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THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN
i Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday
By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY
At 20 East Alabama St , Atlanta, Ga
Entered as second-class matter at postoffice at Atlanta, under act of March 3, U7»
Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier. 10 cents a week. By mail, 35.00 a year.
Payable in advance,
Wage Commissions to Reg
ulate Labor
The decision of the hoard of arbitration in Die wage contro
versy between the Eastern railroads and their engineers is im
portant, both for what it accomplishes and for what it proposes.
Tn its report the hoard urges the creation of Eederal ami state
wage commissions to exercise public rcgulati\<* power over the em
ployees of public utilities. The artrument of the report is that labor
ought to he regulated as capital is now regulated by the public ser
vice commissions.
This suggestion implies that labor disputes involving railroads
and other industries of a s< mi-public character should be subjected
to compulsory arbitration. Il raises the whole question of the power
of government to prevent the kind of strikes that have recently
paralyzed for a moment at least the comtrn rcial life of England
and Erance, and that have, on a local scale, frequently afflicted this
country
The implication is that the collusion of a multitude of workers
to stop the wheels of an industry that is necessary to the social life
ought to he regarded as a conspiracy in restraint of trade, and ought
to he visited with penalties appropriate to such an offense.
There can be no doubt that general strikes are anti-social in
their nature. They are to he excused or approved only as insurrec
tions are to bo excused and approved.
The right to revolt against intolerable conditions can never be
taken away by law. If the general conditions of labor in the I’nited
States should ever sink to the level that actually obtains in some
countries in Europe, every legal attempt to prevent or suppress
great strikes would be unavailing.
In the existing state of diffused prosperity in this country it is,
of course, reasonable and right that labor disputes should be sub
mitted to arbitration and that the decrees of arbitration hoards
should acquire the compulsive force of a united public opinion.
It should be obvious that individual workmen can not be com
pelled to go to work if they want to stay away. An arbitration de
cree of a Federal or State board, defining the wage conditions
under which a railroad shall be run. could no doubt be enforced
against the physical property involved; but it could not prohibit a
stockholder from selling out. or a train man from throwing up his
job
The only final and effectual remedy for labor disputes is to
abolish privilege and expand the field of free enterprise. It is in
the course of nature that the minds of im n should conceive more
projects than the hands of men can execute. It is natural that men
should prefer to carry out their own plans rather than the plans of
others. It is therefore only natural that the demand for helpers
or employees should always exceed the supply, and that employers
should continually compete with each other in a rising scale of
wage offerings. Such is the condition of things that usually exists
in new countries. It can be restored and perpetuated in the I’nited
States—if we can free ourselves from the unnatural thraldom of
monopoly. Where there are more jobs than workmen there is no
labor problem.
Wives Who Pay Alimony
Are there abused husbands in these I’nited States? Here is
the answer. In New York stale sixtv one divorced wives are
paying alimony to wearv ex-males; in Indiana, four hundred and
fifty; in Ohio, six hundred and seventy-three; in Wisconsin, five
hundred and sixty six ; in Illinois, more than five hundred, Penn
sylvania. though the second state in population, has only six
such wives.
Perhaps these startling figures compiled by the census bu
reau account for the hot suffrage campaigns in those states where
■women are compelled to pay alimony.
For it is humiliating enough for a high spirited woman to
accept alimony from a mere man, but when it comes to paying
it out of her own pocket it is. in the latest suffrage vernacular,
“very spuggy indeed.”
Declaration of Fraternity
By REV. THOMAS B. GREGORY.
IT was one hundred and twenty
years ago that the French peo
ple, through their national
convention, declared their frater
nity with all nations wlio deshed to
be free, and offered them their help
In the st uggle for liberty.
With the exception of tin dis
memberment of the Roman empire,
no event in history ha- created the
Interest and elicited the attention
that has been called forth by the
French Revolution Perhaps more
books hate been written and more
discussion held about that revolu
tion than about any other event in
the history of the human race.
