Newspaper Page Text
Items of Interest Gathered Here and There
Many Federal Jobs.
Senator William Warner has established himself
in his old rooms in the Federal building, which he
left as United States senator, and is proposing to
spend the summer solstice there. There is a steady
tramp, tramp, tramp up to his door, old policical
friends wanting political preferment. The senator
receives them kindly and there is genuine regret
that he cannot provide for all of them.
Immediately to the right of the senator’s desk
is a sort of counter. On it rest two large volumes.
“Official Directory of the United States,” they are
entitled. They contain the names of 306,141 office
holders under the Federal government. It is the
pie counter!
The astonishing number of 28,947 officeholders is
to be found in the city of Washington alone. They
get away with pie to the tune of $31,541,225 each
yeai - . Missouri does fairly well at the pie counter
in the national capital, the blue book on Senator
Warner’s counter showing there to be no fewer than
466 Missourians holding office in Washington, good
for $649,682 a year between them.
Kansas shows up handsomely. It has 309 pie
biters in Washington, drawing $428,785 as regularly
as the year rolls round. Oklahoma is expected to
do better. There are only 54 Oklahomans, drawing
$168,382 a year. It will do better next year.
When it comes to pie biting New York is the
gourmand. Its army of 2,323 Federal officeholders
are getting $3,071,512 a year. Little Maryland has
2,191 appointees, costing $2,099,425 a year, and
Pennsylvania has 1,828 at the pie counter in Wash
ington, costing the country $2,310,254 a year. Mr.
Taft’s State, Ohio, is the next numerous at the pie
counter, with 1,077 offices charged up to it, the
yearly roll totaling $1,386,296, and then comes
Massachusetts, with its 742 officeholders, cheap at
$1,000,173 a year. There is a lull then till Mis
souri’s column swings into line, 466 strong and will
ing to be stronger.
The District of Columbia is made a scrap heap
of, as the blue book shows it —it is merely the city
oi Washington and suburbs —to have 8,691 office
holders appointed from it, their yearly pay being
$7,196,324. When a senator or a congressman has
received his quota of pie, in order to keep other
States from finding that his appointment has been
increased, extras are not charged up to his State,
but to the District of Columbia. There is no finding
out just how many Missourians are included in the
noble 8,691 from the District.—The Kansas City
Journal.
R W
53T Thesis For The Cook.
In the good old times a fellow who wrote a thesis
of his own free will was looked upon as something
of a human prodigy. He was supposed to be the dom
icilium supremum of wisdom. He usually had lean
legs and a hollow eye and a forehead that bulged like
an oldfashioned basket. But it was packed with
knowledge, because that was what made it bulge so,
and when he delivered his thesis he was given a
Ph. D., at least, and the job of assistant professor
of something at the State college, where great things
were expected of him.
Nowadays the man with a thesis can be a cook at
a government hospital if he wants to. In fact, if
he doesn’t have the thesis he can’t be the cook.
Great is paternalism and glorious its name!
Before an ambitious young gentleman can attain
the dignity of chef at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for
the Insane he must deliver his thesis on the relative
nutritive values of various foods and prove that
he knows all about them. It’s a great scheme to
show that he is a good scientist, but it’s pretty hard
to figure how it will prove him a good cook. Plenty
of scientists can be found who know the amount of
sugar in a turnip or can tell with the hydrometer the
specific gravity of a can of condensed milk, but how
many of them could cook a dog biscuit—without
making a martyr of the dog?
There used to be cooks —and pretty good ones,
The Golden Age for July 23, 1908.
too —who weren’t strong on relative nutritive values.
There are old colored mammies scattered throughout
the Southern States, even today, who wouldn’t
know a proteid from an alkaloid and couldn’t tell
if a cucumber contained sugar or a tomato starch
if they had a food chart hung over the kitchen table,
but when it comes to corn fritters and chicken
fricassee, or roas’ sweet ’taters an’ ’possum gravy —
they could make all those hospital folk, insane or
otherwise, think life one long, sweet dream.
It’s a funny conception, after all—that of feeding
people in our public institutions as if training them
for a prize fight or fattening them for an exhibition
of live stock at a county fair. There are joys of
eating as well as of sleeping or smoking or drinking
or chasing the ticket to the cash register, and the
people who eat to live have not a very great deal
of advantage over those who live to eat. Especi
ally may this be so if one is shut up between four
walls mostly and only let out for a bit of pleasure
at meal times. —The Washington Post.
*
The Original Olympic Games.
Every few years, accordingly as the moon which
marked the Greek midsummer drew to its full, a
pilgrimage of all that was best and most vigorous
in Hellas ended at the little plain of Olympia, in
Elis, the small state on the western coast of Pelo
ponnesus, a flat space, with its natural barriers of
mountain and river, some 15 miles from the sea.
Long before the beginning of the festival heralds
went forth, first through Elis, thence throughout
Greece, to proclaim a truce, during which all fight
ing between city and city, state and state, would
cease, so as to allow a whole month of peace during
which the Hellenic youth should be able to travel
unmolested and unhindered from the farthest settle
ments of the race—it might be from Marseilles or
the Crimea —in order to make the offering of' its
vigor and its piety to the Olympian Zeus in Elis.
