E

demanded Congressional inquiries to the activities of an alleged induscialist lobby and the "interference" of ecretary of Commerce Hoover with the ffairs of the Department of Agriculture. t revived the intimation of months gone, hat Secretary of Agriculture Jardine is Hoover's man."

On the following day Iowa Republians met in State Convention, which eiterated much of what the farmer

eeting had said. It demanded that the policy of economic equality of agriulture with other industries shall be Farried into effect by the enactment of "gislation which will permit the estabshment of an American price level, just s the protective tariff accomplishes that esult for manufactured products." It eceived Smith W. Brookhart back into ull fellowship. It applauded Senator ummins for his recent statement that,

the Haugen plan were rejected as a pecial privilege, the protective tariff ould not be defended. Then, being a Republican Convention, it took a phrase ut of storage and indorsed the National Republican Administration "for its effiient and wise conduct of the Governent in accordance with Republican rinciples."

An Obdurate Object

N the same day that the Republicans were holding their Convention in owa, the day after the farmers' meeting 1 Des Moines, Senator Fess, of Ohio, isited President Coolidge at White Pine lamp. On the way out he stopped long nough to talk with the numerous reorters who wait about the gates. He pade it clear that the Administration aders in the Senate will again offer the ubstance of the Fess and Tincher Bills t the next session-the same that they ffered at the last session, the same that he farm bloc Senators rejected. Along ith it, he suspected, will be offered ome provisions for strengthening the Co-operative Marketing Bill passed at he last session, some perfecting of the achinery for helping farmers to oranize.

That, it can hardly be doubted, is the rogram which the Administration will ut forward when Congress meets in Deember. Senator Fess, however, did not rofess to speak for the President. He iscussed various phases of politics. He enied that there will be a serious movehent against the tariff. He expressed

the belief that, at the worst, the Republicans will be able to organize the next Senate, "if the insurgents vote as Republicans."

The appearances are, thus early, that the force will remain irresistible and the object immovable through another session. What may happen beyond that time depends on many things, most of all, perhaps, on the results of the elec

Keystone

John W. O'Leary

tions for Senators and Representatives this fall.

And What May Happen

TH

'HERE are indications that there may be presented at the next session of Congress a third plan for agricultural relief, not a mere variation of the Administration plan or the farm organizations' plan. Possibly it may, in the end, absorb both the others.

While the farmers' organization Committees were meeting in Des Moines and Senator Fess was on Lake Osgood, John W. O'Leary, President of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, was preparing a statement on this subject. He said, in substance, what The Outlook said some weeks ago, that "the farmer's business is the Nation's business." But he went further than The Outlook undertook to go.

American business, said Mr. O'Leary, needs the answer as much as the farmer needs it, because without a stable and healthy agriculture "there can be no promise of health in other fields of en

Weather and World Peace

HIS heat is terrible! We never

"THIS

have anything like it down home." That sounds like the statement of a Southerner on a summer visit to New York City. But it happens to be the statement, in substance, of the Sultan of Morocco on a summer visit to Paris. Very likely he will be going home soon; not so much because he finds it cooler there as because he will find his welcome worn out in Paris. The surest way to win the resentment of a metropolisnext to saying that it is no more naughty and no more automotively congested than smaller cities-is to say that it gets hotter than some place farther south.

Here is a slander-if it is a slanderwidely repeated; a fallacy if it is a fallacy-widely held. There are, conservatively estimating, some hundreds of thousands of residents of our Southern States who honestly believe that it is never as hot down there as it sometimes is at the North; hundreds of thousands of residents of Northern cities who righteously resent the imputation of superior hotness to cities which they regard, with some justification, as summer resorts.

Something should be done, but, unfortunately, the official records do not furnish conclusive proof. They show the average temperature of the South to be higher than that of the North, but they do not show anything conclusive as to maximum temperatures. They may appear to, for the moment, but they do not really. Take, just because they happen

to be next each other in the list of Weather Bureau stations, New York and New Orleans. Yesterday-figuring from the day on which these lines were written-New Orleans had maximum temperature eight degrees higher than that of New York. But last Wednesdaystill figuring from the day on which this is written-New York had a maximum temperature exactly eight degrees higher than that of New Orleans. Something similar would be shown for any number of days and for any number of cities, North and South.

Perhaps all that can be done is to urge people generally to let the weather be a series of natural phenomena instead of a local achievement. A familiarity with weather records outside one's immediate section would help. Despite the fact that every newspaper carries every day a record of weather conditions the country over, there is a widespread Northern belief that the whole South is always boiling hot in summer, and an equally widespread Southern belief that the entire North is zero cold all winter. Travel does not appear to lessen the preconceived prejudice. Nobody ever seems to realize that practically all places get too hot sometimes in summer and too cold sometimes in winter, but that most of them are fairly comfortable during the greater part of the time.

League of Nations, Locarno, and what not else to the contrary, we shall never have a world united in good will until all of us achieve that humility of spirit which will enable us to claim something less than perfection for our own particular brand of climate. No doubt the Sultan of Morocco was provoked to his somewhat extravagant statement by the unqualifiedly extravagant claims of Parisians.

