Newspaper Page Text
Items of Interest Gathered Here and There
Votes Tor Women.
This year’s International Woman Suffrage Con
gress was a tremendous event. It met in
Holland —that is as definite as its geographi
cal location can be made. No one city could
hold it and it had to spread its sessions over
three. It started in Amsterdam and boiled over
into Rotterdam and The Hague. Its proceedings
lasted for six days, from June 15 to June 20, inclus
ive. Twenty-three nations were represented among
the delegates. Enfranchised women from America,
Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and Finland de
scribed the practical workings of equal suffrage
and said that women voters often differed from
their husbands in politics without breaking up
their families. Most of the speeches were in Eng
lish, but there was a bureau of informantion in
charge of polyglot Dutchwomen who could talk in
seven languages. It was decided that the next
Congress should be held in England, on the ground
that the suffragists needed help there more than
anywhere else. The suffragists of the world are to
invade Britain in tremendous force next year and
wage a gigantic international campaign. They are
to have a specially designed flag of their own.
The American delegates confessed with humiliation
that they had no news of progress to report. Their
hopes in Oregon had been disappointed and no
additions had been made to the old list of four
suffrage States.
Meanwhile the English “Suffragettes” organized
a monster demonstration in London on June 21.
Hyde Park was the center of a swirling mass of
half a million people, most of whom seemed to be
curious spectators, and thousands of white-gowned
women, with green, white and purple sashes,
marched in parades. —Collier’s Weekly.
R R
Wonders of a Year.
One hundred and thirty-two years ago today
our nation was born. In the years which it has
taken to reach its present great stature it has wit
nessed many marvelous things come into being
which had never been before. Some of them might
never have existed had it not existed first; they are
its gifts, in science, in art, in acheivements, in
discoveries, and in learning, to the civilization which
produced it. There are but few of the other mar
vels of the past century and a third with which it
has not. been associated or upon which it has not
exerted a strong influence.
Every year has produced more and more things
new and strange to civilization, and the past year
has been no exception. The progress of the world
since the last Fourth of July has been a triumphant
processional of things accomplished. Aerial naviga
tion was an experiment then; now it is an acheive
ment. The Dreadnought was the boast of Britain
and the scourge of the seas then; now the navies of
several powers have greater ships than the Dread
nought, and she has begun to be looked upon as a
toy in comparison with the vessels of the future.
Wireless telegraphy has become, within the year,
a service almost as common as the telephone, and
the noiseless gun promises to revolutionize warfare.
Electricity has been harnessed to draw the chariot
of progress through every land under the sun; every
work of man is being accomplished oy it; its powers
have been studied and more widely disseminated,
and its use as a force for the discharging of pro
jectiles from guns greater and more terrible than
the world has ever known is about to he accomp
lished.
But inventions and appliances do not wholly
measure the world’s progress during the year. There
have been powerful impulses stirring among peo
ples, new adventures into the realms of space and
thought. Yonder in the East —the land of the ris
ing sun —a multidinous race, countless as the sands
of the sea, has arisen out of the somnolence of cen
turies and become, in a day, as it were, among the
foremost of the peoples of the earth. Nothing has
been more wonderful than the belated coming of
The Golden Age for July 16, 1908.
the yellow man into his place. What it will mean
for the white —what new relations and values are
to be adjusted —is a problem of the future.
The world is full of projects born of new and
startling thoughts. An artificial island supported on
buoys anchored to the bottom of the sea is one of
the strange projects of the year past. It is to be a
sort of roof garden, floating on the crest of the
ocean, at which vessels may call, and it may be
towed from the tropics to the arctics as winter and
summer come. An overland route to Europe via
Alaska and the wind-blown steppes of Siberia is an
other project. Will it be practicable? is another
question which only the future can answer. The
past has affirmatively solved many harder ones;
why not this?
The proposed explorations of the polar regions by
balloon and airship may present new light upon the
possibility of travel lines encircling the earth. One
of these explorations is about to start now. It
would seem to have chances for success. Who
knows but that next Fourth of July the American
flag may be flying from the north pole itself?
It has been a wonderful year of progress and
achievement and promise, this 132 d year of the his
tory of the United States. —The Washington Post.
•6 R
The "Presiding Elder. ”
At the twenty-fifth delegated session of the
Methodist Episcopal General Conference, held re
cently in Baltimore, the title of “presiding elder”
was abolished, and that of “district superinten
dent” was substituted for it. The history of the
term thus relegated to the past is interesting. In
the beginning, John Wesley had no intention or
wish to found a sect. He was essentially an evan
gelist, and his purpose was merely to stir and re
vivify the English church of his day to a more
active spiritual life.
