Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

EDITORIAL RAGE The Atlanta Georgian THE HOME RARER THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At SO East Alabama Bt Atlanta. Ga. 1<r Entered as second-claea matter at postofflre at Atlanta, under act of March B, leva Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier. 10 cents a week By mall, 15.00 a year. Payable in Advance. The“HoltCaterpillar”--lt Is the Behemoth of These Days. It Pulls Down Trees, Rips Up Stumps, Drags Ten Plows and Does the Work of Forty Horses and Twenty Men. (Copyright, 191S.) The Modern Circe. What this country needs Is more food, more fanning, more land cleared for those that want it, and are willing to work it. There are millions of acres in this country, not merely in the distant forests, BUT RIGHT AROUND THE BIO CITIES, that lie wasted because it would cost so much to clear them. In the old days land could be cleared in the winter time by labor that asked only enough to eat, for $10 an acre or less. Later, in the West, Chinese coolies could be hired to clear land for $25 an acre. Goats were supposed to do the work partly—but they DIDN’T doit. In these days it costs so much to clear land that the average man who owns the land NOT CLEARED simply sits and looks at It, never thinking of turning it into fields that will produoe food for the people and profit for the owner. Nothing more important could be found than a mechanical method of clearing away trees, stumps, roots, giving to agricul ture the land that now lies idle, without value as a watershed factor, useless for timber, NON-PRODUCTIVE. Recently we published an editorial under this heading: “Has Anybody Yet Made a Motor to Do Farm Work?’’ We asked these questions: What man has got a machine that will begin by rooting up trees, pulling out the stumps? Then plow up the ground and cut the loose roots that remain; Then harrow it; Then cultivate the crop, whatever it be—fruit trees, corn or potatoes—and between whiles supply power for a saw mill or threshing machine? Let that man come forward. And we invited manufacturers who might think they had the machine, important to the public, to make a test and prove the work of their machine. Many men apparently THOUGHT they had the machine. Just exactly ONE man out of the whole lot said that he KNEW HE HAD THE MACHINE, AND WOULD PUT IT TO WORK, AND PROVE IT. AND HE IS PROVING IT. The man with the machine is Holt, of the Holt California Caterpillar Company. At Stockton, in California, and at Peoria, Illinois, this Caterpillar is made. The machine is a huge gas engine, weighing thousands of pounds, yet able to travel and work on ground so soft as to make the use of horses impossible. Instead of running on four wheels that would sink into the soil, it runB on a track of its own—a caterpillar contrivance—the full length of the engine, a track that moves as the engine moves. This caterpillar of steel, iron and brass is hooked to huge trees. The engine moves slowly, there is a grunt and a smash, and a tree is on the ground, with the roots pulled out. The steel cable is hooked to big stumps, there comes a chug ging of the engine, the caterpillar crawls along a few steps, the root is pulled and lies on the ground. This giant now being tested at Farmingdale, New Jersey, promises to do a wonderful and important work for the world. For the machine that can change scrub oak, burnt over pine land, WASTE TERRITORY, into fertile fields, and useful val uable farms, is a great machine indeed. This same caterpillar pulls ten plows at one time, and turns over ten furrows, fourteen inches deep. It does the work that twenty teams of horses would do. And it takes only two men instead of the twenty men that would be required to drive the teams. One man controls the gang of ten plows, another the engine. Needless to say, this newspaper hasn’t any interest in the Caterpillar, or any other machine, or in anybody connected with it. We invited the intelligent manufacturers of the country to show what they could do in the way of producing a machine that would increase the farm area. Just one man responded. And so he gets this free advertisement to which he is heartily wel come. A Flow of Electrons By EDOAR LUCIEN LARKIN. The ancient Circe was a beautiful sorceress . . . . whose charmed cup Whoever tasted lost his upright shape, And downward fell into a grovelling swine. There is nothing beautiful about whiskey, the modern Circe, and yet thousands ui men crowd around it, heedless of the thousands before them who have been turned by its evil spell into grovelling swine. Q "W1LL you kindly Inform me which is the smaller. # molecules or electrons?" A. Electrons are the smallest bodies known, If one can use the word bodies when speaking of them They possess the funda mental property of all bodies known, inertia. They are sup posed to be composed entirely of electricity, and It \u sup posed that nothing else exists. Could humans force them to lie In a row’—this is impossible, since they repel—then a row one Inch long would contain 12.700.000,- 000,000. An atom of hydrogen, the lightest known, possesses about 2,000 times greater Inertia than that of one electron, and all molecules still more. But note this: Professor O. W Richardson, Palmer Physical Lab oratory, Princeton, N. J., has Just made a classic demonstration well on. in supreme and majestic im port, with the eve r-memorable achievement of Millikan, of the I’niverslty of Chicago, in his iso lation and w ighing of one elec- iron. Flic’ :i ison experimented b --•(! ^candescent pip. the