Inoculating Icebergs
THE

HE mixture of aluminum and iron oxide called thermit has long been in use for quickly heating iron (as with rail. ends or broken shafts) to high temperature for welding. Professor H. T. Barnes, of McGill University, conceived the plan of using thermit to disrupt or dissolve ice jams, and even icebergs. Last spring he tried the idea on a great and perilous ice jam in the Allegheny River. The results were, some accounts stated, highly successful.

This summer Professor Barnes. has been in Newfoundland and has tested his

Wide World

A Battle-Ship of the Ice Fleet-discovered by the scouts of the International Patrol

thermit process on Arctic icebergs. A press despatch says, "Three icebergs which were treated by his process disrupted speedily, cracking and disintegrating in a manner resembling Vesuvius in action." The full account of this remarkable experiment will be awaited with interest.

Already the danger of icebergs to navigation has been greatly lessened by the efforts of American Coast Guard vessels which watch for icebergs on their way toward the transatlantic zones of traffic and by wireless notify vessels of the berg's position and probable course. This patrol is carried on by the United States acting as the executive for eleven. countries in association. An account of what has been done in this way appears

with fine illustration in the current "National Geographic Magazine." This article states that now for fourteen years

no ship has been wrecked by icebergs in the North Atlantic.

Professor Barnes is quoted as saying of the effect of thermit on ice: "The af ter effects of a charge in a mass of ic over a watercourse work on indefinitely. The whole effect of thermit is similar to the spread of a point of infection from a wound." So in a way one might call this treatment an inoculation, for its action proceeds from within out.

The indications are strong that Professor Barnes is justified in believing that this remarkable force may be used to combat the dangers of ice in river t floods and afloat at sea.

S

le

HETHER the continents are fixed solidly in place, as has long been believed, or whether some of them are A

imperceptibly drifting westward and equatorward under the tidal forces of the moon, is the unusual question which is shortly to be tested by the International Geodetic and Geophysical Union .and the International Astronomical Astronomical Union. By means of radio time signals instantly transmitted to a network of stations covering most of the earth, the precise longitude of each chosen point will be determined. Then, after about five years, the same tests will be conducted in exactly the same places. So accurately is it now possible to determine time or longitude by radio signals that if in the meantime any of the continents have shifted by as little as a few feet it will be known with certainty.

Since the World War geologists and other scientists have treated with growing seriousness a hypothesis to which the name of Professor Alfred Wegener, of the University of Graz, Austria, has become attached. Only recently Wegener's interesting book, "The Origin of Continents and Oceans," was published in English, although its author was engaged in research on the Wegener Hypothesis during the World War. postulates what most geologists acceptthat if we could penetrate the earth's crust to a depth of about sixty miles or more we should find a zone of rock between the granite of the crust and the basalt beneath that is subject to extremely slow flow under long-continued stresses. This zone is something like pitch, only far more rigid.

Science Withholds

Its Opinion

IN

He

N 1910 Wegener noted on a globe of the earth what others had noted before him-that the several continents, especially the Americas and EuropeAfrica, could be fitted together like a jig-saw puzzle. Originally, he believes, all the present land masses formed a single great continent covering onefourth of the earth. Late in the great coal-forming period, the Carboniferous, this began to break up, for some reason he does not name. Later, about the time that dinosaurs were beginning to evolve, South America split off from Africa. This split, like a rip in a piece of cloth, lengthened for millions of years, finally resulting just after the last ice age in the complete separation of the New World from the Old and the formation of the Atlantic Ocean bed.

International

Colonel Washington A. Roebling scientists. Although there are several objections to it, so many things in the earth's history that have been difficult to explain before can be explained if one grants its essential truth that it will not be cast aside without much previous experimentation. It involves a slow migra

tion of the earth's poles and tropics, thus explaining why fossils of tropical plants are found in the Arctic and indubitable evidences of great ice ages in the tropics. Needless to say, science has not yet accepted or rejected the Wegener Hypoth

esis.

Conservation and the
Sportsman

THE United States has a new Chief

Game Warden. He is Captain Harold P. Sheldon, who for the past five years has been State Game and Fish Commissioner of Vermont. Captain Sheldon approaches his larger work with Sheldon approaches his larger work with the statement that "the American sportsman is winning in his fight to conserve

465

and perpetuate the wild game of the United States." He thinks that present policies and projects are well conceived and will result in a steady increase of wild life.

Nothing should be said to lessen the fine optimism of a new incumbent in so important a position, but he is not sufficiently inclusive in giving credit. There are indications that the fight to conserve wild life in the United States is being won, but to say that it is being won by the sportsmen alone is to overlook the contribution of numerous other agencies not interested in wild life primarily for the sake of shooting. It is always to be remembered that there are many reasons other than love of hunting for conserving wild life.

No doubt it is true, as Captain Sheldon says, that "the future will certainly provide a reasonable abundance of game to a greater number of sportsmen," but that is only one of several objects of Conservation. Most of the species for whose preservation a fight has been necessary have their economic importance. Bob White, for instance, is certainly as important to the farmer whose wheat field he patrols for insects as he is to the sportsman who finally bags him.

