date Americans 
 were the first to demonstrate the exact nature of ap- 
 pendicitis and to emphasize the necessity of operative 
 measures. McBurney is especially associated with the 
 development of the technic of the operation for ap- 
 pendicitis. The Mayo brothers, of Eochester, Minne- 
 sota, have established a surgical hospital in that little 
 town to which patients and doctors go from all parts 
 of the world. 
 
 "A great revolution in surgery has come about by 
 the introduction of the antiseptic, and later the aseptic, 
 treatment of wounds. By the former method the 
 wound is disinfected, in order to render it immune to 
 noxious germs and thus prevent blood poisoning, or 
 other trouble. On its introduction, the mortality in 
 hospitals fell in a remarkable degree. 
 
 "The aseptic treatment means the sterilizing of 
 everything connected with the operation. White 
 robes — such as you see me wear — are put on; and 
 
 288 
 
STORY OF THE SCIENTIST 
 
 some even put on masks and rubber gloves of great 
 flexibility. 
 
 **If time permitted, I should like to give you some 
 account of the marvels that modern surgery is per- 
 forming. I can, however, only refer briefly to a few 
 cases. A few years back, a woman, blind from birth, 
 had her sight given at the age of 36 by means of 
 an operation; the first of the kind, I believe, in the 
 annals of surgery. 
 
 ^^ There is a man going about with an aorta, or 
 main artery, of gold, which was placed by an ex- 
 tremely delicate operation and which does all the work 
 required of it. 
 
 *^ Another remarkable operation was in a case of 
 twins of the 'Siamese variety,' where the live baby 
 was successfully separated from its dead companion. 
 I think such an operation had never been attempted 
 before. 
 
 *'In conclusion, I would mention the moral, as dis- 
 tinguished from the physical, benefits conferred oc- 
 casionally by surgery. Several cases have occurred 
 of children, whose wayward conduct was the despair 
 of their parents, but was found eventually to be due 
 to some unnoticed injury of the head. This'' — once 
 more raising his scalpel — ''set to work, and, as if by 
 magic, the child's whole temperament seemed to change 
 and its bad habits disappeared. The connection be- 
 tween the mind and the body is very intimate, and it 
 is interesting to consider surgery as a moral agency. 
 This is thrown in as good measure with the incal- 
 culable mass of benefits that surgery has conferred 
 on the world." 
 
 289 
 
THE STORY OF THE SCIENTIST AND 
 A VISIT TO HIS LABORATORY 
 
 ON the night on which this story was told one of 
 the Story-tellers stepped to the table. Taking a 
 piece of paper and a fine pointed pencil, he 
 made an almost invisible dot. 
 
 *^Do yon see that dot!'' he asked. 
 
 Those standing near enongh gazed intently over 
 the paper and said that they could barely see it. 
 
 ''Do you think,'' he went on, ''that you could 
 weigh the amount of lead in that dot? Well, never 
 mind. It weighs three or four billion times as much as 
 what I am going to talk about — the electron. You 
 have heard so much of the big things in the world that 
 it will be a change to hear of the very smallest. 
 
 "We speak of an 'atom' of anything, meaning a 
 very small quantity. Until recently the atom was re- 
 garded as the smallest particle of matter. Its very 
 name means 'indivisible.' But we have lately discov- 
 ered that the atom is very much divisible. We can 
 split it into electrons." 
 
 "What is an electron!" asked one young lady, who 
 had been listening intently. 
 
 "An electron," replied the Story-teller, "is noth- 
 ing more or less than a very minute charge of elec- 
 tricity, and this charge has been formed with a small 
 particle of the all-pervading ether. This is a sub- 
 stance that entirely fills all the space in the universe. 
 Although we cannot smell, see, hear, feel, or taste it, 
 we know that something of this sort must exist, for 
 
 290 
 
STORY OF THE SURGEON 
 
 example, between the sun, the stars, and the earth, in 
 order to convey the waves of light for millions and 
 millions of miles, just as surely as we know that water 
 exists between a rock dropped in the center of a pond 
 and a piece of wood near the shore, bobbing up and 
 down on the waves from that rock. 
 
 *'Now, as I have said, these electrons are negative 
 charges of electricity. I will take five needles, mag- 
 netize them, and stick them through the center of a 
 email cork, in a bowl of water, so that they will float 
 in an upright position, and so that the south pole of 
 each is pointing upward. Everyone of them will move 
 to the side of the dish and seem to try to get just as 
 far away from the others as possible. 
 
 ' ' On the other hand, they will be attracted to a 
 magnet. Now, it is in a very similar way that the 
 electrons, since they allure negative charges, repel 
 each other; but, at the same time, they are supposed 
 to be in motion, and, this motion being circular, they 
 generate a small amount of electricity — on exactly the 
 same principle that it is generated by a large dynamo. 
 This electricity, in turn, is positive, and we can imag- 
 ine a group of electrons revolving in what we might 
 call orbits, resembling, in a very small way, the sun 
 and planets. 
 
 *'In this way, we obtain a body composed of a num- 
 ber of electrons, each of which is negative, but by its 
 motion is generating a positive charge. Each of these 
 electrons traveling at a high rate of speed drags along 
 with it a portion of the surrounding ether — ^much as 
 the swirl of water follows a ship. This group of elec- 
 trons, each with its accompanying portion of ether, 
 forms a body known as the atom. 
 
 ^'It is in this way,'' he continued, impressively, 
 *^that the universe is built up. Thus, we can imagine 
 a certain number of electrons becoming mutually at- 
 
 291 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 tracted in a certain way, having a negative charge, 
 and forming an atom of hydrogen. Then let a large 
 number become grouped in a different form, and with 
 a positive charge, and we have an atom of gold. Is it 
 really any more absurd to think of this than it is to go 
 to a brickyard and see a large number of bricks, and 
 then see a few of these bricks arranged in a certain 
 way to make a sidewalk, while a large number ar- 
 ranged in a different way will make a sky-scraper? 
 
 ^'Now I am going to speak of something eminently 
 practical in connection with electrons. Did you know 
 that X-rays come from them! That is the origin of 
 X-rays, but their nature is a mystery. It may be that 
 the electrons, in their flight, send waves of some sort 
 through the surrounding ether, just as a boat going 
 through water will send waves of water to the shore. 
 Certain it is, that they are not affected in any way by 
 a magnetic force. 
 
 ** X-rays were discovered by Wilhelm Konrad 
 Eoentgen, a Oerman physicist, in 1896; and, in 1901, 
 he received the Nobel prize for physics, in recognition 
 of his discovery. X-rays, as you know, are a method 
 of photographing the unseen; they have, so to speak, 
 the power of ^second sight,' and ignore the surface to 
 delve into what is hidden beneath it. 
 
 ^'When the news of this discovery burst on an as- 
 tonished world, it was quickly realized how inesti- 
 mable its value would be in surgery and medicine. No 
 longer would the doctor have to work in uncertainty. 
 The exact location of a bullet or other foreign sub- 
 stance could be known; a malignant growth could be 
 studied. 
 
 ^'Forthwith this magical apparatus became an ap- 
 purtenance of every well-equipped hospital and part 
 of the outfit of every up-to-date surgeon. Nowhere in 
 the world has the use of the X-ray been more exten- 
 
 292 
 
STORY OF THE SCIENTIST 
 
 sively developed than in the United States; nowhere 
 have their possibilities received more patient and ex- 
 haustive study. 
 
 *^This has been pathetically illustrated in the long 
 list of American martyrs to this department of 
 science. The continual use of these powerful rays 
 causes a mysterious sickness, which often destroys the 
 fingers, before proving fatal. The latest victim was 
 one who has done for this study more than any other 
 man in the country, and, in fact, invented what is 
 known as the X-ray tube — Burton E. Baker, of Hart- 
 ford, Connecticut. 
 
 ^* Almost every day brings fresh evidence of the 
 value of the X-rays in surgery and medicine. One 
 notable result has been the ability to tell with cer- 
 tainty the difference between cancerous and non-can- 
 cerous growths, and hence to know whether an opera- 
 tion is necessary. More than this, the application of 
 the X-rays has succeeded in actually curing cancer. 
 
 *'One of the most extraordinary tests was that 
 made with Dr. J. R. Cocke, of Boston, who had com- 
 pletely lost his sight at the age of three weeks. A 
 particularly powerful current was applied to his head, 
 and various objects were held successively between 
 his head and the glowing tube. At once he described 
 them accurately, though not by name. A bunch of 
 keys, for example, with one longer than the others, 
 he described as a darkness with a straight line in the 
 center and a circle above. 
 
 *^ Needless to say, that army surgeons find much 
 use for the X-rays, and the treatment of the wounded 
 is now very different from what it was when bullets 
 were found only by probing and operation. The 
 wounded man is relieved at once, and so regains 
 his strength rapidly; and the number of deaths from 
 wounds is materially lessened. By a special process, 
 
 293 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 connected with the X-ray, it is possible to ascertain 
 the exact depth of the bullet, and, needless to say, this 
 simplifies the work of extracting it. 
 
 *'An unexpected result followed the application of 
 the X-rays to a negro for lupus, which had affected 
 his nose and a part of his face. It was found that 
 after treatment had been continued daily for over a 
 month, the skin on the affected part had become en- 
 tirely white. The skin was exactly like that of an or- 
 dinary white man, and had simply lost its dark hue, 
 because the rays had destroyed the pigment which 
 caused it. But, according to the doctors, such a change 
 could not be permanent. 
 
 **Now I come to one of the most remarkable tri- 
 umphs of these wonderful rays. You know that it is 
 difficult to find an absolutely certain indication of the 
 presence of death, and many persons have a haunting 
 fear of the fate of premature burial. Now the matter 
 seems to be set at rest. In the case of a living person, 
 the abdominal organs are invisible under the rays, but 
 are clearly seen in the case of the dead. 
 
 ** Multifarious, indeed,'' said the Story-teller in 
 conclusion, **are the uses to which this new invention 
 is being put. Post-offices use it to detect smuggling 
 in registered letters ; the rays are flashed onto oysters, 
 to discover any possible pearls within, and into eggs, 
 to test their status as edibles. A Cincinnati man an- 
 nounces that he can save four months' time by tan- 
 ning hides by means of them. These mysterious rays 
 will, I have no doubt, influence human life more and 
 more in the future, as new possibilities for their use 
 are discovered. We live in a world of revelation. ' ' 
 
 294 
 
THE STORY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER 
 
 WHO RECORDS THE WORLD'S 
 
 EVENTS 
 
 A BLINDING flash of light swept through the 
 room. There was a loud report like that of an 
 explosion. 
 
 ''Thank you!'' exclaimed a young woman, who 
 stood behind a camera under the arch leading from the 
 librarian's study. *'I trust that we have secured an 
 excellent photograph of these distinguished Story- 
 tellers." 
 
 A ripple of laughter passed over the gathering. 
 
 ''Tell us the story of the camera," pleaded several 
 of the feminine celebrities. 
 
 "It is a wonder story, I assure you," exclaimed 
 the young woman photographer. ' ' Through this inno- 
 cent-looking little lens the scenes of the earth have 
 been brought before our eyes, the faces of the peoples 
 of all nations and climes are preserved for the genera- 
 tions. It is one of the greatest factors in our modern 
 life. To-day we can sit among our photographs and 
 look up the world's events." 
 
 "When did photography commence!" interrupted 
 some one. 
 
 "It had its origin," replied the Story-teller, "in 
 the 'camera obscura.' The first camera was literally a 
 room, darkened, with the exception of a small hole in 
 the window shutter, through which the sun shone on 
 the whitened surface of the wall within, which received 
 the faint, inverted image of outside scenes. This was 
 20 295 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 the invention of Giambattista della Porta, an Italian 
 philosopher, in the latter half of the sixteenth century. 
 In 1727, J. H. Schultze, a German, who has become 
 known as the ' Columbus of photography, ' obtained the 
 first actual photographic copies of writing. Various 
 experiments were made with chloride of silver, but 
 little progress was made until, in 1814, Joseph Niepce, 
 a Frenchman, succeeded in producing permanent pic- 
 tures by a process which he called heliography. In 
 1832, another Frenchman, Daguerre, invented the fa- 
 mous process, called ^daguerreotype' after him, which 
 consisted in exposing a metal plate covered with silver 
 solution. Subsequently he developed in a darkened 
 room the impression, which was rendered permanent 
 by special chemical treatment." 
 
 **Is it known of what actual person the first photo 
 was taken?'' asked some one. 
 
 **Yes, positively," replied the Story-teller. **It 
 was an American woman, Dorothy Draper, who was 
 photographed by her brother, John W. Draper, in 
 1840. 
 
 *^Up to that time," she continued, '* metal alone had 
 been employed in photography, but about 1850 sen- 
 sitized paper began to be used, and the era of modern 
 photography commenced. Since then, the art has been 
 perfected in various ways, and it has become inti- 
 mately connected with many sciences, especially physi- 
 ology and astronomy. 
 
 * ^ I wish to mention an important fact in connection 
 with the part played by Americans in the develop- 
 ment of photography. About the middle of last cen- 
 tury Mathew Brady began a series of experiments in 
 out-door photography, and later carried it out in prac- 
 tice, on the outbreak of the Civil War. He accompanied 
 the troops from place to place, and, for the first time in 
 history, photographs were taken of the actual scenes 
 
 296 
 
STORY OF THE CAMERA 
 
 of the battlefields. Painters have frequently depicted 
 memorable battles, but the scenes of the American 
 Civil War alone live in a series of pictures of absolute 
 fidelity to life. 
 
 ** Another important American development was 
 the development of the ^ kodak' or hand camera, which 
 first appeared in 1888. The first instrument was a rec- 
 tangular box covered with black leather, six inches 
 long. In one end was a round hole over which a shut- 
 ter was operated by a push button and a spring wound 
 up by a pull cord. In the recent forms, the cord has 
 been abolished and the shutter is moved by a lever. 
 
 *^That which led the way to the introduction of 
 the kodak and the displacement of glass plates as a 
 necessity in photography, was the invention of the 
 ^film.' This is a paper backing coated with soluble 
 gelatine covered with a sensitive gelatine emulsion 
 made insoluble by chrome alum, patented in 1884. This 
 film is wound inside a backing of black paper upon the 
 ^carrying spool,' a flanged wooden cylinder, and the 
 end fastened by a * gummed sticker. ' The ends of the 
 black paper pass so far beyond the film that it is safely 
 protected. This arrangement made possible daylight 
 photography and practically revolutionized the art. 
 
 *^The kodak has popularized photography. Its 
 lightness especially recommends it. A cartridge of 
 twelve exposures, 4x5 inches, weighs 2% ounces, while 
 glass plates for the same picture would not be less 
 than 3 pounds. Besides the cartridges are mailable 
 and many may be developed at the same time, while 
 for its protection each glass plate must be developed 
 by itself. The films because of their orthochromatic 
 and non-halation qualities, that is, freedom from * fog- 
 ging' or blurring, due to the reflection of light rays 
 from the back of the negative, have added to the pos- 
 sibility of amateur photography. This is easily un- 
 
 297 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 derstood when it is considered that a plate is 19 times 
 thicker than a film. 
 
 *'The American kodak will take pictures from the 
 size of a miniature up to 5x7 inches, and from two 
 to twelve may be taken upon a film. The ' double two ' 
 cartridge gives an opportunity to take two pictures, 
 remove the roll which they have made, leaving the 
 balance for the future, or take all four before removal. 
 The camera boxes are made of wood and aluminum, 
 and some, as in the case of the pocket kodaks, entirely 
 of aluminum. A telescopic extension of the lens has 
 reduced the thickness of the pocket camera to the size 
 of the book. Some kodaks mil use either plates or 
 films. Photographs are successfully taken with the 
 tele-photo attachment. The instrument is capable of 
 instantaneous, time exposure, landscape, portraiture, 
 flash light, and panorama work. 
 
 *^The kodak has played an important part in illus- 
 trating war scenes. It was used in the war in Cuba, 
 in South Africa, in the Philippines, in Korea and Man- 
 churia. One of the great weeklies reports that 90% 
 of the war pictures were upon films. The kodak does 
 excellent work in tonality, correctness of line, and in 
 composition. It is the solace of the traveler, it ideal- 
 izes the commonplace and ordinary, and it perpetuates 
 home life. It is essentially suited for the amateur, as, 
 in connection with it was devised a new method of 
 developing negatives, so that any persons may accom- 
 plish what was once a work of very difficult attain- 
 ment. In fact, all the means and appliances in con- 
 nection ^vith the kodak are most simple and effective. 
 To quote from a statement that has been made: ^Ko- 
 daking is photography with the bother left out. ' This 
 invention enriched the language with several new 
 terms. Besides the name of the instrument, we have 
 the verb, *to kodak.' The words * cartridge' and ^film' 
 
 298 
 
STORY OF THE CAMERA 
 
 have been given an added significance. *To shoot/ and 
 *snap shot/ referring to the operation of the camera, 
 have new meaning, and the term Ho develop' as well 
 as the names of new photographic material all have 
 given lis an idea of the sudden change in the meanings 
 and uses of words that is possible in a language.'' 
 
 *'Who was the inventor?" asked some one. 
 
 *^ George Eastman," replied the Story-teller, ^^who 
 was born in Waterville, Oneida County, N. Y., July 
 12, 1854. He started experiments in photography, es- 
 pecially with dry plates, and, in 1884, he invented the 
 first pliable photographic film. As an instrument for 
 its use became necessary, he devised the kodak camera 
 and the developing innovations naturally followed. The 
 introduction of the Eastman bromide papers made an- 
 other new departure in photography. The first pic- 
 tures from kodaks were about 2% inches in diameter 
 and were developed in Rochester, N. Y. It was the 
 kodak that gave rise to the phrase ^You press the 
 button, we do the rest,' which had considerable prev- 
 alence. In 1902 the kodak developing machine, en- 
 abling the development of negatives in daytime, made 
 an important improvement. The next year came the 
 non-curling film, and about the same time the cartridge 
 device and black paper backing. One American fac- 
 tory devoted to the manufacture of films and like prod- 
 ucts, covers 25 acres, called Kodak Park. It employs 
 11,000 hands and has wholesale offices in England, 
 Scotland, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, 
 Australia, Canada, and in the United States at New 
 York, Chicago, and San Francisco. The kodak, in fact, 
 has leaped into popularity and overspread the world. 
 It has made possible the wonders of modern photog- 
 raphy. ' ' 
 
 299 
 
THE STORY OF THE MATHEMATICIANS 
 WHO COUNT OUR POPULATION 
 
 THE business man sank wearily into a chair, say- 
 ing: '^I am completely exhausted to-night. I 
 have just finished the annual inventory of my 
 property, figures are swimming before my eyes, and 
 my hands are crippled by ^writer's cramp.' '' 
 
 *^You ought to use the modern methods," said an- 
 other Story-teller, whose eyes were shaded by eye- 
 glasses and whose face bore a studious expression. 
 *^Come to my office in the Census Bureau in Washing- 
 ton, and I will show you the machinery which makes 
 it possible for the Government to gather and digest and 
 distribute broadcast nearly four billion facts relating 
 to our more than 100,000,000 American population and 
 all their activities." 
 
 *'Can you tell us about it now?" cried a half dozen 
 voices. 
 
 **I will give you a brief description," the census 
 man replied. *^But you must visit Washington and 
 see for yourselves how we do it. Did you know that 
 the United States was the first nation in the world 
 to make a periodical enumeration of its population? 
 And did you know that our last census has been pro- 
 nounced the most wonderful and most stupendous 
 handling of figures ever known? That our nation 
 presents a phenomenon without a parallel in history 
 is the opinion of the eminent French statistician, 
 Moreau de Jonnes — 'that of a people who instituted 
 the statistics of their country on the very day when 
 
 300 
 
STORY OF THE CENSUS 
 
 they founded their government, and who regulated 
 by the same instrument the census of inhabitants, 
 their civil and political rights, and the destinies of the 
 nation. ' 
 
 ' ^ To-day the American Census Bureau is the great- 
 est of its kind in the world. But it had humble be- 
 ginnings. Our first official census in 1790 required but 
 one question on one subject — that was, how many 
 people live in the United States ? Although they were 
 not required by law to do so, the enumerators also 
 included among their questions those of color, sex, 
 and the age of all males over 16. That census cost 
 $44,000 and President Washington was able to report 
 to Congress on March 3, 1792, that there were 3,929,214 
 inhabitants. These published returns filled a 56-page 
 volume. Just one hundred years later, the census 
 takers made 13,000 inquiries upon thirty-one different 
 subjects, and among other things found that our popu- 
 lation had increased to 62,947,714 persons. These re- 
 sults occupied 21,000 printed pages, and the total 
 census cost about $12,000,000.'' 
 
 ^'How do you gather all those four billion facts 
 you mentioned f asked some one. 
 
 *^ Surely you haven't forgotten the month of April 
 in 1910!" exclaimed the speaker. ^^ Don't you remem- 
 ber that one of your fellow-townsmen came to your 
 door and asked all kinds of questions about you and 
 your family? Well, there were about 70,000 other in- 
 quisitors doing the same in all parts of our domain. 
 Nearly 330 others supervised their work. 
 
 **That was only the preliminary work," the speaker 
 continued. *^A11 of your answers were carefully noted 
 by the enumerator and later found their way into 
 the central office of the Census Bureau in Washing- 
 ton. I wonder how our friend the manufacturer would 
 feel to receive those schedules from over 100,000,000 
 
 301 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 people and y/as requested to find out from them how 
 many married men and women there were in the coun- 
 try, or how many farmers there were in, say, Missouri, 
 over 16 years of age? 
 
 *^Our paternal government is more inquisitive than 
 Lot's wife. When it sends out its enumerators, it in- 
 structs each one to ask twenty questions of every in- 
 dividual in the country. That is only one subject. 
 Then comes agriculture — the acreage of farms, im- 
 proved and unimproved, the value, the owner or ren- 
 ter, whether mortgaged, the value of farm machinery, 
 stock and buildings, besides the crops, in fact about 
 everything connected with the farming industry. The 
 manufacturers and other industrial owners and man- 
 agers are quizzed along the same lines. Then a census 
 is taken of all dead persons, of persons defective in 
 sight, hearing, or speech, of crime and criminals, of 
 financial and social statistics of cities of over 30,000 
 inhabitants — and scores of other questions too numer- 
 ous to mention here. 
 
 ^^Each one of these inquiries represents a fact, and 
 these total in the approximate aggregate, as I said 
 before, about four billion. Can you conceive of any 
 mortal, or a crew a thousand strong, being able to 
 sit down with a pencil and reams of paper and digest- 
 ing these facts and totaling them before it is time to 
 take another census? We have found that it is im- 
 possible by old-fashioned methods. 
 
 *' Still, we are able to analyze this tremendous 
 amount of statistics in the time allowed, and for this 
 miracle — it is, indeed, a miracle — we are indebted to 
 the genius of an American, a former employee in the 
 Census Bureau, Dr. Herman Hollerith. This genius 
 invented two wonderful machines which are equipped 
 with steel brains and are operated by electricity. 
 
 * * They are wizards ! ' ' exclaimed the speaker. ^ ^ One 
 
 302 
 
STORY OF THE CENSUS 
 
 machine, the ^puncher,' which resembles a typewriter, 
 will take each and every fact about the person noted 
 on the big schedule sheet filled up by the enumerator 
 and records those facts by series of holes punched 
 through a card not much larger than your open hand. 
 Another machine will take these cards and not only 
 count the cards — each one represents an individual — 
 but intelligently separates the facts into many differ- 
 ent groups and sums up the totals of those groups. 
 
 ^ ' They to all intents and purposes think, and think 
 more accurately and quickly than a human being can. 
 When you come to Washington, just follow one of 
 those schedule sheets and the record card; you will 
 witness miracles that excel those of the alchemists 
 of the Middle Ages. The schedule goes to the ^puncher,' 
 where the operator presses down those keys of the 
 machine which correspond with facts on the sheet. 
 All possible inquiries have their symbol keys. For 
 instance, ^Wf^ indicates wife, *F^ the sex, ^25' the 
 age, *W' the color, ^M' married, ^Mo' place of resi- 
 dence, ^ Ger ' place of birth — and so on until all facts are 
 recorded. This done, the operator pushes a button on 
 the machine which releases the electric power that 
 simultaneously punches those record holes through the 
 record card lying within the machine. 
 
 *^This machine does the work which was formerly 
 performed by twelve clerks, and it makes no mistakes. 
 It will perform as many as a thousand different group- 
 ings of the facts in the one operation, if that many 
 groupings are desired. 
 
 ^^The next operation is the sorting of the record 
 cards by an electrical device by which cards with 
 holes indicating what they represent, for instance, 
 native white persons, are segregated from those rep- 
 resenting the foreign born whites and from those rep- 
 resenting negroes. Similarly, the cards can be sorted 
 
 303 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 by sex, age, marital condition, or thousands of other 
 characteristics. 
 
 '^But the real wizard," said the census man, ^'is 
 the tabulating machine, which lays claim to the title 
 by doing not only what formerly it required thousands 
 of clerks to do in the old way, but by doing the work 
 in a period shorter by ten times. And not only that, 
 but this marvelous electrical genius is able to do what 
 the thousands of clerks under the old regime were 
 never able to find time to attempt to do. 
 
 *^The machine as a whole resembles a roll-top desk. 
 On the table part rest two brass plates hinged so that 
 the upper plate can be raised at right angles to the 
 other. Where the pigeonholes of an ordinary desk 
 would be, are many little dials, sometimes as many 
 as eighty to a machine. The clerk takes the record 
 card and places it upon the lower plate, which has 
 tiny holes half-filled with mercury and corresponding 
 in position to each symbol printed upon the record 
 card. The operator then closes the upper plate upon 
 the card, and needles, corresponding in number and 
 position to the holes on the lower plate and the sym- 
 bols upon the card, begin to drop. Of course, where 
 there is no opening in the card, the needles cannot 
 penetrate into the mercury cups — but, where there are 
 holes, they do go through and form an electric circuit 
 when they enter the mercury. As by magic, each 
 pointer on the dials moves forward one space and 
 registers or counts one for each hole in the card. 
 
 ^*The machine is uncanny in its intelligence. It 
 will tell you, accurately and quickly, whether marriage 
 is more fashionable and children more numerous in 
 one state or another. When the cards are being 
 counted by the machine, they are also distributed ac- 
 cording to any desired grouping. Say you want to 
 separate the cards according to states. The operator 
 
 304 
 
STORY OF THE CENSUS 
 
 adjusts his machine, and, as the needle thrusts through 
 the hole on the card, say, for New York State, the 
 metal cover of the New York compartment in a box 
 standing at the operator's elbow flies open to receive 
 the card, after which it closes automatically. This 
 box contains compartments for all the states — or by 
 changing the labels on the boxes they can be made into 
 compartments dividing up the earth into countries. 
 
 ^'All this sounds complicated," said the census 
 man, apologetically, '^and looks as though it must re- 
 quire a great deal of time to count, tabulate, add, and 
 group a half dozen cards. But it doesn't. The aver- 
 age operator can perform all those mathematical feats 
 at the rate of 3,500 cards an hour, or about 23,000 
 a census office working day, which consists of six and 
 a half hours. There are some twenty facts to each 
 card — so that means that we can count, tabulate, add, 
 and group on one machine more than 450,000 facts 
 every working day. 
 
 ^'That is the reason,'' said the census man, in con- 
 clusion, 'Hhat we of the modern generation can take 
 inventory of the entire nation and its multitudinous 
 activities and details and within a comparatively short 
 time answer almost any question you ask us about 
 Americans — for instance, how many lady blacksmiths 
 or lady preachers there are in our nation." 
 
 ''How many are there?" shouted some one. 
 
 The Story-teller picked up a red-bound book and, 
 after a momentary search, replied: 
 
 ''Exactly 193 of the former in 1900, and 3,373 of 
 the latter in the same year!" 
 
 305 
 
THE STORY OF THE DIVER WHO 
 
 WALKS ON THE BOTTOM OF 
 
 THE SEA 
 
 (( 
 
 I 
 
 DOUBT/' remarked a gaunt, weather-beaten 
 man, who had hitherto spoken little, ''whether 
 any of you would care to take my job." The 
 curiosity of the audience was aroused at once. 
 
 ''Would you like to hear my story?" he continued. 
 *'I'm a worker in Davy Jones' locker, if you know 
 what that is. I am a diver. I work amongst dead 
 men, with no other companions than the fish, who 
 make themselves sociable enough in all conscience, 
 staring inquisitively through the eye windows of my 
 helmet and nibbling at my fingers, as if they were bait. 
 I am sent down to examine wrecks and to recover 
 bodies and treasure. I've seen plenty of strange 
 things, but nothing to what I might see if it were not 
 for one thing — the pressure of the water. 
 
 "Even at the depth at which we generally work, 
 about 30 to 100 feet, we have to be weighted down, 
 to resist this pressure, which is reckoned at about a 
 ton to the square inch in every 6,000 feet. At 15,000 
 feet — nearly half the depth of the ocean at its deepest 
 point — the pressure is equal to that of 30 locomotive 
 engines." 
 
 "What is the greatest depth of the sea!" asked 
 one of the audience. 
 
 "Exactly 31,614 feet, or just 66 feet short of six 
 miles," answered the diver. "If Mount Everest, the 
 highest mountain in the world, were sunk at that 
 
 306 
 
STORY OF THE DEEP SEA 
 
 point, which is in the Pacific Ocean, near our posses- 
 sion of Guam, it would have nearly half a mile of 
 water over it. 
 
 *'The bottom of the ocean is a practically un- 
 explored wonderland. The temperature is icy cold, 
 and no ray of sunlight ever penetrates. The pressure 
 of the water, of which I have spoken, is enormous 
 there. You may wonder whether any life can exist un- 
 der such conditions. 
 
 * ' Our know^ledge of deep sea life is very imperfect. 
 But we may say that the ocean depths are the refuge 
 of the failures in the great battle of existence, which 
 goes on as relentlessly in the water as on land. The 
 fish which have been driven down by their stronger 
 rivals are for the most part, curious, uncouth crea- 
 tures. Nature, indeed, seems to have run riot in the 
 production of these strange monsters. She seems to 
 have lost all sense of proportion. Some of them are 
 all body; some are all mouth. Some eel-like species 
 have jaws longer than the entire extent of the trunk. 
 The black swallower, like many of its kind, has a 
 stomach that is enormously distensible. A specimen 
 has been brought to the surface containing within its 
 paunch the body of a much larger fish which it had 
 swallowed. 
 
 ''Some of the deep-sea fishes seem to be enlarged 
 reproductions of smaller fishes of the same species 
 which exist in shallower waters. The monocaulus, 
 which is ordinarily from two to three inches in length, 
 attains a length of three feet below the depth of two 
 thousand fathoms, as though this were the habitat 
 best suited to its development. Most of the fishes 
 taken at great depths have been comparatively small, 
 but it is surmised that, with enlarged dredge nets, 
 greater ones may be taken. A 'ribbon-fish' twenty- 
 four feet long has been captured. The organs of these 
 
 307 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 fish have become adapted to their new conditions. 
 Thus, down to a certain depth their eyes have become 
 greatly enlarged, to make the best of the scanty rays 
 of light that may penetrate there. Lower down the 
 eyes are still further enlarged, or in some species they 
 disappear and are replaced by enormously long feelers. 
 But at the very bottom Nature, as though weary of 
 darkness and ugliness, peoples these regions with 
 things of beauty and illuminates them with a brilliant 
 blaze of light.'' 
 
 A slight exclamation of astonishment came from 
 the auditors. 
 
 **You are naturally surprised,'' said the Story- 
 teller. *^If you could only descend to those abysmal 
 depths, you would find yourselves in a veritable fairy- 
 land. You would see their denizens glowing with 
 phosphorescent light. Some of them have two parallel 
 rows of small, circular phosphorescent organs running 
 along the whole length of their bodies. The shellfish 
 glow with light, and the corals emit a soft glimmer. 
 There are forms of exquisite beauty and rich coloring, 
 all brilliantly lit up. Here a sea lily rears it grace- 
 ful head, there a dainty creature in the form of an 
 electric light bulb diffuses radiance. Strange to say, all 
 these creatures can resist the enormous pressure of the 
 water about them, and cannot live in lesser depths. 
 
 '*Did you ever hear of anything falling upward f 
 Some deep-sea fish get killed that way. They are pro- 
 vided with air-inflated swimming bladders, and if one 
 of them chance, in chasing its prey, to ascend too high, 
 its bladder becomes distended with the decreased pres- 
 sure and carries it still higher, with fatal consequences. 
 
 ^^What does the bed of the ocean look like? Mostly 
 like a vast plain, but here and there are mountains of 
 quite respectable size. The first of these mountains 
 was discovered in 1832, and many have been located 
 
 308 
 
STORY OF THE DEEP SEA 
 
 since. There is not a trace of a sunken ship or of a 
 drowned man. A thick, bluish slime covers everything. 
 And here is another of Nature's surprises. This ooze 
 consists, as may be seen under the microscope, of a 
 mass of exquisitely formed shells ! 
 
 *^Did you know," asked the diver, **that there are 
 rivers under the ocean? In some parts of the world 
 springs of fresh water rise from the ocean bed; in 
 other parts they flow under the sea until they come to 
 the surface on some island. The crew of a cable ship 
 were once surprised to find, near Cape Verde, swamp 
 vegetation continually rising to the surface. It was 
 afterward discovered that a small river in West 
 Africa, which disappears in a fresh water swamp, finds 
 its way by an underground channel into the Atlantic, 
 to which it conveys this vegetation. 
 
 * * The charting of the ocean, ' ' exclaimed the Story- 
 teller, *4s a mighty task and one worthy of an Amer- 
 ican sailor. Captain Matthew Fontaine Maury had 
 made a hobby of collecting sailors' logs, and the pro- 
 posals which he made for the systematic investigation 
 of the ocean's wonders were placed before two inter- 
 national congresses held at Brussels and London, in 
 1853 and 1873. The Hydrographic Office at Wash- 
 ington was interested in furthering deep-sea explora- 
 tion, and by the year 1888 had collected 3,800 logs, 
 with 3,200,000 entries, containing amongst other ma- 
 terial a number of interesting facts and data relating 
 to the depths of the ocean. 
 
 ^'Like every other science, this one required the 
 development of mechanical means for its pursuit. 
 Captain Maury replaced the hempen lines which had 
 been used for sounding with strong twine to the end 
 of which a cannon shot was attached. When the bot- 
 tom was reached the twine was cut, and the depth was 
 estimated from what remained. In 1855 Maury made 
 
 309 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 the first chart of the depths of the Atlantic between 
 latitude 52 north and latitude 10 south. 
 
 ^'The laying of the ocean cables gave an impetus 
 to the study of the ocean bed. America has the honor 
 of having both inaugurated this study and of having 
 produced the largest number of discoveries. The 
 United States Coast Survey has had vessels engaged 
 upon this work since 1870, and the United States Fish 
 Commission has not lagged behind. In 1900 the Fish 
 Commission's steamship Albatross brought back the 
 largest number of deep-sea specimens ever taken. 
 Nearly six thousand soundings were made, and two 
 thousand hauls taken with the dredge from Newfound- 
 land to Behring Sea, along the American shores, and 
 also off Japan and in the Pacific. The dredge, or beam 
 trawl, I may tell you, consists of an iron frame, to 
 which is attached a bag twenty feet long. Fishes, sea- 
 urchins, starfish, squids, coral growths — all are meat 
 to the dredge. The Albatross took ten hours to haul 
 up one collection from a depth of 4,173 fathoms. 
 
 ^^ There are also the 'tangle,' consisting of bunches 
 of shredded rope attached to iron bars, for scooping up 
 samples of the sea's bed, and the gill-net. The gill- 
 net is so devised that fishes which swim into it are 
 caught by the gills and imprisoned there. The 
 Albatross caught fish with a net set a depth of a mile. 
 
 *'But we are only at the beginning of deep-sea ex- 
 ploration," said the diver, in conclusion. ''Who knows 
 but that we may in the near future discover all kinds 
 of monsters in those awful ocean depths? Perhaps 
 the famed Leviathan may be taking his pastime 
 therein. Perhaps the veritable Sea-serpent may be 
 causing havoc among the lesser fry. At any rate it is 
 a field full of alluring possibilities." 
 
 310 
 
Copyright bj' Underwood & Underwood. 
 
 SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF LONG LIFE 
 
 Visit to the laboratory of Dr. Alexis Carrel, while he is making a microscopic 
 
 examination into the creative forces of life. His wonderful discovery 
 
 that living tissues and organs could be transplanted to take 
 
 the places of diseased members, brought the Nobel 
 
 prize to America for the first time. — See page 260. 
 
THE STORY OF THE PLOWMAN AS 
 HE DROPS HIS SEED IN RICH EARTH 
 
 " \ NATION without a plow is like a house built 
 
 Jy^ on sand — it will crumble into decay.'' The 
 
 words of the speaker, a modern Cincinnatus, 
 
 mighty in limbs and body and with keen, flashing eyes, 
 
 shaded by shaggy brows, challenged the Story-tellers. 
 
 *^It is the plow that tells the story of civilization 
 more eloquently than any other agency having to do 
 with the building of nations," he declared. *^ Hindoo 
 legends, the writings of the Vedic bards, say that the 
 ancient Acvins taught its use to Mantu, the first man. 
 The Egyptians say that Osiris, the son of Leb (the 
 earth) was the inventor. 
 
 **Many nations have glorified the plow in religion 
 and legend. None, perhaps, more poetically than the 
 Hindoos, when they celebrate Sita, the spouse of 
 Rama, rising brown and beauteous, from the plowed 
 field. She is herself the furrow (Sita) personified. 
 
 ^*It probably will surprise you to know that, in 
 this age of American forty-gang plows drawn by ma- 
 chinery, the ancient plow of Babylonians and Egyp- 
 tians still turns the furrow in various parts of the 
 world. The ancient forked stick, drawn by camels or 
 oxen, still plows the plains of Sharon, outside of Pal- 
 estine, just as a similar instrument turns the earth in 
 the highlands of Mexico, or even on the farms of Mo- 
 have Indians in our own Southwest. 
 
 **But my story has to do with the modern plow. 
 There are legions of American plowmen, probably 
 21 311 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 10,000,000, who go into the fields every spring and 
 with their modern plows turn up empires of rich 
 earth. What a mighty army of modern Israel Put- 
 nams they would make! And probably among their 
 number could be found a leader to equal the states- 
 manship and battlefield strategy of that Eoman far- 
 mer-statesman, Cincinnatus. 
 
 **In the decade preceding the beginning of the 
 American Civil War American plowmen were mostly 
 using the English wooden moldboard plow, equipped 
 with an iron point. At that time they were plowing 
 an area of land which was larger than the entire coim- 
 try of Sweden. Sixty years later, or in 1910, the era 
 of modern plows had dawned, and our plowmen were 
 turning over every year an area four times greater, 
 or nearly as large as the whole of Mexico. Our crops 
 in that time increased from about $2,000,000,000 to 
 nearly $10,000,000,000. That is the magic of the mod- 
 ern plow, without which these tremendous crops 
 could never have been planted. 
 
 ^* Modern American genius has improved the plow 
 in two ways — ^in the method of drawing it, and in the 
 form of the implement itself. It was an American, 
 Charles Newbold, a native of New Jersey, who began 
 the evolution of the plow from its old-time wooden 
 moldboard, shod with iron, in 1797. He devised a cast- 
 iron plowshare, with wooden beam and handles. It 
 was the first step forward, but did not meet with favor 
 because, when the point wore out, the whole share had 
 to be replaced, entailing great expense. 
 
 *^The plow has had eminent disciples. Ancient 
 kings and statesmen have operated them and studied 
 their defects with a view of improving them. The dis- 
 tinguished Thomas Jefferson, even while he per- 
 formed the duties of Vice-president of the nation un- 
 der Washington, in 1798, studied the plow from scien- 
 
 312 
 
STORY OF THE PLOWMAN 
 
 tific standpoints and published his discoveries in re- 
 lation to moldboards in that year. While Perry was 
 defeating the British ships on Lake Erie, another 
 American, Richard Chenaworth of Baltimore, made 
 the next step forward in plow-making, improving 
 upon Newbold^s plow by casting the point and mold- 
 board in separate parts. 
 
 *^Two years before the first complete railroad 
 joined the Mississippi with the Atlantic, the real se- 
 cret of the plow had been discovered. This genius 
 was the American, James Oliver, of Indiana, who be- 
 gan, in the year 1855, to manufacture his famous 
 chilled iron plow, which successfully resisted the 
 wearing power of the earth and automatically scoured 
 itself, as it passed under the ground. 
 
 ^^The plowman is a sympathetic individual. He 
 had witnessed the hard toil of his animals, when they 
 pulled the plow, and tried to lessen the labor. The 
 first effort was to harness steam power to it, the first 
 plow of this kind appearing in 1769, the invention of 
 Francis More. Nearly a century later, in 1844, ap- 
 peared the first patented * sulky plow,' invented by H. 
 Brown and consisting simply of a plow mounted on 
 wheels and drawn by horses. It was the beginning 
 of a new era in plowing, for it made possible the use 
 of revolving discs in place of the share. They are in- 
 genious machines, cutting into the ground, raising the 
 loosened earth, turning it over, and pulverizing it as 
 it falls. Simultaneously metal pieces scrape the earth 
 from the discs to prevent their clogging. 
 
 ** While Grant was besieging Petersburg in the 
 American Civil War, the first steam plow was oper- 
 ated in America. It consisted simply of a steam en- 
 gine standing stationary in a field, drawing the plow 
 back and forth by ropes attached and traveling over 
 a drum. Next another genius conceived the idea of 
 
 313 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 bringing the road-roller into the field, or an engine 
 similar to it. To this the plows, either moldboard or 
 disc, were attached. Two plows were used first, and 
 then more added, until ten, twenty, and even thirty 
 plows were hauled by one engine cutting parallel fur- 
 rows across the field. Then the climax was reached 
 when recently forty-four plows were attached and 
 turned up the same number of furrows in any kind of 
 soil. This mighty machine, operated by only two men, 
 can do more work than was done formerly by forty- 
 four men and eighty-eight horses. It travels at the 
 average rate of twenty-five miles a day. 
 
 *^This is the wonderful machine which has made 
 possible the vast wheat fields of Western America. 
 In the springtime it is an inspiring sight to look upon 
 the monster ^caterpillar,' as it is familiarly called, 
 starting to turn a 30,000-acre field. It often performs 
 three operations at once. Behind the tractor engine 
 come the plows, steadily performing their work, while 
 attached behind them are modern harrows to smooth 
 the upturned earth, and behind the harrows come the 
 mechanical seeders, dropping the grain in the fur- 
 row. ' ' 
 
 The plowman hesitated. 
 