Certainly nothing else that ever
happened has evoked such a deep
and world-wide enthusiasm. There
have been revolutions innumerable,
but no rising up of a people has
ever touched the great heart of
.mankind like that which began
with the fall of the Bastlle.
The reason I- not far to seek.
“Man’s inhumanity to man that
makes its thousands mourn" never
received a more terrible illustra
tion than it did In the France of the
sixteenth, seventeenth and eight
eenth centuries. Human arrogance
and greed, human indifference and
cruelty never pressed down hardet
or more remorselessly upon the
poor and the helpless, and when, at
la>-t. the worm turned, when, after
generations of suffering, th. people
lose up against their ppp: essors, all
the world said •Amen." and shout
ed th. 1: approval to the ends of the
earth.
But the < wa- anuthi . ason foi
the loving Interest that tin world
took, and still takes, in the story of
the great revolution. France, apart
from the very natural spirit of ill
will toward the gold-laced and he
powdered scoundrels who hud for
sq long oppressed her. was ani
mated by the noblest good will to
nil mankind. Worn site had tasted
of the sweets of liberty site wanted
* very other people to be as happy
she he self was Her supreme
desire .■ eemed to bo that the op
pressed everywhere should partici
pate with her in the long-deferred
blessings of freedom. In her en
thusiasm and joy she threw’ her
arms about the neck of the world
ami loved It as site loved herself.
When thdse Frenchmen of the
Revolution made the In avens trem
ble with their cry of "Liberty. Fra
ternity. Equality." they meant just
what they said, and they meant
that all others should have what
they were claiming for themselves.
It was the most natural thing in
the world, therefore, when the na
tional convention, voicing the sen
timents of the French people,
passed the famous Declaration of
Vniversal Fraternity, backing the
declaration by the offer of material
aid to all who needed it.
Nor was the vote of the national
convention taken in vain. Those
half-mad enthusiasts were saner
and wise: than the quidnuncs might
have Imagined. I'astdng theii Dec
laration of Elate nlty they cast ft
to the b ... z... and today, a century
and a quui t' l after the ev.-nt. the
spirit ot the! declaration q ; ,. b.-
< om> the mastei st iitimeitt w ith
the elect of mH lands
The Atlanta Georgian
* The Real “Garden of Allah” *
.\ ew Disclosures of the Hidden Mysteries of the Desert of Sahara Make It Seem More
Wonderful Than Ever
- .
I- .
, ’ V A , - ‘ ,
J
LX' ' 'A, fl A
THE SIROCCO'S “FINGER PRINTS’' ON SAHARA'S SANDS.
By GARRETT P. SERVISS.
rTrsHE vast sandy desert of the
J Sahara covers an area two
thirds as great as the entire
United States! if all its offshoots,
together with the other deserts of
Africa, are added, they exceed the
United States in extent.
The Sahara is one of the real
wonders of the world. If it could
be redeemed, as we have redeemed
sonic of the tiny deserts in the
Kar \\ eat, it would be able to sup
port 200,000,000, and perhaps 500,-
000,000 inhabitants. At present it
contains about 2,500.000, living on
its oases, where a little water is
found. That is as if the United
States had one inhabitant for each
one and three-quarters square
miles. But experiments have shown
that in many places there is an
abundance of water deep beneath
the sandy covering of the Sahara.
How the Sahara got into its pres
ent condition is a problem not yet
satisfactorily solved. It lias been
a great, blasted waste sinc< the
earliest reworded times.
No scenes that the earth present*
have ever had a greater effect upon
the imagination of mankind than
those of the Sahara. And now that
civilized men have begun to tra
verse it in many directions, finding
out its secrets, testing its possible
future capabilities and making pho-
The Spasmodic Income
By THOMAS TAPPER.
T SHOULD like to know," writes
I a Workingman's Wife, "how
to build a fortune on a spas
modic income. How can 1 save for
the future when for five months of
the year iny husband has no work'.'"