beauties now appear- everywtyeie in advanced lec- tric lighting. But the vacuum made by him was much more nearly absolute than any in com mercial lamps. Doubtless he ex hausted the air from within the bulb to the extreme limit yet at tained by the most consummate skill. If any air existed between the molecules of the tungsten filament, he removed that also by means of the cold liquid air and absorptive carbon. With this high vacuum sur- rounding tungsten, something new in science was made possible. Would that Newton, Gilbert, Franklin, Faraday could have wit nessed what followed. For when the electricity was sent through the thin filament of tungsten of course, many molecules were torn off, but the electrons that poured into the vacuum were three times greater than the mass of the tungsten evaporated off. Thus electrons were actually conveyed from the outside into a vacuum. Mighty fact this: It is now known that a current of electricity on a conductor Is a flow of electron*. No doubt this classic discovery will greatly enhance all electrical science and engineering. And now all of the laboratories will hasten to tepeat the experiment. Facts About the Atom We Call Universe Stars Flying Hundreds of Thousands of Miles Per Hour Like Flying Electrons in a Molecule—May Constitute Real Universe. By GARRETT P. SERVISS I KAVE Just received from the Licit Observatory a bulletin containing a list of the veloc ities with which 915 stars, that have been specially studied, are dying either towar . Jr away from the earth. You would hardly believe that there are stars which are speed ing toward us more than two hundred times faster than the swiftest bullet or cannon ball that was ever flred from a gun, and others which are flying away with equal velocity! Yet such U the fact There Is a little star in the Southern Hemisphere that Is ap proaching the Solar System at the terrific speed of 150 miles per second, or 640,000 miles per hour. There Is another that Is flying away at the rate of 103 miles per second, or 370,800 miles per hour The flrst of these stars would traverse the space between the earth and the moon in about 26 minutes. These statements seem prepos terous. Yet they are undoubtedly true and accurate. They are based upon observations with the spec troscope, which shows the motion of a star by the shifting one way or the other of the lines In the spectrum of Us light. If the star Is approaching the lines shift toward the blue end of the spectrum. If It is retreating, they shift toward the red end, and the amount of the shifting be trays the speed of flic star’s mo tion. When once the observation of the shifting lines has been care fully made, the calculation of the speed is as simple as the rule of three. The proceedings of the as tronomer are no more mysterious than those of the surveyor. I have chosen some examples of extreme speed simply because they are more striking to the imagination. But I find in the GARRETT P. SERVISS. list many stars whose motion to ward or from us Is only a few miles per second, and one, at least, which is moving aw-ay at the rate of but half a mile per second. Vet that equals the speed of a swift projectile. The large star Alpha Cassiopelae is retreating less than two and a half miles per second, hut the star Mu Oassio- peiae is approaching with a < speed of sixty miles per second. It is not only the stars in this list that are thus in motion; all the stars are flying, with similar velocities, one way or another. Many are going nearly across our line of sight, to the right or left, or up or down. Our own star, the sun, shares In this universal stellar dance. It Is flying north ward, carrying the earth with it, at a speed of about 12 miles per second. Since this is the fact, you may wonder why we do not all notice the motion of the stars. You might naturally think that those which are going crosswise would rapidly shift their places in the sky; that those which are ap proaching would visibly become brighter, and those which are re treating fainter. The reason we do not notice such changes is twofold. It de pends, first, upon the fact that all the 8tars are so Immensely dis tant that the effect produced upon their apparent places in the sky by a motion of several hundred thousand miles per hour is im perceptible. even at the end of a year, except to the most accurate astronomical instruments. Sec ondly, It depends upon the ex treme brevity of our observations. Just as a million miles are noth ing in comparison with spaces trillions of miles across, so a cen tury Is nothing in comparison with lapses of time millions of years In length. That star that I have mention ed, which is approaching us so fast that It would come from the moon to the earth in 26 minutes, is. nevertheless, so far off in space that at the end of a year it is not perceptibly brighter or bigger than at the beginning. Hut if the span of a man's life ware a mil- ion years, he might see the star growing with his growth; faint in his childhood, ominous with wax ing splendor in his youth, terrify ing by its eye-searing magnifi cence in his manhood, and out- blazing the sun itself as it swept close by the solar system In his declining age. All this is based upon the as sumption that the star in ques tion will continue for a million years Its course hitherward through the sea of space. In truth, however, It is more proba ble that Its course will change. And bo with the motion of all the other stars. They appear to travel In straight lines, but no doubt their paths are curved, since they must respond to the varying