 **Now that you know my story," he said, *^I trust 
 that whenever you see a plowman in the fields you 
 will remember that these are the men who turn the 
 sod for the planting of the seeds that sustain civiliza- 
 tion. Whether he walks behind a hand plow in the 
 furrow, or rides the great, groaning steam plows of 
 the modern days, the plowman always has been and 
 always will be a mighty man." 
 
 314 
 
THE STORY OF THE REAPER IN THE 
 EMPIRE OF GOLDEN GRAIN 
 
 THE agriculturist, as tie stood before the seated 
 Story-tellers, appeared like the reincarnation 
 of Hercules. His massive head, crowned with a 
 silvery thatch of hair, rested upon broad, powerful 
 shoulders. His mighty thighs and brawny arms gave 
 hints of great strength. 
 
 ^^My story, the story of reaping,'' he said, ** begins 
 at the threshold of humanity. Poets have sung its 
 praise, painters have immortalized it on canvas, kings 
 have created empires and kingdoms upon it — and the 
 masses have lived upon it since the Garden of Eden. 
 
 ' ' Cain and Abel probably were the pioneer reapers 
 and they have been followed by countless millions 
 through the succeeding generations. They began the 
 song of the reaper, which has swelled in our modern 
 generation into a full-throated chorus, an anthem of 
 the harvest in the food-fields of the world. 
 
 **The modern American reaper is as unlike the 
 reaper of Biblical times, and earlier, as the wooden- 
 wheeled ox-cart is unlike the twentieth century loco- 
 motive. The sickle of those days has been replaced 
 by mighty combined harvesting and threshing ma- 
 chines. Without these modern harvesting machines, 
 our nation wouM be a land of small rural districts — 
 our mighty cities could scarcely exist." 
 
 ** Isn't that a broad claim?" inquired one skeptic. 
 
 ^^Not at all," calmly replied the speaker. ^^You 
 only have to refer to our own history for the evidence. 
 
 315 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when our 
 modern farm machinery was not known, 97 per cent 
 of the Americans were compelled to work farms to 
 raise enough food for themselves and stock. Then 
 there were only six cities with populations of over 
 8,000 souls. One century later, through our modern 
 farm machinery, only 37 per cent of the Americans 
 were required to work the farms, and they were pro- 
 ducing not only ten bushels of wheat for every Amer- 
 ican, but were also able to export farm products val- 
 ued at $950,000,000. The remaining 63 per cent of our 
 population, released from farm work by modern ma- 
 chinery, were able to live and work in the urban dis- 
 tricts, and, at the close of the century, had reared 484 
 cities, each of whose populations exceeded 8,000 
 people. 
 
 ^'That is the magic of modern farm machinery. 
 Our forefathers cut their grain with the sickle, just 
 as mankind had been doing since the beginning of 
 agriculture. Some used the scythe, introduced to agri- 
 culture by the Romans. They all separated the ker- 
 nel from the stalk with a flail, a method still in use in 
 those countries which have not adopted the modem 
 American machinery. I am reminded of that mighty 
 American Hercules, who, in 1857, leveled, with a 
 scythe which cut a swath 11 feet wide and 5 feet deep 
 with each stroke, twelve and a half acres of grain in 
 one day — the world's record, so far as is known. You 
 will appreciate this mighty feat when I say that the 
 average reaper usually cut between three and four 
 acres in a day ; and also that it kept four men busy for 
 two days to bind up the 4,380 sheaves which the giant 
 Teaper had cut between sunrise and sunset. These 
 sheaves yielded 262 bushels of grain. 
 
 ** To-day we have machines which not only perform 
 ten times the work of the mighty reaper of 1857, but 
 
 316 
 
STORY OF THE REAPER 
 
 also thresh, winnow, bind the straw in sheaves, and 
 deposit the cleaned kernels in bags ready to be sewed 
 up by hand. Their capacities are about 2,000 bushels 
 a day, and they can harvest between 100 and 150 acres 
 of land. 
 
 *^The first practical reaping machine had its birtH 
 down on a small farm in Rockbridge County, in Vir- 
 ginia. On this same farm, Robert McCormick had 
 attempted to solve the problem, but it remained for 
 his son, Cyrus H. McCormick, to make the first prac- 
 tical machine, in 1831. Though crude in workman- 
 ship, it embraced all the essential features of the mod- 
 ern machine — the divider to separate the standing 
 grain from that to be cut, the revolving reel to press 
 the grain against the cutting blades, and the platform 
 between the two wheels on w^hich the sheaves fell, 
 ready to be bound by hand. 
 
 *^At this time, that other great machine, the 
 thresher, was in its formative stage, being known as 
 the Aground hog' thresher. Six years after the birth 
 of the reaper, the Maine inventors, Hiram and John 
 Pitts, patented their machine of endless belts and 
 beaters, which separated the grain from the straw and 
 chaff and cleaned it. This was improved upon by 
 Cyrus Roberts, of Illinois, in 1856, and it is this ma- 
 chine which embraces the chief features of the modern 
 machine. 
 
 *^The third great harvesting machine, the auto- 
 matic twine-binding harvester, was the invention of 
 John F. Appleby, of Wisconsin, and appeared about 
 the year 1880. To-day these three wonderful ma- 
 chines are combined into one and are harvesting the 
 great grain fields of the Pacific Slope, while the same 
 machines, as separate units, are traveling in batteries 
 of twenty to forty over the wheatfields of the Dakotas 
 and mid-Western states. 
 
 317 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 **It is an inspiring sight to watch the harvest of 
 wheat in the San Joaquin Valley of California, for in- 
 stance. Yellow as gold, with the sheen of the sea, the 
 field billows from sky-line to sky-line. Here comes 
 the huge combination harvester, either drawn by a 
 modern tractor engine or scores of horses. In the lat- 
 ter case, the driver is perched upon what seems to 
 be a ladder thrust at right angles from the ground and 
 out over the horses' backs. At the right side of the 
 machine is seen flashing in the sunlight what appears 
 like a frail, old-fashioned mill wheel, but is in reality 
 the revolving reel which captures the grain and holds 
 it until the knives have performed their work. Under 
 the reel is an endless belt, which receives the cut grain 
 and conveys it into the mysterious interior of the ma- 
 chine, where it is threshed, cleaned, and poured into 
 sacks. The chaff and straw pass in another direction. 
 Thus the machine goes, cutting a swath fourteen feet 
 wide, performing the work of 150 horses under old- 
 time conditions, and leveling each acre of wheat at the 
 average cost of fifty cents — a fraction of the cost by 
 old-fashioned methods. 
 
 '*The farm machinery and implements in the 
 United States represented in 1912 an investment of 
 over $1,000,000,000 — a sum sufficient to pay the ex- 
 penses of running the entire government for a year. 
 
 **The plowman spoke a parting word for his fel- 
 low-workers," remarked the reaper. **Let me ask 
 your consideration for the harvester. He is the man 
 who garners the crops and fills our storehouses to 
 overflowing. We should not forget to pay him hom- 
 
 age." 
 
 :^'! 2 
 
THE STORY OF POWER AND THE 
 MEN WHO HARNESSED NIAGARA 
 
 A POWERFULLY built man, with a heavy jaw, 
 and shoulders like a giant, aroused the curiosity 
 of the Story-tellers. Every line in his face, and 
 every movement of his body, denoted physical force 
 and night. 
 
 ^ 'Power !'^ he ejaculated. '^ That's what moves the 
 world along — power !'* 
 
 The words were spoken with such grufeess that 
 one almost fancied that the walls trembled. 
 
 * 'What is it that turns the wheels of our factories ? ' ' 
 he exclaimed. ''What is it that runs our railroads, 
 that moves our ships, that stands behind every step of 
 human progress? It is man's ability to produce that 
 which we call power. In the early years he took it out 
 of the winds ; then he took it out of the rivers ; in later 
 days he has been digging it out of the earth in the little 
 black nuggets that we call 'coal.' Through this, he 
 has created steam, gas, and electric power for our 
 machinery and our domestic appliances. But in about 
 five hundred years the world will be without coal — 
 then what shall we do?" 
 
 The huge fellow struck the table with his fist in 
 emphasis. 
 
 "Strange to say," he exclaimed, "we shall not even 
 miss it. For we have already found a substitute that 
 is inexhaustible — ^water. What! water take the place 
 of coal? Yes, sir, common, everyday water. There is 
 power enough in our rivers and lakes to keep the world 
 
 319 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 going for ages. This wonderful chapter in the long 
 story of man's conquest of Nature is just beginning. 
 We are setting water to work for us ; we are turning 
 its energy into power that we can use in a thousand 
 ways for thousands of years." 
 
 *^What can we do with water?" he asked, and then, 
 answering his own question, replied, ''Anything and 
 everything! With this power we can generate elec- 
 tricity; and thereby we can do all that we have been 
 doing by means of coal, and many new things that the 
 minds of men will conceive. 
 
 ''Let us look at this map of the United States," he 
 said, unrolling a long canvas. "Note the rivers, great 
 and small, threading their way everywhere through 
 the land. The force hidden in those rivers alone is 
 equal to about twenty-five million horse-power. When 
 we say 'horse-power,' we assume that one horse can 
 raise 33,000 pounds one foot per minute. Now, ten 
 million such horses could run all the manufacturing 
 establishments in the United States. So it is unneces- 
 sary for me to prove to you that they could easily be 
 carried on by the water power of the country. 
 
 "All we need to do is to harness our rivers — and 
 that is an easy task. You will understand that water 
 power, in order to be of use, must be concentrated by 
 violent motion. In many cases. Nature provides this 
 process. One of the most notable instances is Niagara 
 Falls. The idea of 'harnessing Niagara' is startling 
 at first — it sounds almost sacrilegious. A great out- 
 cry arose when it was suggested that its waters be util- 
 ized for commercial purposes. The vision evoked of a 
 Niagara run dry astounded the Americans. It is ex- 
 actly what is said to have been foretold ages ago by 
 an Indian — ^that one day the waters would vanish and 
 expose the bare shelf of rock to view. 
 
 "The power of Niagara is almost beyond compre- 
 
 320 
 
STORY OF POWER 
 
 liension. It pours over the falls twenty-five niillion 
 tons of water every hour. This power would be suf- 
 ficient to run all the trains in the country, light all the 
 towns and villages, conduct our telephone and tele- 
 graph service, turn all our spinning wheels, and oper- 
 ate our three greatest industries — all at the same 
 time. The power of Niagara is equal to the powder 
 that can be generated from all the coal taken from our 
 mines in a day, the power of seven million, five hun- 
 dred thousand horses. By agreement between the 
 United States and Canada, the amount of water to be 
 diverted from Niagara has been limited to 56,000 cubic 
 feet a second. This, without diminishing appreciably 
 the flow of the cataract, will provide power equal to 
 that of 14,000,000 tons of coal, which it requires 30,000 
 miners, working for a year, to take out. 
 
 *^The idea of ^harnessing Niagara' is one of the 
 most astounding in the annals of man, because it is 
 the solution of the great problem of the future. It 
 was on October 4, 1890, that the work began. The 
 first step was to excavate a tunnel 200 feet below the 
 city of Niagara Falls. The tunnel is 7,481 feet long; 
 the interior dimensions are 21 feet by 18% feet. It 
 required the excavating of 300,000 tons of rock. Six- 
 teen million bricks were used in the lining. 
 
 ^^How is Niagara made to yield its vast power f 
 On the principle of the old mill wheel, only that the 
 water passes through enormous generators that pro- 
 duce electricity. The water is taken through a canal, 
 screened to exclude floating ice and debris, to the gen- 
 erating station. The electrical energy here generated 
 is transmitted to a distributing station. From this 
 station immense cables convey the power to various 
 points. 
 
 '^Imagine, as you gaze at the majestic waterfall 
 rushing in its eternal course, that its power — ^its very 
 
 321 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 spirit, as it were — is lighting the lamps and moving 
 the street cars 160 miles away in Syracuse. All around 
 the Falls, on both the Canadian and American sides, 
 a large manufacturing district has sprung up, evoked 
 by the magic power of these waters. Niagara's power 
 is applied to-day to everything, from great steel shops 
 and trolley cars to ventilating fans and sewing ma- 
 chines. The influence of the mighty waterfall has ex- 
 tended farther than you may imagine. It has driven 
 out disease. In the old days cutlery was a dangerous 
 trade. A third of its operators were affected with tu- 
 bercular troubles. Niagara brought about the abrasive 
 wheel, which has made the trade healthful. It also 
 has brought about the acetylene process, in which, 
 when a fourteen-inch propeller on a war vessel breaks 
 in two, it is welded perfectly in 36 hours, an opera- 
 tion which formerly would have taken six weeks. 
 These two things, the abrasive wheel and acetylene, 
 are the product of the modern electric furnace — and 
 the modern electric furnace has been evolved from 
 the water-power of Niagara Falls. In this way, its 
 power is making itself felt all over the land, and to the 
 ends of the earth, with a vastness and complexity of 
 operations that are bewildering. 
 
 *^But Niagara has only set the example, a stupen- 
 dous example, of the use of water power. All over 
 the country great rivers have been harnessed; their 
 mighty force is being gathered in power plants and 
 distributed for the needs of industry and agriculture. 
 The water power in actual service in the United 
 States is now doing the work every year of 33,000,000 
 tons of coal. Its possibilities are vastly increased by 
 the introduction of long distance transmission of elec- 
 tricity. You need not move to the power-plant — it 
 stretches out its arms to you. It can cover, by its net- 
 work of transmitters, an area of 100,000 square miles. 
 
 322 
 
STORY OF POWER 
 
 And, in transmission, there is a loss of only 10 per 
 cent of power in a thousand miles. ^' 
 
 *^What will this wonderful power do for the 
 world f asked one of the listeners. 
 
 ^'It wdll reconstruct the world," answered the 
 speaker. ' ^ It will provide the smallest towns with the 
 most up-to-date conveniences. It will link together 
 the scattered cities by a network of interurban trol- 
 ley lines. It will bring the farmer and market to- 
 gether. It will, in short, revolutionize the social, in- 
 dustrial, and agricultural life of the country." 
 
 **The rivers are already obeying the behests of 
 man and performing his work," interrupted another, 
 **but what of the mighty ocean itself?" 
 
 *^That is to be the greatest story of all," exclaimed 
 the Story-teller. **The energy expended in the rise 
 and fall of the tides is something incalculable — almost 
 infinite. The sea could do all the world's work easily 
 many times over, if its forces could only be utilized. ' ' 
 
 **Can we utilize them?" 
 
 ^^ Science says, *yes.' This will come so soon as 
 we can perfect certain apparatus already designed. A 
 start has been made. An electric lamp has been in- 
 vented to glow with power derived from the waves. 
 A small beginning has been made recently in harness- 
 ing the Atlantic. It is merely in the experimental 
 stage at present; but it only needs the construction 
 of a similar apparatus on a sufficiently extensive 
 scale to impress Father Neptune into our service. It 
 is not improbable that the day is not very far off when 
 the tides will run our factories, light our homes, and 
 operate our railways." 
 
 32 
 
 o 
 
THE STORY OF THE PHYSICIST WHO 
 IS HARNESSING THE SUN 
 
 "^TMIIS is the moment when my story should be 
 
 Jl told/' said the young physicist. ^'We have 
 listened to all these marvelous tales of steam, 
 electricity, water, and the other forces of nature, but 
 do you realize that the greatest source of all power 
 is directly over our heads? What unimaginable en- 
 ergy is going to waste every day in the heat of the 
 sun! Can we not use that?" 
 
 The physicist looked about his audience to see 
 what effect his suggestion might make upon them. 
 
 ^'My good friend, the astronomer,'' he said, ^*has 
 told us a wonderful story about the sun. Now I am 
 going to tell you how we intend to make the sun go to 
 work for us. I predict that before the end of this cen- 
 tury, we will harness the sun's rays." 
 
 *^Have we not already harnessed them!" inter- 
 rupted a listener. 
 
 '^We have just slipped the first belt over the sun- 
 beams," replied the young scientist. *^That xs the 
 story I am going to tell you — ^how an American has 
 commanded the earnest attention of science by put- 
 ting the sun to work in the land of the Pharaohs. If, 
 as Napoleon said, forty centuries look down from the 
 Pyramids, they must be looking on in amazement. 
 The ancient East is learning something startling from 
 the new far West. 
 
 ^*In Tacony, a suburb of Philadelphia," he began, 
 *^ there is an inventor who has worked for years on 
 
 324 
 
STORY OF THE SOLAR ENGINE 
 
 the problem of * harnessing the sun.' This has been 
 the dream of many inventors, but in the end it has 
 produced nothing but costly toys, until this man, 
 named Shuman, tried it. He decided to make the sun 
 do some of the world's work, and do it economically. 
 
 *^ Marvelous as it may seem, his efforts have been 
 crowned with success. He set up a * sun-power plant' 
 in Tacony, which gave a practical demonstration of 
 its capabilities. For months his solar engine pumped 
 3,400 gallons a minute to a height of 36 feet. The 
 Egyptian Government heard of this wonderful inven- 
 tion in America. They thought it might be a useful 
 thing for their country, where most of the heat of the 
 sun goes to woeful waste. The sun's chief occupation 
 in Egypt for untold ages has been baking the earth; 
 it would now, they thought, have a chance of repair- 
 ing some of the damage. 
 
 **So expert commissioners were sent to America 
 to examine the wonderful plant. Their report was so 
 satisfactory that the government ordered a solar 
 engine and put it to work forthwith. Other nations 
 followed, and orders for engines poured in from all 
 quarters of the globe. It was found necessary to set 
 up a, sun-power plant factory in Philadelphia — and it 
 is only a question of time before the Sun will have to 
 surrender. ' ' 
 
 **What precisely does the solar engine do?" in- 
 quired the astronomer. 
 
 "It generates steam, just as a fire does," replied 
 the physicist. **But it has the advantage of getting 
 its fuel free; so that, although the initial installation 
 is expensive, it can be rnin very cheaply. It is a great 
 discovery — far greater than we realize at present. Its 
 use will revolutionize conditions in many parts of the 
 world. I believe that ten per cent of the earth's land 
 surface will eventually depend upon sun power for all 
 
 325 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 mechanical operations. It will be used chiefly in re- 
 gions where great natural powers do not exist, and is 
 only available where there is a steady supply of sun- 
 shine. 
 
 * * The capacity of the solar engine used in Egypt is 
 shown by the fact that it can perform the work of a 
 thousand laborers in the annual pumping of water 
 during the dry season, which employs a hundred thou- 
 sand men. When these solar engines get to work in 
 the Sahara Desert, its name will become a misnomer. 
 It will become a veritable hive of industry, a vast col- 
 ony of factories. For the Sahara receives (and 
 wastes) every day an amount of solar heat equal to 
 that produced by six billion tons of coal ; and consider 
 the prodigious number of factories that this amount of 
 coal could run. It could allow a thousand tons a day 
 to six million of them. 
 
 **We may live to see all the dreary deserts, that 
 now stretch their unprofitable length over the map, 
 turned into huge industrial areas. In the past, even 
 the most enterprising have regarded a desert a hope- 
 less proposition ; but the future will change all that. 
 
 **Many other schemes are afloat for putting the in- 
 exhaustible forces of Nature to work for us. The 
 mighty power of the winds has been used for ages to 
 turn mills; but already experiments have been made 
 in employing it in a more scientific way. 
 
 **Then again, it has been suggested that we might 
 utilize the interior heat of the earth. There assuredly 
 must be plenty of it, considering that it increases one 
 degree for every 60 feet of depth. But, in this matter, 
 we are warned to be careful. For, in drawing off the 
 earth's heat, we should be accelerating the cooling 
 process of the earth, and so hastening its extinction — 
 perhaps by a few million years. 
 
 **It would not be surprising if, before we get 
 
 326 
 
STORY OF THE SOLAR ENGINE 
 
 through, we should find a way to harness the vol- 
 canoes. Then the regions, like those surrounding Ve- 
 suvius and Etna, may be selected for great mechan- 
 ical operations. It is more than probable that some 
 method will be discovered of controlling eruptions. 
 Why, indeed, should not an eruption become part of 
 the whole plan, and yield a boundless amount of 
 power? In truth it is not probable that Nature ever 
 intended that anything on this wonderful earth should 
 go to waste. 
 
 *^The greatest possibilities of modern times seem 
 to be hidden in that mysterious substance called 
 radium. 
 
 ^^When the Curries, of France, discovered this 
 new power, they unlocked a secret of tremendous por- 
 tent to civilization. Fifteen grains of radium will 
 evolve an amount of heat equal to six million horse- 
 power. About three times that amount would suffice 
 to run all the factories in the United States. It takes 
 1,500 years for it to lose half its power, and it is not 
 quite used up in 10,000 years. When we learn the se- 
 cret of radium, then indeed our possibilities will have 
 practically become unlimited. Many scientists are 
 working out its secrets, and we may expect to hear 
 any day of discoveries that will stagger the imagina- 
 tion. We have made only a beginning in using the 
 vast forces that lie hidden in Nature. Will not our 
 descendants wonder that we were not quicker in put- 
 ting these forces to work for usT' 
 
 22 
 
 327 
 
THE STORY OF THE MIXT-MASTER 
 AND HOW HE MAKES OUR MOXEY 
 
 THE Story-tellers were deeply puzzled when tlie 
 pallid-faced man with rather shabby clothes in- 
 formed them that he was now going to show 
 them how to make money. 
 
 ''I am a money-maker," he announced. ^'I have 
 probably made more money than any other man on 
 earth — and yet I am a poor man, possibly the poorest 
 man in the room." 
 
 ''Indeed, you must be very poor," ejaculated one 
 of the Story-tellers. ''You must be the proverbial 
 church mouse." 
 
 "Xo," he answered. "I am an employee in a 
 money factory — I work in the mint. I see nothing but 
 money all day. It is piled in huge heaps behind me. 
 Millions of dollars — yes, billions — surround me. Huge 
 machines pour it from their mouths. It is money, 
 money, money — all day long. 
 
 "There is always something fascinating about the 
 story of money," he began. "It is the medium 
 through which the whole civilized world expresses its 
 ambition. It is the goal of most men and the ruin of 
 many men. It is both a great blessing and an awful 
 curse. It is the father of much of the world's wicked- 
 ness — and the mother of much of its virtue. How it 
 began and where it will end is one of the most in- 
 teresting problems in life. 
 
 "Long ago — in the ancient days before men had 
 invented money — we lived by fair trade and barter. 
 
 323 
 
STORY OF THE MINT 
 
 If we had too much corn and our brother had more 
 wheat than he needed, we made a fair exchange. 
 Grains came into use as the purchasing mediums. Then 
 in later days silks and spices w^ere used — and even 
 cattle and human slaves. Our American Indians used 
 animal hides and wampum, while the Esquimaux used 
 tallow and tusks. Finally, necessity (the mother of 
 invention) devised the idea of coins — and from that 
 has come the great modern mint, or * money factory.' 
 
 *'Our first mint was established at Philadelphia 
 in 1793,'' continued the Story-teller. *^From the be- 
 ginning, machinery was used to produce coins in this 
 country. We have never turned them out by hand. 
 In ancient times, before the days of machinery, coins 
 were first punched out of sheets of metal with hand- 
 dies. Coins so made were bound to be irregular in 
 shape and thickness, engraved slovenly and easily 
 clipped. But by the time the United States was ready 
 to coin its first cents, which was in 1793, and its first 
 dollars, in 1794, the French had brought into use a 
 lever-press. It was not until 1-836 that the Philadelphia 
 mint was fitted with the steam press invented by M. 
 Thonnelier. Since then American inventors have im- 
 proved the machinery for making money until it is 
 now one of the modern wonders. 
 
 *^The Philadelphia mint is now equipped mth 23 
 coin presses, each of which is capable of turning out 
 110 finished coins every minute. The government's 
 coin producing facilities are now so great that our 
 mints are able to coin money for foreign countries, 
 as well as that coined for the United States. A Fed- 
 eral law permits them to do this, and many of the 
 South and Central American countries have contracted 
 with the United States mints to coin their moneys. 
 
 *^ Running a mint is not an easy task. There are 
 many problems that do not come up in the operation 
 
 329 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 of any other kind of ^factory.' There must be abso- 
 lute accuracy in every detail, for otherwise great losses 
 would be incurred. The metals used for coins must be 
 of precise composition, the weight of the finished coins 
 must be exact, their size must be uniform, their design 
 must be artistic and simple, and they must be of suf- 
 ficient hardness to stand long usage/' 
 
 ^^Tell us how to make money!" called out some 
 one from the farther end of the room. 
 
 ^^This is the way it is done,'' replied the mint- 
 worker. ^^ First take your gold to the government 
 mint. It will purchase all gold brought to it, provided 
 it is worth not less than $100. The raw metal is first 
 made into bars, from which small bits are chipped. 
 The assay of the metal is determined by the * proofs' 
 which these chips show. The seller is paid either in 
 money or in refined gold, at his option, to the full 
 value of the bullion he has submitted. 
 
 **Pure gold is too soft to stand hard wear; so 
 copper is added to it to make it more durable. To 
 every 900 parts of gold there are added 100 parts of 
 the baser metal. This alloy is then made into ingots. 
 An ingot is a chunk of metal fifteen and one-eighth 
 inches long, one-half inch thick, and twelve and one- 
 half inches wide. These ingots are fed into rollers 
 at the rate of 200 a minute and there go through a 
 process known as * breaking down'; that is, they are 
 rolled out until they assume a thickness equal to that 
 of the finished coin. During this rolling they are an- 
 nealed. After they have gone through this process, 
 they have a length of six feet. To make sure that the 
 thickness is exact, they are drawn, just as is wire. 
 
 ''The next process is to grease the metal with tal- 
 low and pass it on to a machine that punches holes 
 in it. The metal which is punched out of each hole is 
 in the form of a perfect circle and has the measure- 
 
 330 
 
STORY OF THE MINT 
 
 ments of the finished coin. These pieces are called 
 planchets, or blanks. After they fall out of the punch- 
 ing machine, they are sorted. The perfect ones go 
 immediately to the stamping machine, while the short- 
 weight ones are remelted into ingots, and the over- 
 weight ones are filed down to the required weight. 
 This filing is done by women, who perform the work 
 by hand. A special apron is given to each woman, 
 so that all the precious filings may be caught. 
 
 *^Let us watch the coins go through the stamping 
 machines; the perfect blanks first pass between a re- 
 volving wheel and a stationary piece of metal, with 
 the result that their edges are pressed up to form rims 
 on the disks. Thus are coins given their milled edges. 
 The stamping machines imprint the designs on the 
 coins. The obverse and reverse are stamped simul- 
 taneously by properly arranged dies, and the reeded 
 edge is put on the coins in the same operation. 
 
 *^ Great pressure is, of course, required to do this 
 work. In stamping and reeding double eagles, a force 
 of 175 tons is brought to bear on each ; for the eagle, 
 a pressure of 120 tons is needed; for the half eagle, 75 
 tons are required; and for the quarter eagle, 40 tons. 
 The modern stamping machine is capable of turning 
 out eagles and double eagles at the rate of 80 a minute ; 
 half and quarter eagles are poured out at the rate 
 of 100 a minute. ' ' 
 
 **Is silver money made the same way?" asked a 
 listener. 
 
 *^The coining of silver entails practically the same 
 processes," answered the mint-worker, *'but the silver 
 coin is stamped with much more pressure. The silver 
 dollar requires 150 tons; the half dollar, 110; the 
 twenty-five cent piece, 80 tons; and the dime, 40 tons 
 pressure. The first three named are stamped at the 
 rate of 80 a minute, and the dime at 100 a minute. ' ' 
 
 331 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 *'How would you like to count money all day 
 longf asked the Story-teller. *^That is what we 
 have to do in the mint. An expert at this work can 
 count as many as 10,000 dimes in three minutes ! The 
 finished coins are counted by being placed on boards 
 provided T\dth * collars' on their surfaces. Each col- 
 lar can hold one coin, and each board has a given num- 
 ber of collars. So by placing coins on these boards, 
 and then shuffling them, a given number of coins will 
 be held by a board. 
 
 *'The counted coins are then sent to another de- 
 partment in the mint, where they are made up into 
 drafts worth $1,000 each for the gold, and $5,000 each 
 for the silver. This is not done by counting out a 
 number of coins to make up the desired amount, but 
 it is done by weighing — a definite number of coins 
 being of a definite weight and a definite value. The 
 scales used have been brought to such a state of per- 
 fection that a weighing machine capable of handling 
 3,000 ounces at a time can be thrown out of balance 
 by placing a small piece of paper on one of its pans. 
 
 **The machinery for making money is under con- 
 stant watch. Sample coins are selected at random at 
 frequent intervals to be tested by the Assay Com- 
 mittee. But coinage in the United States is such a 
 developed industry that rarely more than one coin in 
 a million is found to be faulty." 
 
 As the mint-worker finished his story, his hearers 
 delved down into their pockets to examine the won- 
 derful coins that we call *^ money'' — these little mir- 
 acles that both **make and break" men. 
 
 332 
 
THE STORY OF THE METEOROLOGIST 
 AND THE WEATHER PROPHETS 
 
 THE rain began to beat against the window panes. 
 The sky had been overcast but a few moments, 
 when the cloud burst and the torrents fell. 
 
 **Who would have believed a half hour ago that it 
 was going to rain 1 ^ ' remarked one of the Story-tellers, 
 adding, *^By the way, is there anyone among us who 
 can tell us about the marvelous story of weather pre- 
 diction r' 
 
 A keen-eyed man arose. 
 
 *^I am what you might call a prognosticator,'' he 
 said, *^but more scientifically known as a meteorolo- 
 gist. It is my duty to tell the nation to-day what the 
 weather is to be to-morrow. Millions of people watch 
 daily for these predictions. Thousands arrange their 
 business affairs according to them. Farmers sow and 
 reap by these predictions, and many fortunes are 
 saved by our weather warnings." 
 
 ^'The weather prophet," he explained^ *4s one of 
 the oldest institutions in the world. Every village 
 has its hoary expert, whose predictions, should they 
 come true, are widely remembered; while, if they fail, 
 they are forgotten. In addition to signs in the sky, 
 such as clouds or a ring around the moon, which are 
 of some value, but only for immediate purposes, there 
 are numberless other traditions. 
 
 ''The government Weather Bureau is not a 
 prophet, contrary to the general belief. It does not 
 attempt to prognosticate weather conditions by same 
 
 333 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 mysterious means. All it does is to trace the areas 
 of high and low pressure, as gathered from telegraphic 
 reports from various sections of the country. From 
 these, knowing that climatic states travel almost inva- 
 riably from west to east, it deduces what the weather 
 will be on successive days." 
 
 *^It is purely scientific," he continued. ^'So far as 
 temperature and storms are concerned, the Weather 
 Bureau can issue predictions for thirty-six hours 
 ahead with almost unvarying accuracy. With fore- 
 casts of rain it is less successful. Sometimes it errs. 
 The prophecy of fine weather on the occasion of Presi- 
 dent Taft's inauguration was falsified by one of the 
 worst blizzards since the famous one of 1888. But 
 that was due to a ^flare-back.' The storm, which had 
 passed out to sea, returned and enveloped Washington 
 and the Atlantic Coast. Against such possibilities the 
 Bureau of Meteorology is helpless. But the occurrence 
 is extremely rare. 
 
 '^The Weather Bureau does not exist to gratify the 
 universal interest in the weather. It saves the nation 
 millions of dollars annually. When a ^northwester' 
 is sig-naled along the Gulf shores the orange-growers 
 get their heating apparatus ready. They know that 
 the northwest wind brings frost. A sudden fall in 
 the temperature, for which they are unprepared, would 
 mean the loss of acres of orange-bearing trees. 
 
 **The first authentic weather record," said he, 
 **was that prepared by William Merle, rector of Driby, 
 England, who kept a tabulation of the weather during 
 the years 1331-38. Ferdinand II of Tuscany origi- 
 nated, in 1653, a local system of meteorological records, 
 the first to be established by any State. The science 
 of meteorology, like most other sciences, began to 
 exist as such in the nineteenth century. 
 
 **Its beginnings in America were in the year 1817, 
 
 334 
 
STORY OF THE WEATHER BUREAU 
 
 when Josiah Meigs issued meteorological instructions 
 to the registrars of the United States Land Office. It 
 was in 1838 that Professor James P. Espey, who had 
 investigated the motive power of thunderstorms and 
 tornadoes, secured the appointment of a joint Govern- 
 ment Committee on Meteorology. He was made 
 meteorologist to the government four years later. 
 
 **The first daily weather maps began to be drawn 
 in 1854. The service ceased during the Civil War, 
 owing to the interruption of telegraphic messages, but 
 in 1870 Congress ordered the Secretary of War to 
 provide for the observation and prediction of storms. 
 The United States Weather Bureau was reorganized 
 under the Department of Agriculture in 1891, and 
 from that date it has uninterruptedly given service 
 to the nation. It maintains some six hundred paid 
 employees at 180 stations. Keports are also received 
 from several hundred special observers, and there are 
 about 2,500 volunteers. 
 
 ** Weather telegrams are received at the central 
 bureau in Washington twice daily,'' explained the 
 meteorologist; **at eight in the morning and at eight 
 at night. On these are based the forecasts which are 
 made for the next thirty-six hours, and from them 
 the weather charts are drawn. These forecasts are 
 sent out by telegrams throughout the country, to 
 newspapers, postoffices, vessels about to sail, flag 
 signal stations, etc. Since 1887 there has been pub- 
 lished weekly in summer a weather crop bulletin, now 
 issued by the Climate and Crop Division. In winter 
 this bulletin appears once a month. It shows the con- 
 dition of snow, ice, navigation, and winter wheat. A 
 monthly lake chart is also issued in the winter for 
 navigators on the Great Lakes. 
 
 **The entire country is divided into forty-five sec- 
 tions, corresponding roughly to the States. In addi- 
 
 335 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 tion to the central office at Washington there are 
 branch offices at Chicago, Boston, Galveston, San 
 Francisco, Portland. 
 
 ^* Needless to say, the men of the Weather Bureau 
 do not make use of any of the arbitrary signs which 
 are supposed to enable us to forecast the weather. A 
 number of delicate instruments of precision are util- 
 ized: thermometers, barometers, anemometers for 
 measuring the wind, psychrometers and hygrometers 
 for detecting the humidity of the atmosphere, and 
 many others. The Hargrave kite is used for atmos- 
 pheric exploration. The Piche evaporometer meas- 
 ures the volume of evaporation within a given unit of 
 time. American scientists have developed most of 
 these instruments. The nephoscope, for the observa- 
 tion of the direction and movements of clouds, consists 
 simply of a mirror in which the reflection of the cloud 
 is seen, and its rate of progress can be traced by com- 
 parison with a point above the mirror. This was im- 
 proved, for land service, by Professor Marvin, in 
 1896, while the most satisfactory type of sea nepho- 
 scope was devised by Abbe on board the Pensacola 
 during her voyage to the west coast of Africa in 1889. 
 
 *^ Various instruments are in use for the recording 
 of sunshine. The Jordan photographic sunshine re- 
 corder, which is one of the most common types, con- 
 sists of a cylinder covered with sensitized paper, and 
 enclosed in a cover, leaving a small aperture through 
 which the rays of the sun may strike. As they enter 
 the opening they discolor the sensitized paper, which 
 is continually reeled off on the cylinder. Whenever 
 the sun is obscured, the paper ceases to be discolored, 
 the discoloration resuming as soon as the sun comes 
 out again. In this way the number of hours of sun- 
 shine may readily be detected. 
 
 '^Then there is the Stokes-Campbell recorder, 
 
 336 
 
STORY OF THE WEATHER BUREAU 
 
 which consists of a burning glass with pasteboard or 
 wood at the back. The glass catches and concentrates 
 the sun's rays, which char the wood or pasteboard so 
 long as the sun is shining. 
 
 ^^Did you ever hear of Professor Marvin's ther- 
 mometric sunshine recorder? It consists of a ther- 
 mometer tube, having a black bulb at one end and a 
 bright bulb at the other. Since black absorbs the heat, 
 while white tends more to reflect it, the column of 
 mercury constantly moves upward toward the white 
 bulb so long as the sun is shining, while the record is 
 taken on an electrically revolving drum. 
 
 *^We must not forget the psychrometer for the de- 
 tection and measuring of humidity. It consists of two 
 thermometers side by side. The bulb of one, being 
 immersed in water, radiates more heat, and conse- 
 quently the mercury column is lower than in the other 
 thermometer. A comparison of the two readily shows 
 the absorption of water, and hence the humidity. 
 
 *'In spite of the remarkable investigations," said 
 the meteorologist in conclusion, ^^our knowledge of 
 the causes of atmospheric changes is still limited. The 
 relation of the weather to sunspots has excited much 
 interest, and it is believed that some relationship 
 exists between them. There is no doubt that many im- 
 portant laws governing the weather remain to be dis- 
 covered, and American scientists are working indus- 
 triously to solve the problems. The time may come 
 when we shall know what the weather is to be a week 
 ahead or even months. '^ 
 
 337 
 
THE STORY OF THE MILLER AND THE 
 LIFE-GIVING GRAINS OF WHEAT 
 
 THE flaxen-haired girl seemed much embarrassed 
 when she saw the eyes of the Story-tellers 
 turned upon her. The roses upon her cheeks 
 deepened until they were crimson. 
 
 ^^I am the miller's daughter," she said. **My fa- 
 ther could not come, because he is too busy. I do not 
 know what to tell you, unless I say that I can make 
 bread." 
 
 Her simple manner won the hearts of her hearers. 
 
 ^^Good, good!" they shouted, ^'tell us about 
 bread." 
 
 *^I will tell you," she said, *'how the little grain of 
 wheat feeds the world. I do not know who invented 
 bread — ^but I know that God invented wheat. We read 
 how it grew thousands of years ago in the valley of 
 the Euphrates or Palestine. In the ancient times, the 
 millers ground it into flour with the pestle and mortar. 
 It is recorded in the book of Judges that a popular 
 leader, while besieging a city, was slain by a woman 
 who threw a millstone upon his head. The millstone 
 is referred to several times in the Old and New Tes- 
 taments. To-day, we have the enormous mills that eat 
 up millions of bushels of wheat like hungry giants. 
 
 **My father once told me," continued the miller's 
 daughter, *Hhat the average American laborer's fam- 
 ily spends $329.19 yearly for food ; $110.50 of this goes 
 for meat, $38 for milk and eggs, and $29.20 for bread. 
 I have heard that 45 per cent of the energy value of 
 
 338 
 
STORY OF THE MILLER 
 
 the American laborer's daily food comes from this 
 bread. Do you know that we folk here in the United 
 States are one of the few countries of the world which 
 have the lordly privilege of eating their own bread? 
 England, Holland, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway, and 
 Sweden must all look to foreign countries for their 
 wheat and flour. We bake bread enough every year 
 to give thirty loaves to each of the earth 's inhabitants. 
 We could build eight ^ bread lines,' each stretching 
 from New York to San Francisco. I wish you could 
 see what the little sheaf of wheat passes through in 
 its journey from the harvest fields of Kansas, or Illi- 
 nois, or Washington, or Nebraska, to the twenty odd 
 millions of American breakfast tables. Not long ago, 
 I saw an exhibition at which wheat was cut, threshed, 
 made into flour, and baked in the form of biscuits — 
 all in the space of twenty-three minutes. Surely this 
 was a more wondrous feat than any ever performed 
 by Cinderella's godmother. 
 
 ^^I am too young to remember the incidents,'' she 
 said, *^but my father has told me how the first mer- 
 chant mill was erected in Minneapolis, in 1854. The 
 first great steel mill was erected in 1878, and in twelve 
 years our infant city on the head waters of the Missis- 
 sippi became the world's greatest ^ flour city.' But, 
 before relating the wonders of the modern flour mill, 
 I will begin with the wheat after it has been threshed 
 in the almost human machines, which separate the 
 grain from the straw and chatf, to prepare wheat for 
 shipping. When the grain reaches the mill, it is 
 weighed by a state official and carried to the top of 
 the wheat-house by an endless chain of buckets. The 
 wheat must be carefully cleaned, for it contains dirt 
 and chaff. When it has passed through sieves, it is 
 carried to a larger cylinder, where the dirt and fuzz 
 on the berries are removed by brushes and by means 
 
 339 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 of compressed air. The ^scoured' wheat is then heated 
 and moistened. This is called 'tempering.^ The 
 dampened grain is now dried in heaters, after which 
 it is ready to be ground into flour. 
 
 ''How is flour made? Why, the berries first pass 
 through five, and sometimes six, sets of steel rollers. 
 The dust, or flour, passes through bolting cloths. Some 
 of them are so fine that they contain more than 16,000 
 meshes to the square inch. A bushel of wheat weigh- 
 ing 60 pounds makes about 43 1-3 pounds of high- 
 grade flour. The discarded portions of the berry are 
 used as animal feed. Altogether sometimes as many 
 as 100 products are created in the process of milling. 
 The streams of wheat which are intended for use as 
 flour are directed into a single chute, in which they 
 mingle. The flour falls into sacks, which, when filled, 
 are automatically weighed and sewed. From the time 
 the grain enters the wheat-house to the time it is 
 packed as flour ready for shipping, no human hand 
 touches it. I always enjoy watching the large milling 
 machines at their work. I have seen a single mill 
 grind out 3,500,000 pounds of flour in 24 hours. The 
 improved machinery has made flour milling one of the 
 greatest of American industries. 
 
 *'If you ever go to the 'flour cities' be sure to visit 
 the wonderful grain elevators. Thej are high, window- 
 less buildings, with a superstructure resembling a 
 cupola, in which is installed the machinery. The ele- 
 vators of the Northwest, such as those of Minneapolis, 
 for example, are capable of storing from 500,000 to 
 4,000,000 bushels of wheat, and can handle and trans- 
 fer as much as 30,000 bushels in an hour. 
 
 "I brought some of the magical figures with me," 
 explained the miller's daughter, "if you wish to hear 
 them. There were in the United States, at the time 
 of the last census, 11,691 establishments producing 
 
 340 
 
STORY OF THE MILLER 
 
 flour. They paid $38,981,000 in salaries and wages that 
 year, and gave work to 51,484 persons. There was 
 $349,152,000 invested in these establishments, and the 
 value of the products was $883,584,000. Two hundred 
 million barrels of wheat flour were produced. 
 