It is easy to save (if one knows
how) on a steady income. On an
income that is not steady it is oft
en impossible. But there arc a good
many ways by which good busi
ness methods can be applied to
money that comes in now and then
instead of all the time.
To begin with, no workingman's
wife should be expected to pay
twelve months' housekeeping out of
seven months' pay. Even with the
greatest economy these two ends
can not be made to meet.
If it is right to consider a family
and the wages that come In as a
business that should be made to
pay. some things are important
before everything else:
1. A fixed schedule of expense
that has been worked out care
fully.
2. No extravagances today that
will weaken the business six
months from now.
3. Everything possible must be
done to improve the business.
Women Financiers.
Thousands of women are carry
ing out the fust two of these condi
tions successfully and many of
them get few thanks or no recogni
tion for it. They are first-class
financiers who succeed in steering
the finances of the family safely
when nothing but shipwreck seems
possible.
The thiid condition is tn> most
difficult to master.
What can b> done to imptove th>
business s.-put of tin family”
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1912.
tographs of its astonishing land
scapes, its fascination has been in
creased.
As It Really Is.
One of the best of these recent
photographs is reprodneed above.
Imagine those huge wind-driven
waves of sand stretching away for
hum'; d-. and even thousands, of
miles, only rarely broken by a II tie
oasis, witli its gleam of muddy wa
ter and its palm trees, and you may
form some conception of what the
Sahara really is. Then picture to
yourself a fierce, hot wind sudden
ly rising, blowing with rapidly in
creasing violence, rolling and rip
pling the sands, and finally lifting
tons of them into the air, and
driving them forward in dense
clouds tiiat hide the sun and
stille every living being that they
encounter, and you will have
idea of what a Saharan
or ‘sand-storm," means. Then the
natives kneel upon the sand and
cover their heads with blankets,
while their camels, the ships of the
desert,” lie down and place their
nostrils close to the ground that
they may get a little breath!
If there had been no camels, with
their wonderful endurance of fa
tigue and their yet more wonder
ful capacity to go for long periods
without food and without water,
V even the few human beings who ,
That is. what steps can be taken
to create more business?
There is more appeal to the high
er qualities in human nature back
of these questions than at first ap
pears. If a man s work is of a kind
x
that throws him into idleness five
BT*
W -t&W' 4
THOMAS TAPPER.
months of the year, what can he do
about it?
Work of this kind plunges a fam
ily into a life of uncertainty that
must stimulate a lot of guessing.
Should one pin his faith to such
work, or try to pm himself in uhap<
to do another s .rt of work that is
apt so lust all the year around?
now dwell within the borders of
! the Sahara would have been un
able to exist there. It is these nat
ural adjustments of means to ends
which lead so many minds to think
that they can see evidence of a
great Supervising, personal control
in nature.
Rut glance again at these sandy
waves, which imitate so faithfully
the waves of the ocean. You find
these forms repeated not only in
the restless waves of the sea, but in
the snows on plains or mountains,
wherever the wind has ready ac
cess to them, and even on any
sandy beach where either water or
wind has tree play. You will no
tice on the slopes of some of the
sandy hillocks long, waving marks
like the ripples on the seashore.
Recent investigation in the Sa
hara has shown that these sa'nd
ripples owe their origin to precisely
the same kind of forces that pro
duce the ripples of the seashore,
only the agent which has exercised
this force is wind instead of water.
But the results are the same, and
the resemblance is often marvel
ously exact.
The Sirocco's Trail.
.)!. Epry. studying these things in
the Sahara, has very ingeniously
traced the course of the winds that
have made the ripples. The ripples
are always found on the slopes of
the sand waves down which the
wind lias passed obliquely. They
are the linger marks of the sirocco,
left on the surface of the grand
waves of sand which it has piled
up in its more furious moments.