For this purpose he encouraged the earnest
Christians of a neighborhood to meet together in
classes, over which a layman of more than ordi
nary ability was placed as leader. Thus came into
existence the “class meeting,” and “class leader”
which have always distinguished Methodism.
These classes came together as the “United So
ci ties, ” a name which Wesley himself wished to
keep. For their government he drew up rules in
1/43. As the work progressed, preachers of two
kinds were appointed. The permanent preachers
were clergymen of the Church of England, but lay
men who had the gift of speech were made “itin
erants,” at first with a tenure of six months, later
with a term of one year. Each of these preachers
had his regular “circuit,” and several circuits
were organized into a “district,” over which was
placed a leader known in America as the presiding
elder.
Te the ordinary preacher and his family the pre
siding elder has been a mighty potentate, since it
was he who generally determined whether or not
the preacher was to move at the end of the year,
and where he was to go.
The change, of name will not, of course, affect the
duties of the office, which are principally executive;
but to the old-fashioned the new title will seem to
lack some of the sacerdotal majesty of the old.—
The Youth’s Companion.
R R
A Parents 9 Educational Referendum.
Said Elmer Ellsworth Brown, at Cleveland, na
tional commissioner of education, proposing the
use of the pri’mtnle of the referendum in initiation
of educational practices and policies: “Let all
the teachers organize for consideration, from
time to time, of definite proposals for the im
provement of the schools, and all of the par
ents of school children organize, with other
interested citizens, for a similar purpose, with
out hampering our educational authorities in
any of their ordinary work, and without relieving
them of their ultimate responsibility, for all of the
referendum agreed upon, under which all proposals
for far-reaching changes in the plan of education
should be considered at length by these two inde
pendent bodies. Such an arrangement should not
only prevent sudden land ill considered change; it
should prevent long continued and equally ill con
sidered lack of change. We need to keep the spirit
of invention alive in our school systems, for new
times call for new measures.” In the resolutions
adopted by the convention, wherein the school
teachers of the nation declare their hope and pur
pose, were the following matters: Approval of
establishment by municipal boards of education of
trade schools, industrial schools, and evening con
tinuation school; “subordination of highly diver
sified and overburdened enures of study in the
grades to a drill in essential subjects”; regard for
individuality and instruction in light of limitations
and capacity; training in “morals and in business
and professional ethics”; maintenance and devel
opment of the National Bureau of Education; ad
justment of child labor and truancy laws that the
end be not the child’s labor, but education; approv
al of the use of school buildings for free vacation
iand evening schools and lectures for adults; ap
proval of the effort of secondary schools and col
leges to purify and dignify sports. To all of which
this thought was added: “We hope for such a
change of public sentiment as will permit and en
courage the reading and study of the English Bi
ble.” By a close vote the association declined to
endorse simplified spelling. The association’s new
president is Lorenzo D. Harvey, of Menomonie,
Wis.—The Standard.
R R
The Story of Khaki.
Khaki, the olive-orchard canvas cloth worn by
soldiers in hot climates, owes its present use to a
lucky accident, as is the case with many inven
tions. This cotton stuff has been worn in India by
British troops for many years. Its tint was a
greenish brown, but it always faded when it was
washed with soap.
A business man from Manchester, while travel
ing in India, chanced to enter into conversation
with an English officer, who remarked carelessly
that the first manufacturer who could produce a
cotton drill that would not fade would make his
fortune.
The young Englishman never forgot this hint. He
came home, found a skillful dyer, and with him
began the search for an olive dye which, when used
on cotton cloth, would not yield to soap or soda.
They spent years in these experiments, tall of which
proved fruitless.
One day they found among several scraps of
dyed cloth one which retained its color under the
most severe tests. The puzzling fact was that it
had been cut from the same piece of cloth and sub
jected to the same process as the other scraps, all of
which faded. The two experimenters were greatly
perplexed, and for months tried in vain to solve
the riddle. The one little fragment of khaki was
the only one which kept its color against all at
tacks.
By chance, one day they found that the dye in
which this scrap had been dipped had remained
for a time in a metal dish of ia. peculiar kind. The
secret was found. The metal of the dish, in com
bination with the chemicals of the dye, had fur
nished the one thing needful. They tried the ex
periment with other pieces. The dye held, and
their fortunes were made. —Chicago Record Herald.
R R
Members of all political parties may profitably
consider some questions put by a writer in the Chi
cago News: Is there any Republican way of clean
ing the streets? Is there any Democratic way of
collecting garbage? Is there any high or low tar
iff way of running the health department? Is there
any interstate commerce policy of managing the
police and fire departments? How does the Monroe
doctrine affect our schools? What do we need to
know of the political beliefs of the men we elect
to manage town and city business?
3