 ^^The most wonderful part of this story of a grain 
 of wheat," said the Story-teller, **is to watch it go 
 through the bakery. Did you ever visit a modern 
 bakery in a large city? Thousands of sacks of flour 
 are stored on the top floor. It has been cleaned care- 
 fully at the mill, but it is again purified in the bakery 
 in an elaborate apparatus known as a ^dresser.' Then 
 it is conveyed to bins. Two and three hundred barrels 
 are cleaned in a single day. Under the bins are the 
 huge dough-mixing machine. The flour is carried into 
 these machines, where it is mixed in the proper pro- 
 portions with milk, water, salt, and yeast. No hand 
 touches the dough. Think of machinery kneading 
 bread with a dasher, operated by steam. The mixture 
 is collected in a trough and is allowed to * raise' for 
 several hours. The dough is then shot through a 
 chute to be molded into loaves. It now rests in a 
 steam-box for a short time, until the forms of dough 
 are ready for the oven. Long-handled shovels place 
 the dough into huge gas-lit ovens. There they remain 
 for about half an hour. The bread is removed from 
 the ovens; the loaves are piled into delivery wagons, 
 and off they go to the grocer and the dining-room 
 table — hundreds of thousands of loaves every day. 
 
 **I always loved the marvelous fairy-tale where the 
 pumpkin and mice are changed by magic into * a coach 
 and six,' " laughed the miller's daughter, **but hov*^ 
 much more wonderful is the magical transformation 
 of grains of wheat into bread that feeds a nation!" 
 
 341 
 
THE STORY OF THE INCUBATOR THAT 
 CREATES AND SAVES LIFE 
 
 "T F you were given your choice between all the gold 
 J^ mined in this country and all the egg and poultry 
 products in the United States — ^which would you 
 choose!" 
 
 The speaker was a portly woman of about fifty 
 years of age, evidently from the country — a farmer's 
 wife. 
 
 **I presume," she said, answering her own ques- 
 tion, **that you would choose the gold. But you would 
 be cheating yourself out of more than $600,000,000. 
 
 **The poultry farm is one of the greatest indus- 
 tries in the world," exclaimed the woman. *^The 
 value of its products exceeds that of all the iron, coal, 
 gold, and silver produced. It reaches $700,000,000 in 
 a single year. If all the chickens, turkeys, ducks, and 
 geese could be placed in a straight line, one closely 
 following the other, they would make a spiral proces- 
 sion around the earth eight times. It is estimated 
 that there are over 500,000,000 fowls in this country 
 at the present moment. It would require a thousand 
 cities the size of Manhattan Island (New York) to 
 make chicken yards big enough to raise them." 
 
 **How many eggs did these fowl lay?" asked a 
 merchant sitting near by. 
 
 ** Nearly two billion eggs in a year," replied the 
 Story-teller. **If they could be placed in boxes of one 
 dozen each, they would make a pile nearly ten thou- 
 sand miles high. 
 
 342 
 
STORY OF THE INCUBATOR 
 
 **But the wonder story of the egg,*^ continued the 
 farmer's wife, **is the incubator, an invention that 
 takes the place of the mother, and which makes the 
 fluffy little baby chicken an orphan even before it is 
 born. In the ^good, old-fashioned days' when the 
 mother-hen longed for children of her own to love, 
 protect, and raise for the ' chopping block, ' she settled 
 down in some quiet, out-of-the-way place and made a 
 nest ; then she laid in it a dozen or more eggs and sat 
 down over them to wait and watch. Nature sent up 
 her blood above normal, and she sat there patiently 
 and kept them warm with her body for three long 
 weeks. Soon the pecking of little bills could be heard 
 inside the eggs, until on some happy day the egg shell 
 cracked and opened, and out slipped the little fluffy 
 chicken like a ball of warm fleece. Remember that it 
 took the mother hen three weeks to hatch the eggs 
 and then it took her nearly three months to raise her 
 family, before they could begin to look after them- 
 selves. That was about a third of a year of ^lost 
 time. ' 
 
 ^^Some miraculous scheme to relieve the mother 
 from her responsibilities always has been the dream 
 of the scientist. He began with the hen, because there 
 the problem seemed to be nearer the solution. The 
 secret for the artificial hatching of eggs was known 
 to the Egyptians and the Chinese for many centuries, 
 and they kept it carefully guarded. In the Nile delta 
 in Egypt it is estimated that 90,000,000 eggs are 
 hatched each year. The Chinese and Egyptian methods 
 are clumsy but successful affairs, being great outdoor 
 ovens in which smouldering fires are maintained. 
 
 **In the year that the pilgrims settled in America 
 (1620), a gentleman in England astonished his coun- 
 trymen by announcing that he had made a machine 
 to hatch chickens every month of the year, even in mid- 
 23 343 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 winter. It was a crude affair, but excited much in- 
 terest and speculation. The mother hen, however, 
 continued to do her duty, and it was many genera- 
 tions before the scientists really began to rob her of 
 the joys of motherhood. Throughout the early years 
 in America, the clucking hen on the nest was the 
 familiar scene. It was not until well along in the 
 nineteenth century that the incubator began to usurp 
 the throne of the ^setting hen.' But, when it did be- 
 come established, there occurred a bloodless revolution 
 in the poultry world. Its population doubled and 
 trebled, and increased like magic. The baby chickens 
 came by the thousands and tens of thousands — by 
 millions. 
 
 **Did you ever watch life come into existence in an 
 incubator?" asked the Story-teller. ^*It is one of the 
 greatest of miracles. An incubator is a cabinet of 
 shallow drawers, in which the eggs are closely ar- 
 ranged. There are all sorts of devices for heating, 
 such as a lamp, gas, stove, hot water, and steam. 
 There are also all sorts of regulators for maintaining 
 a steady heat, for turning the eggs, and supplying 
 moisture. The egg lies in the warmth, and the magical 
 process begins. In the shell is the delicate organiza- 
 tion of a real life. A chill, or too much heat, or too 
 dry a heat, would cause its death. But under about 
 102° Fahrenheit it thrives and continues to grow. This 
 gentle heat maintains the condition of growth. 
 
 * ' The tiny cells begin to stir and swell ; slowly they 
 take form into what becomes the brain, spinal cord, 
 the backbone, the eyes, the limbs, the bones; and va- 
 rious organs of the body, the heart, liver, intestines, 
 feathers or fuzz, all formed cell by cell during gesta- 
 tion. This first takes place within the yolk, finally in- 
 volving and using up the white part of the egg. The 
 delicate and wise plan of the Creator brings the 
 
 344 
 
STORY OF THE INCUBATOR 
 
 embryo (that is, the young tender life) as close to the 
 warmth of the mother-hen's body as possible. If the 
 egg were kept in one position three weeks, the yolk 
 would stick to the membrane, and the chick would 
 probably be maimed or deformed. The wise mother- 
 hen knows this by instinct, so she takes her beak and 
 turns over every egg every day. This same principle 
 is followed in the incubator. Soon life begins to ap- 
 pear in the eggs; they move slightly from the infant 
 power within the shell; you can hear little feet kick 
 the shell and struggle to break the wall that holds them 
 in; there is a smothered chirp. Then the great day 
 comes; the shell cracks and then bursts. Out from 
 its darkness, the little feathered ball of life steps into 
 this wonderful world. 
 
 *^But the modern scientist is not stopping here," 
 continued the Story-teller. *^The incubator is now 
 performing other astounding miracles. It is being 
 used to sustain and nourish the delicate life of the 
 human babies that come into the world before their 
 time. Thousands of children owe their lives to the 
 baby incubator, which is used in most of the large 
 hospitals to-day. The scientists, however, are not 
 satisfied with preserving life, they are working every 
 day to create life — the miracle of miracles." 
 
 345 
 
THE STORY OF THE HOUSEWIFE AND 
 THE NEW DOMESTIC SCIENCE 
 
 ON the day on which this story was told a dinner 
 was served at the Story-tellers Club. The mem- 
 bers were gathered about the library table while 
 the rare eatables were brought steaming hot — food 
 that had never touched a fire, but was deliciously 
 cooked. 
 
 **Hail to the cook!^' shouted one of the Story- 
 tellers. *^ Bring in the cook and let her reveal her 
 magic." 
 
 The cook, a woman of fifty years, more or less, 
 a-nd plump and happy, was plainly embarrassed by 
 the cordial greeting that she received. 
 
 *^I suppose,'' said the cook, ^Hhat my story begins 
 back with Eve, or whoever it was that discovered the 
 great secret that fish and meat were much more 
 palatable when held over a fire. From that moment 
 the trouble began. From that day the world has de- 
 manded that its food be cooked. The duty fell on the 
 hands of woman — and she has been cooking and stew- 
 ing ever since, until to-day the cook is the uncrowned 
 queen of the land. The real throne is the kitchen, 
 and the scepter of power is the frying-pan. The cook 
 reigns supreme in every nation, and even kings obey 
 her commands. 
 
 *^The first recipe known to woman is the recipe for 
 bread," began the cook's story. ** Bread-making is 
 the most ancient of feminine arts. It probably began 
 in Egypt and was then introduced into Greece and 
 
 346 
 
STORY OF THE STOVE 
 
 Eome. It is frequently mentioned in the Bible. 
 Throughout the ages it has been known as ^the staff 
 of life.' It has become so important a part of life 
 that we speak of the problem of earning a livelihood 
 as * bread- winning,' and call our laborers ^ bread-win- 
 ners.' 
 
 ^^How the art of cooking began is an interesting 
 tale, ' ' continued the cook. ^ ^ The first cookstove was fire 
 built of dry leaves and twigs, over which the raw flesh 
 was broiled. Later, some genius discovered that it 
 would be a wise scheme to build the fire between two 
 stones to avoid the winds. Then it was that somebody 
 thought of the lazy plan of laying the flesh over the 
 stones, and the next step was to devise a crude vessel 
 to hold it. Some wise person finally discovered that 
 a hole in the earth could be used, and the fire made to 
 do more work and not blaze up and burn the fuel so 
 fast. After a while some one let the smoke out of a 
 vent in his cave. Then, when men began to make huts, 
 they built a fireplace in one side with a vent to the 
 roof. That was the great invention of the age. For 
 many hundreds of years such a device was the basis of 
 civilization. It was in these old fireplaces that cook- 
 ing became a fine art. 
 
 * ^ The old brick oven was the next great step in the 
 progress of the culinary art. It was first made of 
 earth and stone. Some well-to-do people had very 
 neat brick ovens, with cast-iron front doors. They 
 were heated for baking and roasting by building a 
 wood fire in the oven and then scraping the ashes out 
 clean; and very often the loaf of dough was laid di- 
 rectly on the clay floor by a long-handled wooden 
 shovel. 
 
 **The first stove recorded in history,'' said the 
 Story-teller, '^was made in Germany, in 1490. The 
 first stove made in America was a blast-furnace, 
 
 347 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 erected in Massachusetts in 1642. But it was Benjamin 
 Franklin who revolutionized cooking. He is the ^father 
 of cooking' and the * patron saint' of every cook in 
 the land — there are over ten million of them in the 
 United States to-day. The Franklin stove was in- 
 vented in 1745. It was a cast-iron box, with a sliding 
 shutter in front by which the hole might be closed 
 entirely or in part to regulate the draft. A hearth 
 projected in front. The heat passed under iron plates 
 and about air chambers before it finally entered the 
 chimney. This stove was duly provided with checks 
 to control the fire and embodied the principles of the 
 modern air-tight stoves. 
 
 *'In those days, bread was baked in the earthen 
 ovens out-of-doors. Franklin invented a barrel-shaped 
 double metal drum, which he placed on the back of the 
 stove next to the chimney. In this were metallic 
 shelves ; from this time bread, pies, and cake could be 
 baked in the house. He exacted no royalty, but gave 
 this invaluable invention freely to the people. TThen 
 coal was introduced as a fuel, the grate was invented, 
 to allow air to enter the fuel from below as well and 
 thus keep the coal burning. Times have changed, and 
 we live in a more luxurious age, but, with all our in- 
 ventive ingenuity, we have not until recently improved 
 the general principles in either the stove or the oven. 
 We have modified the old stove and oven to make use 
 of elements that mean less trouble and work — and 
 from this has come the modern range, with all its 
 labor-saving devices. 
 
 ^'But the day has come at last," exclaimed the 
 cook, ^'when the old-fashioned wood and coal stove is 
 fast passing away. Its first strong competitor was 
 the oil stove; then came the gas range. Finally, we 
 began to cook by electricity, and now comes the * fire- 
 less cooker' — ^the greatest invention of all. It is the 
 
 348 
 
STORY OF THE STOVE 
 
 fireless cooker that cooked the dinner that I am now 
 serving to you. It is merely an air-tight box like a 
 refrigerator, which maintains for many hours any 
 temperature desired. A pail of hot water may be 
 placed in one of its air-tight compartments, and it 
 will continue to boil for half a day or more. Foods 
 may be hurriedly heated to the boiling or broiling 
 point at night and placed in the * fireless cooker.' They 
 will continue to cook throughout the night, while the 
 housewife sleeps, and will be steaming hot for break- 
 fast in the morning. 
 
 **This is not a magic dream," declared the cook. 
 *^It is an accomplished fact. The housewife of the 
 future will merely push a button. A vessel or com- 
 partment will almost instantly be heated to the de- 
 sired temperature. The ^fireless cooker' will maintain 
 the heat, the food will cook — and dinner will be ready. 
 
 ** Modern science has come at last to the rescue 
 of the housekeeper," exclaimed the Story-teller. ^^The 
 art of cooking has become one of the Fine Arts. It 
 is being taught in our schools. It is a part of our 
 education. There are Domestic Science courses in 
 our colleges. The cook is no longer the * woman in the 
 kitchen.' She is to-day the * woman on the throne.' 
 The woman who cannot cook is a woman of gross 
 ignorance ; the woman who can cook is mistress of all 
 she surveys." 
 
 As the cook finished her story, one of the diners 
 sprang to his feet. 
 
 ^^ Three cheers for the American housewife!" he 
 shouted — and the room rang with an enthusiastic 
 tribute. 
 
 349 
 
THE STORY OF THE COTTOX PLAXTER 
 AXD THE MODERX COTTOX MILLS 
 
 THE next Story-teller stood before the gathering 
 like a knight of chivalry. His tall, slender, and 
 erect figure was clad in frock coat and light 
 trousers, and a black string tie drooped over his shirt 
 bosom. His aquiline features were accentuated by a 
 gray-tinged goatee. In tones soft and deep he began 
 Ms story. 
 
 ** Ladies!" bowing in courtly manner in their di- 
 rection, ''Gentlemen!" bowing again, ''I have listened 
 to the wonder stories as though they were modern tales 
 of Arabian Xights — ^they thrilled me even more, for 
 they are true, vital, and human; they breathe the in- 
 domitable American spirit. It gives me deep honor 
 to be permitted to tell my story; the story of my land 
 and my people, the story of cotton." 
 
 A subdued cheer greeted the courtly gentleman's 
 words. 
 
 ''The story of cotton is the story of my South- 
 land," he declared. "Its development is the develop- 
 ment of my land; its wealth is the wealth of my people. 
 And we owe it all to the genius of that American from 
 the North, Eli TVhitney, the Massachusetts tutor, to 
 whom we of the South pay deep homage. x\nywhere 
 you go in our great cotton belt, which sweeps from 
 the Atlantic to the far borders of Old Mexico, you will 
 find the same cotton-gin, in essential points, that Whit- 
 ney invented while residing in the family of our dis- 
 tinguished Southern lady, Mrs. General Greene, wife 
 
 350 
 
STORY OF THE COTTON GIN 
 
 of the Eevolutionary hero. He brought it into this 
 world a completed machine, which countless mechanics 
 have been unable to improve upon, one of the few 
 great creations which have this distinction. His gin 
 was completed in 1784, two years after the first Gov- 
 ernment coining mint was opened in Philadelphia. 
 
 **A journey through our cotton fields," continued 
 the planter, '4s like a trip through fairy-land. The 
 uplands in harvest season are mantled in a great 
 gossamer of white, with touches of soft red where the 
 plant has become old. Here you will find the old 
 regime as it flourished a century ago. You will be 
 entertained in great baronial manor houses, whose 
 corridors once echoed the swish of colonial gowns and 
 the laughter of white-wigged ladies and cavaliers. To- 
 day you will find the modern generation, unchanged 
 except for the white wigs. It is a glorious picture. 
 In the soft Southern moonlight you will find Sambo 
 before his cabin door thrumming upon his banjo; in 
 the cotton-fields you will find little beribboned, ging- 
 ham clad pickaninnies whose kinky haired heads are 
 thrust above the cotton plants like a period on the 
 blank page. 
 
 **We have great affection for our cotton planta- 
 tions," he added. ''They have been our bulwarks of 
 wealth for over a century, and they are hallowed by 
 many legends of beautiful ladies and courtly gentle- 
 men. The world could not do without them. We sup- 
 ply three-quarters of the world's 133,000,000 spindles 
 with cotton, which is valued at $700,000,000, a sum 
 nearly as great as that which the Eussians had in their 
 state and postal savings banks in 1912. Cotton is the 
 world's great commodity; it is as standard as gold. 
 Do you realize what a tremendous quantity is required 
 to clothe humanity? We of the South supply three- 
 fourths of it, remember. It has been estimated that, 
 
 351 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 if all the cotton bales produced in a year were stood 
 on end to form a column, it would reach nearly 9,000 
 miles high; or it would require a solid train of freight 
 cars, each loaded to full capacity, numbering about 
 138,000 cars, to move them. 
 
 ^^ Cotton is grown much in the same manner as 
 corn. But the growing is the least part of the opera- 
 tion. It is the picking that drives many planters to 
 distraction, because of its tediousness, and the scarcity 
 and high cost of the labor involved. It is hand labor 
 throughout. But in recent years a new invention, 
 which I will describe later, has appeared, which 
 promises to revolutionize the industry as did Whit- 
 ney's cotton gin. 
 
 *^Let us follow the operations of the cotton planter 
 during harvest season. The crowds of light-hearted 
 laborers, negroes, big and little, men, women, and 
 children, and white people, too, travel down the rows 
 with big bags slung over their shoulders, picking those 
 cotton bolls which are ripe. An expert picker can 
 pick about three hundred pounds a day, or little more 
 than half a bale. Then the cotton bolls, full of seeds, 
 vegetable matter and dirt, are taken to the batteries 
 of gins to be cleaned. Here the sharp teeth of circular 
 saws, mounted in a cylinder and revolving between a 
 network of wires too close together to permit seeds 
 to pass, catch the cotton and clean it. A set of brushes 
 brush the under side of the saw teeth, rubbing off the 
 cotton as it passes into the press, where hydraulic 
 rams press it into bales, 28x56x42 inches in measure- 
 ment. From here it is sent to the compresses, where 
 it is further pressed, the height of the bale being re- 
 duced from 42 to 18 inches. Then it is ready for ship- 
 ment, clothed in bagging and wrapped around with 
 steel or iron bands. 
 
 **The cotton-gin is a simple machine, but it is in its 
 
 352 
 
STORY OF THE COTTON GIN 
 
 simplicity that its greatest value lies. For ages 
 planters had been growing cotton, but the picking out 
 of the seeds was an endless task and prohibited cotton 
 culture on great scales. The Hindus and the Chinese 
 are said to have had a crude machine which is known 
 as the *churka.' What the cotton-gin means to the 
 South, and of course to the world, is revealed in the 
 fact that, before Whitney invented it, the Southern 
 states produced only about 2,000,000 pounds, in 1790. 
 One hundred and twenty years later, the crop amounted 
 to 6,000,000,000 pounds, or 3,000 times as much. 
 
 *^What the cotton-gin did for the industry, a new 
 machine, the mechanical cotton picker, a machine with 
 almost human intelligence, promises to repeat. Even 
 the Aztecs, the Hindus, in fact all people who raised 
 cotton, struggled with the problem of picking cotton 
 expeditiously. It is related that one American even 
 imported Brazilian monkeys and endeavored to train 
 them to take the place of the negro laborer. It was 
 not until a recent year that an American, Angus Camp- 
 bell, after working nearly twenty years on the prob- 
 lem, finally produced a machine which performed this 
 duty. It is a marvelous machine, and a cotton planter, 
 skeptical like all his neighbors, exclaimed when he 
 witnessed the wizardry of the machine: *You can go 
 home, Sam (speaking to one of his negro field pickers). 
 You Ve lost your job !' It looked like a traction engine 
 and ran down astride of the cotton plants, picking the 
 plant clean as it passed. Nimble hooked fingers of 
 metal, assisted by steel needles which mechanically 
 imbedded themselves into each boll, tore the bolls off 
 and deposited them in the hoppers. But the wizardry 
 of the machine was that it literally examined each boll 
 before picking to see if it was ripe and ready. If it 
 was not, then the fingers skipped and looked for those 
 that were ripe. 
 
 353 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ^^The cotton seed was not only once despised, but 
 was a cause of annoyance, for the cotton-gins created 
 liuge mountains of them and finally would have to move 
 to another part of the field or be engulfed To Paul 
 Aldige, of New Orleans, who first successfully crushed 
 the seed and extracted oil, in 1855, Americans owe a 
 great deal. This industry, a by-product, now produces 
 annually more than $140,000,000 a year. 
 
 *^Let us call the roll of the cotton states to find 
 out what cotton means to them. There is the greatest 
 producer, Texas. Her cotton crop, in 1909, exceeded 
 the value of all vegetables, except potatoes and yams, 
 raised in the same year in all the United States. 
 Georgia's crop, the next largest, was valued at more 
 than the total product of orchard fruits; Alabama's 
 at more than the total barley crop ; South Carolina's 
 at more than the apple; Mississippi's, which in that 
 year was only a little more than half her normal, 
 even exceeded, with that handicap, the total value of 
 sugar products; North Carolina's, the valuation of 
 flowers and plants and nursery products; Oklahoma's, 
 the peaches and nectarines and rye crops; Arkansas', 
 the bean, dry pea, and peanut crops; Tennessee's, the 
 rice and hop crops; Louisiana's, the buckwheat and 
 kaffir corn, and milo maize crops ; Florida's, the maple 
 sugar and syrup; Missouri's, the subtropical fruits, 
 except oranges and lemons; Virginia's, the last in 
 point of production, nearly twice as much as all the 
 hemp raised. All hail to King Cotton ! ' ' 
 
 354 
 
THE STORY OF THE SHEEP-RAISER 
 AND HIS CROPS OF WOOL 
 
 THE genial, bronzed face of the next Story-teller 
 reflected the open range. Strength of body and 
 character permeated his whole bearing. 
 
 **I am a sheep-raiser and wool-clipper," were his 
 opening words. ^'My story will prove to you that the 
 little, humble sheep is mankind's best friend. Modern 
 civilization cannot do without him ; he appears on your 
 table as luscious joints; his wool drapes your backs 
 and graces your floors; his * grease' makes milady's 
 complexion as sweet and wholesome as the sun-kissed 
 cheeks of my native Western land. 
 
 **The United States is the greatest, by far, wool- 
 consuming nation in the world. To supply this de- 
 mand, or at least a great part of it, we have in this 
 countrv more than 50.000.000 sheeD. a srreater number 
 than we have of horses, mules, and dairv cows. In 
 the one state of Montana alone there are more sheep 
 than there are mules in the whole nation. We clip 
 from all our sheep more than 300,000,000 pounds of 
 fine wool, enough to supply every individual American 
 with three pounds each. Over 1,200 American woolen 
 mills use this vast fleecy mass, and call upon the rest 
 of the world for sufficient to meet the insatiable de- 
 mand. 
 
 ** Just as the woolen industry has undergone mirac- 
 ulous changes in the last half century, so has the sheep 
 industry. A sheep-herder of that day would not recog- 
 nize a modern sheep ranch, possibly only the sheep. 
 Chaos has given way to system, and in our Western 
 
 355 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 states there are stringent laws which we sheepmen 
 must live up to. They are largely designed for our own 
 perfection and benefit. 
 
 ^ ' Picture a well sheltered valley, deep with luscious 
 grass. Keen-eyed men, two to a flock, ceaselessly 
 watch their charges, numbering, in the aggregate, hun- 
 dreds of thousands of sheep, each valued at from $3 
 to $12 apiece. Scores of intelligent sheep dogs sit 
 on their haunches, keenly watching every move of the 
 sheep. It is early spring in one of our Southwestern 
 states, and the drovers are preparing to bring their 
 flocks to the clipping sheds. They are long rambling 
 buildings, whose interiors resemble a modern factory 
 in the point of machinery. Long belts hang to the 
 shaftings and lead down to the clipping machines, or 
 shears. Twenty shearers, men who are experts at 
 their trades and follow the clipping seasons, as the 
 wheat harvesters do, take position beside the ma- 
 chines. When all is ready, each man reaches into the 
 shute leading from the outside and seizes a sheep, and 
 with a quick swing has it in sitting posture between 
 his knees. The machinery whirs, and the flashing 
 shears slip over the sheep's back, clipping off his 
 woolen coat in less than two minutes, a coat weighing, 
 on the average, seven pounds of good wool, which, 
 after scouring, will sell at the rate of about 55 cents 
 a pound. 
 
 * * One of the curious sights of the sheep ranch is to 
 watch the sheep being * dipped,' an operation which is 
 compelled by law. It is designed to free the sheep 
 from the * scabies,' the disease caused by a parasitic 
 germ which travels over its body under the wool. The 
 sheep are driven to the entrance of a long trench 
 filled with a cleansing composition, usually sulphur 
 and tobacco, and are forced in and must swim the 
 length of the trench to the exit." 
 
 356 
 
STORY OF WOOL 
 
 **I suppose man domesticated sheep as lie did other 
 animals/' said one of the gathering. 
 
 ** Yes, he did/' replied the Westerner. ^^Inaway, 
 wool is a symbol of civilization, for the wild sheep 
 grows hair, not wool. Wool, as you probably know, is 
 hair covered with minute pointed scales, or plates, at- 
 tached to filaments at their bases and overlapping like 
 fish scales. This causes the wool fibers to interlock 
 and renders possible the manufacture of felt, which 
 is wool heated and pressed into compact substance. 
 
 *^ Jewish and Eoman chroniclers have left records 
 which show that sheep-breeding was carried on by the 
 ancients. The Eomans made of certain portions of 
 Spain a great sheep ranch, their breeds including the 
 Tarentine sheep (now extinct) and the merinos, which 
 survived the raids of the Vandals and Goths and are 
 perpetuated in the species of to-day. It is related that 
 King George III, of England, wanted to introduce the 
 Spanish merino to England, but the Spanish were 
 reaping such wealth from their breed that they made 
 it a criminal offense to export any. The difficulty was 
 met, it is said, by giving the Spanish Ambassador's 
 wife a pair of creamy white horses, valued at $40,000, 
 and in return she caused smugglers to bring over a 
 flock. These became the progenitors of the great 
 Australian merino flocks. America was more for- 
 tunate, for Columbus, in 1493, included in his cargo 
 several Spanish sheep, which became progenitors of 
 large flocks in New Mexico, Utah, and Texas. Sheep 
 were introduced from England into Virginia, in 1609 ; 
 into Massachusetts from England, in 1824; and into 
 New York from Holland, in 1625. 
 
 ** Ninety-five out of every hundred Americans who 
 wear woolen clothing are clad in fabrics from Amer- 
 ican mills. To describe the processes by which the 
 various cloths are made would fill a volume, as almost 
 
 357 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 every kind of cloth is manufactured differently. But 
 they all, up to a certain point, receive the same pre- 
 paratory treatment. The package of wool from the 
 sheep ranch is received with harsh treatment, being 
 severely beaten to drive out dust, open up the staple, 
 and increase the volume of the fiber. Then, like cot- 
 ton, it is scoured, and next dyed or bleached, and dried 
 in great automatic driers. Like cotton, it is next given 
 to the revolving drums, equipped with sharp teeth, and 
 is disentangled. Another machine pounds it to crush 
 out the burrs, or else it is treated with chloride of 
 aluminum and other chemicals to decompose the or- 
 ganic matter. Then it is again washed in soda solu- 
 tion to destroy the vegetable matter or any cotton 
 shoddy that may be mixed with the wool. It now is 
 ^ry and brittle, and oil must be added to it. Then 
 comes the carding operation, as with cotton, from 
 which it emerges in narrow strips or slivers, and is 
 then spun into yarn. But to make worsted requires 
 a different process from woolen yarn. Worsted is 
 a very hard thread, while the fibers of woolen yarn 
 project slightly from the main thread and form the 
 nap of the finished cloth. 
 
 **The worsted machines are ingenious. One, the 
 gilling machine, levels the fibers and makes them lie 
 parallel, one pair of rollers pulling the yarn over 
 heavy steel bars, fallers, covered with projecting pins, 
 the pins becoming finer and more numerous as the 
 fiber travels through the machine. From here is goes 
 to a machine to be spun into a very hard, twisted 
 thread. Then it is ready for weaving. 
 
 ** Weaving consists essentially of three movements. 
 First the threads of the warp are separated, so as to 
 permit the filling thread to interlace. The second is 
 the interlacing, or the passing of the shuttle contain- 
 ing the filling thread, or woof. The third is the crowd- 
 
 358 
 
STORY OF WOOL 
 
 ing of the threads together into a compact web. This 
 is the method, but not the means, by which the Egyp- 
 tians wove their mummy cloths, the Greeks their fine 
 tapestries and damasks, the natives of India their fine 
 muslins and their Cashmere shawls. But theirs was 
 done by crude looms of simple mechanism, and by 
 hand. From that time to the modern automatic power 
 looms many improvements have been made. John 
 Kay gave to the world, in 1733, his flying shuttle, and, 
 in 1760, the drop-box, an attachment by which dif- 
 ferent colored threads could be woven into the fabric. 
 In 1784, the Reverend Edmund Cartwright invented 
 the power loom and revolutionized the industry. Next 
 Joseph Jacquard, of France, invented, in 1801, a loom 
 for weaving figured patterns. Leonardo da Vinci, the 
 painter of *Mona Lisa,* invented the machine which is 
 used to-day to trim the pile of cloth. 
 
 ^^The last operations upon the fabric are to wash 
 and shrink it, and then to teasle it, to raise the nap 
 of the cloth. Then Da Vinci's machine trims the pile, 
 the cloth is brushed, wound around drums, and soaked 
 in hot water for three hours, steam being afterward 
 forced through by hydraulic pressure. It is dried, 
 and then it is ready for the tailor. Despite these many 
 complicated processes, wool has been clipped from a 
 sheep in the morning and appeared at nightfall in a 
 suit of clothes!'' 
 
 24 
 
 359 
 
THE STORY OF THE TANNER AND 
 HIS HIDES OF LEATHER 
 
 "1% yTY trade/* began tlie next Story-teller, as lie 
 l^yX stood by the library table, ^'is the oldest occu- 
 pation of mankind, excepting possibly hunting. 
 I am a tanner, a worker in leather.'' His limbs trem- 
 bled \vith age ; his face looked like the leather he made ; 
 his hands were calloused and toughened by chemicals. 
 
 ^'I clothe the feet and hands of humanity," he con- 
 tinued. "I, and my fellow-workers, upholster its fur- 
 niture and kindred articles of civilization, spin the in- 
 dustrial machines with great leathern belts, which, in 
 smaller strips and lengths, humanity binds about its 
 waist, or pastes within its hat. You will find my han- 
 diwork wherever you look. 
 
 *^Mine is an honored trade. The cave-man by his 
 crude methods, made leather of a kind for himself; 
 the Egyptians, the ancient Hebrews, the Romans, in 
 fact all races, even the aborigines, used it in various 
 forms. We of the modern generations — there are over 
 200,000 of us in all the branches of the industry in the 
 United States — use methods unknown to the ancients. 
 We are employed in about 5,000 establishments in this 
 country, and we earn more than $100,000,000 each year. 
 We import from all the countries of the world — the 
 United States cannot begin to meet our demand — 
 more than $120,000,000 worth of hides and skins, 
 stripped from the backs of cattle, horses, buffalo, 
 sheep, goats, kangaroos, pigs, and even the fish of the 
 sea, and many other kinds of animals. If all the ani- 
 
 360 
 
STORY OF LEATHER 
 
 mals could be gathered into one continuous line they 
 would, I have no doubt, reach many times around the 
 earth. 
 
 ^* Leather tanning has kept pace with civilization," 
 the tanner continued. *^The world's chemists and its 
 mechanics have contributed of their genius to give us 
 modern tanners better methods than those employed 
 by the early generations, and therefore we can pro- 
 duce a much better grade and in many more different 
 forms and kinds. There was a time when the tanner 
 was despised. The ancient Hebrews, notably in the 
 city of Joppa, where Simon the Tanner lived, com- 
 pelled the tanners to work outside of the city limits. 
 This has changed, and to-day we are accepted in so- 
 ciety and cities as industrial benefactors. 
 
 *^The average American, when he slips on his easy- 
 fitting shoe in the morning, does not realize what a 
 tremendous amount of time and labor it represents. 
 I have not time to take you into the intricacies of the 
 trade; it would require many hours and would fill a 
 volume. Did you know that it requires about 120 days 
 just to convert the green hide into leather suitable for 
 the shoe manufacturer to cut out his shoe soles? It is 
 a long process, during which the hide is soaked and 
 cleaned of its hair and such particles of flesh as es- 
 caped the skinning knife; it is doused in tanning 
 liquids and chemicals of many kinds, rubbed and 
 scrubbed and kneaded and stored away in tan bark, 
 some of which comes from far distant Asia, Greece, or 
 Central and South America. 
 
 ** There are other methods. One is known as the 
 chrome process and involves the use of such chemi- 
 cals as bichromate of potash, hydrochloric acid, hypo- 
 sulphite of soda, and various dyes. Glazed kid leather 
 is treated in this way. Black leather, such as is used 
 in black gloves, passes through yolks of eggs, flour, 
 
 361 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 alum, salt, lime, and bran, while patent leather is made 
 by successive applications of lamp-black mixed with 
 linseed oil and turpentine, with a month's interrup- 
 tion, during which it is allowed to dry, and a final 
 coating of varnish, which is baked on in hot ovens and 
 then exposed to the sun for a day. 
 
 ^^Who was the first American tanner f inquired 
 one of the gathering. 
 
 *' History does not tell us,'' replied the tanner. ^^It 
 has been said that the Pilgrims, not intending to walk 
 barefoot in the New World, brought over a cordwainer 
 to make boots. The first tannery mentioned in 
 America is the Virginian establishment which began 
 operations in the same year that Boston was founded, 
 1630. It was only a matter of a year or so before 
 Francis Ingalls had one established in the Massachu- 
 setts Colony, in Swampscott. In those days our trade 
 was considered of such vital importance that the au- 
 thorities issued strict laws that whenever an animal was 
 killed, its hide must be saved for the neighborhood 
 leather maker, and also laws that prohibited, under 
 heavy penalty, hides being exported. Under this pro- 
 tection the industry flourished, especially that of mak- 
 ing shoes. Up and down the length of the land passed 
 those itinerant shoemakers, whipping the cat, they 
 called it, stopping in the settlements to mend or make 
 the shoes, just like the scissor-grinder does to-day. 
 
 *^ Humanity's feet evidently were not designed to 
 walk over this earth unshod. Even the cave-man 
 bound his feet with protecting covers. We know that 
 the Egyptians used foot-coverings, for they are shown 
 in sculpture and picture and were made sandal-shaped 
 of interlaced palm leaves and papyrus stalks, the toes 
 turning up like Dutch ice-skates. Grecian women went 
 in more for style, having a sole and upper lined with 
 cat's fur, the claws drooping down from the top. Shoes 
 
 362 
 
STORY OF LEATHER 
 
 have passed through as many evolutions of styles as 
 have women's hats and, like them, they have been the 
 subjects of much adornment and comment. Henry 
 IV. of Sicily wore shoes made of cloth of gold and 
 adorned with pearls. 
 
 **Many great Americans have been shoemakers,'' 
 exclaimed the tanner. ^'One whom you will all recall 
 was Eoger Sherman, who worked at the bench for 
 twenty-two years. From the old-time shoemaker's 
 bench to the modern shoe factory there intervenes but 
 little more than a century of practice. The battle of 
 New Orleans was but a year old when J. W. Hopkin- 
 ton invented the shoe-pegging machine, one of the first 
 steps toward the modern era of shoe machinery 
 
 *^If you have never been in one of the New Eng- 
 land shoe shops, as they are to-day, you cannot ap- 
 preciate the wonderful intelligence of the machines. 
 They perform all the work, from cutting out the 
 leather to putting on the finishing polish. There are 
 machines that sew the uppers together, make and at- 
 tach the toe-caps, fasten in accurately the eyelets, fit 
 the uppers over the lasts so that they fit the foot like 
 a glove, cut grooves, and trim, nail, and stitch inner 
 and outer soles together and then to the upper, level 
 the soles and heels, which are nailed on by machinery, 
 to a uniform thickness, and then sandpaper them, and 
 finally bevel, blacken and burnish the heels and soles 
 with hot irons. The finished product is the pride of 
 America and is pronounced by the world as the finest 
 shoe made. The American shoemakers are turning 
 out their product at the rate of 250,000,000 shoes every 
 year, enough to give every individual in our nation, 
 whether he wears shoes or not, two and a half pairs. 
 This, then, is the story of leather." 
 
 363 
 
THE STORY, OF THE PIN-MAKER AND 
 WHAT HE HAS DONE 
 
 t i^HE biggest things in the world are not always 
 
 a 
 
 the most wonderful/' remarked the little 
 maiden with golden hair and deep blue eyes. 
 We have heard so much about gigantic things 
 that I shall tell you about one of the smallest things 
 in the world — and yet one of the greatest. I am going 
 to make a plea for this ! ' ' 
 
 She held on her finger tips the tiny object. 
 
 ^*It is only a pin/' said the girl; *^a common, ordi- 
 nary, everyday pin — ^thrown away as worthless when 
 you do not need it, and yet worth its weight in gold 
 when you do need it! 
 
 **This despised little pin," she continued, *'is 
 woman 's best friend — and worst enemy. Some people 
 think that women are made of pins. It might be more 
 truthfully said that pins make the woman — for with- 
 out them she falls apart. All women are created free 
 and equal when it comes to pins. The pin reigns 
 supreme in the boudoirs of queen and maid, palace 
 and hovel ; it knows both riches and poverty. ' ' 
 
 **Do you know," exclaimed the witty Story-teller, 
 *^that, when you come to investigate civilization, you 
 will find that it is only * pinned' together? Take the 
 pins out of our modern society, and there would be 
 a shocking state of affairs. When we decided to step 
 out from barbarism and wear clothes, the humble little 
 pin was the guide that led the way — and since that day 
 there have been frequent occasions in the lives of all 
 
 364 
 
STORY OF THE PIN 
 
 men and women, great and small, when the pin is the 
 ;^innacle of hope ! ' ^ 
 
 Good humored laughter interrupted the speaker for 
 a moment. 
 
 ^*Let us look into the life-story of the pin,'' she 
 continued. *^It is an important factor in the world's 
 history. Nature gave the pattern for the pin in the 
 thorn. We find that, in one form or another, pins are 
 of the highest antiquity, the earliest form being a 
 natural thorn, such as is still to be seen fastening the 
 dresses of the peasant women in Upper Egypt. Its 
 name is derived from the Latin spina — a thorn. 
 Spina Christi is the name of the tree on which grow 
 the large thorns used as pins in Egypt. 
 
 ^^ During the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods, 
 pins, or ^clothes fasteners,' were made of bone from 
 the fibula of some animal; they were split and then 
 rubbed to a point. With the coming of the Bronze Age, 
 pins were made of bronze — a composition metal of 
 copper and tin. The development of clothing ren- 
 dered a more finely tapered and highly polished pin 
 necessary, and later on an attempt at ornamentation 
 was made. Nothing radically new in the shape of 
 pins has been invented since the Bronze Age. 
 
 *^Pins are mentioned in the Bible, and the Hebrew 
 word refers to tent pins. But long, stiletto pins were 
 found in Egyptian deposits as early as 1200 B. C. 
 Pins of this character, with ribbed handles, were un- 
 earthed at Cyprus and Sparta. They were prodigious 
 pins of such size and strength that, in the hands of 
 excited women, they were considered dangerous. 
 
 *' Herodotus relates the tragedy of a disastrous 
 expedition of the Athenians early in the sixth century, 
 when only one man returned alive; the wives of all 
 those who had fallen in battle were so infuriated with 
 the unfortunate man for having escaped, when their 
 
 365 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 own husbands liad perished, that they killed him with 
 pins! As a future safeguard, a different style of 
 dress was afterward imposed on Athenian women, 
 which did not require such large pins, but was secured 
 by being sewn on the shoulders. The ancients also 
 wore pins in their hair. 
 
 *^The primitive safety-pin was the earliest form 
 of the brooch. It was in full use in Northern Italy 
 before the end of the Bronze Age. The birth of the 
 safety-pin is an interesting anecdote. In the lake 
 dwellings of ancient Italy, long, slender pins of bronze 
 were a characteristic feature ; one was crooked to form 
 a head, and the other was elaborated into a spiral. 
 One day, a necessity arose for *some one' to fasten 
 his, or her, body covering with greater security than 
 that afforded by an ordinary pin. This *some one' 
 conceived the idea of bending the body of the pin, after 
 passing it through the garment, and securing the point 
 behind the head. Then an ingenious person — ^prob- 
 ably a woman — thought of the brilliant idea of giving 
 a complete turn to the pin and thus getting a spring. 
 The earliest type of these safety-pins was found in the 
 graves of children and date to the fifteenth century 
 before Christ. The safety-pin went through many 
 evolutions in shape and style; it was made of varied 
 metals, bronze, iron, and gold, but it is the primitive 
 and simplest form which is in use at the present time." 
 
 ** Coming now to comparatively modern times," 
 said the Story-teller, **pins, in their present form, 
 though probably coarser, were in use in France in the 
 first half of the fourteenth century. There seemed 
 always a tendency to make them long. Women pinned 
 their veils, whimples, stomachers, lappets, kerchiefs, 
 using them in great quantities — a dishful, one his- 
 torian explains. Twelve thousand pins were delivered 
 for the wardrobe of a French princess in 1347. 
 
 366 
 
STORY OF THE PIN 
 
 *^The first date given when an English queen re- 
 ceived pins from France is 1540. And England con- 
 tinued to receive pins from France until about 1626, 
 when John Tilsby introduced the manufacture into 
 Gloucestershire. He gave employment to fifteen hun- 
 dred people, and Stroud pins gained a high reputation. 
 The pinmakers of London formed a corporation in 
 1636. Metal pins were expensive luxuries, owing to 
 the amount of hard labor involved. They were given 
 as New Year's gifts, and there was an ancient tax to 
 provide the queen with pins. 
 
 *^The attention of the American colonists was 
 drawn to the manufacture of pins by the offer of 
 prizes for the first native-made pins in 1775 — the year 
 of the Battle of Bunker Hill. The price of pins rose 
 enormously. But, even prior to this action of the 
 colonists, Nathaniel Robbinson, a 'wyer drawer,' peti- 
 tioned the General Court for aid in establishing the 
 pin business, but the Court did not see fit to grant his 
 request. Another member of the Plymouth Colony 
 made a similar request — Joseph Jenks, Sr. 
 