But unchanging as the desert
seems, it nevertheless is as muta
ble as Hie sea itself. The waves of
sand are driven slowly forward by
successive winds, and their forms
are changed, so that if for us. look
ing over the broad surface of the
Sahara, years were but as seconds
of time, we should see it actually
fluctuating, rolling on in never
resting billows, like the Atlantic in
a storm. Thus it is always burying
its past. The most remarkable ■ -
amples of the effect of the slew
rolling onward of waves of wind
driven sand have been found in the
deserts of Asia, some of which now
extend over lands which centuries
ago were thickly inhabited and
adorned with cities. Even exten
sive lakes have been filled up with
sand in this way. so that, at pres
ent, only tlie geologist can detect
their former location.
Writers on social subjects have
said a thousand times that any one
can, tn his leisure hours, prepare
himself for a better job. Whether
these writers have ever tried it, I
do not know, but the statement
seems reasonable.
In a workday of eight hours,
there ought to be enough time mar
gin after all else is accounted for
to permit a man to think an hour
or two for himself. That extra
hour or two that most all of us can
find is the very backbone of all tite
correspondence school courses
These schools have made trained
men out of tin untrained, and pat
the pay envelope on a fifty-two
weeks basis.
Time For Improvement.
But such schools are by no means
all the opportunity a man has. In
| them, howt ver. is the one great
suggestion that appeals to every
one of us, whether to be success
ful or not.
It is this:
You can find some time every
day for the improvement of your
self as a worker. You can get
skill in something or other by us
ing your thoughts about your own
future.
Spare time is as good as money
to many men. A man can look
around, question and learn some
thing. Any one on the move is
pretty sure to find what he is look
ing for if persistence, intelligence
and learning something every day
are all they are said to be.
Hence, the seven months a year
workers can only begin to build a
fol tune in money by first building
it in skill in spare time The ulti
mate value of spare time put in (>n
some one definite thing beats the
»dd job
THE HOME PAPER
Inspector McMichael I
Writes on
war I
Curing the I
Smoke Evil in ■flfl|; I
Atlanta W I
IW JR
.>«****** IsL;
Proper Amount of Air 15 I
Needed for Perfect I
Combustion—Gases $ jg|||' I
Must Be Ku pt Very JBH I
Hot to Burn. I
Written for The Atlanta Georgian
By Paul McMichael I
City Smoke Inspector.
ARTICLE 11.
In order to understand why com
plete combustion with resultant
utilization of all the heat units con
tained requires special furnace con
ditions. one must know something
about the composition of bitumi
nous coal. Rough! 7 speaking, the
coal used in Atlanta is composed of
3 per cent moisture, 12 per cent ash,
55 per cent fixed carbon (coke) and
30 per cent volatile matter (gases).
Anthracite coal, on the other hand,
contains approximately 3 per cent
moisture, 8 per cent ash. 85 per cent
fixed carbon (coke) and only 4 per
cent volatile matter (gas "S). While
anthracite will burn with a flame
length of from 18 to 24 inches, bi
tuminous coal will have a flame
length of from 12 to 15 feet, due to
the greater percentage of volatile
matter which it contains.
Keep Gases Hot.
in order to obtain complete com
bustion, 11.6 pounds of air are re
quired for each pound of coal. As
there are 13 cubic feet of air In a
pound, 150 cubic feet of air are re
quired to completely burn one
pound of coal. If coal were com
posed of nothing but pure carbon it
would be a comparatively simple
matter to so adjust the air supply
that exactly the tight amount
would be present at all times to in
sure perfect combustion, but with
bituminous coal the volatile matter
is given off rapidly as soon as the
coal is placed in the furnace and a
very much greater quantity of air
is required then to burn these gases
(the most valuable part of the coal)
than is required a little later to
complete the combustion of the
residue (coke) which is left.
In order for the combustion of
the volatile matter given off by
soft coal to continue until com
pleted, it has been found that not
only must sufficient air be present,
but also that the temperature of
the gases must not be permitted to
fall below 1,480 degrees Fahren
heit.
With 100 pounds steam pressure
in a boiler, the temperature of the
water in the shell of a tubular boil
er or in the tubes of a water-tube
boiler is only 328 degrees Fahren
heit.