The plain at Olympia was hallowed ground, dedi
cated to 'Zeus, and contained on its northern side
the Altis, or sanctum. In this sanctum were the
temple of that god, that of Hera, and altars to
Demeter and Aphrodite, and it was adorned, as time
went on, with the most exquisite productions of
Hellenic art, including the statue of Zeus by Phidias,
that same statue from which he removed and weigh
ed the gold in order to disprove the accusation that
he had been guilty of peculation in his use of pre
cious metal. For the rest, as a place protected by its
special sanctity, the Altis contained the treasure,
houses of many of the Hellenic states.
No pains were spared to prevent the entrance of
any competitors in the games who should by lack of
character or piety profane the religious nature of
the festival or of the hallowed ground upon which
it was celebrated. The first qualification was that
of pure Hellenic blood, but no youth who had been
branded by his own state for any disgraceful offense,
or was known to have sinned against the divine
laws, was allowed to compete. Lack of patriotism
was sufficient to exclude a competitor. Thus the
horses of Hieron of Syracuse were excluded at the
instance of Themistocles, because he had failed to
take part with his countrymen in resisting the
Persian danger. —The National Review.
* M
When Shall We Fide the Air?
The ultra-conservative may prefer locomotion on
the earth’s surface only, but none the less science
is working toward the practical navigation of the
air. It is not a man merely pulling at his boot
straps and expecting a trip around the moon; it is
man cunningly applying all the knowledge of
aeronautics he has acquired to build a machine
which will hold a course in the air at the director’s
will. Two types of air vehicles are under experi
mentation, one tlie balloon propelled and steered by
an engine, the other a so-called aeroplane, of the
“heavier-than-air” class, with characteristics sug
gestive of the bird. This latter machine, from a
surface start, glides upward and is propelled and
steered by an engine also. The third type of airship
is the familiar balloon, good for observation and
flights and adventure thrilling to the last degree.
On the Fourth of July nine great monsters of this
type raced from Chicago whither the winds directed.
The winner, the “Fielding-San Antonio,” landed at
West Shafford, Province of Quebec, 895 miles dis
tant, in twenty-three hours and fifteen minutes.
But the old type of airship lacks dirigibility—that
is, power to steer. It is the dirigible type, the ship
which can be steered, which inventors in France,
Germany, England and the United States are work
ing on with feverish intensity. Perhaps Paris might
be said to be the aeronautic center, if there is one,
where the names of Farman and Delagrange are
familiar as daring pioneers in development of the
“heavier-than-air” machines. In this country the
\\ right brothers are evolving an aeroplane of mys
terious promise. A few days ago a dirigible balloon,
over 400 feet long, was navigated with perfect
accuracy over parts of Switzerland. On the Fourth
of July the first official aeroplane test yet made in
America was successfully conducted at Hammonds
port, N. Y., when the “June Bug,” flying about a
mile, won a gold cup valued at $2,500, the trophy
ottered for the promotion of aeronautic science by
The Scientific American. The proud aviator, as the
new name designates the man-bird of an areoplane,
is Glenn 11. Curtiss. Aeronautics is now entering
the stage of organization, and advancing toward a
status already passed in other industries of loco
motion. Mind, money and unquenchable enthusiasm
have combined for conquest of the alluring but
inconstant air.—The Standard.
Improbed Seeds.
One of the leading Democrats of Congress said
last winter that if he were elected President he
would invite James Wilson to retain the office of
Secretary of Agriculture, where he is doing a great
work for the benefit of the American farmer. Just
now the Secretary is paying a great deal of attention
to experiments looking - to the improvement of seeds,
and especially seed corn, our greatest crop.
It would be impossible to estimate the toil made
futile because of weak, defective and infertile
seeds; for it cost as much sweat to raise a nubbin
as it does to grow the largest ear of coin, and it is
as easy to produce the one as the other.
Two centuries ago the weight of the average
bullock fit for market on the English farm was some
300 pounds. Now the average weight of such an
animal is nearly three times as much. This improve
ment was consummated by careful and intelligent
breeding and adaptation, and we on this side the
waters have successfully accomplished the same
thing. The improvement in wool and mutton sheep,
swine, mules, and barnyard fowls has been as
marked, though not what it should be or what it
will be.
But strength and virility of seeds are as im
portant to the farmer as improved breeds of live
stock, and it is probably true that labor that ought
to yield a return of millions of dollars is thrown
away every year in the cultivation of weakling
plants springing from weakling seeds.
Secretary Wilson has accomplished wonders in
the improvement of the cotton plant by crossing the
domestic seed with that from Egypt, and the same
result is bound to follow the improvement of grain,
vegetable and grass seeds.
The Agricultural Department is a paternal affair,
but it is doing a splendid work for the producer and
the consumer of foods.
*
Some commodities ought to remain highpriced.
For example, few people believe in cheap liquor li
censes. Fewer still will approve the economics of
a New Jersey justice who has reduced the side of
finis because times are hard and sinners are poor.
Marking down the price of disorderly conduct does
not seem to be a wise way of helping the needy.
3