 *^ During the American Revolution, pins were made 
 by Jeremiah Wilkinson, also famous in connection with 
 needles and nails, who drew the wire himself for the 
 manufacture. Up to this time, the heads of the pins 
 were made of a fine wire, twisted firmly about the top 
 of the body of the pin. Samuel Slocum, of Rhode 
 Island, who had patented a pin-making machine some 
 twenty-five years before, now commenced their manu- 
 facture in Providence, and Leonard Chester, of Weth- 
 ersfield, Connecticut, proposed to the legislature to 
 erect a pin factory in that state. 
 
 **A few years later, Apollos Hinsley, a doctor, 
 living in Connecticut, invented a pin-making machine. 
 Then followed the action of the Provisional Congress, 
 offering fifty pounds for the first twenty-five pins of 
 
 367 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 domestic make, equal to those imported from England 
 and costing seven shillings and sixpence a dozen, show- 
 ing the scarcity and high cost prior to the Revolution. 
 
 *'The modern pin is an American product. The 
 beautiful automatic machinery by which pins are now 
 made of wire is an invention of Seth Hunt, an Amer- 
 ican, who, in 1871, created a ^ solid headed' pin. 
 Samuel Wright, of Massachusetts, a young engineer, 
 patented a pin-maMng machine in England in 1824. 
 He was residing at the time in Middlesex, and his 
 invention placed the industry on its present basis. 
 
 ^^Did you ever visit a modern pin factory? The 
 machinery is truly marvelous. Wire of a suitable 
 gauge is run off a reel with almost magical speed. It 
 is drawn in and straightened by passing between 
 straightening pins or studs set in a table. When a 
 pin length has entered, it is caught by lateral jaws, 
 beyond which enough wire projects to form a pin- 
 head. The steel punch advances against this end and 
 strikes a terrific blow which compresses the metal by 
 a die arrangement into the form of a head. The pin 
 length is immediately cut off, and the headed piece 
 drops into a slit sufficiently wide to pass the wire 
 through but retain the head. The pins are conse- 
 quently suspended by the head, while their projecting 
 points are held against a revolving file-cut steel roller, 
 along the face of which they are carried by gravitation 
 till they fall out at the extremity, well pointed pins. 
 
 **The pins are next purified by boiling, and so 
 cleaned. They are arranged in a copper pan in layers, 
 alternating with layers of grained tin. The contents 
 of the pan are covered with water over which a quan- 
 tity of bitartrate of potash is sprinkled, and, after 
 boiling several hours, the brass pins are coated with 
 a thick deposit of tin, which gives them their silvery 
 appearance. They are then washed in clean water 
 
 368 
 
STORY OF THE PIN 
 
 and dried in sawdust, from which they are winnowed — 
 finished pins. Mourning pins are made of iron wire, 
 finished by immersing in black Japan and drying in 
 a stove. The sizes of ordinary pins range from the 
 three and one-half inch stout blanket pins to the finest 
 slender gilt pins used by entomologists, 4,500 of which 
 weigh about an ounce. ^' 
 
 *^How many pins a year does it take to hold the 
 American people together? '' asked one of the listeners, 
 who feasts on figures. 
 
 ** About forty billion pins a year." 
 
 **Is there any romance connected with the pin?" 
 inquired a maiden lady. 
 
 **Eomance!" ejaculated the Story-teller. **Why, 
 the pin is the most romantic object in the world. No 
 one knows what a subtle part it plays in deftly 
 pricking lovers' fingers and breaking up courtships. 
 In the old days of witchcraft one way of proving that 
 a woman was a witch was to stick her with a pin. 
 
 **In America, the pin has not played as important 
 a part in the light of superstition, religion, charms, 
 and the like. But, in the Old World, many myths 
 cluster about the crooked pins of Ireland; the holy 
 wells in Scotland, where, whenever a pin is dropped 
 in with fervent faith, all the other pins rise up to greet 
 the new one ; the pin games of England ; and the pin 
 shows, recurring like our marble and kite seasons. It 
 is said that if pins continue to be lost, the whole world 
 will some day be a mass of pins. 
 
 **So it is not surprising," concluded the vivacious 
 young Story-teller, **that women are inclined to pin 
 their faith on pins rather than men. And so it is that 
 the pin is mightier than the sword ! ' ' 
 
 369 
 
THE STORY OF THE NEEDLEWORKER 
 AND HER SERVICE TO THE WORLD 
 
 "T F a monument is ever to be erected to the smallest 
 
 X object that has done the greatest good in the 
 
 world," shouted a woman's shrill voice from the 
 
 settee near the potted palm, ^4t will be in everlasting 
 
 tribute to the needle!" 
 
 ^^Tell us your story, then!" called a score of voices 
 from the different parts of the library. 
 
 The woman was attractively attired in a plain black 
 dress. There was a tired expression on her thin face. 
 Her hands were somewhat calloused by years of hard 
 work. 
 
 *^I am a seamstress," she began. ^^I came here 
 to-day to defend the needle, for I knew that it would 
 be neglected. But I love it; it is woman's staunchest 
 friend, and I could not bear to see it forgotten." 
 
 *^It may be," she continued, ^Hhat you Story-tellers 
 are right when you tell us about the great things that 
 have made civilization, but I claim that the needle is 
 the little magic worker that keeps civilization * sewed 
 up ' — and that is no mean accomplishment. The pin is 
 the laziest thing on earth, while the needle is the most 
 industrious. The needle is no sluggard nor schemer. 
 It does not shirk work by shifting the responsibility; 
 it does its work well. It does not cover up our sins 
 of omission — it removes them!" 
 
 The listeners thoroughly enjoyed the gibe and ex- 
 pressed their approval by clapping their hands. 
 
 **As we sit here telling these stories," continued 
 the loyal seamstress, **more than a million women sit 
 
 370 
 
STORY OF THE NEEDLE 
 
 by their firesides in the homes of the nation, indus- 
 triously creating objects of usefulness and beauty with 
 the magical little needle in their deft fingers. The 
 needle is, without doubt, the world's greatest industry. 
 It employs the hours, the minds, and hands, and the 
 tongues of more women than any other object ever 
 conceived by the ingenuity of men ! ' * 
 
 The listeners again broke into hearty laughter. 
 
 *^The needle,'' continued the seamstress, ^'is the 
 little wonder worker in our homes. It takes part in 
 our courtships by adding to the natural charms of the 
 maidens. It enters into our love affairs by creating 
 dainty frocks to enhance their beauty. It makes the 
 wedding gown; it goes on the honeymoon; it figura- 
 tively creates the home. It prepares for the baby; it 
 designs the little robes for the heir to the new kingdom 
 of love; it contrives and repairs and patches his gar- 
 ments through his childhood ; it sends him out in youth 
 garbed for the world's struggles; it follows him 
 through the seven ages of man — and it folds him peace- 
 fully in his last resting robes when sweet peace comes 
 at last. The needle, therefore, is the beginning and 
 the end of life." 
 
 The listeners applauded enthusiastically. 
 
 ** Needle making," explained the seamstress, ^^was 
 one of the first arts practiced by man. Needles of fish- 
 bone, horse bone, and bronze have been found in caves 
 in France and in Central Europe. In Egyptian and 
 Scandinavian tombs, and among early European and 
 Western Asiatic peoples, bronze needles, two and one- 
 half to eight inches long, were found — ^huge, clumsy 
 affairs. Steel needles were made in Nuremburg 
 toward the close of the fourteenth century. At a later 
 period, Spanish needles were in great demand. The 
 Germans planted the trade in England, where it has 
 been established for over two centuries. 
 
 371 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ^^ There are no records of the industry in America 
 during the Colonial period, but Lynn, Massachusetts, 
 applied to the Court of Plymouth in 1666, for the sum 
 of fifteen pounds for the purchase of tools for wire 
 drawing to make needles. Tools were bought, and 
 manufacture begun. Jeremiah Wilkinson, of Cumber- 
 land, Ehode Island, the inventor of cut nails, made 
 needles in 1775. Needle manufacture as an industry 
 was put on a permanent basis in the United States in 
 1852, when the type of needle used in machinery was 
 introduced. 
 
 *^As the sewing machine is an American produc- 
 tion, so its most important feature is the needle con- 
 structed by Elias Howe, for the making of the lock 
 stitch. When the sewing machine was first made, 
 needle-making was a process similar to the English 
 method, requiring much manual labor. The reducing 
 of the 'shank' and putting in the grooves on the side 
 of the needle was done by stamping between dies. 
 Gradually these operations were replaced by rolling, 
 grinding, turning and milling — and the world was 
 flooded with needles; needles with round points for 
 sewing cloth; needles with points of different shapes 
 for sewing leather, twist needles, reverse twist, wedge, 
 cross, chisel, reverse chisel, diamond needles. An in- 
 teresting needle is used in making boots and shoes. 
 Then there is a special needle used in making hoisery 
 and in stockinet work. 
 
 ** Inventive genius has worked over the needle for 
 ages. Like everything else, it is constantly subject to 
 improvements. Drill-eyed needles were made in 1826. 
 As early as 1800, the inventive genius of an unknown 
 American saw the possibility of a stamp to impress 
 the point of the groove and a press to pierce the eye, 
 but this idea did not produce results until 1886'. A 
 Mr. Morrall, of New England, invented a machine in 
 
 372 
 
STORY OF THE NEEDLE 
 
 1839 for polishing thousands of needles simultane- 
 ously; a Mr. Lake, of New England, made further im- 
 provements in 1869. But it was not until 1860 that 
 the manufacture of needles was reported to the census. 
 
 * * Since that day, the needle has played a distinctive 
 part in the progress of civilization. Its varied uses 
 give to it a utility unquestioned, whether in the hands 
 of the tailor, the shoemaker, the surgeon, while the 
 usefulness of the needle in the hands of the modern 
 woman is a story of such wonderful significance as to 
 put it ahead of almost all stories of modern industry. 
 It has its artistic and aesthetic side, the lace-making, 
 the delicate and intricate embroideries — all the count- 
 less beautiful designs which could not be carried out 
 without the needle. 
 
 ^^It may interest some of my women friends, as 
 well as the men,'' suggested the Story-teller, *Ho hear 
 how wonderfully the needle is made to-day. Take one 
 in your hand and look at it carefully. Then imagine 
 it passing through all these struggles to get into ex- 
 istence. It begins in huge bars of steel. These are 
 reduced by wire-drawing machines to a suitable diam- 
 eter. The ends of a few wires in each bundle are cut 
 off, ignited, and hardened by plunging them into cold 
 water. They are then snapped between the fingers in 
 order to judge their quality. The bundles belonging 
 to the most brittle wires are set aside to be employed 
 in making peculiar kinds of needles. The quality of 
 the steel wire has to be ascertained by a careful gauge, 
 and then the coil is cut with mechanical shears. The 
 wire is now passed under a guillotine shearing ma- 
 chine, which cuts it into the desired length of the 
 needle. These lengths of wire have been raised to a 
 dull red heat by being worked back and forth, until, 
 by combined pressure and rolling, the lengths become 
 perfectly straight and even. 
 
 373 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 *'How does a needle get its point? It is dry 
 grindstone, revolving at high speed, which creates the 
 sparks and dust so injurious to the workmen. A 
 grinder holds at one time several dozen wires against 
 the stone with his left hand and revolves them slightly 
 with his right. He will point about 100,000 needles 
 a day." 
 
 ** How does the needle get its eye?" asked one of* 
 the listeners. 
 
 **It has it punched in," answered the Story-teller, 
 with a laugh. **Wire blanks are automatically fed 
 into a swift, belt-driven machine and held while two 
 oval holes are quickly punched by another belt-driven 
 punching machine. After being eyed, the needles must 
 be filed smooth. They are threaded together with a 
 fine wire passed through the eyes, giving the appear- 
 ance of a fine, close-set comb. Each side is clamped 
 up tightly and the heads are smoothed and rounded 
 before the needles are set free. 
 
 **What makes the needle brittle? The hardening 
 and tempering process. They are placed in an iron 
 tray, heated to redness ; then they are plunged into an 
 oil bath; they must now be re-heated until they turn 
 a straw color, and are then gradually cooled. By the 
 old process of tempering, they were thrown into a 
 frying-pan along with a quantity of grease. 
 
 **What gives the needles their polish? It is done 
 by giving them a good scrubbing. The needles are 
 put up in bundles of several thousands and thrown into 
 soft soap, oil, and emery powder in a tightly tied 
 canvas cover. The needles are actually put to bed, 
 that is, in the bed of a machine, in which they are kept 
 rolling backward and forward so that each individual 
 needle rubs against its neighbor. After a time, the 
 bundles are withdrawn. The needles are washed, 
 dried, and again bundled up, but this time with putty 
 
 374 
 
"GOING DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA" 
 
 See page 307. 
 
STORY OF THE NEEDLE 
 
 powder instead of emery. Then they are rolled again 
 until their surfaces are sufficiently polished. Now 
 they are unpacked, washed in an alkaline solution, and 
 dried in sawdust. 
 
 *^But the greatest task is yet to come. The heads 
 must all be brought into one direction. The needles 
 are conveyed to trays where they are brought parallel 
 to each other by a sharp, jerking motion. Then a 
 * header' presses a lot of needles against a cloth finger, 
 and the faulty needles are picked out. The heads are 
 now all laid in one direction. This is not all; there 
 must be the smoothing and rounding of the eyeholes 
 to prevent the breaking of the thread in sewing; the 
 heads must be blued by heating, then strung on a 
 roughened steel wire, over which a paste of emery 
 and oil is spread, and the smoothing process is done 
 by friction. Then the blue color must be removed by 
 a grindstone, and a final polish is given by a rapidly 
 revolving buff wheel aided by putty powder. Finally, 
 the little needles that have endured these hardships 
 are gathered into papers and given long rides on the 
 freight trains, wandering through various cities and 
 stores, until at last they find an abiding place in some- 
 body's home and begin their household duties like 
 faithful slaves. 
 
 **I trust,'' said the seamstress, in ending her story, 
 *Hhat hereafter you will all have more respect for the 
 little needle which goes through a discipline so severe, 
 a test so supreme, to give it the heroic qualities of 
 great endurance." 
 
 25 375 
 
THE STORY OF THE WEAVER AND HIS 
 WONDERFUL SKEINS OF THREAD 
 
 "T IFE hangs by a thread. When the thread is 
 1 ^ broken, life ends." 
 
 Thus spoke a woman, bent and old, with 
 thread-worn hands. The tremor of age quivered on 
 her lips. 
 
 ^'I am a weaver," she said. '^I am one of the 
 legions of women who weave the slender threads into 
 the fabrics of life. There are more than a half mil- 
 lion in my profession in the United States to-day. 
 
 *^I have listened with interest to the story of the 
 needle, but thought how helpless it would be, if it were 
 not for that little thread, as delicate as the spider's 
 web, that follows so faithfully wherever it is led. The 
 needle only blazes the path; it is the pilot — ^it is the 
 thread that bears the burden of humanity. 
 
 ^^It requires about fifty million miles of thread, of 
 all kinds, to hold the American people in their 
 clothes!" was the next startling statement. ^^To 
 weave this vast web, there were, in 1911, more estab- 
 lishments manufacturing textiles in the United States 
 than there were factories making furniture and re- 
 frigerators for our homes. They represented a total 
 capital investment of more than $3^000,000,000 — a sum 
 sufficient to instantly discharge Italy's total public 
 debt in the same year. During the working day, more 
 than 29,000,000 spindles sing their songs of industrial 
 prosperity. 
 
 '' Everyone is familiar with the little spools on 
 which cotton thread is wound, probably has, as a boy 
 
 376 
 
STORY OF THREAD 
 
 or girl, tied one onto a string for the cat to play 
 with," continued the speaker. 
 
 **Do you realize what mighty forests have been 
 leveled to supply these spools?" inquired the weaver. 
 *' There is one company whose annual output of cot- 
 ton thread is wound on spools which would form a 
 mighty pillar over 700 miles above the earth's surface, 
 if all the spools were stood on end, one on the other. 
 If some one could wrap the earth in a brown paper, 
 this company could supply the thread necessary to tie 
 the bundle." 
 
 *^Who invented thread — the modern cotton thread 
 which we use?" inquired one Story-teller. 
 
 ^^An American woman, I am proud to say, a woman 
 whose name was Mrs. Samuel Slater and who resided 
 at the time, in 1794, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is 
 said to have discovered that cotton fiber was superior 
 to flax and induced her husband to use it in his factory. 
 There is another story — ^history is rather uncertain 
 about the invention of commonplace things, you 
 know — ^that Napoleon was indirectly responsible for 
 its beginning in Europe. He found a vast stock of 
 silk in Hamburg, in 1803, and, thinking to destroy Eng- 
 land's commerce in this commodity, had it burned. He 
 succeeded in driving the makers of heddle-twine and 
 heddles in Paisley, Scotland, to the substitution of cot- 
 ton for silk in making heddles, a fortunate cir- 
 cumstance for Europe. 
 
 **That was the beginning of making modern 
 thread," the weaver resumed. ^*But one of the chief 
 occupations of Colonial American housewives was that 
 of weaving — an occupation that is counted as one of 
 the oldest in civilization. Indeed, there is no record 
 of when spinning-v/heels began to turn. The com- 
 plete story of the development of the fine six-corded 
 spool cotton of to-day from the old-fashioned hand- 
 
 377 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 made yarn involves a large part of the romance of hu- 
 man invention and almost the whole history of me- 
 chanical progress; it could not be given without ac- 
 counts of the inventions and improvements of the 
 cotton-gin, the spinning- jenny, the 'mule,' the water- 
 wheel, the steam-engine, and countless other contriv- 
 ances for quick and accurate work. 
 
 *'The spinning-wheel still holds an honored posi- 
 tion in many American homes, though now they are 
 kept as relics, their wheels forever silent. They have 
 a distinguished lineage, dating back for ages, for, until 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century, they had not 
 changed materially in cardinal principles. The Eo- 
 man maiden made her thread with the distaff; the 
 weavers of ancient India made their wonderful silks 
 and shawls, some of the latter, it is said, so delicate as 
 to permit folding away inside a walnut shell, with 
 spindles and distaff operated by hand. The threads 
 of the delicate, sheer fabrics of India were spun upon 
 a spindle no larger than a darning needle. 
 
 ^'I have often wondered how thread is made," said 
 one Story-teller, a man. 
 
 **If you could follow," replied the woman, ''an 
 individual fiber of cotton from the bale to the finished 
 spool of thread, you would find that it had traveled 
 over more than three thousand miles of space, and had 
 passed through many complicated machines. My 
 story begins with the opening of the bale, after which 
 it goes to be scoured with soda, and then on to the 
 hooked teeth of revolving drums, which tear the staple 
 into a filmy mass. Next, the picker loosens the fibers 
 at the rate of a thousand pounds a day. Before the 
 invention of this machine, one man could not clean 
 enough to make a yard of cloth in a day's time. The 
 picker gives it up almost in the form of cotton-batting, 
 which the carding machine seizes in its fairy-like hands 
 
 378 
 
STORY OF THREAD 
 
 and smoothes out, much as milady brushes her hair, 
 into a gossamer web that is even, and clean, and al- 
 most light enough to float in air. This filmy mass is 
 sent to series of rollers to be ^ drawn,' one of the 
 most important parts of thread-making. The different 
 rollers revolve at varying speeds. If one set, for in- 
 stance, turns ten times as fast as the other, the strand 
 that passes out between them is, of course, ten times 
 lengthened and ten times as fine as the original. This 
 is called a ^ draft of ten.' The drawing may be in any 
 ratio, and any number of strands may be run to- 
 gether into one at the same time that that is drawn. 
 
 ^^This process of uniting strands is called doubling. 
 The operation is repeated again and again, until the 
 original strand, if it could be followed up, would be 
 found to be reduced to millionths of its original size. 
 The doubling from first to last is about ninety million 
 times ! During these doubling operations, another ma- 
 chine, the guardian of the future thread, takes 
 the ^slivers,' as they are called in this condition, 
 and combs them over and over, taking out all for- 
 eign substances, and even short fibers, allowing only 
 the suitable staples for making the best thread to 
 pass its inspection. The next operation is roving, 
 the twisting of the sliver so that it will not break. 
 
 '^The resultant strand is known as * roving' after 
 this operation, and is wound on bobbins, which are then 
 put upon the *mule' or ring spinners. The thread 
 is led between rollers of graduated speeds for 
 another drawing and attached to bobbins. The frame 
 of bobbins, or spindles, moves away and the spindles 
 begin to revolve, and at once the strand is drawn by 
 the motion of the frame and twisted by the revolution 
 of the spindles. When the length taken out has re- 
 ceived sufficient twist, the spindle gathers it in and 
 winds it up as it goes back for a fresh start. 
 
 379 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ^^The ^mule' rivals the spider; it spins so delicately 
 that a single pound is often one hundred and ninety 
 miles long, or almost the distance from New York to 
 Boston, or more than from New York to Baltimore. 
 
 *^I cannot describe the sights and sounds of a 
 thread mill,'' continued the weaver. ^'The rooms re- 
 sound with the buzz of machinery, the whirling of 
 belts, the clatter of spindles revolving from five to 
 ten thousand times a minute, and the rush of men, 
 women, and children dancing attendance upon these 
 tiny threads, which can hardly be seen across the room. 
 
 '* After the making is complete, the skeins are 
 marked, each with a special knot, to indicate their 
 size and then given to an inspector, who instantly re- 
 jects those below standard. Then it is washed and 
 either bleached or dyed, and given to the winding 
 machine, which automatically winds the finished prod- 
 uct upon the spools, fitting each layer to the widen- 
 ing space upon the spool, filling all up as evenly as 
 though the thread were forced into place by hydraulic 
 pressure. The ticketing machine is a wizard. One girl 
 supplies it with sheets of printed labels, and another 
 feeds it with spools ; it does all the rest itself, cutting 
 out, pasting, and fastening the proper mark for each 
 end of the spool, at the rate of a hundred a minute. 
 
 **When you get home to-night," said the old 
 weaver in conclusion, '^tske a spool and examine it; 
 see if the strength throughout its length is not uni- 
 form ; try to find any flaws or uneven spots in it ; slide 
 it over your finger and think of all that has been done 
 to give it this uniformity, and decide then whether the 
 genius of man is not a wonderful thing. ' ' 
 
 380 
 
THE STORY OF THE MATCHMAKER 
 AND HIS MAGIC FIRE 
 
 THE grizzly old man who sat in a dark corner of 
 the room looked about him in curiosity. Then^ 
 fumbling in his pockets, he withdrew a disrep- 
 utable looking match and scratched it on the sole of 
 his shoe. Holding it over his head, it flickered like a 
 miniature torch. 
 
 *^ Friends,'' he said, in a husky voice, *^I hold in 
 my hand the greatest miracle in the history of man- 
 kind. On the point of that tiny stick I hold the great- 
 est power on earth — fire! This harmless appearing 
 little stick which we call a match is in reality both a 
 god and a demon. It is within its power to destroy 
 the greatest city ever built — or to kindle the flaming 
 furnaces which can build a greater city than human 
 eyes have yet seen. It is both the best friend and the 
 crudest enemy that mankind has ever known." 
 
 The Story-tellers drew their chairs nearer the 
 picturesque stranger. 
 
 *'I am a matchmaker," he said, introducing him- 
 self, *^and I will tell you the story of how we came 
 to conquer the demon fire and imprison it on the end 
 of a stick, so that we could carry it in our pockets 
 without endangering our lives. 
 
 ^^The whole secret of civilization," he began, *4s 
 fire. The use of this marks the first step up from the 
 brute. The lowest savages knew the use of fire and 
 kept it perpetually burning amongst their tribes. The 
 Alaskan rubs together two pieces of quartz, which 
 
 381 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 have been smeared with native sulphur, and catches 
 the spark in the dry grass. Some people strike fire 
 with qnartz and steel, quartz and pyrites, and even 
 broken china and bamboo. I have seen them do this 
 in the interior of China and amongst the East Indian 
 tribes. In some countries they run a blunt stick along 
 a groove of its own making, until the heat generated 
 by the friction produces smoke and then flame. I 
 have heard that the burning lens was used in ancient 
 Eome and Athens. I can remember when our great- 
 grandfathers used the tinder-box with the first brim- 
 stone match. It was a strip of dry pine six inches in 
 length, dipped in melted sulphur, which was applied 
 to the tinder spark. 
 
 ^'I shall never forget the bewilderment that was 
 caused when the instantaneous light box was in- 
 vented," exclaimed the old Story-teller. ^'The first 
 friction match was the Lucifer,' invented by Walker, 
 an Englishman, in 1827. It consisted of a strip of 
 dried wood, coated at the point with melted brimstone. 
 It was then dipped into a solution composed of chlorate 
 of potash and sulphuret of antimony, which had been 
 rendered adhesive with powdered gum. A few years 
 later. Walker introduced the use of phosphorus. 
 
 ^'But it was the Americans who made the match 
 what it is to-day and started the custom by which 
 every man to-day carries fire in his vest pocket. In 
 the year 1836, Alonzo Phillips, of Springfield, Massa- 
 chusetts, brought out an improved friction match. The 
 body was of wood. The head was coated with phos- 
 phorus and niter, or with phosphorus, sulphur, and 
 chlorate of potash mixed with gum and coloring mat- 
 ter. This was the day of the ^wax vesta' — a match 
 with a wax body. The wax taper was then in univer- 
 sal use to carry the fire from room to room. 
 
 382 
 
STORY OF FIRE 
 
 *^ American genius solved the problem. In the year 
 1842, Reuben Partridge patented the first splint-cut- 
 ting machine, which made possible the production of 
 matches on a large scale and speedily reduced the ex- 
 travagant price which had been paid for them. Thir- 
 teen years later, a Swede named Lundstrom brought 
 out the first * safety match, ^ which ignited only upon 
 the box. This was a very simple contrivance, and 
 consisted merely in omitting the sulphur from the 
 match and coating the side of the box with it. 
 
 ^*It was about this time,'' said the old match- 
 maker, ^Hhat trouble began. The matchmakers were 
 seized with a sudden illness and died in great agony. 
 It was found that the * match factory' was a death- 
 trap. The yellow phosphorus caused a terrible dis- 
 ease called ^phossy jaw' — a painful and deadly disease 
 of the jawbone. Inventive genius came to the rescue, 
 and a man named Schotter discovered a red phos- 
 phorus that did not cause this awful blight. So all 
 civilized nations began to compel the use of the red 
 phosphorus — and the matchmaking industry has be- 
 come one of the marvels of the age." 
 
 '^How many boxes of matches are used each day 
 in the United States?" inquired one of the listeners. 
 
 ^'More than two million boxes a day," answered 
 the matchmaker. **The average daily consumption of 
 matches is said to be five a day for each person. In 
 1880 there were thirty-seven match factories in this 
 country, employing 2,200 people, and producing 
 2,200,000 gross of matches per annum. Ten years 
 later, the number of persons employed in this industry 
 had diminished to 1,700, with an annual increased pro- 
 duction of 8,500,000 gross. In 1900 there were 2,047 
 persons employed in twenty-two factories. There are 
 now some twenty-three factories engaged in the manu- 
 
 383 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 facture of this product. The annual value of the 
 matches made in America amounts to nearly $6,000,000. 
 Until a comparatively few years ago, matches had to 
 be transported by wagon, being considered too unsafe 
 for transportation by the railways. 
 
 ^'The manufacture of matches in America on a 
 large scale is only possible because of the improved 
 machinery. In Europe most of the match factories 
 use machinery that is at least thirty years out of date. 
 The largest American match concern has established 
 a factory at Liverpool, where, with its modern 
 methods, it is enabled to turn out a product superior 
 to the English match at a lower price. In some parts 
 of Europe the match-boxes are still made by hand in 
 the old-fashioned way. 
 
 *^Did you ever visit a match factory?" asked the 
 Story-teller. 
 
 ^^It is very interesting to watch modern machinery 
 turn out these matches at almost miraculous speed. 
 First the splints are prepared from blocks of pine 
 from which the knots and cross-graining have been 
 removed. These blocks come to the factory in two- 
 inch planks, thoroughly dried. They are sawed to 
 lengths of 1% "to 21^ inches; then they are passed 
 through a machine which cuts them into thin strips; 
 each strip contains splints for forty-four matches. As 
 each set of splints is cut from the block it is placed 
 in cast-iron plates, which are formed into an endless 
 chain. The cutting-machine makes from 175 to 250 
 revolutions a minute. At each revolution forty-four 
 matches are cut and set in the plates. This means that 
 an average of nearly 9,000 matches can be cut per 
 minute from a single machine. 
 
 **The splints have now been cut and set in the 
 plates. The next step is to carry them over a drying 
 
 384 
 
STORY OF FIRE 
 
 block where they are heated. They are now ready 
 to have the composition applied to their heads. This 
 composition consists of a mixture of paraffin and other 
 ingredients. As the splints pass along the endless 
 chain, the head of the match is coated at the composi- 
 tion rollers. The matches are cooled and dried by 
 blasts of cold air. Then they are automatically packed 
 in boxes, which are fed into a machine automatically 
 and passed to a rotating table, where girls paste on 
 the box-covers. 
 
 ' ' That is the way that we get the fire that we carry 
 in our pockets!'' exclaimed the matchmaker. **It is 
 the result of American genius. Fire, which once 
 ranked as divine, and was the chief care of the savage 
 matron, is now carried in its passive state in every- 
 body's pocket. The American match has penetrated 
 to the remotest corner of the globe. It is to be found 
 wherever civilized man has set his foot, and even in 
 places where he has never been seen." 
 
 The old match-maker struck another match into 
 flame. 
 
 ^'Take this fire away from us to-day and we can- 
 not exist," he said. **Fire is the substance of our 
 whole civilization. It is our best friend when we hold 
 it under control. It is our worst enemy when it con- 
 quers us. It is no wonder that the ancient peoples of 
 the earth worshiped fire as a god." 
 
 385 
 
THE STORY OF THE CARPENTER AND 
 HOW HE BUILDS OUR HOMES 
 
 (6 
 
 COME from the oldest and possibly the most im- 
 portant trade in the world," said the young man 
 as he greeted the Story-tellers. *^I am a car- 
 penter — a trade which has numbered among its work- 
 ers the Man of Nazareth. 
 
 * ' Since the days when men lived in earthen caves, ' ' 
 exclaimed the youth, ^'the carpenter has been the 
 maker of the home and the builder of our towns and 
 cities. Wherever we turn our eyes we see the handi- 
 craft of the man with the hammer. He has been the 
 creator of our civilization. His well-directed blows 
 have erected the structures that surround us. 
 
 *^If you were to ask me," said he, ^Svhat one little 
 object had taken the largest part in our national great- 
 ness, I would say — the nail. When we invented the 
 nail, our real progress began. Yet it is considered 
 to-day so insignificant even by the carpenter, that 
 when it goes bounding away from a misdirected blow, 
 instead of going after it he immediately replaces it 
 from among those in his pocket. This is because the 
 nail is now so commonplace that the time required to 
 search for it is more valuable than the nail. But there 
 was a period in this country, and in fact throughout 
 the world, when a nail was a very valuable com- 
 modity — too valuable to be lost. 
 
 **In the old days nails were rare objects, made by 
 hand. They were of precious metal, because iron was 
 comparatively scarce; so nails were hard to get and 
 
 386 
 
STORY OF OUR HOUSES 
 
 therefore highly valued. But people had to have homes 
 in which to live — so they were forced to go ahead and 
 build without nails. The wit of men devised a plan 
 by which planks and boards were held in place with 
 wooden plugs. It was necessary to bore a hole in the 
 timber at the point where it was to be fastened, and 
 then to drive a wooden plug, fashioned by hand, into 
 this hole. Sometimes plugs were driven into the 
 seams between timbers ; they were then held together 
 by ^jamming' them. Not only houses, but ships and 
 wharves, fences and bridges, were held together in 
 this way. These plugs did their work well. They held 
 the wood firmly and lasted for great periods, but the 
 labor needed to make even a small wooden chest was 
 too great to be profitable. 
 
 **In colonial America lumber was more abundant 
 than in any other part of the then inhabited globe. 
 There, too, more building was going on than in any 
 other country. In Europe the people had time to 
 quarry stone and bake bricks for their homes, but in 
 America the houses of timber could be built more 
 quickly. The demand for nails became greater here 
 than in the older parts of the world. Therefore, at 
 night, when the other work was done, the colonial 
 families would gather around the forges and all would 
 help to make nails. Even small children took part in 
 the production. Old scraps of iron were used, and 
 by heating and hammering were turned into crude 
 nails. 
 
 *^In one of these families, '^ said the carpenter, 
 ' ' there was a young man who grew disgusted with this 
 nightly, irksome task. So he set himself to thinking 
 about a way in which it could be lightened. He had 
 an idea — and went to work on it. He devised a method 
 for cutting nails instead of hammering them out. This 
 was the origin of what is now known as the *cut nail,' 
 
 387 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 a name which distinguishes it from wrought and 
 moulded nails. This young man was Jeremiah Wil- 
 kinson; he lived in Cumberland, Ehode Island. It 
 was in 1777 that he hit upon the innovation, and be- 
 came the inventor of the modern nail. Wilkinson lived 
 to be ninety years old, dying in 1832, but before his 
 death he witnessed a revolution more important than 
 war — ^he saw the manufacturing of nails cease to be a 
 household craft and become a great national indus- 
 try. 
 
 **The nail became the hero of its times. Even 
 statesmen believed that progress was made of nails. In 
 the village of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, there lived 
 a man named Ezekiel Eeed. He created quite a reputa- 
 tion in 1786 by announcing that he had invented a 
 machine that would not only cut the nail but also put 
 a head on it. But the machine was imperfect, and it 
 was not until 1790 that Jacob Perkins, of Newbury- 
 port, Massachusetts, developed some improvements 
 on Eeed's principle, and became the great inventor of 
 his times. No less than 120 patents for nail-making 
 machines were taken out in the United States between 
 1790 and 1825. A machine was invented by 1810 that 
 could produce 100 nails a minute, or 6,000 an hour — 
 a wonderful improvement when it is considered that 
 it had been requiring a whole working-day to produce 
 2,000 nails. It seemed as if every man with inventive 
 skill now began to improve the nail. Scores of devices 
 were introduced until, in 1850, William Hersel patented 
 a machine for the manufacturing of wire nails. But 
 all these machines and those used to-day are based on 
 the principle first adopted by Ezekiel Eeed. 
 
 *^I am an ardent disciple of the nail," continued 
 the carpenter. **Cut nails have been miracle-workers. 
 The rapid opening up of America, and of all new con- 
 tinents, has been made possible because men could 
 
 388 
 
STORY OF OUR HOUSES 
 
 build quickly and securely by the aid of nails. Even 
 in this twentieth century of steel and concrete struc- 
 tures, that little piece of iron, the cut nail, is respon- 
 sible for our modern wonders. Scaffolding must be 
 built ; it must be secure, and must be raised quickly — 
 the little cut nail has enabled man to do this. We are 
 still paying tribute to that little piece of iron. Not only 
 in our buildings, but in our ships and our furniture it 
 plays an important part. The commerce of the world 
 is carried in crates and packing boxes — cut nails hold 
 them together. The house that we live in; the trans- 
 portation of our food ; the performing of our engineer- 
 ing miracles ; the intercourse between oceans, and be- 
 tween continents — all depend, to a large extent, upon 
 the nail. 
 
 *' To-day the nail industry is one of the most im- 
 portant in the United States. No less than 726,000 
 tons of iron and steel are required for nails in a single 
 year. They are manufactured in more than 80 plants, 
 and nearly four thousand persons are engaged at the 
 work. The value of the nails turned out in a recent 
 year amounted to over $30,000,000. They were pro- 
 duced by machines at the rate of 1,000 a minute. One 
 thousand nails a minute! How is it done? One ma- 
 chine makes the entire nail. It takes in strands of 
 wire or sheets of metal at one end and pours out the 
 completed product at the other end. After the metal 
 is fed into the machine it is chopped into the desired 
 lengths. These are called nail blanks. As they fall 
 from the chopping device they are caught at one end 
 and are struck by a moving die. The head is formed 
 at one blow. They now pass into another device 
 which roughens the shank just below the head. This 
 roughening gives them a greater holding power — 
 twenty per cent more than they would have were they 
 left smooth. Swiftly, they pass under a mechanism 
 
 389 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 that slices them in one stroke to point them, and then 
 they are spewed forth into kegs that catch them as 
 they pour from the machines like veritable Niagaras. 
 These kegs are each made to hold just one hundred 
 pounds of finished nails, so that the total number may 
 be quickly known by merely counting the kegs. 
 
 **With the exception of England, where iron 
 abounds and where American patented machines are 
 in use, the entire world uses American-made nails,'' 
 asserted the Story-teller. **More than 18,000,000 kegs 
 are made in a year — nails enough to reach around the 
 earth 200 times. In Australia the settler is using them 
 to build his farmhouses. In China the coolie is busily 
 engaged in driving them into his new occidental home. 
 In Europe they are holding together fences on farms 
 and scaffoldings on world famous buildings under- 
 going repairs. In Alaska they are being used to form 
 the structures of entirely new cities." 
 
 The carpenter held a nail before his auditors. 
 
 *'I repeat," he said, **that this is the little wonder 
 worker that holds our civilization together. Like 
 soldiers in a vast army, these little bits of wire that we 
 call nails stand guard at every fortification. Upon 
 them fall the burdens of the modern world." 
 
 390 
 
THE STORY OF LIGHT AND HOW IT 
 HAS CONQUERED NIGHT 
 
 THE library was in darkness on the night that this 
 story was told. Suddenly it burst into light. 
 **I am one of the wizards,'* said a man who 
 was seen to be standing in the center of the room, * Hhat 
 turn night into day. Darkness is driven from the face 
 of the earth wherever or whenever we decide to do it. 
 By the mere touch of the finger on a button whole cities 
 are aroused from their slumbers into a blaze of light, 
 and lie before us like fairylands." 
 
 **The story of light," exclaimed the electrician, **is 
 a tale of modern magic! The Creator made the sun 
 to shine by day, and the moon and stars to shine by 
 night. And man discovered that what work he had 
 to do must be done by day. But the Creator had made 
 man tremendously ambitious. Moreover, He endowed 
 him with the power to work out the solution of his 
 own happiness. Man soon came to feel that night was 
 somewhat of a burden to him. When the sun had set 
 there was nothing for him to do but sit in darkness 
 or go to sleep. So he decided to see what he could 
 do to make light for himself ; and his success has been 
 astounding. 
 
 **The first method he used was that of burning 
 pieces of wood. By the time of the Pharaohs, bundles 
 of wood were being dipped in grease to make flaming 
 torches. Then, a thousand years later, some shrewd 
 person invented candles. Wax candles began to ap- 
 pear at great state functions and at religious ceremo- 
 
 26 ^^1 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 nials. The candle consisted of a reed that had been 
 coated with fat. This was held in an iron clamp, so 
 that the burning end could be kept upright. When it 
 was desired to obtain more light from the one candle, 
 both ends were lighted. From this came the phrase, 
 * burning the candle at both ends.' The light from 
 these candles was very poor. It was blown out by 
 the slightest draft, but the people who used them no 
 doubt considered them marvels. After a while, men 
 learned to refine tallow, and this solved the candle 
 problem. 
 
 ^^But the ingenuity of man never ceases," ex- 
 plained the Story-teller. ^^ About this time some one 
 created a crude device for burning a wick soaked with 
 grease or oil. It was called a lamp. The first lamp 
 was a hollowed receptacle. It was made of stone, a 
 gourd, a shell, or a piece of bone. Oil or refined 
 grease was poured into the hollow. A wick of moss 
 or other vegetable matter was used to absorb the 
 grease. The tip of the wick was then lighted and gave 
 a glowing flame. The Greeks and Eomans substituted 
 metal receptacles. With their artistic capabilities they 
 were able to make lamps of very beautiful designs. It 
 was an American, Benjamin Franklin, who first pro- 
 posed the hempen wick, but lamps were still without 
 chimneys. 
 
 ^'How the chimney came to be put on the lamp is 
 an interesting story. It was an accident. One day a 
 Frenchman was holding a bottle near a lamp. The 
 bottom of the bottle was suddenly cracked off by the 
 heat, and his fingers were burned. Quickly setting the 
 bottomless bottle down, he placed it accidentally over 
 the burning wick. He was amazed as he saw the 
 effect. The light immediately grew brighter and 
 burned more steadily. From that day onward we have 
 had lamp chimneys. The chimney ]amp was supposed 
 
 392 
 
STORY OF LIGHT 
 
 to be a wonderful invention, and no doubt it was ; but 
 to-day we regard it as a most primitive thing. It 
 required much cleaning and care; the wick had to be 
 trimmed regularly, and the chimney was broken with 
 discouraging frequency. With the discovery of oil 
 and kerosene came the dangers of exploding and 
 catching fire. Thousands of lives were sacrificed 
 through accidents with chimney lamps, and nothing 
 was ever discovered which would make them safer." 
 
 *^ American inventive genius found the solution," 
 exclaimed the electrician. ^^It was in 1865 that Pro- 
 fessor T. S. C. Lowe, who had already won fame for 
 his aeronautical exploits in the Civil War, discovered 
 how to get water gas from coal. That same year he 
 erected the first central gas plant in the world. The 
 gas, after it was generated, was sent into an immense 
 tank, and from this it was distributed by iron piping 
 to homes and factories. Gas lighting as an institution 
 owes its greatest development to Americans. 
 
 **It was thought at that time that this was the last 
 great improvement that could possibly be made in 
 connection with artificial lighting. It was only nec- 
 essary to turn a stop-cock and apply a match — and 
 there was illumination. The cost was not great and 
 the convenience was wonderful. Gas lighting was at 
 first a luxury to be found only in mansions and 
 palaces. Soon it was put in even modest homes, and 
 the streets began to be lighted by it. 
 
 ^^But the last word in lighting had not yet been 
 said. The time was to come when gas light was to 
 be as old-fashioned as candle light. It was in 1879 
 that the American wizard of wizards, Thomas A. 
 Edison, revealed the secret. He took a glass bulb 
 from which the air had been drawn. Then he placed 
 a filament of carbon in it so arranged that an electric 
 current could be passed through it. Behold ! the fila- 
 
 393 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ment burst into light and glowed brightly ! This was 
 the first electric light for practical home purposes. It 
 was made to give a light equal to about eight candles. 
 The old-fashioned gas jet gave about that amount of 
 light, so it now had a rival. 
 
 ''The world figuratively sat up and rubbed its 
 eyes ! For the first time in the history of civilization, 
 man was in possession of a practical light that was not 
 produced by combustion of anything. It burned, or 
 rather glowed, without the slightest flicker; there was 
 no smoke ; it gave off very little heat, and it could not 
 be blown out. All that was needed to carry it into 
 any house was a double line of wire that could be very 
 easily strung from the central power plant. Now, for 
 the first time, rural districts as well as cities could be 
 brought into the new 'darkless age.' Gas lighting had 
 never been practical except in cities, and the farmer 
 still was forced to use oil lamps — until the coming of 
 the electric light. 
 
