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EDITORIAL PAGE 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.