"Never before," says Captain Sheldon, "have the official agencies of Conservation found such large sums of money at their disposal." They may not find them so large again if the impression gets abroad that Conservation is solely for the purpose of providing an "abundance of game to a greater number of sportsmen."

Builder of a Great Bridge

C

OLONEL WASHINGTON A. ROEBLING, who died recently, in Trenton, New

Jersey, at the advanced age of eightynine, left behind him a memorial such as few men can achieve. To his daring and

genius was due the construction of the first suspension bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan, which still remains the most graceful and efficient structure of its kind in the world.

Roebling, a maker of wire and cables, The conception of his father, John A. was left, through the death of the elder, for the son to carry through to completion. This he did, overcoming the while great difficulties. sonally supervised the sinking of the coffer-dams, upon which the foundations for the stone towers were laid, and in so

He per

ا

doing contracted a dread malady known as "the bends"-otherwise, the caisson disease that comes from working under air pressure. This incapacitated him from being on the ground, and he established himself in a room on Brooklyn Heights, from which he followed the progress of the work with a fieldglass.

Begun as a private enterprise, which the corporation was unable to carry on, the bridge became the property of the two cities, as they then existed, Brooklyn paying two-thirds and New York onethird of the cost. Opened May 26, 1883, it has carried in safety more traffic than any other bridge ever built and remains a marvel of beauty as well as usefulness. It was so perfectly designed that Mr. Roebling believed the truss would stand without the aid of the cables, yet it is the lightest in material of all its sisters that now span the East River.

Robert Todd Lincoln

THE

'HE death of Robert Todd Lincoln extinguished the White House family of the Civil War period and removed from the world the last but one of the men who had intimate personal contact with Abraham Lincoln. And, in the main, the son's knowledge of his. father died with him. Robert T. Lincoln persistently refused to contribute anything to biographies of his father, and only once was induced to make a speech at a Lincoln celebration. On that occasion he confined his remarks to expressions of appreciation of the people's admiration for the character of Lincoln. It may be assumed, however, that he was keenly interested in what was said and written of his father, since on numerous occasions he undertook to correct what he regarded as misrepresentations.

All sons of prominent men are more or less embarrassed by the reflected greatness of their fathers. Some of them, none the less, make use of it for personal advancement. To avoid this, or any appearance of it, was apparently Robert T. Lincoln's greatest care throughout his life. It may be that had Robert T. Lincoln not been the son of Abraham Lincoln President Garfield would not have appointed him Secretary of War and that President Harrison would not have made him Ambassador to Great Britain, but Mr. Lincoln did not employ the name of his great father in order

War, he sent the French armies into the Ruhr Valley. The grip they took on that valuable and productive coal-mining and steel-making region hurt all Germany. It doubtless contributed largely to the achievement of the reparations agreement of 1924, under which Germany is now working and paying.

Now France has turned again to Poincaré to save her from financial panic. When he was in office before, the country already was deep in economic troubles, facing heavy obligations at home and abroad. The war had cost dear, and in addition there was the hard. struggle to rebuild the devastated areas. And, unfortunately, to the unavoidable burden on the nation was added a burden of private graft in the patriotic business of reconstruction. Individual fortunes were made out of reconstruction contracts-some by men now prominent in French public life-which

hardly would bear public investigation So Frenchmen had increased the heavy load the French people were carry. ing.

Poincaré proposed drastic increases in taxation. The measures he suggested were unpopular; and his radical foes and the critics of his coercive policy toward Germany combined to force him out of power. Since then, under Ministries led by Herriot, Painlevé, and Briand, the nation has seen its finances go from bad to worse, its internal debt grow, and its currency drop in value from 20 francs to the dollar to 40 francs to the dollar. After the fall of the last Briand Cabinet and a futile two-day experiment with a Cabinet under Herriot, President Doumergue called Poincaré back to office.

He has made a brilliant start by forming an "all-star" Cabinet of National Unity, comprising conservatives and radicals, former foes as well as friends, and including five ex-Premiers besides himself: Briand, French Socialist, as Foreign Minister; Painlevé, Republican Socialist; Barthou, Republican Union ist; Leygues, moderate Republican; and even Herriot, leader of the Radicals and Radical Socialists in opposing the conservative Nationalists under Poincaré. André Tardieu, once the chief henchman of the old war Premier Clemenceau, it is interesting to note, likewise is in the new Cabinet. Yet it remains to be seen whether Poincaré can be as effective in dealing with his own countrymen as he was with Germany.

The shoal which has wrecked the fis cal plans of other Governments is the present Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the French Parliament. It is divided into two camps which represent differences of opinion in the country re garding economic policy. All Frenchmen agree that the franc must be saved from total loss of value. But on the question of how more revenue is to be secured to accomplish it they split into arguing factions. The conservatives suggest increases in indirect taxes-those that fall on things which people have to buy and use. The radicals suggest increases in direct taxes-those that fall on incomes and business profits and inheri tances-and, if necessary, a levy on private capital. The conservative plan obviously would bear hardest on the masses of the people; the radical plan would hit the rich. The conservative