 *'The genius of man is never satisfied — he keeps 
 improving. An Englishman gave us the arc light for 
 street purposes. Then some one harnessed water 
 power to run dynamos. If our coal supply, or our 
 gas and oil supplies, should be cut off to-day we still 
 could get as much light as we need. As long as 
 Niagara flows, and similar waterfalls, we need never 
 fear about our supply of light. Finally a thoughtful 
 mechanic began to cover our electric wires and lay 
 them underground where they are out of danger from 
 wind and weather. 
 
 "So it is that to-day darkness does not put an end 
 to work. The time for man's activity has been 
 doubled. Between the night and the day there is little 
 difference in the brightness of our surroundings. 
 Former civilizations may have excelled in some re- 
 spects, but ours has seen the end of superstition and 
 
 394 
 
STORY OF LIGHT 
 
 has shorn night of its illusions and terrors. Modern 
 lighting is nothing less than magical. Gigantic chan- 
 deliers light onr halls with even greater brilliance than 
 conies with the daylight. Our streets are very nearly 
 as bright at midnight as they are at noon. On our 
 coasts stand lighthouses with beacons that may be seen 
 twenty miles away. In our forts are searchlights 
 which may pick up and illuminate ships ten miles out 
 at sea. Where has the world seen such magic before ? 
 
 ^'A man in a power-house turns a switch and a 
 home many miles away is lighted. The turn of an- 
 other switch — and the streets of a whole city with 
 millions of inhabitants burst into radiance. The turn 
 of still another switch sends a flood of light under the 
 earth into the tunnels of the city where trains roar 
 under the same power of electricity. Again, the turn 
 of a switch lights up hundreds of miles of country 
 roads. As late as the eighteenth century any man 
 who had declared that such things might be, might 
 have been prosecuted as a madman or as a practitioner 
 of the ^ black art.' 
 
 ^^It was not long ago when, in the largest cities, 
 men kept in their homes at night for fear of thieves 
 and marauders who prowled in the dark. Those who 
 desired to read or study could do so only under the 
 greatest difficulties. Lincoln, as a boy, studied by the 
 light of a wood fire ; yet many of his contemporaries 
 are still living. In two generations the electric light 
 has completely revolutionized the life of man.'* 
 
 395 
 
THE STORY OF HEAT AND HOW WE 
 LEARNED TO CREATE IT 
 
 THE crisp bracing air of the late autumn flowed 
 into the open door. An elderly man entered. 
 * * This seems like winter, ' ' he remarked. * ' Is 
 it cold in here T ' 
 
 **Well,'' exclaimed a woman near the radiator, ^4f 
 it is, we can turn on more heat. ' ' 
 
 **That reminds me of my story," ejaculated the 
 elderly man. *'Did it ever occur to you how wonder- 
 ful it is to be able to sit here even on the coldest day 
 in winter, with the thermometer far below zero, and 
 turn a wheel that pours heat into the room until it 
 is like a tropical garden? Flowers bloom in our 
 homes while the snowdrifts pile up outside the win- 
 dow. Winter is transformed into summer in an in- 
 stant. In a single step we pass figuratively from the 
 arctic to the equator. 
 
 **This is not the tale of some ancient sorceress,'* 
 added the Story-teller; **it is the plain, true story of 
 heat. 
 
 *^We like to talk," he continued, ^' about the ^good 
 old times,' to which sentimental folk hark back with 
 regret. They may have been full of romantic charm, 
 but they were ^good cold times.' After men had given 
 up dwelling in caverns to live in shelter of their own 
 making, they ran against the problem of keeping their 
 homes warm — a problem which continued to worry 
 them down to our own times. 
 
 *^The first artificial heating of houses was very 
 
 396 
 
STORY OF HEAT 
 
 crude. In the first place, the hovels of the poor were 
 not heated at all. Only the rich conld know that 
 luxury. Brushwood fires were lighted in the middle 
 of the rooms. The smoke, for which no outlet was 
 provided, was such a nuisance that the members of 
 the household did without fire as much as possible. 
 Previous to the ninth century, it was no uncommon 
 thing for water, and even wine, to freeze on the tables 
 of kings. 
 
 ^ ' Then there came an unknown genius who planned 
 and built a fireplace. This permitted the burning of 
 large logs; but even these conditions were far from 
 ideal, because the designer was not genius enough to 
 contrive a chimney. The smoke nuisance still existed, 
 and it continued to be dangerous to change one 's cloth- 
 ing during the winter months. Even the Romans, who 
 heated their rooms with portable stoves, could not 
 solve the problem of confined smoke, and the develop- 
 ment of house-heating was lost to western Europe 
 along with the other arts after the decline of the 
 empire. 
 
 *^ Chimneys were unknown before the twelfth cen- 
 tury. Up to that time, the only provision for letting 
 out smoke was a number of holes cut into the wall 
 behind the fireplace. No draft was afforded, and the 
 fire burned poorly, giving off little heat. All sorts of 
 devices were used to get heat without smoke. Pieces 
 of metal and large stones were allowed to remain in 
 the big fire until they were very hot, after which they 
 were carried to other parts of the house. The house- 
 wife of those days often boiled water by dropping hot 
 stones into receptacles. When the fire had gone out, 
 the hot ashes were scooped into earthen pots, which 
 were carried to the bedrooms in order to make un- 
 dressing a safe act. The custom of putting a warm 
 iron among the bedclothes originated in those times. 
 
 397 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 But by the fifteenth century brick chimneys were being 
 built. About the log fire the family gathered at night 
 to watch the dancing flames and hear the sputtering 
 of the burning woods. 
 
 ** After the introduction of chimneys, the next im- 
 provement was the grate, which held the fuel above 
 the floor and permitted the air to circulate underneath 
 the fire. Coal and coke were gradually introduced as 
 fuel, but they were very costly. 
 
 **It was an American," proclaimed the Story-teller, 
 **and no less a man than Benjamin Franklin, who in- 
 vented the next innovation concerned with heating. 
 In 1744 he devised a cast-iron open heater which pro- 
 jected from the fireplace and radiated from the back 
 as well as the sides and front. This idea was taken 
 up and developed into the heating-stove. A cast-iron 
 box-stove was invented in 1752; then came the sheet- 
 iron cylindrical stove. The first base-burner used in 
 this country did service in New England about 1830. 
 Meanwhile another method for heating houses was 
 gradually being adopted. It was the hot-air furnace. 
 This, too, was invented by Franklin in 1744. Nowa- 
 days the use of the furnace is universal. Three kinds 
 of furnaces are used, and of these the hot-air furnace 
 is the most obsolete. As you all know, a furnace is 
 nothing more than a large stove, placed, generally, in 
 the cellar. In the case of the hot-air furnace it is so 
 arranged that air may pass through a compartment, 
 heated by the fire, from which it is carried to all the 
 rooms by large tin pipes. Fresh air is constantly 
 drawn into the heated compartment by a separate pipe 
 entering from outdoors. 
 
 *'Then came the steam-heating furnace. It is a 
 rearrangement of the other. Steam is generated in 
 a compartment and circulates throughout the house in 
 pipes of iron. The hotter steam seeks to rise and in 
 
 398 
 
STORY OF HEAT 
 
 that way keeps up a circulation. In the rooms the 
 steam passes through coils of pipe, called radiators. 
 
 *^The hot-water system which followed these is 
 really the older. Seneca tells us that the Roman baths 
 were heated by brass pipes containing water that had 
 passed over fire, but, like other Roman devices, it fell 
 into disuse until it was entirely unknown to those liv- 
 ing in the Middle Ages. The system was rediscovered, 
 however, by M. Bounemain of Paris, in 1777, when he 
 began to use it to heat the hothouses of the Jardin des 
 Plantes. William Cook introduced it into England in 
 the middle of the eighteenth century, but it was not 
 until a hundred years later that it was used in America. 
 
 **The first Ajnerican building to be heated by hojt- 
 water plants was the Eastern Hotel in Boston. The 
 first Ajnerican factory that tried it was the Burlington 
 Woolen Mill in Vermont. Fundamentally, the hot- 
 water system is like the other two. A compartment 
 called a ^jacket' surrounds the fire, and in it water is 
 heated. The hot water seeks to rise and flows upward 
 through iron pipes into radiators all over the house. 
 By the time it reaches the highest point, it is cooler, 
 therefore heavier, and seeks to descend, so it runs 
 down a pipe which conducts it back to the jacket. Thus 
 the same water is heated over and over again, circu- 
 lating continually in the same manner as the blood in 
 the bodies of animals. 
 
 **But a still greater system of heating was to be 
 introduced, ' ' continued the Story-teller. **It is elec- 
 tricity. It was found that the passage of electricity 
 through a conductor generates heat. This discovery 
 was quickly taken advantage of, with the result that 
 electric heaters came into existence. 
 
 *'Then some wise man struck an ingenious idea. 
 He conceived the plan of heating whole groups of 
 buildings or an entire city by one fire at a central plant. 
 
 399 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 Compare this to the ^good old daysM A turn of the 
 wrist and a radiator warms np a community. The 
 heat is uniform throughout the room ; there is no dirt ; 
 the labor is carried on all in one spot. Heat can be 
 had at will or may be easily turned off; any given 
 temperature may be maintained. What a difference 
 from the time when every room required a fire and 
 only that part near the fire was really warm! 
 
 *^The modern large office building with its half- 
 hundred floors and hundreds of offices would be an 
 impossibility, had not Franklin and his imitators de- 
 veloped the furnace. The business of the world would 
 have been hampered immeasurably. The large mod- 
 ern schools and the great comfortable hospitals never 
 would have been possible. The winter months would 
 still cause a slowing down of all human activities, just 
 as they used to do, and the progress of the world could 
 not have been nearly so rapid. Factories would have 
 been able to produce only a part of what they now 
 turn out, and travel would have to cease during half 
 the year. 
 
 **We are not accustomed to give much thought to 
 such things as heat," said the speaker, in conclusion, 
 *^but when we do we are convinced that the modern 
 methods of heating are magical. It is all very well 
 for our fathers to speak of the 'good old times,' but 
 let them first see to it that the valve of the radiator is 
 opened. Queen Elizabeth trod on Ealeigh's coat in 
 crossing a puddle, and reigned over the British Em- 
 pire, but she never stepped into a really comfortable 
 room in winter." 
 
 400 
 
THE STORY OF WATER AND HOW WE 
 CAME TO CONQUER IT 
 
 THE stout man with a ruddy complexion and a 
 twinkle of humor in his eyes lifted a glass from 
 the table and touched it to his lips, 
 
 ** Partners/' he said, ^^I drink to your health in the 
 finest, purest nectar ever tasted by man — a glass of 
 good cold water. There is nothing sweeter; there is 
 nothing healthier. It brings us long life, contentment, 
 and prosperity. Let me sing the praises of water." 
 
 He drank the sparkling contents of the glass and 
 then filled it again from the pitcher. 
 
 ** Without this water," he said, holding the glass 
 before the Story-tellers, **we could not have our 
 modern cities. The growth of a community cannot 
 exceed the facility with which it can supply itself with 
 fresh water. Beyond this limitation a town cannot 
 exist. The history of civilization is a story of man's 
 efforts to extend this limit ; it is the story of water. 
 
 **One of the first things that man learned about 
 himself was that he could not go long without water. 
 He found that thirst must be quenched in the same 
 way that food was required to keep him from starva- 
 tion. So he bent his knees at the springs and brooks 
 and drank. Way back in the days before Christ, he 
 began to build walls of stone around the natural 
 springs to protect them. The women came to these 
 springs and filling their urns with the pure water car- 
 ried it on their heads to their homes. On the oldest 
 ceramics we find pictures, often crude, of this method 
 
 401 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 of carrying water. The neckyoke, with two suspended 
 receptacles, still used in rural Europe, was also used 
 in Biblical times. Beasts saddled with leather water- 
 bottles were then a common sight. These methods 
 were also used in early America, until some one de- 
 vised the scheme of roughly hewn wooden buckets. 
 
 *^When there came times of drought, the suffering 
 was intense. One day some wise man decided to dig 
 deep into the earth in search of the hidden streams. 
 He did so, and, as a reward, he found the lost springs 
 of refreshing water. Since that discovery the ^welP 
 has been the fountain of good health and long life. 
 
 **Then came a remarkable invention," exclaimed 
 the Story-teller. *^It was the pump. The principle 
 of the pump had been known for centuries, but until 
 the use of iron became extensive, no pump had been 
 made to draw water. Pumps were at first bought by 
 communities; and the 'village pump' became an insti- 
 tution throughout the land. 
 
 *^The problem of water was not yet solved. It was 
 still very difficult to get fresh water into the homes. 
 As before, it had to be carried. The *rain barrel' was 
 commonly used to catch the precious water that ran 
 off the roofs. Finally, in 1652, some progressive citi- 
 zen in Boston suggested that they build a lake or 
 reservoir and then run the water from the neighboring 
 springs into it. The first reservoir was twelve feet 
 square and located in the center of the village. This 
 scheme turned the minds of men thinking about means 
 of extending this wonderful system. So it was that 
 one Christopher Christiansen, of Bethlehem, Pennsyl- 
 vania, began to construct, in 1754, what was to be the 
 first public water works in America. Water was con- 
 veyed by pipes from springs to a cistern 350 feet away. 
 A wooden pump forced the water from this to a 
 wooden tank in the town square. This plant was en- 
 
 402 
 
STORY OF WATER 
 
 larged seven years later and created quite a sensation 
 when it was announced that it was worked by three 
 iron force-pumps, which sent the water through hol- 
 lowed hemlock logs. From the tank the water was 
 distributed by means of pipes consisting of bored pine 
 logs. The news was sent through the country — at last 
 water could be brought to the home without the labor 
 of carrying it by hand. 
 
 **In the year that George Washington died there 
 were sixteen public water plants in the United States," 
 said the speaker. **The development of the system 
 grew quickly. Streams were dammed to form reser- 
 voirs to take the place of springs. Instead of the 
 wooden pipes, metal ones were used. When Phila- 
 delphia fitted her water system with cast iron piping, 
 in 1804, she attained the distinction of being the first 
 city in the world with such equipment. London 
 adopted it in 1820. 
 
 * * The idea grew rapidly. Larger and larger reser- 
 voirs were built. The areas which they drained be- 
 came greater. The size of the conveying pipes was 
 increased, till finally the building of water works be- 
 came one of the most important branches of civil 
 engineering. In contrast to the little twelve-foot res- 
 ervoir for early Boston, there is to-day the Wachusett 
 Eeservoir, containing sixty-three billion gallons of 
 water, now supplying that city. The city of San Fran- 
 cisco gets its water from the San Mateo Eeservoir, 
 which holds thirty-one million gallons. New York de- 
 pended for years upon the Croton Reservoir, with a 
 capacity of thirty-two billion gallons, until it was 
 decided to construct near Kingston, at a distance of 
 over seventy-five miles from New York City, the 
 Ashokan Dam to hold back one hundred and twenty 
 billion gallons of water. Five hundred million gallons 
 will daily flow through a gigantic aqueduct that is 
 
 403 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 built cross-country, over mountains and under the 
 Hudson Eiver, to bring water into the homes of the 
 metropolis of the Western Continent. This stu- 
 pendous system will cost $200,000,000. The water will 
 have pressure enough behind it to flow up to the 
 twenty-fourth floors of the skyscrapers. 
 
 **But these gigantic water plants have not yet 
 driven the good old wells out of our villages. They 
 are still used; but they, too, have undergone great 
 changes. Nowadays wells are bored by drills which 
 make holes that are measured by inches instead of by 
 feet. These borings go down very far. The deepest 
 well in the world used for obtaining water is located 
 at Putnam Heights, Windham County, Connecticut. It 
 goes down 3,848 feet, and gives a supply of two gallons 
 of water each minute, shooting the water four feet 
 above the level of the ground. These deep wells are 
 known as Artesian wells, a name derived from Artois, 
 where they were first used. Brooklyn obtains 78,- 
 000,000 gallons of water each day through Artesian 
 wells and many other towns fare almost as well. 
 
 '*The danger of water famine is now past in most 
 cities. The city of Buffalo supplies each inhabitant 
 an average of 230 gallons of water a day. In Pitts- 
 burgh the average is 250 gallons, and in New York it 
 is 129. This is due to the many different uses to which 
 water is now put. Since the early seventies, when 
 porcelain bath-tubs first came into use, millions of 
 gallons are daily used for bathing. Other millions 
 are used by factories; horse-troughs take their quota; 
 the public fountains flow perpetually ; but the greatest 
 amount of all is used by the hydrants of fire depart- 
 ments to prevent our homes and cities from being en- 
 tirely destroyed. 
 
 ^^The value of water was strikingly illustrated at 
 the time of the destruction of San Francisco, in 1906. 
 
 404 
 
STORY OF WATER 
 
 The city might well have withstood the slight damage 
 done by the earthquake, had it not disconnected the 
 water-mains. Without water the San Franciscans 
 were helpless. The houses caught fire, and nothing 
 could be done to check the spread of the devouring 
 flames. Without water the inhabitants dared not stay 
 in the stricken city for fear that fever would come and 
 carry them off. 
 
 ** Human life depends upon water, food, and air. 
 Air we get without trouble; food we get with a little 
 more exertion, but water we get only through elabo- 
 rate systems. Yet we must have them — for no city 
 would be safe without water more than six days.'' 
 
 ^^ There is one more interesting point about this 
 story of water, ' ' exclaimed the engineer. ^ ^ It is this : 
 great fortunes are being made in selling water. Big 
 corporations have gone into the business, and millions 
 of dollars are invested in water companies. So great 
 has become the industry of supplying water that many 
 cities have started their own reservoirs, and one of 
 the most frequently discussed phases of American 
 politics is the municipal ownership of water plants — a 
 problem that sooner or later must be settled in every 
 town in the United States." 
 
 405 
 
THE STORY OF THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS 
 AND THE ARMY OF CHILDREN 
 
 A BRIGHT little woman, with black hair and snap- 
 ping black eyes, sat on the window seat. 
 
 ** Would you like to hear my story?" she 
 asked. **It is about a great army, the greatest army 
 in the world. Its soldiers are all young boys and 
 girls — ^twenty million of them. Every morning they 
 march in columns to their battle grounds ; every night 
 they return after the day's conquest." 
 
 *^The noble army about which I am to tell you," 
 said the bright little woman, raising her voice, * * is the 
 mighty army of little soldiers in our public schools. 
 Their foe is ignorance; their weapon is the * school- 
 book' ; and every hour of the day they win some notable 
 victory. 
 
 **It is an army greater in numbers than all the 
 soldiers in all the standing armies of all the nations 
 of the earth. Every schoolhouse is a fortress. We 
 have spent more than $1,100,000,000 on public school- 
 houses in the United States. Every teacher is a gen- 
 eral; and we have over 524,000 of them in command 
 every day in our common schools. Every pupil is a 
 soldier of far greater value to the community than 
 the soldier in actual warfare; and we have nearly 
 20,000,000 children in our public schools to-day. This 
 does not even include our public high schools. We 
 have 10,240 of them, with a million more pupils. 
 Neither does it include our 600 colleges, with nearly 
 225,000 young men and over 100,000 young women in 
 their ranks. 
 
 406 
 
STORY OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL 
 
 *^Have you any idea what we spend every year to 
 educate our children? 
 
 *^ Nearly $500,000,000 to give our boys and girls a 
 good start in life — and it is the best investment that 
 any nation ever made. 
 
 **The public school, as it exists to-day, on a basis 
 of pure democracy, is an American achievement. 
 Athens and Eome had extensive school systems. In 
 the early stages of the Christian Church, free schools 
 were set up by bishops and missionaries. Later, there 
 were free schools of some kind in most countries, 
 though the subjects taught were very few in number. 
 There was one defect in these schools, however; they 
 were looked upon as charitable institutions, and often 
 it was considered degrading to study in them. Only 
 the poor attended ; the well-to-do children were taught 
 privately. It -was America '^ privilege to do away with 
 this state of affairs and make public education truly 
 democratic. 
 
 ** There is some doubt as to where the first school 
 in the United States was founded. Boston, Worcester, 
 Hartford, Brooklyn, and Virginia all claim the honor. 
 As early as 1633, the school of the Eeformed Dutch 
 Church was founded in New York. When Boston was 
 five years old, in 1635, the first school in Massachusetts 
 was established, and by some this is called the first 
 American school. 
 
 *^The American colonists knew from the beginning 
 the importance of public education. Massachusetts 
 passed a law in 1647, only 27 years after the settle- 
 ment of the colony, requiring every town of 50 house- 
 holders to maintain a master to teach reading and 
 writing, and every town of 100 householders to main- 
 tain a grammar school. Connecticut passed a law in 
 1650 that was much the same. Throughout New Eng- 
 land public education was the pride of the inhabitants. 
 27 407 
 
WONDER STORffiS 
 
 Only eighteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims, 
 a college liberally endowed with books and money, 
 opened its doors to receive the sons of the colonists, 
 and that was the beginning of Harvard University. - 
 
 '^The history of the American public school is a 
 wonderful story," continued the young teacher. ^'Two 
 hundred and fifty years ago, the children of all ages 
 were crowded together in a crude cabin to have * read- 
 ing, writing, and arithmetic' switched into them. To- 
 day many of our schools are in magnificent buildings. 
 In the larger cities, these buildings contain scores of 
 rooms ; they are warmed and lighted by the most ex- 
 pensive processes. There are many teachers, all of 
 whom are trained for their work. The best books are 
 provided free; there are large gymnasiums, where 
 the children are drilled; there are manual training 
 shops. Pupils are trained to use their hands, as well 
 as their minds; to draw, to carve wood, and to do 
 simple work. In New York City there are over 800,000 
 pupils enrolled in the public schools; there are about 
 19,000 teachers and supervisors. This great city uses 
 about one-fifth of its total expenditure to support edu- 
 cation, and spends on the average of $44.90 yearly 
 for each pupil. When we consider that one-fifth of 
 the entire population of the United States attends the 
 public school system, we can feel sure that there will 
 ever be in America a true patriotism, the patriotism 
 which comes from intelligent gratitude. 
 
 *^The meaning of the words, pnhlic school^ is not 
 always understood. Indeed, it is difficult to grasp the 
 magnitude of our present system. The elementary 
 school course is eight years generally. It is compul- 
 sory. Parents are forbidden in some states to remove 
 their children from school before the age of fourteen. 
 There are high schools, where the work of the ele- 
 mentary schools is continued for four years. But not 
 
 408 
 
STORY OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL 
 
 even here do the opportunities for free education end. 
 Shortly after the beginning of the Civil War, the Land 
 Grant Act was passed. This measure gave each state 
 30,000 acres of land for every representative it had in 
 Congress, for the purpose of endowing a State uni- 
 versity. Almost every state west of New York and 
 Pennsylvania has taken advantage of this splendid 
 opportunity and has established state universities, 
 where tuition costs practically nothing. In these uni- 
 versities there are industrial colleges. 
 
 ^^The purpose of the American school is to prepare 
 its boys and girls for a life of intelligent industry. 
 Education in America does not mean a preparation for 
 an existence of pleasant idleness ; it is the foundation 
 for productive work and constant usefulness. For years 
 there have been high schools that teach bookkeeping, 
 typewriting, and stenography, carpentry and metal 
 working; girls are instructed in cooking and sewing. 
 There are night schools and vocational schools. Some 
 schools and colleges send their pupils to get experience 
 in the shop and the factory. The usefulness and dignity 
 of labor is the keystone of the public school system 
 in the United States. 
 
 '*So, when we are talking about the wonderful 
 things that surround us," exclaimed the ardent young 
 teacher, **do not forget the foundation of them all — 
 the public school which has molded such careers as 
 those of Jackson, Lincoln, Garfield, and tens of thou- 
 sands of others whose daily labors are contributing 
 to the greatness of the republic. Who knows but what 
 there is somewhere in our public schools to-day another 
 'man of the hour' who will rise up and 'save the na- 
 tion' in the time of need!" 
 
 409 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBRARIAN AND 
 THE WORLD OF BOOKS 
 
 THE eyes of the Story-tellers were directed sud- 
 denly toward a dignified young woman, wearing 
 eye-glasses from which hung a long silken cord. 
 Her words were spoken mth the pure tones of culture. 
 
 ^^My story/' she said, ^^is the story of books. I 
 am the bookworm — the modern public librarian.'' 
 
 **I presume," she added, ^'that you expected to see 
 a bent old gentleman wearing a faded green coat or 
 linen duster, old-fashioned rimmed spectacles poised 
 on the end of a long nose." 
 
 The Story-tellers smiled at the caricature. 
 
 *^That day has long gone by," she added. ^^The 
 modern public library is to-day a great progressive 
 institution in which the wisdom of the ages is yours for 
 the asking. Think of being able to walk out of one of 
 our twentieth century libraries with Aristotle under 
 one arm, Cicero under the other, and Plato stowed 
 safely away in your pocket! 
 
 ^^ American ingenuity has done many wonderful 
 things," continued the librarian, ^^but none is more 
 vital to our civilization than the great houses of books 
 that have been reared in nearly every city and town in 
 the United States. Even England confesses that the 
 modern library movement is essentially American. 
 
 ** Perhaps," she said, thoughtfully, ^^we should give 
 some credit to those early beginnings buried under the 
 sands of the Assyrian desert — those inscribed bricks 
 found in rows and tiers of shelves in ancient ruins. 
 And we should not overlook that period in the Dark 
 
 410 
 
STORY OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 Ages of Europe when the flame of learning was kept 
 alive in the monasteries and universities, where thou- 
 sands and thousands of volumes were preserved 
 through the patient care of the copyist. 
 
 ^'In America,'^ she continued, *Hhe first libraries 
 were established in the colonial parishes. The Bishop 
 of London, in 1696, appointed the Eev. Thomas Bray 
 founder and secretary of the Society for the Propaga- 
 tion of the Gospel, and sent to Maryland thirty parish 
 libraries, embracing 2,545 books. The bishop further 
 announced his intention of extending his scheme for 
 the supply of all the English colonies in America. 
 
 ^^But the progressive free public library belongs to 
 the latter half of the nineteenth century. Before that 
 time the idea of a collection of books for the use of an 
 entire community from the proceeds of a tax can 
 scarcely be said to have existed. The oldest existing 
 library of this kind is at Petersboro, New Hampshire. 
 
 ^^The first ^town' library was opened in Connecti- 
 cut in 1803. Subscription libraries were * public' in 
 the sense that they were open to all on the same con- 
 dition without discrimination. The Philadelphia Li- 
 brary Company, founded by Benjamin Franklin, was 
 of this cooperative type. The Mercantile Library 
 arose about 1820, in Boston, New York, and St. Louis, 
 originating in the idea to furnish good reading for the 
 younger employees in business houses. Active pro- 
 gress along the modem library idea dates from the 
 formation of the American Library Association in 
 1876. And the chief distinctively modern features 
 of American public libraries, besides public support, 
 are freedom of access to shelves, work with chil- 
 dren, cooperation with schools, branch libraries, and 
 traveling libraries.'' 
 
 ^'How many libraries are there in the United States 
 to-day?" asked a man near the reading-table. 
 
 411 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ^' There are nearly sixteen thousand,'' answered the 
 librarian. ''On their shelves are nearly seventy-five 
 million books. These books represent a cost exceeding 
 $100,000,000, while the buildings in which they are 
 preserved cost many millions more. 
 
 ''Suppose we stroll through one of the vast li- 
 braries where the modern or American idea has ex- 
 pressed itself without limitations! A large library 
 contains two distinct parts ; a stackroom, in which the 
 books are stored, and reading rooms, where they are 
 read. Larger libraries have separate collections on 
 economics, technology, architecture, or other subjects, 
 in charge of expert custodians, while the collection of 
 public documents is stored separately. Let us go into 
 the great reading-rooms, where we have access to the 
 volumes which are not to be taken home, and into the 
 vast reference rooms, with their shelves filled with dic- 
 tionaries, encyclopedias, periodicals. 
 
 "Think of all the schemes of classification. There 
 are fiction, juvenile books, English and American 
 literature, biography, travel, sciences; there are the 
 useful arts, the fine and recreative arts, political and 
 social science, philosophy and religion ; there are works 
 on languages and in foreign languages; books about 
 similar things grouped together; books belonging in 
 some way to the same part of the world grouped to- 
 gether; books grouped chronologically and alpha- 
 betically, or grouped by languages. 
 
 "The library touches the lives of thousands of im- 
 migrants. No attempt was made ten years ago to 
 reach them. Now you will hear, in the course of your 
 stroll through the big modern library, foreigners ask- 
 ing for books in Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Dano-Nor- 
 wegian, Eussian-Polish, Bohemian, Hungarian, Mod- 
 ern Greek, Lithuanian, Roumanian, German, and 
 French. 
 
 412 
 
STORY OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 *^The public library is one of the greatest of mod- 
 ern educators. Its vast collections contain books for 
 the use of the mechanic, for the handicraft man, for 
 the plumber, the tinsmith, the carpenter. Its wonder- 
 ful shelves are filled with trade and technical books. 
 Its rooms contain public records and patents. Here 
 the engineer comes in to find a remedy for a cylinder ; 
 or the boy who wants information on building an 
 aeroplane ; or the man who wishes to know if peanuts 
 can be grown in a Northern State; or some one who 
 wishes to know of the industrial resources of the West 
 or the South.'' 
 
 The librarian hesitated a moment. 
 
 ^^I should like to tell you,'' she said, ^'the story of 
 the great benefactions that have been left to American 
 libraries; how Andrew Carnegie has started nearly 
 2,000 of these institutions; and how, through other 
 great endowments and public taxation, they have be- 
 come a vital part of American life. 
 
 **But," she added, raising her hand in emphasis, 
 **I must close my story here with this one fact, which 
 I ask you to remember : The American library to-day 
 is practically a woman's institution; its largest num- 
 ber of books are taken out by women; it finds the 
 greater number of its librarians and assistants among 
 women; and its public service and influence is more 
 largely felt by the women and children in the Amer- 
 ican homes. 
 
 *^But not to slight the men," she added, **let me 
 say in conclusion that, back of this wonderful system 
 of distributing books free to every remote corner of 
 the nation, is the administrative genius of men." 
 
 413 
 
THE STORY OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 
 TEACHER AND HER GOOD WORK 
 
 THE eyes of the Story-tellers were turned admir- 
 ingly toward a young girl, handsome as a paint- 
 ing and as sweet and fragrant in her personality 
 as a garden of roses. Slender and graceful, the charm 
 of her maidenhood was enhanced by a simple frock of 
 light blue. 
 
 **I am only one of nearly two million,'' she said 
 modestly, *'two million Sunday school teachers." 
 
 She had hardly spoken the words when she, too, 
 received the ovation that the genial Story-tellers ex- 
 tended to womanhood. 
 
 ^^A Sunday school teacher seems such an ordinary 
 creature in such a gathering of genius as this,'' she 
 said, somewhat confused. *^But, then, I am proud 
 of the distinction." 
 
 The threads of brown hair fell over her face, and 
 she pushed them back with her soft, white hand. 
 
 **The idea of the Sunday school," she said, speak- 
 ing slowly, '^ began back in the days of the ancients, 
 but it is only in modern times that it has been or- 
 ganized on the vast scale of our modern Sunday 
 schools. We read in the books of the Pentateuch how 
 the priests gathered the children about them to tell 
 them of the great Creator and his wonderful world. 
 The Mohammedans followed the example of the Jews, 
 and many travelers have described the spectacle of the 
 children seated on the floor of a mosque, listening to 
 the recital of the Koran by the imaum, or minister. 
 
 414 
 
STORY OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 
 
 From the earliest times, the Christian church has in- 
 structed its little ones in the paths of virtue. By the 
 beginning of the fourth century, bible schools were 
 established in Egypt and many parts of the east, and 
 it was largely through their means that St. Gregory 
 the Illuminator converted Armenia to Christianity. 
 
 ^^In the days shortly after the discovery of Amer- 
 ica, the Archbishop of Milan founded Sunday schools 
 in his European diocese, and organized the teachers, 
 both men and women, into a * ' Confraternity of Chris- 
 tian Doctrine, ' ^ which, at his death, in 1584, numbered 
 4,000 schools, and is still in existence. Even to-day 
 the Milan cathedral is used for this purpose, and chil- 
 dren, with their books and slates, receive instruction 
 in one part, while working-men are gathered in an- 
 other part of the historic edifice. 
 
 **But the real founder of the modern Sunday 
 school, as we know it in English-speaking countries, 
 was Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, England. He was 
 born in 1735; his father was a local newspaper pro- 
 prietor, in easy circumstances. He lived in a time of 
 great religious and philanthropic activity. The teach- 
 ings of John Wesley were then gaining many con- 
 verts. The courageous John Howard was in the 
 midst of his activities in the prisons; and William 
 Wilberforce was already in Parliament. 
 
 '^What was it that led Robert Raikes to establish 
 the Sunday school? It is as interesting as a romance. 
 On his visits to the jail, he pondered over the wretched 
 plight of the prisoners whom he saw. Whenever he 
 walked on the streets, his pity went out to the throngs 
 of neglected children, mostly workers in a pin factory, 
 who were to fill the jails of the future. So it was that 
 he resolved to do what he could to avert these hiiman 
 tragedies. 
 
 **It was on a Sunday in July, 1780. Raikes col- 
 
 415 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 lected twelve poor children in a small room and placed 
 them in charge of a lady of his acquaintance, who told 
 them of the love of God. The children listened with 
 awe to the wonderful story. Then they brought their 
 little friends to hear the glad tidings. They came in 
 such numbers that it was necessary to engage teachers 
 at the rate of a shilling a day. Seldom has a move- 
 ment, started in so humble and unostentatious a man- 
 ner, reached fruition so quickly. Sunday schools 
 sprang up everywhere. In 1785 a Sunday school 
 society was formed, and by 1796 there were a thousand 
 Sunday schools in England. 
 
 ^^ Needless to say, the movement was not without 
 its opponents. There were found learned statesmen, 
 who saw in it something seditious and revolutionary; 
 and godly churchmen, who denounced it as a profana- 
 tion of the Lord's Day. The Anglican episcopate de- 
 clared solemnly against the impious innovation. In 
 Scotland it met with no favor; and, when the move- 
 ment crossed the ocean, New England frowned on it. 
 One worthy Connecticut minister went so far as to 
 shake his cane at a young lady parishioner, whom he 
 accused of ^ doing the Devil's work' by organizing a 
 Sunday school. But all this opposition did not stem 
 the great movement. 
 
 ^^The introduction of the Sunday school into the 
 United States may be said to date from 1791, when a 
 * Society for the Institution and Support of First Day 
 or Sunday Schools in the City of Philadelphia' was 
 organized, with Bishop William White as president 
 and Matthew Carey as secretary. But it was soon felt 
 that an organization wider in its scope was required, 
 and, in 1817, the Sunday and Adult School Union was 
 formed in Philadelphia. This developed, in 1824, into 
 the American Sunday School Union, which is national 
 and interdenominational in its scope. 
 
 416 
 
STORY OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 
 
 *^Its wonderful progress is shown by the fact that, 
 in less than one hundred years, there are in the United 
 States 160,225 Protestant Sunday schools, with 
 1,570,188 teachers and 13,907,845 scholars. In Great 
 Britain are 49,210 schools, with 712,610 teachers and 
 7,425,857 scholars. The figures for the whole world 
 show that to-day the Sunday schools number 296,129 ; 
 teachers, 2,633,120 ; scholars, 26,653,715. To such pro- 
 portions has the ragamuffin school of twelve pupils, 
 begun by Eobert Eaikes, already grown. 
 
 **The first national convention of Sunday schools 
 was held in New York, in 1832. The first World's 
 Sunday School Convention was held in London, in 
 1889, and since then these international conventions 
 have been held every three years in various parts of 
 the world. The last (1913) was held at Zurich, Switzer- 
 land, and it is intended to hold the next in Tokio — a 
 sign of the ecumenical activities of the movement. 
 
 **What is the meaning, we may well ask, of this 
 world-wide movement? To what end are devoted the 
 activities of this army of earnest, high-minded men 
 and women who give their services in our Sunday 
 schools? What are the results in the case of the mil- 
 lions of children the world over, who, week by week 
 for many years, assemble in these schools? The wealth 
 of noble influence or moral worth can hardly be ex- 
 aggerated. The Sunday school is the guardian of 
 childhood throughout the world; it has the oppor- 
 tunity, such as the day school cannot enjoy, of mold- 
 ing their character to a pattern of virtue with the aid 
 of the powerful sanctions of religion. It takes these 
 young minds, when they are not distracted by their 
 ordinary studies and occupations, and guides them to 
 noble ideals of life and a high conception of duty. We 
 naturally expect that all this should have an elevating 
 influence on our people, that this training of our future 
 
 417 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 citizens should have an important bearing on the 
 moral progress of the nation. Can any one doubt 
 that such is the wonderful achievement? 
 
 '■ ' The modern Sunday school, ' ' continued the young 
 teacher, ^^has been keeping pace with the times. In 
 the large cities, both indoor and outdoor recreations 
 are provided for use on week days by the Sunday 
 school pupils. Many church buildings have gym- 
 nasiums, reading-rooms, and game-rooms. All kinds 
 of outdoor sports are organized. The Sunday School 
 Association of Chicago has the largest amateur base- 
 ball organization in the world, consisting of eleven 
 leagues of six teams each, enrolling about a thousand 
 young men, who must be certified Sunday school at- 
 tendants. There are similar baseball leagues in many 
 other cities. 
 
 **0f such," declared the vivacious young lady, ^4s 
 the rich fruit growing on the tree that has sprung from 
 the tiny seed sown by Eobert Eaikes. It seems a long 
 step from the humble room in Gloucester to all the 
 comfort and magnificence of the palatial edifice at 
 Washington. Yet the same spirit is there — ^the spirit 
 of Christian service. When we reflect on what the 
 Sunday school has done, and is doing, for the better- 
 ment of mankind, we do not hesitate to accord it an 
 almost incalculable share in our progress in the past, 
 and in our hopes for the future." 
 
 418 
 
THE STORY OF THE YOUNG MEN OF 
 THE NATION AND A BENEFACTOR 
 
 A YOUNG man, full of the vigor of life, stood be- 
 fore the Story-tellers. His face was radiant 
 with enthusiasm, and his voice strong. 
 
 **I come to you as a messenger from the youth of 
 the nation," he said. *'They stand shoulder to shoul- 
 der, 600,000 strong, in the story that I am to relate. 
 It began in a bedroom in London, in 1841, but it soon 
 crossed the ocean and spread over the American con- 
 tinent, until to-dav it is one of the wonder-stories of 
 modern life. 
 
 *^ Shortly before the death of Queen Victoria, an 
 old man — 73 years of age — ^was summoned into the 
 presence of Her Majesty. As he knelt before the 
 throne, the good Queen bestowed upon him the order 
 of knighthood for his ^distinguished services in behalf 
 of the young manhood of the world.' The venerable 
 knight is the man who, at twenty years of age, per- 
 formed the deed that culminates in this story. 
 
 "George Williams, for that was his name, was a 
 farmer's boy. At about twenty years of age he de- 
 cided to go out into the world and seek his fortune. 
 So he left his farm in Somerset and came up to Lon- 
 don to enter the house of George Hitcncock and Com- 
 pany, at 72 St. Paul's Churchyard. This sudden 
 change was a revelation to him. He found himself in 
 a strange environment, in a group of men like him- 
 self, struggling and anxious to get on in the world, 
 but unlike himself in one great particular. Without 
 
 419 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 exception they were profligate and profane. They had 
 little opportunity for self-improvement, since they 
 lodged in small and ill-ventilated bedrooms. There 
 were eighty of these yonng fellows, and every one de- 
 clared that it was impossible for a clerk to be a Chris- 
 tian. This young Somerset farmer set about to dis- 
 prove that assertion, and after he had been there three 
 years it was agreed that it was impossible for a clerk 
 to remain in that store and not be a Christian. 
 
 *^The young men met evenings in the small bed- 
 room occupied by their friend and discussed the prob- 
 lems of the day. They read books and talked about 
 life and its great opportunities. Three years later — 
 in 1844 — twelve of these young men formed them- 
 selves into a club of self-help, and that is the beginning 
 of the great organization known to-day as the Young 
 Men's Christian Association. Shortly afterward 
 similar societies were formed in other London dry- 
 goods houses. A letter from London, published in a 
 Boston newspaper on December 29, 1851, led to the 
 organization of an Association in Boston — the first in 
 the United States. Within the next two years Associa- 
 tions were formed in twenty American cities, among 
 them New York, Chicago, Washington, Buffalo, New 
 Orleans, and San Francisco. These associations met 
 in their First International Convention in Buffalo in 
 1854. 
 
 ** During the bloody years of the American Civil 
 War, these organizations formed what was called the 
 United States Christian Commission to go upon the 
 battlefield and administer to both the physical and 
 spiritual needs of the soldiers. More than five thou- 
 sand Christian helpers went into the camps and hos- 
 pitals and distributed over ^ve million dollars in money 
 and supplies. 
 
 **The first World's Congress of the Young Men's 
 
 420 
 
STORY OF THE Y. M. G. A. 
 
 Christian Associations was held in Paris in 1855. There 
 they adopted the historic Paris Basis, which is the 
 bond of unity between the various bodies throughout 
 the world. It is to-day a great world movement for 
 the betterment and culture of young men. So great 
 has it become that it requires over 3,250 officers in 
 North America alone to direct its affairs." 
 
 ^*How many Associations are there in the United 
 States?" asked one of the listeners. 
 
 ** There are 2,118 Associations in the United States 
 and Canada to-day," replied the Story-teller. ^^Six 
 hundred and thirty-six are in the cities, 669 are in 
 universities and colleges, 235 are Eailroad Associa- 
 tions, 132 are Colored Men's Associations, 351 are 
 town or rural, 36 are Army or Navy Associations, and 
 61 are Indian Associations. These Associations have 
 an aggregate number of 536,037 men and boys. Of 
 these young men 72,938 serve on committees in their 
 respective Associations." 
 
 **IIow much money is invested I" 
 
 ** Nearly $70,000,000 is invested in buildings and 
 other permanent equipment. 
 
 **It is doing a wonderful work among the railroad 
 men in America," continued the speaker. * 'Railroad 
 Associations have been established at 235 divisional 
 and terminal points. The man coming in from a long 
 run finds restrooms, clean and inexpensive, restaurants 
 operated without thought of profit, social rooms at- 
 tractively equipped, modern sanitary baths, libraries, 
 and reading-rooms. Nearly $4,200,000 is now invested 
 in Railroad Association buildings. The total attend- 
 ance at 3,703 shop meetings during the year 1912 ex- 
 ceeded 250,000 railroad men. Bible classes show an 
 enrollment of 8,030 students, and 241,647 technical and 
 general books were distributed that year through the 
 Association libraries to railroad men alone. 
 