Bearing the foregoing facts in
mind, we find that to attain smoke
less combustion of bituminous coal
the following conditions must ba
met:
At least 150 cubic feet of air
must be available when the
coal is first placed in tile fur
nace in ordei t burn the vola
tile matter which is given off
in the first few moments.
The gases must not be per
r muted to strike any surface
which would cool them below
1.48a degrees Fahrenheit until
complete combu-'ion has oc
curred. This means that the
gases must be shielded from
contact with any boiler sur
face for about twelve feet, this
being tiie flame length.
<>ne cause of smoky stacks in
manufacturing plants in Atlanta
is insufficient air supply. This is.
; —— ——
Sea Glamour
By VERA NICOLSON.
H<> ar<> th ° Se " hOS< ‘ earS ar< ' Open to the callin £ the Sea ?
V V They w ho gave thpir hearfs to her . n davs past .
J Though now 'mid pleasant inland places, far from her, they dwell,
I They are weary toll she calls them back at last.
For they think of cool green water-walls with sunlight glinting
through—
White horses lifting to a leaden sky—
Os shifting, silver moonlight on the shoreward-going swell,
And the gleam of broken water hissing by.
They long for open highways that of old their fathers knew,
■ Where whistling breezes meet the foaming tide
. I-or it's only wide blue waters that can satisfy their souls,
< And bring back to them the peace so long denied.
due very largely to the general use B
of the herringbone grate which was B
originally designed for use witn B
anthracite, and is not adapted for B
bituminous coal. The initial cost fl
of this grate is low. but whereve: B
it is used for soft coal it causes a B
loss through incomplete combus- B
tion many times the saving effected B
in initial outlay. Tile air spaces fl
through this type of giate are only fl
about 25 per cent of the total grate B
sui face, whereas there should bo fl
neare’ 50 per cent, and the grate i« fl
difficult to keep clean so that the B
air space is reduced even more B
from clinkeis forming between the fl
webs of the bar. fl
One of the first steps to be taken S
to achieve smokeless combustion Is fl
tlie adoption of a grate designed for 9
use with bituminous coal. A sliak- fl
ing grate is preferable because with fl
it the tire can be kept free from fl
as!) and clinker, and the air spaces fl
open so tiiat a uniform supply of fl
air i.in be maintained at al! times. fl
it is difficult with a hand-fired I
furnace to have enough air for fl
complete combustion of tire gases fl
given off when flesh coal is charg- fl
ed, and yet not have very much fl
more than is necessary for theca - fl
bon residue (eoket that is left after
these have passed off. The best
results have been obtained whe:e
the spaces through the grates are
sufficiently large to permit the
passage of enough air to burn the
fixed carbon (coke) and then when
fresh coal is charged such addi
tional air as is needed to burn the
volatile matter can be admitted
over tire fuel body by cracking the
furnace door for a couple rtf min-
utes. a great disadvantage of this
method, however, is that it is apt to
be ov< rdone. Too much air may be
admitted, and the furnace temper
ature may be so much reduced tiiat
combustion of tlie gases is stopped.
Mechanical Stokers Ideal.
The ideal manner in which to
establish tlie proper relationship
between air supply and coal con
sumed is to have the coal fed in a
steady and continuous stream. In
this way there is an almost con
stant amount of gaseous products
given off, the amount of air re
quired R likewise constant, and the
supply once legulated need not be
changed. Such feeding is possibh
only with mechanical stokers, but
the investment required for their
i) st.illation is so great that small
generating plants are not often
justified in putting them in. In a
plant where the load is constant
and enougn horsepower is devel
oped to jturtify tlie installation of
mechanical stokers, these are tlie
ideal solution of tlie problem of ef
ficient and smokeless combustion.
When tho b ad is subject to su' de 11 ■
and wide variations, however, the
mechanical stoker falls short, us i:
is almost impossible to speed up a
mechanical stoker to take care of a
sudden Increase of load without
causing the emission of great quan
titles of dense smoke.