 421 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ''The Y. M. C. A.,'' continued the speaker, '4s a 
 high-grade, low-cost, young men's club. It is Chris- 
 tian, but not sectarian. It is an athletic organization 
 that does not use men to promote athletics, but uses 
 athletics to develop men. It is a night school for young 
 men who work by day. It is a home for young men 
 away from home. Its fellowships, club-rooms, gym- 
 nasiums, baths, classes, and all other practical ad- 
 vantages are open to all young men of all faiths or 
 of no faith. It is controlled by representatives of 
 churches. It is not an experiment, but is the survivor 
 of many experiments. While other organizations — 
 social, athletic, educational, ethical, and even reli- 
 gious — have failed, this has succeeded, and is now in 
 successful operation in over eight thousand places in 
 North America and throughout the world." 
 
 "What are you doing for the immigrant!'' asked 
 one who is interested in all the peoples of the earth. 
 
 "We are working for him day and night," an- 
 swered the speaker. "The immigration work was 
 begun in 1907. To-day there are four hundred Asso- 
 ciations doing some form of service for the immi- 
 grants. Last year 15,000 foreigners were in classes in 
 English, 50,000 attended lectures and practical talks 
 on citizenship. Secretaries at ports of embarkation 
 in Europe rendered personal service to the departing 
 emigrants. Practically every port on the Atlantic 
 Coast has its port secretary meeting immigrants on 
 arrival. Hundreds and thousands of industrial work- 
 ers are in small industrial communities, in village and 
 isolated camps." 
 
 "The Y. M. C. A. has encircled the world," con- 
 tinued the Story-teller. "It is on the seas and in the 
 mines. It goes to war. It stands behind the guns on 
 the battleships. During the Spanish-American War 
 in 1898 it went to the firing-line. Its Army and Navy 
 
 422 
 
STORY OF THE Y. M. C. A. 
 
 Department to-day has material equipment, including 
 sites, buildings, and endowments, valued at $2,000,000. 
 It is organized in twenty-six army posts and has ten 
 navy branches, touching the lives of men, not only in 
 the United States, but in Alaska, on the Canal Zone, 
 and in the Philippine Islands. Eighty-eight secretaries 
 are giving their time to the promotion of the work 
 for sailors and soldiers. 
 
 *^The magnitude of the work accomplished by the 
 Y. M. C. A. almost staggers the imagination. In a 
 single year 5,486,895 men attended its religious meet- 
 ings, 1,191,386 went to its shop meetings, 987,286 sat in 
 its bible classes. Nearly 1,000,000 used the reading- 
 rooms of the Associations. Seven hundred thousand 
 good books were read; 1,900 lectures were given; 
 $528,000 were paid in tuition fees in the commercial, 
 industrial, trade, academic, and language classes; 
 2,560 teachers gave instruction to 61,800 employed 
 boys and men. Over 100,000 were aided in the exten- 
 sion work. Sixteen thousand boys were members of 
 evening classes alone. The annual expenses for this 
 work amounted to $8,000,000.'' 
 
 ^^I should like to tell you about the almost mirac- 
 ulous way in which money comes to this great work," 
 concluded the enthusiastic young worker; ^*how the 
 business men of the nation have extended their sup- 
 port ; how the richest men and women of the land have 
 bestowed fortunes upon it ; and how much larger gifts 
 are needed to extend the magnificent work. But the 
 story is too long to tell here. I can only say that the 
 Young Men's Christian Association is one of the 
 greatest influences on American citizenship, and that 
 in time of need the nation will always find it ready 
 and willing to lend its helping hand." 
 
 28 
 
 423 
 
THE STORY OF THE YOUNG WOMEX 
 OF THE NATION— FUTURE MOTHERS 
 
 A YOUNG- woman sprang quickly to her feet. 
 Her dark brown eyes snapped like jewels. There 
 was a ruddy glow on her cheeks. 
 
 ^'This is the psychological moment for my story,'' 
 she said. ' ^ I speak for the yonng women of America. ' ' 
 
 The Story-tellers broke into applause. 
 
 ** Three cheers for all the women in America — 
 young or old ! ' ' shouted a young man ; and the library 
 echoed with a hundred voices. 
 
 ^'My story,'' the young woman began, ^* started in 
 the terrible Crimean War. The nurses were return- 
 ing from the battlefields with the moans of the wounded 
 and dying still ringing in their memories. Upon their 
 arrival in London from the East some thoughtful 
 woman with a motherly heart opened a home for them. 
 This was in 1854. In the following year, Lady Arthur 
 Kinnaird formed an organization to take control of 
 this home and to develop a great idea. It was decided 
 to throw open its doors to worthy women who were 
 training for all branches of usefulness. A circulating 
 library was opened, and a register kept of persons 
 seeking employment. The whole city of London was 
 studied and districted. Various plans of usefulness 
 were developed, and the great work began which has 
 culminated in the modern movements for the protec- 
 tion of our working women. 
 
 *^The American people took a deep interest in this 
 magnificent undertaking," continued the young 
 
 424 
 
STORY OF THE Y. W. C. A. 
 
 woman. ' ' It was in the city of New York in 1858 that 
 the Ladies' Christian Union held its first meeting for 
 self-supporting young women. One day a clergyman 
 came to these benevolent ladies. 
 
 ^^ ^I have a young woman/ he said, *who is unable 
 to find a safe, comfortable boarding-place at a price 
 she can afford to pay. She has just come to New 
 York to earn her own living and you should help her. ' 
 
 ^* ^Here is your work,' suggested the clergyman. 
 * Open a boarding home for such young women ! ' 
 
 *^The home was opened in I860,'' continued the 
 Story-teller. *^ About this same time a similar idea 
 had occurred to the women of Boston, and on the 6th 
 of March, in 1866, they organized what is known to-day 
 as the Young Women's Christian Association, and 
 two years later opened their first home with lodgings 
 for eighty young women." 
 
 Another round of applause passed through the 
 room. 
 
 ^^Many homes for self-supporting women were 
 started throughout both America and England," con- 
 tinued the speaker. ^*A directory by which young 
 women could be directed to employment was a feature 
 of the earliest associations. Educational classes were 
 opened ; and, later, physical training classes. In 1885, 
 the Traveler's Aid work was started. The American 
 seaports and large inland cities were kept in close 
 touch with a central union as well as with the various 
 American points from which young women came. In- 
 dustrial Associations were formed in cotton mill vil- 
 lages. It was in 1907 that the Young Women's Chris- 
 tian Association of the United States of America was 
 formed. The distinction of bringing about the na- 
 tional organization belongs to Miss Grace H. Dodge. 
 
 ^'So great had become this wonderful system that 
 in 1912 there were 908 Associations in North America, 
 
 425 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 with 280,597 members. Over forty-nine thousand 
 women are enrolled in the Bible classes of the Associa- 
 tions. In the educational classes 46,426 young women 
 are enrolled. More than forty-three thousand are in 
 the physical training department. In the offices of the 
 Associations, 1,563 young women are employed, and 
 there are nearly one hundred field secretaries and 
 young women at the headquarters. The budget for 
 1912 amounted to $4,196,233. 
 
 ** Nearly thirty thousand young women lunch daily 
 in the luncheon rooms provided by the Association. 
 The Association gave 55,331 young women employ- 
 ment through their bureaus in 1912. Sixty-nine sum- 
 mer homes were conducted. The Travelers' Aid was 
 in personal touch with 211,461 young women and girls 
 during the year. The Association owns 172 buildings 
 and has real property valued at $14,315,934." 
 
 These remarkable facts deeply interested the lis- 
 teners. 
 
 ^^ Shall I stop here?" asked the speaker. *'I do not 
 wish to tire you." 
 
 ^^Go on! go on!" called out nearly a hundred 
 voices. 
 
 *^The heart of this great achievement of woman 
 for woman centers in New York City," resumed the 
 Story-teller. ^^It is here that you will find the Na- 
 tional Board and the National Training School occupy- 
 ing one of the most commodious and perfectly con- 
 structed buildings in the world. There you will learn 
 that, while the headquarter 's budget is $400,000, the 
 budget of the nation is nearer ten millions. There, if 
 the charts are spread out before you, and you survey 
 the work in America, you will see thousands of girls 
 pouring into classes all day and evening, thousands in 
 domestic science classes and physical training classes, 
 
 426 
 
STORY OF THE Y. W. C. A. 
 
 eighty thousand in millinery classes and learning 
 typewriting and stenography and other honest work 
 that will teach them to be mode efficient. 
 
 *^The wonderful system called the 'Department 
 of Method,' is a challenge to the world of woman's 
 efficiency. Under its name gather a staff of women 
 who are expert students of women's life as it ex- 
 presses itself in industrial, rural, student, social, im- 
 migrant, physical, educational, and religious terms. 
 Working chiefly through the field secretaries, these 
 specialists stand ready to consult, advise, and 
 diagnose. A statesmanlike policy has been proved; 
 the country has come to have confidence in the plan 
 which has done more for the American girl and for 
 the American woman than any other, at any time, in 
 the history of the world. 
 
 **If you ever have an opportunity to visit the Na- 
 tional Headquarters in New York, do not fail to do so. 
 There you will find a chart telling you that 6,000,000 
 of the 45,000,000 women and girls in America are 
 wage-earning and most of them at a non-living wage. 
 
 ''Here you will find a great and quiet force gath- 
 ered for attack on the social evil by the only com- 
 plete way; here is conducted a quiet campaign in the 
 interests of good, old-fashioned thrift; here is a cam- 
 paign against the extravagances of the times. 
 
 "One last word to carry in your memory!'' ex- 
 claimed the young woman, impressively. "G-ive the 
 American girl a wholesome environment and a fair 
 opportunity to earn her way in the world, and you 
 need not fear for the future of the nation." 
 
 427 
 
THE STORY OF THE WORKING WOMEN 
 AND THEIR MODEST EARNINGS 
 
 A MIDDLE-AGED woman of matronly appear- 
 ance spoke. There was a businesslike manner 
 about her that commanded attention. 
 
 **I, too, speak for woman and her work,'' she be- 
 gan. * ^ Not the woman in the office, or the mill, or the 
 store; not the woman in industry; but the woman at 
 home who with her hands creates objects of beauty 
 and utility, or who with her patience contributes her 
 share to the world's needs." 
 
 The curiosity of the listeners seemed to be aroused. 
 
 **0n one of the most crowded thoroughfares in 
 the world," she said, ** there is a building where the 
 passerby occasionally pauses in wonderment. It stands 
 on the corner of Madison Avenue and Forty-second 
 Street, in the city of New York. Over its entrance 
 appear these words: *The Woman's Exchange.' The 
 name tells its own story — a story of the ingenuity, 
 perseverance, and ability of the American woman. It 
 is a plan whereby a great system of clearing-houses 
 has been established for the handiwork of women. 
 
 ** Thirty-five years ago, a small shop was opened 
 in New York City with thirty articles, the handiwork 
 of women, by a woman who saw the necessity of pro- 
 viding a market for gentlewomen thrown upon their 
 own resources. This was the first Woman's Exchange 
 in the world — a clearing-house for the handiwork of 
 women. Fundamentally an American institution for 
 
 428 
 
S TORY OF THE WOMEN'S EXCHANGES 
 
 self-supporting women, this was the parent of many 
 other exchanges throughout the country. Its methods 
 and systems were soon adopted in Canada, France, 
 Germany, and England. 
 
 * * This one exchange now registers over fifteen thou- 
 sand articles yearly, and pays its consignors annually 
 between ninety-five and one hundred thousand dollars. 
 This exchange alone has disbursed to women 
 $1,688,384. Since its organization, exchanges in hun- 
 dreds of American cities have been formed, until the 
 entire country has fostered and encouraged this unique 
 American movement to provide markets at home for 
 the thousands and thousands of women unequipped 
 to enter the industrial trades or professions, but who 
 must utilize their talents and energies in providing a 
 livelihood for themselves and their families. 
 
 **The second exchange to be established in America 
 was the Madison Avenue Exchange, twenty-eight 
 years ago. It is now the largest in the United States 
 and owns its own building. This one exchange has 
 disbursed to women over six hundred thousand dol- 
 lars. The total amount disbursed yearly by all the 
 Women's Exchanges in America is estimated at sev- 
 eral million dollars. 
 
 ^'The American exchanges are now the one great 
 clearing-house for all the activities of the American 
 women in a century when economic independence is 
 being preached from the housetops. No articles are 
 ever received from women who are not dependent 
 upon their own resources. Fees varying in amounts 
 from $1.50 to $3.00 are charged consignors, and the 
 exchange receives ten per cent of all sales. It is under 
 the management of women; women form its board of 
 managers, fill all executive departments, and only 
 women comprise the consignors. 
 
 429 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ''Some idea of the wide sphere of woman's work 
 and the varied activities for the woman bread-winner 
 that is fostered by the thousands of exchanges through- 
 out America may be had by glancing over the bulletin, 
 which is posted at practically all of these wonderful 
 women's markets in the country: 'Order taken for 
 babies' and children's clothing and equipment for the 
 nursery; hand embroidery, lacework, fancy and use- 
 ful articles, plain serving, delicacies for the sick, hos- 
 pitals, institutions and convalescent homes supplied 
 at short notice; preserved and candied fruits always 
 on hand. ' Here is where the exchange touches elbows 
 with the country woman in disposing of her fruits, 
 her home-made wines, her fresh eggs, her home-made 
 products. 
 
 "We have not only widows with families to sup- 
 port," said the woman, who is one of the managers in 
 this great clearing-house for woman's work, "but 
 mothers who are working to give their children an edu- 
 cation, or daughters who have accepted the burden of 
 helpless parents. The self-respecting woman who sees 
 herself left behind with unrealized plans and ideals 
 comes to us. And we have among our consignors 
 those who come to us for positions of trust; women 
 educated in household arts and science, skilled man- 
 agers ; women of efficiency in various directions, who, 
 in working out their own individual lives, have become 
 stranded. This age sends forth its thousands to seek 
 work. I am proud to be a part of the Women's Ex- 
 changes which provide safe and wholesome occupa- 
 tions for these thousands, these millions of women 
 bread-winners." 
 
 430 
 
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITAL NURSE 
 AND THE BATTLE FOR HEALTH 
 
 A BIG, black automobile sped through, the streets 
 and stopped at the entrance to the library. A 
 woman in a plain black garb alighted and hur- 
 ried into the building. 
 
 As she entered, the Story-tellers greeted her with 
 cordial handclasps. 
 
 **I had much difficulty in getting here,'' she said. 
 '*The hospital wards are filled with patients, and I 
 must be on duty through the night. So I must tell you 
 my story quickly.'' 
 
 **It is a story of patience, self-sacrifice, and hu- 
 manity," she began. *'The modem hospital is the 
 miracle of miracles. Here we literally hold back the 
 hand of death and rob the grave. Yes, even more — • 
 there are frequent instances where we almost believe 
 that we bring the dead back to life." 
 
 **When and how did the hospital begin?" 
 
 **I will tell you," she answered gently. **It was 
 in the time of the old Crusaders that the Christian hos- 
 pital began. They seem to have been the first to act as 
 nurses in the hospitals in the Holy Land. There may 
 or may not have been hospitals in pre-Christian times. 
 We know that the Egyptians studied medicine, but 
 their sick were brought to the temples to be healed 
 by the priests. There are evidences that dispensaries 
 for ill soldiers and slaves were opened in Rome. 
 Chinese explorers describe hospitals for men and ani- 
 mals. Hospitals existed in Mexico before the Con- 
 
 431 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 quest. There was an Arabian hospital with a staff of 
 forty-two doctors. The oldest hospital in the world 
 still existing is the famous Hotel Dieu, on the banks 
 of the Seine. It was supposedly founded by a bishop 
 of Paris, 660 to 800, A. D. 
 
 * 'Hospitals in America, you ask! The first was 
 erected by Cortez in the City of Mexico, in 1542, and 
 it is still in existence. The first hospital in United 
 States territory was erected on Manhattan Island, in 
 1663, to care for ill soldiers and negroes of the East 
 India Company. Early in the eighteenth century, pest- 
 houses for contagious diseases were established in va- 
 rious towns on the Atlantic Coast. A permanent hos- 
 pital for these ailments was built in Boston in 1717. 
 The first privately endowed hospital in the United 
 States was the Charity, in New Orleans, founded in 
 1720, by a sailor named Louis. It receives 8,000 pa- 
 tients annually. 
 
 ''The spread of hospitals,'' continued the nurse, 
 *'is an American marvel. The last census shows the 
 number of hospitals in the United States to be 1,493. 
 The number of patients admitted that year was 
 1,064,512. There were 21,844 nurses and 2,863 resi- 
 dent doctors, with 15,914 visiting physicians. America 
 has a brilliant record. In hospital construction and 
 in advanced methods of hospital equipment this coun- 
 try has made wonderful strides. The evolution of the 
 American hospital is one of the wonders of America. 
 
 "Let us take a glimpse at one of these great city 
 institutions," said the nurse. "It will appeal to you 
 if you are a lover of hygiene. Visit one of these per- 
 fectly planned and magnificently equipped hospitals; 
 observe the wards and separate rooms for patients; 
 here is the administration room, the reception room, 
 the adjacent waiting room; there is the doctor's office, 
 the head nurse's office, the drug room. You have not 
 
 432 
 
STORY OF THE HOSPITAL 
 
 begun to see the entire floor space, for here is a gen- 
 eral dining-room, a nurse's dining-room, the kitchen, 
 the pantries, the storerooms. And have you passed by 
 the operating room, with its marvelous equipment? 
 Look at the walls on either side, and the ceilings. They 
 are of glass, double, with spaces between the walls 
 for heating these rooms. There is the sterilizing room, 
 the septic and clean rooms, and the instrument ster- 
 ilizers which can be reached without leaving the op- 
 erating room. And here is the anaesthetic room. 
 
 ' ' Did you ever think of the part that economy must 
 play in every part of the hospital system? Think of 
 the time consumed in conveying food to patients from 
 the kitchens. In the Steinhof hospital in Vienna, 3,000 
 patients are scattered over 350 acres, and food has to 
 be carried to them in electric cars. In American hos- 
 pitals there are the great kitchens and the smaller 
 diet kitchens, where, both in the preparation of the 
 food and in conveying it to the patients, little time is 
 consumed. And economy enters now in the smallest 
 details of construction. Architects no longer leave 
 any projections in hospital rooms; no mouldings to 
 catch dust. There must be the one panel door, and, 
 by the way, American manufacturers make the most 
 sanitary doors that are to be found in the world. Equal 
 attention is given to hygienic and noiseless floors.'' 
 
 The nurse glanced hurriedly at her watch. 
 
 *^I have two minutes more," she said, *^and then 
 I must hurry to my duty. Sunshine and air is the 
 keynote in the modern hospital. The modern idea 
 that patients must be kept in the open air has revolu- 
 tionized hospital construction. Architects now design 
 airy balconies and even roof wards. In the modern 
 American hospital electric lights are used to signal to 
 nurses and internes. The signals are set from the 
 main office, and, by different colors and positions of 
 
 433 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 electric bulbs, the different doctors are signaled to 
 answer by telephone. There are wonderful hospitals 
 for children, where the floors are of a light gray vitre- 
 ous tile, and there is no chance for a particle of dust 
 to stay one single moment in one single corner. Here 
 is a complete milk laboratory; there are dainty diet 
 kitchens, a general laboratory fitted with sinks and 
 slabs ; and here is a pathological room for research. 
 
 * ^America has hospitals for children, for consump- 
 tives, for cripples, for emigrants, for incurables, for 
 the insane, for cancer, besides the military and naval 
 and marine hospitals. Were it not for the hospitals, 
 cities could not exist. People could not be housed — 
 hundreds and hundreds in one block — if it were not for 
 the hospitals which act as safeguards in contagious 
 diseases. Our hospital systems make it possible for 
 communities to live without being swept away by 
 epidemics. Hospitals are equipped with chutes for 
 soiled clothing, with an incinerator where all garbage 
 is burned, with an appliance where mattresses are 
 sterilized by steam. The modern hospital has had a 
 wonderful effect on American civilization. It has 
 given stability to communities in periods of contagious 
 disease. It is the refuge of humanity both in war and 
 peace. Never, at any time in the history of the world, 
 has so much attention been given to hospital construc- 
 tion, and America stands in the forefront." 
 
 **My friends," said the nurse, in closing her story, 
 * ^ I do not wish any of you ill luck, but, if you are ever 
 taken seriouslv sick, the best luck that I can wish vou 
 is that some good friend will hurry you off to the 
 nearest hospital." 
 
 434 
 
THE STORY OF MODERN SANITATION 
 AND ITS GREAT BLESSINGS 
 
 '']y /T Y story is not the most interesting in the 
 1 T X world," said the man near the door, ^^but it 
 is one of the most important — ^your lives de- 
 pend on it!" 
 
 The speaker was abont forty years of age and had 
 the appearance of a professional man. 
 
 **I am a sanitary engineer," he said. **It is my 
 business to fight disease, epidemics, plagues — to drive 
 them out of their dark hiding-places and destroy them 
 before they destroy us. It is a long, hard battle, but 
 we are winning it step by step." 
 
 *^Can you remember," he asked, **the days when 
 smallpox ravaged our cities and towns? Then there 
 were great scourges of fevers that fell on our bones 
 like wolves and devoured us. Our communities were 
 always in danger. We never knew when the next pest 
 was to attack us." 
 
 *^ Those days," he said emphatically, **have gone 
 forever. The enemies have been driven from our 
 doors. They now appear only occasionally and sel- 
 dom as a devouring epidemic. The individual cases 
 are isolated. And the force back of this notable vic- 
 tory is the great army of engineers, and the boards of 
 health that to-day stand guard over our cities and 
 towns. 
 
 **This story of sanitation, as T have warned you, 
 is not wholly pleasant, but it is chivalrous. It deals 
 with the environment of civilized man, the air he 
 
 435 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ■ breathes, the water he drinks, the ventilation of his 
 dwelling, the disposal of waste material. Uncivilized 
 man, living in natural surroundings, knows little or 
 ^nothing of this science. It is a product of city life, 
 and nowhere is it in greater requirement than in the 
 crowded cities of America. 
 
 *^It is not exactly a new idea, for even hack in 
 antiquity there were regulations as to sewage disposal 
 and quarantine. But the science, as it is known to 
 us, is considerably less than a hundred years old. 
 
 **We realize to-day that we must keep posted on 
 this subject of public hygiene. Nowadays the Board 
 of Health is an important feature of every city. Yet 
 the first State Board of Health was not established 
 until the year 1855. Louisiana has the honor of hav- 
 ing led the way, but this institution was then more a 
 project for the enforcement of quarantine. Massa- 
 chusetts followed as late as the year 1869, and Cali- 
 fornia in 1870. 
 
 *^ Strange to believe, the great State of New York 
 did not establish a State Board of Health until 1880. 
 It then began to realize that a gigantic metropolis 
 could not long exist without defending itself against 
 disease. It then began to fortify itself as it would 
 against an invading army. To-day it is bulwarked by 
 an immense organization under command of a com- 
 missioner, secretary, chief clerk, medical expert, path- 
 ologist and bacteriologist, director of the Bureau of 
 Chemistry, director of the Cancer Laboratory, regis- 
 trar of vital statistics, consulting ophthalmologist and 
 consulting engineer. ^ 
 
 *'The first secret of public health," exclaimed the 
 sanitary engineer, ^4s pure water. Without that no 
 city can exist. Impure water will wipe a community 
 o:ff the face of the earth as surely, if not as quickly, 
 as an earthquake. To-day impure water is trans- 
 
 436 
 
STORY OF SANITATION 
 
 formed into crystal pure water by the wonderful pro- 
 cess known as slow sand filtration. 
 
 *^The first United States city to build a sand fil- 
 tration plant was Poughkeepsie, in 1870. Another 
 was built at Hudson, New York, soon afterward, and 
 no further progress was made until 1889, when the 
 city of Albany adopted this method. One was built 
 for the national capital at Washington, with a filter- 
 ing capacity of 125,000,000 gallons of water daily, in 
 1905, and Philadelphia soon afterward commenced the 
 construction of one having a daily filtration capacity 
 of 300,000,000 gallons. 
 
 '*The second of the great secrets of public health,'' 
 remarked the engineer, *4s the proper disposal of 
 sewage. This has not yet become a fine art. Sewers 
 were known in ancient Eome. Paris had a sewerage 
 system as early as the year 1536, but even in 1893 very 
 few houses had sewerage connections. In the year 
 1847 the houses of London were forced by act of Par- 
 liament to have connection with drains. 
 
 ** Boston was provided with drains in the year 
 1701. Since 1848 the houses have been universally 
 connected. Every American city of importance has 
 since erected its own great sewage systems. 
 
 **In the small American towns sewers are still far 
 from universal. The disposal of refuse is not such a 
 serious problem in country places. It is only when a 
 population becomes concentrated that the subject be- 
 comes vital. The small villages use the rivers, which 
 generally purify themselves by the action of sunlight 
 and the filtration through sand and gravel before the! 
 water reaches the next settlement. American cities 
 situated on tidal waters remove their waste matter to 
 sea in barges and cast it overboard at a safe distance 
 from land. Experiments show that the action of the 
 ocean effectively destroys the elements of putrefac- 
 
 437 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 tion after a very short space of time. Before tlie con- 
 solidation of New York City it was estimated that 
 valuable fertilizer to the amount of $650,000 worth 
 was lost annually to the Borough of Manhattan alone 
 by being dumped into the sea." 
 
 **The latest solution for this great problem," con- 
 tinued the sanitary expert, *4s incineration — a method 
 for the complete destruction of sewage in a garbage 
 furnace, having a temperature of 2,000 degrees Fahr- 
 enheit for its complete combustion. One of the best 
 plants of this character is at San Francisco, where a 
 private company has a crematory capable of burning 
 600 tons of waste material daily. Large refuse destruc- 
 tors, as these furnaces are also called, were begun in 
 1901 by Milwaukee and Minneapolis. Many other 
 cities have since adopted the * cremation' process. 
 
 ** Boston is the first city to adopt the refuse-sort- 
 ing plant. This is the first step toward the scientific 
 treatment of waste products. At present all kinds of 
 organic refuse are dumped together into the garbage 
 pan, and find their way to the incinerator or the sea. 
 
 **The death rate per thousand in civilized com- 
 munities has fallen at least a hundred per cent since 
 the beginning of the last century, and now stands at 
 about 13 to 17 annually. This is wholly due to sani- 
 tation, which, by enforcing a pure milk supply, in- 
 specting foods and slaughter houses, and enforcing 
 quarantine regulations, has eradicated typhus and a 
 host of other diseases which formerly ravaged the 
 world." 
 
 **I venture the prophecy," exclaimed the sanita- 
 tion engineer, **that the day will come when disease 
 germs cannot live in our cities — and when garbage, 
 instead of going to waste, will be turned into wealth." 
 
 438 
 
Copyright by Underwood •& Underwood. 
 
 THE MAN WHO TURNED NIGHT INTO DAY 
 
 The modem miracle worker who dispelled darkness with the electric light ; 
 who preserved the human voice on the phonograph so that men shall 
 speak hundreds of years after they are dead ; who created the 
 kinetoscope which causes men to appear and reappear be- 
 fore our eyes many generations after they have 
 entered the grave. Photograph taken for these 
 "Wonder Stories" while Thomas A. Edison 
 was at work in his laboratorj\ — 
 See page 391. 
 
THE STORY OF THE PAPER MAKER 
 AND A VISIT TO THE MILLS 
 
 w 
 
 E can seek far and wide for wonders, but 
 we will find nothing more wonderful than 
 this .'' 
 
 The speaker held in his hand a plain sheet of paper. 
 Tearing it into bits, he tossed the fragments into the 
 air. 
 
 ^^It rivals the sleight-of-hand performers in its 
 magic uses,'^ he said, ^'Without paper the modern 
 world would be literally impossible. It has become a 
 great part of our social and business life. We use 
 it for our money; we use it to send our news into 
 every part of the earth; we use it to conduct the 
 great stream of business correspondence which is the 
 foundation of the whole commercial world to-day. It 
 is the basis of our schools; it is the keystone of our 
 system of law and justice; it is the medium of ex- 
 pression for our religions. 
 
 *^The world has passed through several so-called 
 'ages' — but the present period may well be called the 
 ^ paper age.' We almost live on paper to-day. We 
 do everything with it, except actually to eat it. Cloth- 
 ing, window frames, lanterns, umbrellas, handker- 
 chiefs, and artificial leather are made from paper in 
 Japan. Paper coffins are manufactured in the United 
 States and Germany. Paper barrels, vases, and milk 
 bottles are manufactured in Germany. It is possible 
 now to purchase a straw hat into which enters not an 
 item of straw. It is made of narrow paper strips 
 
 29 439 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 colored yellow. Artificial sponges are made of cellu- 
 lose or paper pulp. One man has even taken out a 
 patent for paper thread to be used in sewing shoes, 
 and a braid of artificial silk is made on a basis of 
 paper pnlp. And the use of paper in industry may be 
 indefinitely extended. It is employed to make imita- 
 tion porcelain, for bullets, shoes, sails for boats, boards, 
 and boats. A paper stove has even been manufac- 
 tured, and it is said to have satisfactorily held the 
 flames. Cellulose may be used to prepare a water- 
 proof coating that may be applied like paint. In Nor- 
 way a church holding one thousand people was made 
 entirely of paper. In many parts of China paper 
 skirts are used by the natives ; they are said to be 
 much warmer than cotton in cold weather. Paper 
 coats are worn in Japan ; they are oiled to make them 
 water-proof. 
 
 *^ Possibly the most wonderful of all the ingenious 
 uses of paper," continued the Story-teller, *4s paper 
 car-wheels. Paper is now substituted with success for 
 metal, stone, and wood, while paper fabrics are used 
 in some cases for linen, cotton, or silk. From com- 
 pressed paper are made wheels, rails, cannon, horse- 
 shoes, polishers for gems, bicycles, asphalted tubes for 
 gas or electric wires. With wood pulp and zinc sul- 
 phate there has been an attempt, in Berlin, to make 
 artificial bricks for paving. After subjecting them to 
 a pressure of 2,000 tons per cubic centimeter, they 
 are baked for forty-eight hours. In similar fashion 
 are made roofing-tiles and water-pipes. Telegraph 
 poles made of rolled sheets of paper are hollow, lighter 
 than wood, and resist weather well. 
 
 **But even more remarkable than the uses to which 
 we put paper," said the mill operator, **are the diversi- 
 fied substances from which we make paper — there are 
 109 of them. Some are quite unique. Paper has been 
 
 440 
 
STORY OF PAPER 
 
 made from the bracken or fern in Scotland; from 
 frogs ' spittle in Eed Hook, New York ; from the stems 
 and roots of horseradish in England ; from rushes and 
 flags ; from peat in France ; from hornets ' nests, saw- 
 dust, stone, tow, gutta-percha, ivory chips, asbestos, 
 bran, all kinds of fibrous plants, and many woods, be- 
 sides the usual mill stock of rags and waste paper. 
 Only a few, of course, are commercially practicable. 
 *^We are slowly eating up our forests to turn them 
 into paper,'' exclaimed the Story-teller. '^We are 
 using nearly 5,000,000 cords of wood this year to 
 make paper. One metropolitan Sunday paper will use 
 100 tons of paper, which requires for its manufacture 
 125 cords of wood, enough standing timber to cover six 
 acres. A Philadelphia newspaper that owned its paper 
 mills once made a trial of rapid paper-making. It 
 was able to turn wood from the growing tree into the 
 printed page in twenty-two hours. Thousands of 
 square miles of forests are being cut down to feed our 
 paper mills. This is resulting in drying up our rivers 
 and even checking our rainfall. At the rate at which 
 the forests are disappearing, since the coming of the 
 * paper age,' it is only a question of years before the 
 supply will be exhausted. The paper mills of the 
 United States are turning out over 5,000,000 tons of 
 their product every year. Its commercial value is 
 over $300,000,000, or more than twice that of all the 
 gold and silver mined annually in this country. There 
 are 9,000 people working in the paper mills. The 
 total horse-power required to operate these mills is 
 1,304,265, exceeding the horse-power of the cotton in- 
 dustry and approaching that of iron and steel. It is 
 estimated that 2,400,000 tons of this paper become 
 absolute waste within three or four years, representing 
 a waste of $10,000,000 per year. The United States 
 
 441 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 produces and consumes more paper than any other 
 country in the world/ ^ 
 
 '^When and how did all this begin?'' asked one of 
 the listeners. 
 
 *^The first paper was made probably as early as 
 2,000 B. C, in Egypt," replied the mill operator. ^'It 
 was taken from a tall sedge (Cyperus papyrus) which 
 grew in dense beds along the Nile and in the adjacent 
 countries. It is called the bulrush in the Bible, and 
 grows 10 to 15 feet high. The pith was edible, either 
 cooked or raw. The plant was serviceable for making 
 mats, sail cloths, and light boats. Twenty sheets of 
 papyrus could be made from one stalk, and the layers 
 nearest the pith were the whitest and best. The Ro- 
 mans improved papyrus, whitening it with a mixture 
 of flour and a little vinegar. Alexandria at one time 
 was the seat of papyrus trade and manufacture. It 
 was much in use until the eighth century and remained 
 in use until the eleventh. 
 
 *'The Chinese first made paper from pulp, using 
 the inner bark of the bamboo end of the mulberry 
 tree. The Arabs learned the art from Chinese pris- 
 oners taken in a repulse of a Chinese invasion in A. 
 D. 751. They resorted to flax, and then rags, and 
 later other vegetable fibers. This method of paper- 
 making was introduced into Europe through the Mos- 
 lem conquest of Spain. In A. D. 800, linen paper 
 began to supplant papyrus and was introduced into 
 China in the tenth century. The first paper mill men- 
 tioned in England was in 1498, in the time of Henry 
 VII. Peter the Great introduced the art from Ger- 
 many into Russia, in 1712. 
 
 ^'The first paper made in America was produced 
 by William Rittinghuysen, or Rittenhouse, at Ros- 
 borough, or Germantown, on a brook still called Paper 
 Mill Run, in the year 1690. The output was 250 
 
 442 
 
STORY OF PAPER 
 
 pounds a day, made from linen rags. The paper on 
 which the Declaration of Independence was written 
 was especially made for the purpose by Thomas Amies 
 of Philadelphia, a considerable quantity being pro- 
 duced at the time. To insure the best results new 
 rolls were made and the machine especially prepared. 
 The paper was of excellence beyond anything before 
 made. Only the finest linen rags were taken. Each 
 sheet was 22x36 inches. Each ream weighed 140 
 pounds and the price was $125 per ream. 
 
 ^' Paper was first made in a continuous web, in 
 1799, by a Frenchman, Louis Robert, who was awarded 
 8,000 francs by the French Government. The process 
 was perfected in England by Fourdrinier, who gave 
 the name of the machine. 
 
 ^^The greatest paper producing center in the world 
 is the city of Holyoke, Mass., where the Connecticut 
 River is dammed. About 200 tons a day are being 
 produced here — nearly all high class writing paper. 
 The canals are upon several levels and the water sup- 
 ply and power are abundant. In passing about the 
 city, one crosses the canals continually, and the smell 
 of paper ingredients is in the air. In the government 
 mills at Dalton, Massachusetts, operated by the Crane 
 family, descendants of Zenias Crane, one of the first 
 paper-makers of New England, the paper for bank 
 notes is made. Only new, clean, linen rags are used — 
 the refuse of linen mills. A silk thread is introduced 
 from cross troughs over the pulp, letting out bits of 
 silk held in the liquid which traverses them. 
 
 **It would be interesting to visit the paper mills 
 and see how rags and wood pulp are transformed by 
 almost magic machinery into paper, but my story to- 
 day must end here.'' 
 
 443 
 
THE STORY OF THE GLASS BLOWER 
 AND HIS CREATIONS OF BEAUTY 
 
 THE Story-tellers watclied with amusement the 
 attempts of one of their gathering to catch a fly. 
 Finally he succeeded, and placing it in an up- 
 turned glass, closed the opening of the glass with his 
 hand. Turning, with triumph gleaming on his face, 
 he said: 
 
 ^^Do you want to see me make that fly grow 100 
 times its size in an instant f" 
 
 ''Yes!'^ exclaimed a half dozen voices, and the 
 Story-tellers gathered around him, while the fly- 
 catcher drew something from his pocket and placed it 
 over the opening. 
 
 ^'Look!'' he exclaimed, and there was the fly re- 
 vealed as large as a small bird. ^^ Isn't that a miracle?'' 
 
 ^'It's a magnifying glass," said a practical man. 
 
 *^Yes, a magnifying glass — a miracle that is no 
 longer a miracle," paradoxically spoke the Story- 
 teller. *^It is as commonplace as creating fire by rub- 
 bing a stick across a board. But the miracle, the ability 
 to make that fly grow under your eyes, is still there. 
 And it is this miracle, known to man since the days 
 of Nineveh, that has revealed the hidden secrets of the 
 heavens and even the blood corpuscles in our veins. 
 
 **The prime secret of its magic is, of course, its 
 transparency — ^the great feature of glass. Did you 
 know that glass, one of man's greatest boons, came to 
 him through accident! Pliny, the Eoman scribe, re- 
 lates that some Phoenician merchants, some 3,000 
 
 444 
 
STORY OF GLASS 
 
 years before Christ, set their cooking pots upon the 
 seashore which contained at that spot the essentials 
 of glass. When they removed their pots a fairly trans- 
 parent mass greeted their eyes, and led to their trying 
 to imitate it. That was the beginning, and the secret 
 passed on to the Egyptians, who nsed it to make sham 
 jewels — the practice exists to-day, I might add — and 
 then on to the Eomans, who adorned their persons with 
 it and made toilet articles of it, as well as household 
 utensils, mural mosaics, and tessellated pavements. 
 
 ^' About the first articles manufactured in America 
 by English colonists were of glass made from the ma- 
 terials found around Jamestown, Virginia, in 1609. 
 The first glass factory is said to have been erected at 
 Manheim, Pennsylvania, about the year 1761, and was 
 under the direction of Baron William Henry Stiegel, 
 of Germany. Thus Pennsylvania was the first in the 
 industry, as it is the first in production of glass to- 
 day. ' ' 
 
 ''How much do we produce in the United States 
 annually?" inquired the banker. 
 
 About $100,000,000 worth," was the answer. 
 This sum is increased by more than $16,000,000 
 earned in the glass staining, cutting, and ornamental 
 works. Nearly 90,000 Americans are employed in these 
 industries. 
 
 ''Have you any idea how many electric light bulbs 
 were made in 1911 to illuminate our homes, offices, and 
 cities in general? Only about 150,000,000. In the same 
 year we made about the same number of jelly tumblers 
 and goblets, and 110,000,000 blown tumblers and other 
 similar goods. It would require about 36,000 of the 
 largest freight cars to transport the more than a mil- 
 lion tons of glass sand used in the glass industry every 
 year. 
 
 445 
 
 i i 
 
 i i 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 *'We now are at the portals of a wonderful age — 
 the Glass Age, according to the predictions of eminent 
 authorities. We have been content for generations to 
 use glass for bottles, dishes, spectacles, watch crystals, 
 adornment, window panes, mirrors and scores of other 
 articles. But now the genius of man has made glass a 
 greater boon to civilization. In the tropics glass tele- 
 graph poles have already replaced the wooden ones, 
 and are defying the ravages of pestiferous bugs and 
 insects. Germany has houses equipped with glass 
 water pipes, and France has cities whose streets are 
 paved with blocks of glass. The Sultan of Turkey 
 has erected a most gorgeous staircase, twenty-five feet 
 wide and illuminated with colored lights, which is made 
 of glass. The Mexicans have installed in their Na- 
 tional Theater a magnificent theater curtain of glass, 
 which weighs over twenty-seven tons and is composed 
 of one million separate pieces of glass. A wonderful 
 art pattern has been worked into it and depicts the 
 volcanoes of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, with all 
 their gorgeous color tones. 
 
 ^^It is a wonderful age — it is already hero. How 
 would our ladies like to clean their hats and dresses, 
 as well as their carpets, napkins, tablecloths, window 
 curtains, and even the lingerie by simply throwing 
 them into the fireplace and afterward brushing them 
 with a hard brush! These articles are being made in 
 Austria to-day, and are produced in white, green, lilac, 
 pink, and yellow. They are as soft and pliable as the 
 finest of silks. 
 
 ^^Did you ever hear of the burglar-proof window 
 paneT' asked the Story-teller. ^^That is a sheet of 
 glass so tough that a hammer will not shatter it, and 
 a bullet will penetrate and leave a hole only as large 
 as itself. Did you ever hear the name Eudolph 
 
 446 
 
STORY OF GLASS 
 
 Blasclikal He, a native of Bohemia, is the only man 
 in the world who can make glass flowers. He learned 
 the secret from his father, now dead, who made that 
 wonderful collection of plants modeled in glass, which 
 now rests in the Harvard University museum. 
 
 ^'We Americans have done some wonderful things 
 with glass. One of these is the glass bridge spanning 
 the Eoyal Gorge out in Colorado. Its floor is made of 
 plate glass through which you can look down for a 
 distance of half a mile to the Arkansas River flowing 
 underneath. In Wyoming, in the Yellowstone Park, is 
 one of Nature's glass handiworks — a glass cliif 300 
 feet high and a half a mile long. 
 
 "What is glass made of? A combination of sand, 
 soda, lime, and from 2,000 to 12,000 degrees of heat! 
 The interior of a glass furnace sometimes reaches 
 that last inconceivable intensity — a temperature sixty 
 times as hot as that of boiling water. 
 
 "Glass making originally was handwork, pure and 
 simple. The worker, after the mixture had become 
 liquid, thrust a hollow pipe into it and gathered a 
 quantity on its end. Then he blew through the tube 
 to form the glass into a bubble or cylinder, much like 
 you would blow a soap bubble. But to-day we manu- 
 facture glass by machinery. A window pane when it 
 comes from the blowing machine and is trimmed, 
 looks like a section of stovepipe. This is cut open 
 with a diamond and the sheet rolled flat. Plate glass, 
 such as you find in your bank window, is taken from 
 the melting pot in liquid form and poured out upon a 
 table which has a marginal edge of a height equal 
 to that of the desired thickness of glass. A roller 
 smoothes out the mass, and next it is annealed and 
 polished. Bottles are simply blown by machinery and 
 formed in molds. Bowls and pitchers, such as you find 
 
 447 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 scintilating upon the buffet, are made of the best flint 
 or * Jena' glass. We form the boTvls, or blanks, in the 
 glass factory, and the glass cutters weave their intri- 
 cate designs upon them through the use of grindstones 
 and polishing wheels. 
 
 ''If you ever have the opportunity,'' said the Story- 
 teller, in conclusion, ''do not fail to visit a glass fac- 
 tory — only do not go in the summer months, for you 
 Trill find them closed; old Sol and our modern gas- 
 fired furnaces make things too hot even for the glass- 
 maker. It is a fascinatino- sio'ht — one that vou will 
 never forget. And it will show you how we American 
 glass blowers are making that magical substance which 
 at once keeps out the cold north winds and lets in the 
 warming rays of the sun." 
 
 448 
 
THE STORY OF THE RUBBER KING AND 
 A JOURNEY INTO THE JUNGLES 
 
 "T AM going to tell you the story of tlie jungle — 
 _!_ and how a bankrupt American merchant made 
 a great discovery that accelerated the world's 
 progress.'' 
 
 The speaker was a short, stout, red-faced man. 
 
 *^I have just come from the jungles of South 
 America," he said. ^^I have been exploring the vast 
 country along the banks of the Amazon. In the forests 
 I watched the black natives tapping the trees to get the 
 precious sap. As it dripped into their pails, I realized 
 for the first time how it could all be traced back to the 
 poor storekeeper in the United States, who, by a single 
 idea, turned this vast wilderness into a land of almost 
 unlimited resources — until even the trees bleed riches. 
 
 *'It is the story of rubber," said the traveler, *^and 
 how it was brought about by American genius. The 
 rubber or *gum' tree stood for many centuries in the 
 forests, waiting to be called into the service of man- 
 kind. It was first discovered by a party of astrono- 
 mers in Peru, in 1735. It was first called gum-elastic, 
 then caoutchouc, and finally India-rubber. Not until 
 1770 was the strange gum given serious attention by 
 civilized men. In that year a few lumps were sent to 
 England, and some one discovered that they could be 
 used by artists for erasing pencil marks. Much 
 curiosity was excited when a Boston captain, coming 
 from South American ports in 1823, brought a pair of 
 crude gum shoes. Two years later, a Boston mer- 
 
 449 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 chant, who thought he saw possibilities in the ^gum 
 elastic,' imported five hundred pairs of gum shoes. 
 Before a decade had passed, almost a million pairs 
 were brought into the country and sold at prices rang- 
 ing from $3 to $5 a pair. 
 
 * ^ The experiences of the first rubber manufacturers 
 are filled with entertaining anecdotes. A company was 
 organized in 1833 for the manufacture of shoes, coats, 
 caps, wagon-covers, and piano-covers, and other sim- 
 ilar articles made of rubber. The products of the 
 factory sold so well at first that the promoters thought 
 they were on the highroad to fortune. Then came 
 disaster. The goods manufactured in the winter be- 
 come worthless the following summer. The shoes 
 melted into shapeless masses. The coats and caps and 
 covers became sticky and emitted such an offensive 
 smell that they had to be burned. Twenty thousand 
 dollars' worth of goods were thrown back on the com- 
 pany, and ruin was the result. Other concerns which 
 had embarked along the same line became insolvent. 
 The rubber stockholders throughout the country lost 
 an aggregate of several million dollars. All confidence 
 in rubber was destroyed, and, in fact, the very name 
 became hateful to the people. 
 
 **It was at this time," exclaimed the Story-teller, 
 **that American genius came to the rescue and saved 
 the belated ^gum' for the civilized world. There was 
 living at this time a young man, thirty-three years of 
 age. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, 
 but moved in his boyhood to Philadelphia, where he 
 worked in his father's hardware store. When the 
 son became of age, he was admitted as a partner. In 
 the panic of 1836-37 the house went down, owing 
 $30,000 to creditors. The young merchant, whose 
 name was Charles Goodyear, was attracted, as so many 
 
 450 
 
STORY OF RUBBER 
 
 had been, by rubber, and decided to investigate its 
 possibilities. It so happened that, through curiosity, 
 he had been led to buy a rubber life-preserver. On 
 examining it, he found a defect in the inflating valve. 
 He worked over it and produced a new valve which 
 worked to his satisfaction. Thinking that he had made 
 a great discovery, he came to New York and offered 
 to sell his device. The manager of the rubber com- 
 pany let him into the secret that the concern was on 
 the verge of collapse, and that the rubber industry 
 was a failure. ^If, instead of the valve,' said the 
 manager, *you could invent some process that would 
 make rubber durable and keep the goods from melt- 
 ing, then your fortune would be made.' 
 
 ^^ These words made a deep impression on the 
 young storekeeper. He returned to Philadelphia in- 
 tent upon experiments to make 'gum elastic' durable. 
 But he was immediately arrested and sent to prison 
 for the debts of the firm. Besides this misfortune, 
 he was in poor health. The combination of woes was 
 enough to discourage any man. But he persevered. 
 Crude rubber was cheap, and he was able to get enough 
 of it to make experiments. When he got out, he still 
 continued his experiments. He became so infatuated 
 with the idea that he thought of nothing else. 
 
 **Many people regarded Goodyear as crazy on the 
 subject. He talked of nothing but rubber. He was 
 poor, wretchedly poor, and he had a wife and family; 
 but he succeeded in borrowing funds from his friends 
 to continue his experiments. He depended on the 
 pawnshops until reduced to such a state that he had 
 scarcely anything left to pawn. He made rubber 
 boots, shoes, caps, and coats — but all were failures. He 
 clothed himself in his own manufacture, so that he 
 was ironically termed Hhe rubber man.' Once a 
 stranger inquired for him and asked how he could be 
 
 451 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 recognized. ^Oh,' said his informant, 4f you see a 
 man with a rubber coat, rubber trousers, rubber cap, 
 rubber shoes, and a rubber purse in his pocket without 
 a cent in it, be sure that is Goodyear.' 
 
 ''But through poverty and suffering success was 
 coming. One day, he was bronzing the surface of 
 some rubber drapery, and, finding the bronze rather 
 heavy, he applied aqua-fortis to eat it away. The 
 acid removed the bronze, but it seemingly destroyed 
 the fabric — so Goodyear threw it awav. However, 
 he chanced to pick it up again and, on examining it 
 closely, was surprised to find that the rubber was not 
 destroyed, but so hardened that it would stand a 
 great degree of heat without melting. 
 
 ' ' Goodyear was on the brink of his great vulcaniz- 
 ing discovery. He hastened to patent it, and engaged 
 in the manufacture of rubber treated with aqua- 
 fortis. He had begun to make some money, when a 
 panic swept the country, and he went down to defeat 
 again. After a while, he persuaded some business men 
 to join him in opening their old factory. Then came 
 the discovery that his process was a failure after all. 
 The aqua-fortis hardened the surface only; the rest 
 of the rubber would not bear the test. The business 
 men withdrew their funds, and Goodyear was left to 
 struggle alone. 
 
 **The few friends that Goodyear had left begged 
 and pleaded with him to give up his 'wild dream.' 
 But he turned a deaf ear to them and plodded on, in 
 the hope of reaching the successful goal. Nathaniel 
 Hayward, once foreman of the old company, who had 
 tried the effect of mixing sulphur without much suc- 
 cess, stood by the deserted inventor. One day, while 
 mixing a mass of gum and sulphur, he accidentally 
 let it fall on a red hot stove. The result of the acci- 
 dent surprised and delighted Goodyear. The com- 
 
 452 
 
STORY OF RUBBER 
 
 position was so changed in character that it would 
 not melt. 
 
 *^At last he had found the secret! It was evident 
 that sulphur was the controller of India rubber. The 
 problem that remained was how to mix the sulphur 
 and gum so that every part of the rubber would be 
 subjected to the agency of the sulphur. Goodyear 
 continued to experiment, working out one thing after 
 another, until at last he solved the problem of the 
 compounds and how to use them. Success was achieved 
 at last. Eubber was made durable and fit for practical 
 use, by washing it with sulphur and then subjecting it 
 to a great degree of heat. The secret of ^vulcanizing' 
 had given the world a new substance which was to 
 make the name of Goodyear famous. 
 
 *^This was the invention," remarked the traveler, 
 *Hhat has made the forests of South America, and 
 other parts of the earth, pour forth their riches, until 
 to-day the manufacture of rubber, and the various uses 
 to which it is applied, is one of the most important 
 factors in the march of progress. At the present time, 
 the amount of rubber annually called for in the United 
 States alone amounts to almost one hundred million 
 pounds, while the capital invested in the industry 
 equals a dollar to the pound, or the great total of 
 one hundred million dollars.'' 
 
 453 
 
THE STORY OF THE PRINTING PRESS 
 AS THE GUARDIAN OF LIBERTY 
 
 A GENIAL faced man stood beside the library 
 table. His glance followed along the well-filled 
 book shelves and then dropped to the table 
 whereon reposed stacks of magazines and newspapers. 
 
 *^The shelves of this library seem to be well sup- 
 plied," he said to the Story-tellers. ^'I cannot help 
 but compare it with the libraries of the year 1803. 
 In that day, the library of the average man generally 
 consisted of the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Foxe's Book 
 of Martyrs, and Johnson's Dictionary. Magazines 
 were unknown, and newspapers were scarce and hardly 
 readable. ' ' 
 
 He seemed lost in thought for a moment, and then 
 asked: ^'Have you any idea how many different kinds 
 of books — ^not including magazines and newspapers — • 
 are printed every year?" 
 
 No one could answer. 
 
 **One authority has said," he continued, ^'that ap- 
 proximately 150,000 kinds are published throughout 
 the world — that, since the beginning of printing back 
 in the days of Johann Gutenberg, about 12,163,000 sep- 
 arate works have been produced. In the United States 
 alone, in the year 1911, we published 11,123. This 
 means that, estimating conservatively, more than 
 25,000,000 books were printed. 
 
 ^*That is the miracle that has been wrought since 
 the year 1803, the birthday of the modern printing 
 press. Before that day all printed matter was printed 
 
 454 
 
STORY OF THE PRINTING PRESS 
 
 upon a crude hand-printing machine, not unlike a 
 cheese- or cider-press. It was that kind of press which 
 Johann Gutenberg used in the year 1450 to print the 
 first book, a Bible containing 36 lines, that had ever 
 been printed by movable type. 
 
 *'They were crude machines, being operated by 
 hand power. The type were set within a flat frame, 
 or *bed,' and then inked by rubbing a ball of wool 
 over them by hand. This frame was set in the bottom 
 of the press, and a corresponding flat platen pressed 
 down upon the dampened paper which covered the 
 type. Then the paper was hung up to dry. 
 
 **In the year 1814, the publishers of the London 
 Times astonished the world by printing 800 papers in 
 an hour on the steam printing press which Frederich 
 Koenig, a Saxon, invented. Compare that with what 
 our modern printing presses are doing every day in 
 some of our metropolitan newspaper offices. There 
 in the center of the pressroom is a mammoth mechan- 
 ical genius which sweeps the whole gamut of mechan- 
 ical ingenuity — from the most delicate chronometer to 
 the swiftest locomotive. It virtually is twelve presses 
 combined into one. It prints, pastes loose sheets to- 
 gether, folds, counts and stacks 160,000 sixteen page 
 newspapers in an hour. 
 
 ^^Let us compare its marvelous speed with our 
 great railroad engines. The distance between New 
 York and Chicago is about 900 miles, and the quickest 
 schedule time by railroad is 20 hours. Starting the 
 printing press and the locomotive at the same instant, 
 the former will have printed and folded and counted 
 into newspapers more than 1,000 miles of paper before 
 the locomotive has completed half of its journey to 
 the Illinois city. The paper is supplied to the press 
 from rolls, weighing about a ton apiece. When one 
 30 455 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 roll is finished, another stands ready and is auto- 
 matically pasted onto the end of the paper as it leaves 
 the first roll — and this is done without halting the 
 flying machinery for an instant. 
 
 ^^That is the miracle which permits the American 
 publishers to print more than 120,000,000 copies of 
 newspapers and periodicals in a year. That is the 
 miracle which allows the newspaper and periodical 
 publisher to sell 8, 10 and even 16-page publications 
 for a cent apiece, and enables him to distribute mil- 
 lions of copies throughout our nation every day — and 
 allows him to publish many editions during the day. 
 
 **The progress of the printing press has been slow, 
 but sure. The first printing press made in America 
 came from the shop of Adam Eamage, in Philadelphia, 
 in 1795. In 1817 George Clymer, of Pennsylvania, 
 built the first printing press capable of printing on 
 both sides of a newspaper at once. In 1822, Daniel 
 Treadwell, of Boston, made the first American print- 
 ing press operated by steam. Next, Eobert Hoe con- 
 structed the type revolving press, in which the type 
 form was arranged on one cylinder and made to im- 
 print upon paper passing over smaller cylinders. Then, 
 William Bullock, of Philadelphia, applied the principle 
 of printing on both sides simultaneously to the steam 
 press. This marked the dawn of the printing era. 
 
 *^ To-day the printing industry is the sixth in im- 
 portance in the United States. It gives employment 
 to more than a quarter of a million people, and created, 
 in the year 1909, products valued at $737,876,000~a 
 sum much greater than the total value of men's cloth- 
 ing, or cotton goods, or boots and shoes." 
 
 456 
 
THE STOKY OF THE TYPE-SETTER AND 
 THE MARVELOUS LINOTYPE 
 
 EVEN the sober-minded scientist smiled in re- 
 sponse to the good humor expressed in the face 
 of the next Story-teller. His smile broadened 
 when he heard his opening words: 
 
 ^'I am a magician/' declared the jovial speaker. 
 ^^I take the thoughts from man's mind and words 
 from his mouth and put them before you in visible 
 form so that you may read them. That is the magical 
 story which I have the pleasure of relating to-night. 
 
 ^^I am a typesetter," he said in explanation. *'Not 
 a typesetter of a generation ago, who laboriously 
 picked his type from the case and then set it in his 
 ^ stick,' but the modern worker, who presses the keys 
 of a marvelous machine and forms words and lines 
 and columns and books as fast as the average typist 
 can operate a typewriter. I can set as much type in 
 one hour by our modern machine as the old-time hand 
 worker could set in an 8-hour day." 
 
 ^^Who made the first type?" asked some one. 
 
 *^The world has placed the laurel wreath for this 
 wonderful achievement upon the brow of Johann Gut- 
 enberg, a native of Germany, who made the first mov- 
 able type about the year 1438. Some historians, how- 
 ever, have pointed out that there are Korean books 
 which were printed from movable type made of clay 
 as early as 1317. Gutenberg carved his type out of 
 wood. His collaborator, Peter Schoffer, improved this 
 method by substituting metal for wood. Four cen- 
 
 457 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 turies after the birth of printing, an American watch- 
 maker, Ottmar Mergenthaler, revolutionized the print- 
 ing industry with his marvelous linotype, which trans- 
 formed cold metal into solid lines of type-matter. 
 
 ''This American genius was not the first to attempt 
 this wonderful achievement. For more than three- 
 quarters of a century, the world's greatest mecha- 
 nicians had struggled with the problem. Twenty years 
 before Howe invented the sewing-machine, a Connecti- 
 cut inventor, William Church, created a machine to 
 set type, but, like the hundreds that followed, his 
 stumbling block proved to be one of the most important 
 features of the modern machine. That is, to auto- 
 matically justify the type. Justifying type means to 
 have a uniform space between words and sentences. 
 
 ' ' In this feature alone, the modern linotype is more 
 intelligent and accurate than the average human type- 
 setter. As each word is completed, the operator 
 presses a key which drops a wedge-shaped space. When 
 the line is completed, these wedges are driven upward 
 between the words, thus assuring exact spacing be- 
 tween the words. 
 
 ^'If you have ever been in a modern composing 
 room, you no doubt have been fascinated by the won- 
 derful linotypes in operation. The machine resembles, 
 roughly speaking, a small pipe organ of iron and steel, 
 with a typewriter set in position where the organ's 
 key-board would be. Before this key-board the oper- 
 ator sits operating the keys and following the manu- 
 script which hangs before him. Every time he presses 
 a key, a little mould, in which that particular letter is 
 to be cast, takes its place beside the preceding letter in 
 an assembler. When the line of moulds is complete, 
 a bell warns the operator and he begins a new line. 
 The completed line of moulds is automatically carried 
 by the machine to a pot of liquid metal. Here a little 
 
 458 
 
STORY OF THE LINOTYPE 
 
 pump forces the metal into the moulds, and the type 
 are cast. When the letters are solidified into a solid 
 line of type as it will appear on the printed page, the 
 line, or ^slng,' drops into its proper position in a 
 frame, or ^galley,' and this, when full, is carried 
 away to the composing room tables. In the meantime, 
 the moulds have returned to their first position and are 
 ready to make another journey through the linotype. 
 Thus the modern linotype operator can set more than 
 1,000 words an hour, and it is by this magic that a 
 battery of linotypes can digest and reproduce in cold 
 type the thousands upon thousands of words that flow 
 through a modern newspaper composing room in the 
 space of a few hours. 
 
 ^^If you should follow the completed galley of 
 freshly made type lines, you would see men laying pads 
 of paper over them and by pressure making a paper 
 mould of the newspaper page. This paper mould, or 
 matrix, then goes to the stereotyper, who casts his 
 semi-cylinder of metal from it, and, after he has 
 trimmed his product, you find the galleys of type repro- 
 duced exactly in a solid plate. Then this goes to the 
 printing press, and the paper is printed. 
 
 ^^You are all familiar with the perforated paper 
 roll of the automatic piano. We have adopted this 
 principle into typesetting. A little machine, called 
 the monotype, having keys like a linotype, punches 
 holes in a strip of paper, the different combinations of 
 holes representing different letters. It is a weird little 
 contrivance, which sets its words in a continuous line 
 without spacing between. But, as the operator ap- 
 proaches the end of the line, a warning finger on a 
 dial informs him which justifying keys he must strike 
 in order that the line, when cast, may be of proper 
 length. These justifying perforations are made at 
 
 459 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 the end of each line. When the paper tape is taken 
 to the typecasting machine, usually situated in an- 
 other room, it is fed in backwards, so that the casting 
 machine, by ^feeling' of the justifying perforations, 
 so to speak, can automatically arrange its space cast- 
 ing mechanism to properly separate the words and 
 cast the right length of line. 
 
 **The magical feature of the casting machine is 
 in that blasts of air form the type. When the tape 
 passes over the proper part of the machine, the air- 
 blast blows the type moulds into position, as they are 
 called for by the different combinations of air cur- 
 rents. Then the metal type are cast much in the man- 
 ner of the linotype, and are ready to be placed upon 
 the printing press. 
 
 *^My friend the pressman has told you the wonders 
 of the great double sextuple and double octuple print- 
 ing presses. He is more familiar with them than I 
 am. But, while listening to his story, do not forget 
 that, without the modern typesetting machinery, his 
 machinery would not be possible." 
 
 460 
 
THE STORY OF THE IMMIGRANT AND 
 THE LURE OF AMERICAN FREEDOM 
 
 Y fellow-Americans,'^ said the dark-eyed man 
 with the long black beard, addressing the 
 Story-tellers, with a slightly foreign accent, '^I 
 have listened to the stories of yonr wonderful achieve- 
 ment with awe and admiration. I believe that you are 
 the greatest people on the face of the earth. The 
 world looks to you for leadership. But there is one 
 thing that I beg to call to your minds. It is this: 
 greatness does not consist alone of genius in inven- 
 tion, of material growth, or even scientific discovery. 
 Behind it all there must be stamina and character." 
 
 The spontaneous clapping of hands and cries of 
 '*Good! Good!'' seemed to embarrass the stranger. 
 He hesitated a moment and then continued. 
 
 **So," he said, *^with your kind permission I beg 
 to say a few words for the great flood of human 
 brothers who come to your shores to be merged into 
 your citizenship and form the backbone and sinew of 
 this great nation. My story is the modern classic of 
 the * Melting Pot'; how a million human lives are be- 
 ing poured into it every year ; and how they are being 
 transmuted from dross into pure gold — it is the mir- 
 acle of immigration. 
 
 *^I never fully realized what the word * miracle' 
 meant," said the stranger, ^^ until I came to America. 
 Then I saw the raw materials of the earth poured 
 onto your shores; I watched it pass through your 
 schools and churches; I witnessed its miraculous 
 
 461 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 transformation into a free and educated people ; I saw 
 it build your homes and industries ; I saw it begin to 
 produce your art and science — then I began to com- 
 prehend that we still live in the days of miracles — 
 miracles even more wonderful than the loaves and 
 fishes or the parting of the waters of the Red Sea." 
 
 His voice was now drowned by the ovation that 
 greeted his words. 
 
 *^Let me tell you about this miracle of transmut- 
 ing the peoples of all races and creeds into loyal 
 Americans/' he shouted. ^^It began back with the 
 first shipload of Englishmen that came to Jamestown, 
 Virginia, in 1607. It was substantially fortified when 
 the sturdy Dutch settled on Manhattan Island in 1613. 
 It was permanently assured when the Pilgrims landed 
 on Plymouth Rock in 1620. The great influx began, 
 however, when you established on this continent, in 
 1787, the great republic that was to be the first asylum 
 for the oppressed people of the earth. In the first 
 thirty years of this republic about 266,000 immigrants 
 came to this country. 
 
 *^What brought these pilgrims in such amazing 
 numbers to America? The answer is: freedom and 
 opportunity. Men and women came here to escape 
 tyranny and persecution, to avail themselves of the 
 freedom of the new country. At first the newcomers 
 were mainly English; then the Germans began to ar- 
 rive. When the news that gold had been discovered 
 in California spread throughout Europe, it brought 
 hundreds of thousands of immigrants in 1849. At this 
 time the famine in Ireland was unusually severe, and 
 between 1851 and 1860, Ireland sent 914,119 souls to 
 make their fortunes in this new country. 
 
 ^^Then came the Civil War and for two years im- 
 migration fell off. Rut even the uncertainty of Amer- 
 ica's future could not crush the hardy spirit of the 
 
 462 
 
STORY OF IMMIGRATION 
 
 immigrant. In the year of the battles of Gettysburg 
 and Vicksburg, 174,524 persons came to America. War 
 had destroyed a million men. There was need of citi- 
 zens who could work with a will, to build up a country. 
 Great railroads were to be constructed, and huge fac- 
 tories needed laborers. Each year saw an astounding 
 increase in the immigration figures. The West became 
 more and more accessible as the covered wagon of the 
 pioneer gave way to the locomotive. A mighty tor- 
 rent of sturdy men was poured into the great new 
 country. 
 
 ^^Then came a few lean years and the prosperity 
 of America lost a little of its magical appeal to Euro- 
 peans. Immigration fell off steadily from 1874 to 
 1879. Yet even in the leanest of these years 
 138,469 aliens arrived. But the depression could not 
 last long. About three times as many foreigners 
 landed in 1880 as in the previous years. Now Ger- 
 many sent forth its great army. In the next decade 
 1,452,970 Germans left their homes to become Ameri- 
 cans. With the coming of the twentieth century the 
 great migration surged on, until 1,285,349 arrived in 
 the United States during the year of 1907, to be 
 merged into the trades and industries. Among these 
 arrivals in 1912 were 135,726 laborers, 116,529 ser- 
 vants, 184,154 farm laborers, 18,836 tailors, 10,240 
 merchants and dealers, 11,034 carpenters and joiners, 
 8,671 shoemakers, 12,701 clerks and accountants, 4,124 
 mariners, 5,889 miners. 
 
 ^' Where do the immigrants go? That is the 
 miracle. Many of them settle in the large cities; 
 others go far west to build new cities, to perform new 
 miracles, or to work in mines, or grow fruits. They 
 go to the cattle country; they become prosperous 
 farmers in the Middle West ; they cultivate the small 
 
 463 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 farms of the Xorth; tliey become the brawn of the 
 manufacturing industries. They have constructed 
 our railroads, dug our canals, and tunneled our moun- 
 tains. Thev are the sinew back of our progress." 
 
 ^^Has America room for these millions of new citi- 
 zens?" asked one of the listeners. 
 
 ^^So vast is this country," answered the speaker, 
 *^that even now you have a comparatively small pop- 
 ulation. The area of Texas is 57,950 square miles 
 greater than that of Germany; yet Germany's popula- 
 tion is 64,904,423, while the population of Texas is only 
 3,896,542. Arizona is larger than Italy, but Arizona 
 holds 204,354 persons, while Italy contains 32,475,253. 
 New Mexico has a slightly greater area than Great 
 Britain and Ireland, yet the former has a population 
 of 327,301, and the latter 45,216,741. 
 
 ^^The miracle lies not in the vast numbers but in 
 the way they are assimilated into productive occupa- 
 tions. The school and the library, the right to wor- 
 ship and to vote, exert a mighty influence upon these 
 children of Europe and Asia and Africa. From a 
 hundred nations they come, and in God's crucible they 
 are changed as if by wizardry into Americans, eager 
 to help work out honorably the progress and destiny 
 of the greatest nation on earth." 
 
 Again the hearers joined in expressing their ap- 
 proval. 
 
 **As a parting word to you," exclaimed the stran- 
 ger, *'let me recite those eloquent words from the 
 poet-dramatist. 'There she lies, the great melting 
 pot — listen; can't you hear the roaring and the bub- 
 bling? There gapes her mouth — the harbors where a 
 thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the 
 world to pour in their human freight. Ah, what a 
 stirring and a seething. Celt and Latin, Slav and 
 
 464 
 
STORY OF IMMIGRATION 
 
 Teuton, Greek and Syrian, black and yellow, Jew and 
 Gentile, yes. East and West, the palm and the pine, 
 the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross, 
 how the great alchemist melts and fuses them with 
 his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build 
 the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God. Ah, 
 what is the glory to come and Jerusalem, where all 
 nations and races come to worship and look back, com- 
 pared with America, where all races and nations come 
 to labor and look forward.' " 
 
 As the stranger sat down, the Story-tellers gath- 
 ered about him to grasp his hand in brotherly wel- 
 come. 
 
 465 
 
THE STORY OF THE PHILANTHROPIST 
 AND HIS GIFTS TO HUMANITY 
 
 A SWEET-FACED little woman was the center 
 of a gronp of interested Story-tellers. She was 
 speaking quietly but earnestly, and her face 
 shone with enthusiasm. 
 
 *'I am an optimist/' she was saying. ^* There is 
 so much true charity in the world to-day that I cannot 
 help but believe in human nature and nowhere in the 
 world is it more splendidly displayed than in our own 
 country. 
 
 * ^ I am a worker among the poor, ' ' she added, drop- 
 ping her eyes modestly, ^^and I know of what I 
 speak.'' 
 
 **Let us have your story," cried one or two of the 
 group. 
 
 *^I will do my best," she replied, '^to give you 
 some account of modern time philanthropy. But let 
 me say first that the world owes more than it realizes 
 to voluntary benevolence. What is it that supports 
 our hospitals, endows our scientific institutes, cares 
 for so many of the helpless and destitute, and is ever 
 ready with open heart to respond to the cry of need 
 and suffering, even when coming from far distant 
 lands? It is," she said, dropping her voice softly, 
 **the Christ-spirit that still reigns in the world, in 
 spite of the sin and selfishness around us. Do you 
 know that last year the people of the United States 
 gave away some half billion dollars in charity? If I 
 may speak on behalf of my own sex" — ^here were mur- 
 
 466 
 
STORY OF PHILANTHROPY 
 
 murs of applause — ''I would say that the women of 
 America are doing a noble work in behalf of needy 
 humanity. Their organized efforts have been ex- 
 pressed through clubs and miscellaneous societies. 
 Their activities have covered extensive fields of phil- 
 anthropy — lodging-houses maintained for women and 
 children in need, working girls' clubs, night schools, 
 employment bureaus, boys' gymnasiums, provident 
 societies, protection of child labor, collecting and dis- 
 tributing new clothing for the needs of homes, hos- 
 pitals and other charitable institutions — such are a few 
 of the multifarious activities of benevolent woman- 
 hood. 
 
 *'In time of national disaster,'' she continued, 
 raising her voice, *Svho make a nobler response than 
 the American people? After the terrible Chicago fire 
 of 1871, America contributed $5,000,000 to the suf- 
 ferers. The Chicago problem was one of relief, pend- 
 ing the resumption of trade and industry, but it was 
 met gloriously by American philanthropy. Nearly 
 forty thousand families were aided, or 150,000 per- 
 sons. Public officials and private individuals vied with 
 each other in their measures of relief. In 1889, after 
 the great flood at Johnstown, subscription lists were 
 opened in every community, and nearly $1,000,000 
 worth of supplies were distributed to the sufferers. 
 Over one thousand carloads of goods were brought 
 by the railroads, free of charge. 
 
 **In 1902, the fire and flood in Paterson, New Jer- 
 sey, brought generous response to the call of a citi- 
 zens' meeting. In the industrial distress in New 
 York, in 1895, the most wonderful work was done by 
 the East Side Belief Committee, working in the heart 
 of the tenement house population. Printed appeals 
 resulted in raising funds and opening a food market. 
 
 467 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 ''Every recent disaster that we can call to mind 
 tells the same story of unwearying charity. TThether 
 it be an inundation, as at Galveston, an earthquake, as 
 at Charleston, a cyclone, as at St. Louis, flood, fire or 
 drought — a million helping hands have been held out, 
 and a fresh chapter added to the long story of Ameri- 
 can philanthropy. 
 
 ''Xor has this splendid benevolence been limited 
 to our ovm land. The fearful Martinique disaster 
 struck a sympathetic chord in American hearts, and a 
 committee appointed to receive subscriptions actually 
 collected $80,000 more than it could disburse. 
 
 *'I come now," continued the speaker, ''to the or- 
 ganized philanthropy of our country. Few persons 
 have an adequate idea of the magnitude of poor relief 
 work. The cost to the country of all forms of depen- 
 dencies, including that of crime, is given at $250,000 
 per annum. There is no single national poor law or 
 general system of poor relief throughout the whole 
 country. But there are characteristic American 
 methods and laws on the subject enacted and enforced 
 in the various states. 
 
 "There is an earlv record which savs that Boston, 
 in 1691, chose supervisors at a town meeting whose 
 duties were to dispense funds to the poor. Each 
 township was made responsible for its own poor. But 
 the poor for a long period were cared for in an unsys- 
 tematic way. G-radually expert siDecialization was 
 introduced into American methods. According to the 
 Constitution of the United States, the legislation and 
 other administration of jDoor relief in America are 
 controlled wholly by state legislation, with the excep- 
 tion of institutions for disabled soldiers and sailors, 
 controlled by the national government. Classes of in- 
 digents who have claim for public relief are indigent 
 defectives, neglected and abused children, mentally 
 
 468 
 
STORY OF PHILANTHROPY 
 
 and physically able adults in extreme indigence, deaf 
 mutes, blind, insane, idiotic and feeble minded, epi- 
 leptic, inebriates, consumptives. Many American cities 
 have well organized and scientifically administered 
 charity departments, municipal hospitals, lodging 
 houses, and wood yards. 
 
 ^^The first Central Board of Charities in the 
 United States was established in 1863 in Massachu- 
 setts. Boston was at one time the only city that had 
 an endowed charity, but now there are numerous cities 
 with trust funds. Philadelphia has nearly forty. 
 
 **Let me speak for a moment of the children,'' 
 continued the Story-teller, a softer light coming into 
 her eyes, *' those who are so specially dependent on 
 us and need all our loving care. It is with regard to 
 the treatment of neglected and abused children that 
 we find an instructive sidelight upon the development 
 of the spirit and methods of philanthropy. At the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century, it was considered 
 by public officials a progressive step to care for chil- 
 dren in the almshouse. Before that, they had re- 
 mained utterly destitute. Strange as it may sound, 
 societies to protect animals were organized in America 
 before societies to protect children. It was not until 
 1871 that dependent children in the United States 
 received public care separate from dependent adults. 
 Before that they were kept in almshouses, a system ter- 
 rible in its results. That year, Michigan established 
 a state public school, excluding all children from alms- 
 houses and providing means of education and mainte- 
 nance. In 1875, New York made a similar enactment, 
 and similar measures were gradually adopted in other 
 states. 
 
 ^^We come now to the law of outdoor and indoor 
 relief. By outdoor relief is meant relief from the 
 public treasury, given and consumed in the home of 
 
 469 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 the indigent family without public surveillance. The 
 fundamental principle embodied in the law of relief 
 in homes is that it shall be temporary or furnish only 
 partial support. Every American commonwealth has 
 an almshouse, which, in contrast to outdoor relief, is 
 designed to be more or less permanent and complete. 
 The administration aspects of public philanthropy in 
 America fall into four general systems; those of the 
 town, of the city, of the county, of the state. In the 
 town and county the fundamental institution is the 
 almshouse, although outdoor as well as indoor relief 
 is administered by town officials. Towns also have 
 minor institutions for the care of children. 
 
 '^The United States in one year spent $55,577,633 
 on benevolent institutions (including public, private, 
 and ecclesiastical), orphanages, day nurseries, hos- 
 pitals, dispensaries, permanent homes, and temporary 
 homes. 
 
 *^Such," said the speaker in conclusion, *4s a brief 
 review of what our country is doing in public and 
 private charity. The full tale will never be told, at 
 least in this world. While it is true that huge for- 
 tunes are sometimes accumulated in this country, it is 
 also true that they are often spent in princely gener- 
 osity on the less fortunate members of the community. 
 We may well be proud of the record for philanthropy 
 of every kind held by our nation as a whole and by 
 the individuals comprising it. 
 
 n 
 
 470 
 
THE STORY OF THE SCHOLARS AND 
 THE "BOOK OF ALL BOOKS" 
 
 THE venerable gentleman wore a long, black, silken 
 gown. His gray head was crowned with the 
 black ^^ mortar board' ^ cap of the scholastic 
 world. Over his shoulders was thrown the brilliant 
 red hood of the Doctor of Divinity. 
 
 *^My entire life,'' he began, in low, cultured tones, 
 **has been spent in studying this one book — the great- 
 est book that mankind has ever known. ' ' 
 
 He held in his hand a small leather-covered volume. 
 
 ^'This is the Book," he exclaimed, ^Hhat first re- 
 vealed to man the miracle of life. In its pages are 
 locked all the secrets of the universe. For more than 
 two thousand years the scholars have been delving 
 into its rich and apparently inexhaustible wisdom. It 
 is the moral code of the progressive peoples of the 
 earth. It is the masterpiece of literature and philos- 
 ophy. It is the key to civilization — the Bible. 
 
 *'The Bible," continued the scholar, ^4s the Svon- 
 der book' of the ages. It has been translated, either 
 in whole or in part, into nearly 500 tongues. During 
 the last century, it has been placed in possession of 
 more than 1,200,000,000 people. The King James 
 version of the Bible contains 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 
 31,173 verses, 773,746 words, and 3,566,480 letters. The 
 word * Jehovah,' or Lord, occurs 6,855 times. The 
 number of authors of the Bible is fifty. 
 
 **The word * Bible' comes from the Greek word 
 meaning book. It comes to us from the Latin word 
 
 471 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 Bihlia. The name was first used about the middle of 
 the second century. The Bible first appeared in He- 
 brew, Aramaic, and G-reek. The first translation of 
 the Bible into English was completed by John Wycliffe 
 and his fellow-workers, in 1382. The Bible was the 
 first book to be printed from movable metal type by 
 Gutenberg, the inventor of printing, in 1452. The first 
 authorized version of the Bible was produced in 1611, 
 under the patronage of King James I. About fifty 
 scholars were engaged in the work, which became the 
 standard form of sacred scripture for the entire Eng- 
 lish race for nearly 300 years. The first American 
 edition of the Bible was printed in Boston in 1752. 
 The revised version was begun by English scholars, 
 with a committee of American scholars as advisers, in 
 1870. 
 
 **It is from this point that an interesting story 
 develops," remarked the scholar. **It is the story of 
 the first American version of the Bible and how the 
 gigantic task was accomplished: In the museum of 
 the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, 
 there is a large, oblong table, at which sixteen per- 
 sons could sit comfortably. Another table of about 
 the same size can be seen among the treasured posses- 
 sions of Eutgers College, in New Brunswick, New Jer- 
 sey. These pieces of furniture have as much right 
 to be considered the scene of an American triumph 
 as has any battlefield of the Eevolution. The triumph 
 was not won against assaulting columns of hostile 
 troops, nor against the warships of an invading fleet. 
 But it was no less momentous than if much human 
 blood had been shed. It was a victory of Christian 
 scholarship, inspired by Christian faith. 
 
 ** These tables were formerly in two connected 
 rooms in the Bible House, New York City. Around 
 them on the historic day of December 7, 1871, was 
 
 472 
 
STORY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 gathered the distinguished group of American scholars 
 who were to join hands across the sea with their 
 British colleagues in producing the new American 
 Bible. There had been a long continued revolt among 
 scholars against the defects of the King James ver- 
 sion, published in 1611. That version, notwithstand- 
 ing the great beauty of its style, contained many im- 
 portant words and phrases whose meaning had be- 
 come entirely changed. The English language had 
 long outgrown the life and scholarship of King James' 
 day. More than forty English dictionaries had been 
 published between 1611 and 1900. The greatest book 
 in the English language needed a newer and more 
 accurate expression of many meanings contained in 
 it. The English Committee, in inviting their American 
 brethren to cooperate, took one of the most important 
 steps in strengthening the ties of a common blood, 
 language, and religion. 
 
 '^Let us look in upon this gathering of the great 
 scholars, of whom there were thirty-two in all, in the 
 rooms of the Bible House. At the head of the table, 
 during the earlier stages of the revision, is the Eev. 
 Dr. Theodore Woolsey, chairman of the Committee 
 and ex-President of Yale University. At the foot is 
 Rev. Dr. Howard Crosby, ex-Chancellor of the Uni- 
 versity of New York, a fine Greek scholar as well as 
 a great preacher. At the right side of the table from 
 Dr. Woolsey are Bishop Alfred Lee, of the Protestant 
 Episcopal Diocese of Delaware; Rev. Dr. J. Henry 
 Thayer, of the Harvard Divinity School, said to be 
 the foremost textual critic in America and one of the 
 foremost in the world; Rev. Dr. A. C. Kendrick, of 
 the University of Rochester; Rev. Dr. Timothy 
 Dwight, President of Yale University; Rev. Dr. 
 Matthew B. Riddle, of the Western Theological Sem- 
 inary ; Dr. Thomas Chase, President of Haverf ord Col- 
 
 473 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 lege ; Eev. Dr. J. K. Burr, of Trenton, N. J. ; and Rev. 
 Dr. E. A. Washburn, Rector of Calvary Church, New 
 York City. At a private desk, at the left near Dr. 
 Woolsey, sits the Rev. Dr. Philip Schaff, a scholar of 
 universal, historical, and Biblical learning, a great 
 executive, and a recognized mediator between the 
 scholarship of Europe and America. 
 
 **As the meeting opens. Dr. Woolsey reads por- 
 tions of the English revision which have been sent to 
 him. The verses of the particular passage are then 
 compared by some member with the corresponding 
 verses in the version of King James. If no changes 
 are made, the passage is allowed to stand. If any 
 change suggested is not important enough to provoke 
 discussion, that fact is put on record, to be duly sent 
 to the English revisers. But if the suggested change 
 touches one of the doctrinal points, we see at once the 
 finest exhibition of what may be called linguistic, 
 historical, and theological sword play — a contest in 
 which, nevertheless, there is never an unkind thrust. 
 Though the weapons are finely tempered, yet more 
 finely tempered still are the zeal and purpose of those 
 who wield them. Christian charity, breadth of out- 
 look, and the utmost nicety of discrimination com- 
 bine to *give and take' in the right spirit. The dis- 
 puted meaning, whose chance of life hangs, perhaps, 
 by the slender thread of a Greek particle, has collec- 
 tive justice done to it. It has to pass through the fires 
 of eight or nine denominational furnaces. No phase 
 of evangelical religious thought has been consciously 
 ignored. The result is embodied in a printed state- 
 ment and transmitted to the English revisers. It 
 speaks well for the truly Christian spirit that animated 
 the Committee that, although it was composed of mem- 
 bers holding widely differing religious views, no dis- 
 cussion was conducted in any but an amicable man- 
 
 474 
 
STORY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 ner throughout the meetings, which extended over 
 nearly thirty years. 
 
 **It was in 1885 that the English Committee com- 
 pleted their version, but the American Committee de- 
 cided to continue its investigations in the interests of 
 Biblical scholarship, determined to produce a version 
 that would prove to be the standard for the English- 
 speaking world. Besides, they acted from a patriotic 
 as well as a religious motive. At that time, the 
 Biblical scholarship of America, as compared with the 
 best in Europe, was considered to be on trial. It was 
 looked at askance and waited for foreign recognition. 
 The American revisers took up the implied challenge 
 of the scholarship of Europe. 
 
 *^The rich discoveries in the excavations in Bible 
 lands began to throw new light upon disputed books 
 and passages. The voices of the discovered tablets, 
 the unearthed foundation stones, the monuments with 
 their tell-tale dates, the newly found manuscripts mth 
 their precious message, were heeded. The American 
 scholars reverently listened and reverently worked. 
 They welcomed every ray of light from those who were 
 delving among the ruins of buried cities and the tombs 
 in Palestine, Asia Minor, Egypt, Arabia, Greece, Per- 
 sia — all brought their contributions of discovered truth 
 to the aid of American scholarship. Not for one mo- 
 ment did they stop to consider the question of per- 
 sonal gain. Although men of the highest eminence, 
 holding professorships in the leading universities, they 
 did not hesitate to throw to the winds the large profit 
 they might have gained by working for a money com- 
 pensation. 
 
 *^ There is an interesting anecdote about one occa- 
 sion, when the question of money came up for con- 
 sideration. Professor Thayer, one of the busiest mem- 
 bers of the Committee, exclaimed: *If I took money 
 
 475 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 for this work, I would be ashamed to raeet President 
 Woolsey in heaven!' Xight and day, in and out of 
 season, in vacation time and in college term, this great 
 task was both a burden and a blessing. Wherever 
 they went, they took the precious manuscripts with 
 them in their traveling bags. Some of them employed 
 their last working hours in loving labor on the sacred 
 pages, even while the shadow of death lengthened 
 across their path and began to envelop them. 
 
 "There were, however, consolations. The revisers, 
 throughout their lonely vigils of mental toil, were sus- 
 tained by the thought of service to mankind. They 
 were, in the highest sense, striking off mental fetters 
 from readers of the Bible — readers who had been 
 spiritually impoverished and misled by wrong transla- 
 tions of the original tongues in which the Scriptures 
 were written. Take one example: they found that 
 Christ never said: *Take no thought for the mor- 
 row;' but something utterly different : 'Be not anxious 
 for the morrow;' yet millions of Christians, for hun- 
 dreds of years, were ignorantly led to believe that the 
 Saviour of mankind encouraged, indeed commanded, 
 heedlessness and thoughtlessness in providing for the 
 morrow ! 
 
 "The greatest achievement in American scholar- 
 ship — the American version of the Bible — was given 
 to the world in 1901. Recognition of its illumining 
 power was instant and almost universal. Although it 
 may not displace the authorized version, which is re- 
 garded with love and reverence by the multitude of 
 Bible readers in English-speaking lands, it is steadily 
 growing in popularity. It has become the accepted 
 version in many Sunday schools, in Bible schools, and 
 theological seminaries. It has been of the highest 
 use to Christian missionaries in foreign lands. 
 Scholars of all denominations have united in praise of 
 
 476 
 
STORY OF THE BIBLE 
 
 its excellence. It has been officially approved by the 
 general councils and assemblies of nearly all the de- 
 nominations in the United States. An eminent Eng- 
 lish authority has said: ^ It is a noble work, destined 
 to become the accepted Bible of the majority of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race ; and we are tempted to wish that it 
 might be adopted as the one final revision of the Eng- 
 lish-speaking world/ 
 
 **In more than twenty-nine years, during which the 
 American revisers were at work, it has been estimated 
 that the value of their services, if they had been work- 
 ing for pay, would have been between four and five 
 million dollars. This amount was their free gift to 
 their fellowmen, and for the lasting honor of Amer- 
 ican scholarship. But who paid their expenses? There 
 were rent, light, railway fares, secretaries, correspon- 
 dence, and the many incidentals to be met. To the 
 honor of private American citizens be it said, there 
 was no lack of generous support during those toil- 
 some years. Men who sympathized with the scholars 
 engaged in this gigantic task gave freely in the true 
 spirit of Christian helpfulness. They, too, deserve 
 the gratitude of the English-speaking race for their 
 aid in furthering a great work whose benefits will in- 
 crease with the usefulness and glory of that race. 
 
 * ' The Bible is the book of all books ! ' ' exclaimed the 
 scholar in closing. ^*It has been the inspiration and 
 guide for the great works of mankind during the last 
 epoch of civilization. It is the beacon light to the 
 peoples of the earth.'' 
 
 477 
 
THE STORY OF THE ARCHEOLOGIST 
 AND HIS ADVEXTURES IN AJMERICA 
 
 **A /TY story, '^ began the aged man Tvitli the long 
 i V X S^^J heard, ^'is the story of lost cities and 
 savage men in the days long before Columbus 
 discovered America." 
 
 The Story-tellers looked up in surprise. 
 
 ^'I am an archeologist,'' said the old man. "But 
 the word is much more exciting than it sounds. I 
 have passed through adventures that would cause 
 even my friend, the warrior, to stop and consider his 
 next step. The old Indian tighter merely killed the 
 aborigine when he met him — without asking any ques- 
 tions or inquiring into the health, wealth, and hap- 
 piness of his family. The archeologist does not work 
 in exactly that way; he at least asks the questions 
 before he kills his victim. But even a dead man tells 
 tales to the archeologist; the ruined walls of ancient 
 cities speak to him; the very excavations in the earth 
 open their mouths and reveal their secrets.'' 
 
 The listeners drew their chairs closely about the 
 old Story-teller in keen anticipation. 
 
 **I am a hunter," he said — "not a hunter of live 
 animals or men, but a hunter of the origin of things. 
 It is my duty to trace everything and everybody to 
 its beginnings. The earliest pioneers of the United 
 States had neither the means nor the knowledge to find 
 out the truth about the origin of the savage tribes 
 with whom they fought and traded. The hunter and 
 trapper were far more concerned to kill the red man 
 
 478 
 
STORY OF LOST CITIES 
 
 than to study him. Men like Daniel Boone and Davy- 
 Crockett took little care to know the origin of the 
 arrow-heads, stone hatchets, totem poles, or of the 
 hundreds and thousands of mounds that hid the re- 
 mains of the earliest inhabitants of our continent. 
 
 ^^But, after the country became more settled, after 
 the fight for Independence had been won, we began 
 to ask more about our first Americans — ^the red men. 
 We began to wonder what was behind the wonderful 
 temples, mounds, idols, monuments, and stone walls 
 that we found on our continent. Stories of great cities 
 in South America, of a splendid and rich civilization, 
 began to excite the interest of American travelers. 
 They began to think that their native land and con- 
 tinent held wonders and mysteries of civilization as 
 alluring to the seeker of truth as were those of Europe 
 and Asia. It was then that we determined to explore 
 and explain the many signs of prehistoric life and 
 civilization. Hundreds of mysterious mounds were 
 uncovered, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. 
 They were found in Ohio, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Kan- 
 sas, Tennessee, and many other states. Countless 
 skeletons and weapons of flint and stone were found 
 hidden beneath them. 
 
 ''The Great Serpent in the State of Ohio, was for 
 years a puzzle to those who tried to understand it. It 
 is built of earth in the form of a gigantic serpent, 
 1,348 feet long. Across its widely opened jaws it 
 measures 75 feet; its body is over 30 feet thick, and 
 ends in a triple coil, like that of a rattlesnake. It is 
 five feet above the ground, and, while some wise doubt- 
 ers were saying that this great earthen serpent was 
 the only one of its kind, another of equal size was 
 found in the same state. Other mounds of equally 
 striking size and shape were discovered. There were 
 mounds made to represent the wolf, the fox, the 
 
 479 
 
WDNDER STORIES 
 
 panther, the lynx, the buffalt), in their strange designs. 
 There were earthen panthers with tails 350 feet long; 
 there were eagles that measured 1,000 feet from tip 
 to tip of outspread wings. It is believed that these 
 earthen animals were worshiped as gods by those who 
 made them; for often, on digging beneath the soil, 
 altars were found, and proofs that fire had been used 
 in rites or worship. The ashes and charcoal, that had 
 been covered for centuries, told their own story. 
 
 **Let us go with these hunters of early American 
 life to the canyons of the Southwest. As our eyes fol- 
 low the surface of a gigantic cliff, soaring a thousand 
 feet above our heads, we see niches apparently dug 
 out of the solid rock. We look closer and see that 
 rock steps have been hewn so that we can climb up 
 and examine these old dwelling houses; or perhaps 
 log-ladders are found. Some of the dwellings were 
 built upon the tops of high cliffs. Who were these 
 cliff dwellers, and how did they live? Many think 
 they were the ancestors of the Pueblo Indians. 
 
 '*In a forest in Guatemala have been found won- 
 derful monuments on which the evidences of civiliza- 
 tion are clearly seen. One of these is over nineteen 
 feet high, five feet wide, and two feet thick. No one 
 can tell its date; but on it are clear proofs that the 
 civilization which produced it had a powerful priest- 
 hood, great wealth, and an amazing system of calculat- 
 ing time in which these early mathematicians under- 
 took to tell on what day of their year, and on what 
 hour in that day, a predicted event would fall 34,000 
 years distant. Near this monument is a gigantic stone 
 turtle, covered with beautiful carvings, and weighing 
 27 tons, or 54,000 pounds. 
 
 **Let us transport ourselves to Cuzco, the city of 
 the old Incas, or rulers of Peru. As we ascend the 
 hill on which that ancient capital was built, we stand 
 
 480 
 
STORY OF LOST CITIES 
 
 before the ruins of Eaesahuaman ; it is a gigantic for- 
 tress — the greatest monument of prehistoric man in 
 America. Its zigzag walls are twenty feet high, and 
 were built so as to repel the attacks of enemies from 
 all sides. If extended in a straight line, they would 
 be one-third of a mile long. They are built chiefly 
 of enormous boulders, and the observer is astonished 
 at the strength that could bring such immense stones 
 up the steep heights and put them into place with 
 such exquisite skill. Some portions of these walls are 
 built of hewn stone, without cement, and so tightly put 
 together that, to quote the words of a celebrated 
 traveler : ^ There is not room for a knife blade between 
 them. The world has nothing to show in the way of 
 stone-cutting and fitting to surpass it.' 
 
 ^^An hour's ride by railway from the City of Mexico 
 brings us to the little hamlet of San Juan, Teotihuacan, 
 and in ten minutes' walk from this obscure place we 
 reach the foot of the Pyramid of the Sun. As the 
 observer muses upon these stupendous monuments of. 
 fallen greatness, he begins to know the meaning of the 
 phrase: ^We, too, shall pass away.' " 
 
 The old archeologist paused a moment. 
 
 *'I wonder," he said, thoughtfully, *4f in the future 
 day some student will be studying the strange devices 
 and implements that we leave behind! I wonder if 
 our homes will appear to them as crude structures 
 of a strange people! Will our monuments appear to 
 them as crude works of art! Will our paintings be 
 grotesque! Will our cities fall into decay and ruin, 
 to make way for a newer and better civilization! Is 
 there any end to the progress of man!" 
 
 481 
 
THE STORY OF THE EXPLORER WHO 
 DIGS UP LONG LOST CITIES 
 
 THE aged gentleman, with long white hair and 
 thin face, leaned on the back on his chair as 
 he spoke. 
 
 ^*An antiquarian, seated in his study, surrounded 
 by musty books, peering through the pages printed in 
 dead languages, and mumbling strange words, would 
 scarcely answer to the popular notion of a hero," he 
 began. ^^ Possibly I may be even less interesting. But 
 if I were seen standing before a mound, musing, and 
 surrounded by a score of men with spades and pick- 
 axes, I might excite curiosity. If the scene were in 
 the distant and storied East, near a long buried city, 
 in whose ruins were secrets which the whole Christian 
 world longed to know, the imagination would be 
 aroused. If it were also seen that the hired helpers 
 with spades and pickaxes were swarthy Arabs, and 
 that, in the shifty and greedy eyes of some of them, 
 there lurked threats of robbery and murder — then it 
 would begin to be truly interesting.'' 
 
 The venerable Story-teller looked like a prophet 
 of old in his long black garb. 
 
 ** Explorations in the Holy Land," he exclaimed — 
 ^Hhat has been my life work — the resurrection of 
 buried cities. For ages, men have braved hunger, 
 frost, sickness, and the ice of Arctic and Antarctic 
 seas until the North Pole was found by an American 
 and the South Pole by a Norwegian. But there have 
 been other explorations — not for the discovery of new 
 
 482 
 
STORY OF THE EXPLORER 
 
 lands, but for the rediscovery of old secrets in ancient 
 lands, for the vast treasures of knowledge hidden under 
 the soil of Palestine, Asia Minor, Persia, Egypt, and 
 amid the ruins of Babylonian, Assyrian, Greek, and 
 Roman cities — dead cities of antiquity. Though Euro- 
 pean countries were first in the new field, in this search 
 for the hidden truths of civilization, yet some of the 
 greatest discoveries have been made by Americans 
 during the brief period in which their activities have 
 been employed in this fascinating field of exploration. 
 
 ' ' The first of the great American explorers in Bible 
 lands was born in 1794, at Southington, Connecticut. 
 His name was Edward Eobinson. Of sturdy New 
 England stock, he grew to be a large, muscular young 
 man; he was strong physically as well as mentally, 
 and, with a thirst for Biblical knowledge which led 
 him to explore Palestine. He was more than forty 
 years old before he was able to succeed in his ambi- 
 tion. He w^as then a professor in the Union Theo- 
 logical Seminary, in New York City. Having ob- 
 tained leave of absence, he started for the East. It 
 was in the early part of April, 1838, that he arrived 
 in the Holy Land and traveled the paths of the Bible 
 stories. Fifteen years later, the Union Theological Sem- 
 inary sent him on another journey. He did not spend 
 more than five months in Palestine, but in that short 
 period he made discoveries whose benefit has reached 
 every boy and girl who looks at Bible maps of the 
 Holy Land. Before this Southington boy went to 
 Palestine, scores of places had been wrongly marked 
 on those maps. It was he who identified most of 
 them, giving them their right names. We now know 
 such places as Megiddo, Shiloh, Pella, Bethel, Mich- 
 mash, Mareshah, and the Vale of Elah, because he 
 found out the truth about them. 
 
 **The adventures of Edward Robinson read like 
 
 483 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 tales of chivalry. Starting on camel back and accom- 
 panied by a missionary friend, Dr. Eli Smith, and a 
 cook, he went from village to village, from city to city, 
 from mound to mound. Dr. Smith knew the Arabic 
 language. It was found that the two could learn more 
 from the humble people with whom they talked than 
 many scholars had been able to tell them. These 
 people had preserved the true names of the places 
 where they lived. Previous explorers, led astray by 
 misinformed persons and by their ignorance of the 
 language and customs of the people, had given false 
 names to many places. Through Judea, Samaria, 
 Galilee, the Lebanon district, and part of Syria, Eob- 
 inson and his companion went, stirred by the idea of 
 a new and better map of Palestine, and making care- 
 ful notes on each day's work. 
 
 *'It was in Gralilee that Eobinson discovered the 
 ruins of buildings which he proved to be the type of 
 the Jewish synagogue. He was the first to find the 
 ruins of the supposed synagogue at Capernaum where 
 Jesus preached. He found the remains of a large city 
 at Petra. In Jerusalem, noticing the fragment of an 
 arch projecting from the remains of a city wall, he 
 showed that it belonged to the bridge which once con- 
 nected the Temple with Mount Zion. ^Robinson's 
 Arch' is now pointed out to all travelers in the Holy 
 City. He crawled on hands and knees through the dark 
 windings of the tunnel leading from the Virgin's 
 Fountain to the Pool of Siloam. Through such labors 
 and hardships did this Connecticut boy lay the founda- 
 tions of a correct historical geography of the Holy 
 Land." 
 
 The Story-teller unfolded a map, and his listeners 
 gathered about it. 
 
 *^In those days," he continued, ^^ Robinson traveled 
 on camels. He worked with surveyor's instruments, 
 
 484 
 
STORY OF THE EXPLORER 
 
 a pocket compass, a thermometer, and a measuring- 
 tape. He was then seeking chiefly to identify old towns 
 and cities, and he did much more talking than digging. 
 He was careful to find out the Arabic words for old 
 Hebrew names. He rode from village to village, 
 examining ruins, and measuring distances. He was 
 generally received kindly by the local sheikh, or chief, 
 of the village, but sometimes he was robbed, and often 
 he saw guns leveled at him and swords drawn. 
 
 ^^ Since that day many Americans have taken up 
 the work of exploration. The discoveries have been 
 wonderful. They have unearthed buried cities with 
 the spade. Pieces of broken pottery, the vase, the urn, 
 the jar, the slab, the tablet — have all revealed their 
 wonder stories. The explorer has threaded his way 
 through the buried temples, streets, bazaars, canals, 
 and tombs. Then, too, there is the famous * pottery 
 key,' which has opened the lock of many a mystery 
 in buried cities. What is it? It is the method of 
 determining the nation and time of certain relics by 
 the pottery found accompanying them. The explorer 
 keeps a sharp eye for the broken pieces of earthen- 
 ware found in every ruin, often by the thousand. The 
 letters, signs, and pictorial emblems thereon are care- 
 fully studied and the different kinds of pottery tell 
 the story of the time, place, and people from whence 
 they come. 
 
 **The expert digger among ruins of Palestine to- 
 day can now tell whether a Phoenician, Hebrew, Ko- 
 man, Greek, or Cypriote has lived on that site; nay, 
 he can uncover a series of cities on the same site, down 
 through sixty feet of accumulated soil, each city built 
 upon the ruins of its predecessor. At Lachish and 
 other places, Gilbert Jones Bliss, an American, the 
 son of a missionary, has found proofs of eight distinct 
 cities, which had been built during the period of some 
 
 485 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 twelve or fifteen hundred years. In the ruins of each 
 of these eight cities were hidden, under mounds con- 
 cealing the vessels, weapons and tablets that told of 
 its origin and civilization. These mounds formed a 
 foundation for the next people who built thereon, and 
 who, in turn, passed away into the silences of history 
 after leaving behind the footprints of their life. 
 
 "In a plain between the Elvers Euphrates and 
 Tigris, in the region of "Western Asia, in olden times 
 called Babylonia, there is a tract of about one hun- 
 dred and eighty acres, containing the remains of the 
 ancient city of Xippur, mentioned in Genesis, X. At 
 this place expeditions, sent out at different times 
 by the University of Pennsylvania, unearthed the most 
 striking proofs of an ancient and high civilization. 
 The first of these expeditions, in 1888-89, was under 
 the direction of the Eev. Dr. John P. Peters, professor 
 of Hebrew in the Episcopal Divinity School of Phila- 
 delphia. The remaining three (1889-90, 1893-96, and 
 1898-1900) were under the direction of Dr. H. V. Hil- 
 precht, Clark Research Professor of Assyriology and 
 Professor of Semitic Philology and Archeology in 
 the University of Pennsylvania. 
 
 **In this ancient city of Nippur, one of the oldest 
 in Babylonia, there was a varied life rivaling in many 
 ways that of the modern city. On those marvelous 
 tablets were inscribed all the important concerns of 
 social and commercial life. These Babylonians of 
 Nippur could make a contract so arranged that the 
 tablet, with its clay envelope, carried its own evidence 
 to detect the man who tried to play false. The tablet 
 was a letter, account, or book, as the case demanded. 
 Scores of thousands of them, disclosing the countless 
 activities of a high civilization, in which law, com- 
 merce, religion, and literature played their vital parts 
 in the drama of a great national life, were brought 
 
 486 
 
STORY OF THE EXPLORER 
 
 to light. Many of tliem are now in the University 
 museums of Philadelphia. 
 
 *^ Records of the transactions of great business 
 houses have been found. Cemeteries, in which the 
 dead were burned, were unearthed. The places where 
 the great bazaars were held were laid bare. The 
 financial accounts of the temple of Bel were secured. 
 Chapels, shrines, urns, vases, many of the latter ex- 
 ceedingly beautiful, testify to a complex social life. 
 
 *^Much might be said of the splendid achievements 
 of Americans in adding to the knowledge of the East- 
 ern Lands. The deep depression in Palestine formed 
 by the valley of the Jordan and by the Dead Sea, 
 1,300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, was 
 not accurately known until 1848, when the United 
 States expedition, under Lieut. W. F. Lynch, estab- 
 lished the truth. The important expeditions into 
 Syria and Palestine under Dr. Howard Crosby Butler, 
 of Princeton University, in 1899-1900 and 1904, added 
 greatly to our knowledge of churches and Greek in- 
 scriptions. Of this scholar's brilliant work at Sardis 
 there is not time to speak, nor of other great work 
 being done by Americans in foreigTL lands. The revela- 
 tions only show us that civilization comes and goes 
 like the nights and days. Great cities and nations ap- 
 pear and disappear. Who knows but what in some 
 day thousands of years in the future the explorers 
 will create a world-wide sensation by announcing that 
 they have unearthed the long-lost city of New York — 
 once the metropolis of the Western Hemisphere!" 
 
 32 
 
 487 
 
THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN WOMAN 
 AND THE TORCH OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 THE Story-tellers broke into applause. Tliey rose 
 to their feet instinctively. Before them stood an 
 elderly lady with snow-white hair — the last 
 woman to tell her story — and a wonderful story it is. 
 
 **I came half-way around God's wonderful world,'' 
 she said, *'to bring this message. It is a message of 
 love, hope, and light — the miracle of Christianity." 
 
 The gentle face smiled sweetly. 
 
 *'I need not tell you," she said, softly, **the blessed 
 story of that Christmas eve in Bethlehem more than 
 nineteen hundred years ago. I need not point your 
 vision to that tragic scene on the cross at Calvary. 
 America received this message when the first explorer 
 planted the flag on the soil of this New World. My 
 story will relate how Americans, filled with the spirit 
 of Christianity, which is the basis of all civilization, 
 have gone out into every part of the world to carry 
 the torch of Progress to all the people of the earth." 
 
 There was a deep tenderness in her soft, gray eyes. 
 
 *'I am a missionary," she said, *^one of the five 
 thousand who have offered their lives to carry the 
 * light' to the millions who have not yet heard the 
 Christmas message of * peace on earth, good will to- 
 ward men.' The word ^missionary' is the Latin of the 
 Greek * apostle.' It signifies one who is sent. It is 
 applied especially to one who is sent to propagate 
 Christianity in heathen countries. Its history is re- 
 plete with wonderful stories of enterprise and hero- 
 
 488 
 
STORY OF THE MISSIONARY 
 
 ism. Under its magical spell the Roman Empire was 
 converted ; then it brought civilization to the barbarian 
 hordes that overspread Europe ; and, in later times, it 
 swept over the New World and opened a vast dominion 
 for the miraculous power of Christianity. 
 
 *^The missionary movement in the United States 
 may be traced to the New England hills. In the little 
 village of Andover, in Massachusetts, is a seminary. 
 One day six young students in this seminary decided 
 to organize a movement Ho carry the gospel to foreign 
 lands.' Among these students was Adoniram Jud- 
 son — a youth born at Maiden, Massachusetts, in 1788. 
 It was decided to send young Judson to London to 
 confer with the Missionary Society established there 
 a few years earlier. Like Paul, he experienced the 
 * perils of the deep,' for he was captured by a French 
 privateer and thrown into prison at Bayonne. But, 
 after being released, he continued his journey and 
 executed his commission. On his return, he, with four 
 others, was appointed as a missionary for India and 
 Burma. The five arrived at Calcutta on the 17th of 
 June, 1812. The East India Company, however, or- 
 dered them to leave its territory immediately. So, 
 after many dangers, young Judson, mth his wife, 
 eventually began his labors in Rangoon. 
 
 ^*It must be remembered that at this time Burma 
 was practically outside the pale of civilization. Budd- 
 hism was the only religion known to the Burmese 
 proper ; while the various hill tribes w^ere nature wor- 
 shipers. The king of the country was a despot, and 
 usually a bloodthirsty one. However, for some time, 
 Judson was left in peace to lay the foundations for 
 the new Christianity. He even gained the ear and good 
 will of the King, and transferred his headquarters 
 to Ava, the capital. Then came those fateful days in 
 1824. War broke out between England and Burma. 
 
 489 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 The Burmese authorities, to whom all white men were 
 alike, threw Judson into a loathsome dungeon and 
 subjected him to all kinds of barbarities. He was con- 
 demned to death — but, after an imprisonment of over 
 a year and a half, he was released on the demand of 
 General Sir Archibald Campbell, and took a prom- 
 inent part in the peace negotiations between England 
 and Burma. 
 
 ^'But here the story only just begins. Dr. Judson 
 was the first to translate the Bible into Burmese. His 
 wife, Ann Hasseltine Judson, was the first American 
 woman to leave her friends and country on a mis- 
 sionary errand. Her story is one of deprivation and 
 self-sacrifice. During her husband's imprisonment 
 she ministered to him with unflagging devotion. The 
 noble woman died of fever in 1826, and her husband, 
 after a second marriage, succumbed to the terrible 
 fevers in 1856. But their great work still lives. To- 
 day, after one hundred years, Rangoon has a flourish- 
 ing Christian college, and a large publishing house, 
 working in nine languages and employing a staff of 
 250. There are more than 700 mission schools scat- 
 tered throughout Burma to-day. 
 
 ^^ Since that eventful day," continued the Story- 
 teller, *Hhe American missionary has sown the seed 
 of civilization in every part of the earth. The story 
 is too long to tell how the different denominations of 
 the Christian church have joined hands in this mar- 
 velous achievement. It is sufficient to say that they 
 are all doing a noble work and confine myself to a few 
 thrilling anecdotes. 
 
 **Did you ever visit the ^hermit kingdom' of Korea? 
 That is the latest field of conquest for the American 
 missionary. Not until the last thirty years has it been 
 in communication with the outside world, except when 
 the Chinese and Japanese took turns in invading and 
 
 490 
 
STORY OF THE MISSIONARY 
 
 oppressing it. But at last Korea has experienced a 
 new kind of invasion. What a story it is — this inva- 
 sion of Korea by devoted American women! This 
 noble army marched nnder the banner of Christ to 
 carry the blessings of civilization to Korean woman- 
 hood. Koreans, like other Orientals, conld not under- 
 stand the idea of educating w^omen. ^A girl,' they 
 said, 'is not capable of education; and, even if she 
 were, it would do her no good; all she needs to know 
 is how to obey.' 
 
 **No man in the world could break down this 
 prejudice. Oriental customs and prejudices do not 
 allow interference or familiar relations with women, 
 except by members of their ow^n sex. The American 
 women, therefore, decided to undertake the work 
 which was beyond the power of men. It was in 1885 
 that Mrs. M. F. Scranton, with several assistants, rep- 
 resenting the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, 
 landed in Korea. Within a year, for the first time in 
 history, a school for girls was opened in Seoul, the 
 capital of Korea. The King of the country actually 
 gave his approval, and bestowed on the institution the 
 name of Eiva HaMang, or 'The Pear Flower School.' 
 The girls caused much scandal by singing and playing 
 in the garden. It was a shocking impropriety. But 
 the 'Pear Flower' school flourished, until to-day the 
 Korean damsels hold their musical exercises and May 
 Day parties, and it is quite the proper social func- 
 tion. Many day schools for girls have been opened 
 in various parts of the country and the educated 
 maiden is the pride of her people. 
 
 * ' Let me say here that medical science is the * Open 
 Sesame,' through which the missionary accomplished 
 most of his miracles. The natives appreciate the cur- 
 ing of their bodily ills, even though they may not be 
 conscious of their spiritual infirmities. A lady 
 
 491 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 doctor — Miss Meta Howard — who came to Seoul in 
 1887, attracted many women patients, and through 
 the dispensary, there as elsewhere, the mission made 
 its first friends. 
 
 ^'To-day there are in Korea more than ten thou- 
 sand women within the fold of the church, and as 
 many more w^ho are connected with it. There are over 
 one hundred native women engaged in mission work 
 as teachers and nurses. And this in a land where, a 
 few years ago, it was thought absurd to teach a girl 
 to read! 
 
 ^'I must not tell you of the exciting experiences of 
 the pioneers in the 'by-ways of the world,' " said the 
 enthusiastic woman. '^I have promised to leave that 
 to my husband whose story you will now hear. He 
 will now relate adventures that stir the heart and 
 strengthen your faith in human nature. 
 
 ''One last thought in this fascinating and inspir- 
 ing story of the missionary," exclaimed the elderly 
 speaker. "It is this: Take away the devoted mission- 
 aries of civilization, and who can estimate where the 
 world would be to-day! Would Africa be an explored 
 continent? Would China be a republic? Are there any 
 5,000 individuals existing that the world could so ill 
 afford to lose? I thank God that I have lived to see 
 His Kingdom of Love extended into every portion of 
 the globe, and that I have been privileged to be one 
 of its humble standard bearers.'' 
 
 The beautiful old lady sank into her chair. Her 
 face was illumined by a sweet light — like a crown of 
 glory for deeds well done. 
 
 Silence lay over the Story-tellers for a moment — 
 and then they burst into enthusiastic and prolonged 
 applause. 
 
 492 
 
THE STORY OF THE PIONEER ON THE 
 PATH OF THE WORLD'S PROGRESS 
 
 THE elderly gentleman arose and paused a moment 
 before he spoke. 
 ^^The adventures of the pioneer male missionary 
 would make a thrilling volume," he said. ^^But I will 
 tell you first about a man who had been laboring 
 there for ten years when the political troubles arising 
 out of the Russo-Japanese War burst over Korea. The 
 King and Queen were very friendly to him and had 
 implicit faith in his loyalty. One day the Queen was 
 murdered. The King distrusted his own people and 
 did not know which way to turn. He placed his 
 faith in only one man — and that was an American 
 missionary — Horace G. Underwood. The troubled 
 King would accept no food except that prepared by Mr. 
 Underwood and his wife. 
 
 *^The King, in his fear, was finally forced to take 
 refuge in the Russian embassy. During this period, 
 some of the missionaries used to spend the night in 
 the embassy in order to be near the threatened mon- 
 arch. One midnight the sound of a shot aroused Mr. 
 Underwood and his two companions. Surmising its 
 tragic meaning, they made a dash for the King^s 
 apartments, brushing aside the guards who attempted 
 to halt them. Two officers stationed at the door, at- 
 tempted to bar the way with their crossed swords. 
 The intrepid missionary struck the swords with his 
 revolver, and rushed through, to find the King in a 
 state of great agitation, calling out for his ^for- 
 
 493 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 eigners/ There is no doubt that there had been an 
 attempt on the King's life, which was frustrated by 
 the promptness and courage of the American mission- 
 aries. 
 
 ^'But the wonder of wonders," said the elderly 
 man, whose story was holding his hearers spell- 
 bound, ^'is Pyeng Yang, the second city of Korea, 
 which to-day is a scene of bustling Christian activity. 
 It has a public bathhouse, the first, probably, ever 
 erected in the Far East. So drastic a change in habits 
 as such an institution may well betoken the wonderful 
 change of heart that has overcome the Koreans. In- 
 deed, we have many practical proofs of this. The 
 Koreans, both men and women, are inveterate smok- 
 ers. Think, then, what it means when I tell you that 
 the natives on occasions have formed themselves into 
 anti-tobacco leagues and are giving to the church the 
 money thus saved. 
 
 ^'Let me tell you some stories of physical violence. 
 The missionary now, as of old, must always be pre- 
 pared to face death. AYe all remember the shock- 
 ing massacre of several American missionaries dur- 
 ing the Boxer riots in China. Is there anything more 
 heroic in the annals of war than the last stand of 
 Pitkin of Pas-ting Fu? When the Boxers approached, 
 he, with two ladies, barricaded him_self in the mission 
 house, with the grim resolution of fighting to the death. 
 All day the Boxer army, a thousand strong, howled 
 around the house — and all day Pitkin held his fort, 
 firing with deadly precision from a window. At sun- 
 set he was shot from a tree; and, as he lay mortally 
 wounded, the Boxer fiends rushed in and hacked him 
 to pieces. Of the two ladies, one died from shock, 
 the other was captured and beheaded. 
 
 *^The story of Lorimer Porter, who had a narrow 
 escape from death at the hands of the Hindoos, in 
 
 494 
 
STORY OF THE PIONEER 
 
 1907, is typical of the dangers met by American mis- 
 sionaries. He, together with his wife and child, was 
 assailed with large stones by a murderous mob. They 
 managed to escape, but the mob burned their house. 
 The cause of the trouble was some unpopular act of 
 the British Governor, which the American missionary 
 was suspected of approving. 
 
 ^'Two missionaries from California, John Wise- 
 man and Wesley Newbern, recently had some thrilling 
 experiences in Palestine. They are unattached work- 
 ers, who believe in conforming strictly to the apostolic 
 model by dressing in Eastern garb, having no fixed 
 abode, and traveling on foot from place to place. 
 They were surrounded by Arab robbers on the road 
 between Jerusalem and Jericho, which has had until 
 recently the same unenviable reputation as in the days 
 of the Good Samaritan. As they had no money, the 
 Arabs declared that they should die. The two Chris- 
 tians silently prayed for deliverance. Suddenly, out 
 of a clear sky, came a terrific sandstorm, and the 
 Arabs threw themselves on the ground and wrapped 
 their heads in their burnooses. The travelers escaped 
 through the whirling sand and arrived in safety at 
 their destination. 
 
 <<Erom the blinding sandstorms of the Syrian 
 desert to the icy plains of the far north is a far cry," 
 the Story-teller continued. *^But, among the Eskimos 
 of the Baffin's Bay country, America has the most 
 northerly mission in the world. The only link that 
 binds the inhabitants of this dreary region to civiliza- 
 tion is a ship which calls there every thirteen months. 
 This mission was founded by a clergyman named Peck, 
 in 1879. His first church was eaten by the dogs — it 
 was made of sealskins. That was an ingenious idea of 
 the missionary's in a land without timber. At his 
 persuasion, the Eskimos gave up their time-honored 
 
 495 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 custom of killing off their old men and women at a 
 certain age. He used a magic lantern to help his 
 teaching. The Eskimos were immensely interested, 
 and came to see it from hundreds of miles aroimd. 
 
 ''I have told you something of woman's work in 
 the mission field. Their o:reatest triumph has surelv 
 been the foundation of the American College for Girls 
 at Constantinople. When we remember how the edu- 
 cation of women has been neglected in the East, how 
 can we overestimate the imjDortance of the only in- 
 stitution in the near East for the higher education of 
 women? Thither flock students from the Balkans on 
 the north, from Persia on the east, from Egypt and 
 Syria on the south, and from Greece and Albania on 
 the west. And they return to their countries, if not 
 Christians, at least with Christian culture, which they 
 disseminate in their turn. Fifteen different nation- 
 alities are represented on its rolls, and the professors, 
 twenty-six in number, have been taken from the best 
 American colleges. 
 
 ^'Just one more word for the American women," 
 the missionary added, ^'this time in iDlague-stricken 
 India. A community in the remote mountain region 
 was stricken with cholera. Everybody, whites and 
 natives ahke, fled. Only one person remained to with- 
 stand the dread scourge, and that a frail American 
 girl missionary — Miss Annie Budden. She stayed to 
 minister to the sick and the dying — nay, even to bury 
 the dead. 
 
 *'I might tell stories endlessly of similar heroism, 
 but now let me turn for a moment to the wonderful 
 achievement of the missionary movement as a whole. 
 North, east, south, west — wherever there is a pagan 
 nation or a savage tribe, there is the emissary of civil- 
 ization in their midst. No one can fully estimate the 
 great work that the American missionary is doing, a 
 
 496 
 
STORY OF THE PIONEER 
 
 work for the betterment of Hhose that sit in darkness.' 
 He not only is extending the kingdom of God on earth, 
 but he is the forerunner of progress. If Japan is to- 
 day far advanced in medicine and surgery, it owes it 
 to the missionaries. In China and Turkey, to take 
 two conspicuous instances, it is Western medical 
 science that is supplanting native methods and bring- 
 ing the dawn of a new civilization. The missionary is 
 educating the world. Wherever he goes, he builds a 
 school, as well as a church. He is the magic worker 
 who turns the searchlight onto ignorance and trans- 
 forms it into intelligence. In the midst of the dark- 
 ness of horrible superstition, the mission school shines 
 as a beacon light. He maintains hospitals. He builds 
 trade schools. He has checked the terrible crime of 
 infanticide where it exists. Everywhere, he is lifting 
 people to a higher moral and material standard. 
 
 *^It is the missionary who opens the trade routes," 
 declared the Story-teller, ^^They are the forerunners 
 of the world's commerce. It is the missionary who 
 perforce introduces all kinds of American goods to 
 people that want them — and who, but for him, would 
 never have heard of them. We may well be proud of 
 the fact that our country leads the world in missionary 
 enterprise. Of the world's annual contribution to mis- 
 sions, the United States gives over $12,000,000. There 
 are over 5,000 American missionaries; they employ 
 about 30,000 native teachers and preachers. There 
 are forty-six foreign mission societies in this country. 
 The native adherents number nearly two millions. If 
 America is to lead the world it will be because it has 
 led the way for civilization with the torch of the 
 American missionary. ' ' 
 
 497 
 
THE STORY OF THE CLERGYMAN AXD 
 THE MIRACLE OF MIRACLES 
 
 IT was Cliristmas Eve. The Story-tellers were 
 gathered around the blazing hearth for the last 
 time. It was the man in a black frock — the clergy- 
 man — ^who was to relate the last story. 
 
 *^My story," said he, in low, cultured tones, ''is the 
 miracle of miracles — the source and power behind all 
 the world's achievements. It is the crowning glory of 
 them all. There is one parting thought that I would 
 give you at this moment. It is this : Wonderful as is 
 man and his handiwork, how much more wonderful is 
 the Creator of man! If man in his frailty can per- 
 form such wonders as you have related, what must be 
 the infinite power of the Creator of all creation ! Who, 
 after listening to these miracles of modern times, can 
 for an instant Cjuestion the miraculous power of God ? ' ' 
 
 A reverent hush fell over the Story-tellers. 
 
 "This is Christmas Eve," continued the clergy- 
 man. "To-morrow will be the birthday of Him who 
 came to the earth more than nineteen hundred years 
 ago to save a lost world and to inspire hope and faith 
 in the hearts of men. The story of the rise and prog- 
 ress of Christianity is indeed a "Wonder Story. It is 
 through this miraculous power that the light of prog- 
 ress was thrown upon the dark ages; it is the torch 
 which has led the way for civilization. Beginning in 
 that little cradle in Bethlehem, it passed through the 
 fiery furnaces of paganism. It had to face terrible 
 persecutions at the hands of its foes; yet it spread 
 with astonishing rapidity throughout the world. 
 
 498 
 
STORY OF THE CHURCH 
 
 *'The turning-point in the history of early Chris- 
 tianity came with its recognition by Constantine, after 
 his famous victory over Maxentius, won under the 
 standard of the Cross. This occurred in 313, just 1,600 
 years ago. It took some seven centuries to Christian- 
 ize Europe. In the fifteenth century came the great 
 crisis of the Eeformation which revitalized Chris- 
 tianity. Men asserted freedom of worship — the right 
 to serve God according to the dictates of conscience. 
 
 *'The discovery of the New World offered a new 
 field for Christian enterprise. Missionary effort went 
 hand in hand with exploration and gold-seeking. The 
 story of the first Christian church sel up in America 
 is as interesting as a romance. So far as we can 
 gather, it happened as follows : Vasquez de Ayllon, a 
 Spanish judge, received a charter from Emperor 
 Charles V. to colonize a certain part of what was 
 afterwards called Virginia. The document specially 
 enjoined that efforts were to be made to evangelize 
 the natives, and two Dominican friars were taken along 
 for this purpose. Ayllon set out in June, 1526, with 
 three vessels, carrying 600 persons, and founded a 
 settlement called San Miguel, near the spot where 
 Jamestown stood later. There a small chapel was 
 erected — the first in the territory now occupied by the 
 United States." 
 
 The clergyman turned toward the historians as he 
 spoke. 
 
 ^^The Protestant Episcopal Church came to us 
 with the first settlement of Virginia, in 1607. These 
 pioneers were men zealous for Church and State in 
 England. The charter granted by King James ex- 
 pressly provided for the celebration of religious wor- 
 ship according to the rites of the Church of England. 
 The first Episcopal — and, incidentally, the first Prot- 
 
 499 
 
WONDER STORIES 
 
 estant, church erected in this country — consisted 
 mainly of an old sail fastened to some convenient 
 trees. It was furnished with log seats and a pulpit 
 made by nailing a bar of wood to two trees. 
 
 ''The advent of the Pilgrim Fathers, in 1620, 
 marks the beginning of Congregationalism in this 
 country. This movement was a revolt against the 
 authority of the Established Church of England, 
 which, sternly repressed at home, found a congenial 
 soil in the New World. The austere reformers were 
 enabled to carry out their ideas of religious freedom, 
 without let or hindrance. 
 
 *'The Baptists owe their origin in America to 
 Eoger Williams, who attained such celebrity by his 
 advocacy of religious toleration. After his banish- 
 ment by the authorities of Massachusetts, on account 
 of his peculiar views, he adopted Baptist principles, 
 and the first Baptist Church in the New World was 
 founded in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1639. 
 
 * ' Presbyterianism in America was derived origi- 
 nally from the Scottish settlers in Ulster, who began 
 to emigrate to America about the middle of the seven- 
 teenth century. A fresh tide of emigration set in for 
 New England, Pennsylvania, and other parts, in 1713, 
 and the Presbyterian Church became established in 
 the New World. 
 
 ** Methodism was brought to this country even be- 
 fore its complete organization in England under John 
 Wesley. It was his one-time famous partner in the 
 movement, George Whitefield, who introduced it into 
 Philadelphia in 1739. 
 
 **In no other country of the world are there so 
 many religious denominations represented as in the 
 United States. There are no fewer than 142 separate 
 bodies. From the humblest beginnings, Christianity 
 
 500 
 
STORY OF THE CHURCH 
 
 lias gradually become a miglity force in the land. 
 There are in the United States to-day over 35,000,000 
 communicants or formal members of the various re- 
 ligious bodies, worshipping in over 218,000 churches, 
 and under the spiritual care of over 170,000 ministers. 
 The total value of the church property in the country 
 is over a billion and a quarter dollars. There are 277 
 colleges and universities under the control of the de- 
 nominations. 
 
 *^But mere figures can convey no adequate idea of 
 the enormous share taken by the Church in our na- 
 tional life. Take the Christian Church out of American 
 life — take it out of the world life — and what is there 
 left to our civilization? It performs important 
 duties and fulfills large responsibilities. Everywhere 
 it cares for the sick and poor ; it raises the degraded, 
 and teaches the ignorant; it sets our moral code and 
 maintains our ethical ideals. Many instances may be 
 recalled in the course of our history in which the voice 
 of the Church has been raised on behalf of justice and 
 humanity. Indeed, it may be said that, in every stage 
 of our onward progress, its potent influence can be 
 seen at work. Thus the religion which the cross typi- 
 fies has become a vital and indispensable part of our 
 national life. May it ever remain free and untram- 
 meled.^' 
 
 The clergyman stood silent for a moment, as if in 
 contemplation. Then turning to the Story-tellers, he 
 said: 
 
 ^^My friends, as we part on this memorable occa- 
 sion, let us not forget the great lessons that we have 
 gathered from these stories of the wonderful achieve- 
 ments of men, but let us remember always that behind 
 every one of them is the Hand of God ! ' ^ 
 
 501 
 
NOV 29 1913 
 
 Tl CHRISTIAN HERALD 
 
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 is read every week by over two million Americans of the 
 home-loving, thinking class — because it comes nearer to 
 their real needs and ideals than any other publication. It 
 carries into the home the news of the world, secular as 
 well as religious, the really important happenings of the 
 week, in such a plain, straightforward manner that every 
 reader is kept abreast of the times. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN HERALD is full of illustrations. 
 Its correspondents live in every country on earth. It 
 appeals to the high and the low, both sexes and all ages. 
 Its readers constitute a great family of well-wishers, who 
 find THE CHRISTIAN HERALD more than helpful. 
 We want to increase the membership of THE CHRIS- 
 TIAN HERALD family until there is no household in 
 which its wholesome influence is not felt. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN HERALD ALMANAC 
 
 100 PAGES OF FACTS AND FIGURES 
 GIVEN FREE WITH YEARLY SUBSCRIPTIONS 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN HERALD ALMANAC is a 
 
 handy manual of the very information you need from day 
 to day. Once in the habit of consulting it, you will do 
 so often and conveniently, for not only are there "Con- 
 tents and Index" which will enable you to turn instantly 
 to any subject on any page, but the book itself has a hole 
 punched through the upper left-hand corner so that you 
 may hang it by the fireplace, in the library, or any other 
 place where you may most handily reach it. 
 
 The Price of The Christian Herald is $1.S0 a Year 
 A.ddress 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN HERALD 
 
 Bible House, New York