pull of gravitation which they exert upon one another. Astronomical study is slowly bringing to light the law that governs the flight of the stars, and the facts thus far learned appear to show that the universe with Its stars is like an atom with its revolving corpuscles or electrons—all In ceaseless motion And depending upon the contin uance and the regularity of that motion for its existence. Outside the visible universe we see only blank space. That means that our range ot vision Is con fined to the 'limits of the starry atom that we inhabit—dwelling, wrapped in our pride, upon one of the Infinitesimal, whirling cor puscles of which that atom is composed. But can anybody believe that that apparently black space be yond is not, in reality, filled with an infinite multitude of other mo bile atoms, each of which si mag nified by the eyes of its microeos- mic inhabitants to the sublime dimensions of * "universal* DR. PARKHURST Writes on The Sulzer Attacks They Are Motived by Tam many and Designed to Rob the Governor of the Popular Sympathy That Is His. Written for By DR. C. H. T HE situation In the greatest State in the Union over the Governorship seems to demand a frank statement. Whether the oblique method of stating the case as practiced by the majority of New York jour nals, even those which make large claim to fairness and in tegrity of purpose, is due to the fact that they have not taken the measure of the situation, or to the fact that they have not the courage of their convictions, or to the fact that they have been bought up, is a question that is not germane to our pres ent purpose to discuss. Nor am I going to deal with the charges that have been brought against Governor Sul zer. I know the man with some considerable intimacy and am willing to let him handle those matters himself when the time shall come for gifting the evidence for and against. Decent Men and Papers Should Not Try Case Out of Court. But there is one thing that men or newspapers of Justice, not to say of decency, ought to protest against, and that Is, try ing the case out of court, bring ing in a verdict and passing sen tence before the court sits. The purpose of publishing such prejudgment is to chill popular sympathy for the defendant and thus to force the high court of impeachment, to an adverse ver dict. knowing that if the senti ments of the people are made clamorous for his conviction their clamor ■will facilitate ad verse action by the court. Nearly a page of one of the New York City papers was de voted to delving into the past history of Governor Sulzer with no other intent apparently than to prove to the public that he waa and always had been a hopeless reprobate. It was a deliberate and long- drawn-out scheme to mnrder a reputation that had been built up by many years of distin guished service, both at Albany and in Washington. That newspaper is intelligent enough to know that popular sympathy is with Governor Sul zer, and keen enough to under stand that something must he done to destroy that sympathy, lest it should break down the courage of such members of the court of Impeachment as would like to support a verdict of con viction. It is sad to see a paper, so dis tinguished for ability as that paper is, prostitute its powers to ends so ignoble, so unfair. The Georgian PARKHURST The paper to which I refer Is supposed to be antl-Tammanr in its allegiance, but by the pursuit of its present policy is playing directly into the hands of Tam many. Its Policy Is Auxiliary to the Vicious Purpose of Tammany. As already said, I do not ex press any opinion as to whether the course it is pursuing la mo tived by a failure to realize that ; it is practically making of itaelf a Tammany adherent, or mo tived by fear of Tammany—tor there are a great many news papers and people that are good In part, but cowards the rest of the way—or motived by some re turn that they expect to receive from that (reprobate organlza- j tion. However that may be, It* pol icy is auxiliary to the vicloua purpose of Tammany and puts fresh cheer into the heart of lta unjalled leader. For the people must not forget to remember that Governor Sul zer, in the exercise of guberna torial functions, is the only power that stands between Tam many and the crib Oiled with mil lions of dollars of the people’s j money. For Tammany is not pursuing Mr. Sulzer for any crimes that he has committed, actual or pre tended; for that institution has no conscience for crimes, except when committed by other peo ple, and not even then unless it can handle them in a way to facilitate their own criminality. They want to prove that Gov ernor Sulzer haa committed crime In order to have a more open field for doing more of the same thing themselves. A G-ang of Hypocrites Who Laugh at Their War on Sulzer. The organization is a gang of shameless hypocrites, and when they get together by themselves they laugh among themselves at the idea of turning heaven and earth to prove that this man. Sulzer, has misappropriated thousands, whereas misappropri ating millions is their regular line of business. And there is nothing that e*a gratify them more, or that oan do more to capitalize the hopes and ambitions of that organized system of thievery and devil try in general, than to have re spectable men and newspapers Ignore the wholesale villainy which itself practices, and light down on the retail peculation (so claimed) of the man who faces them with drawn sword at the door of the puhlla treasury. Marston Moor By REV. THOMAS B. GREGORY. e • as T HE battle of Marston Moor was fought 269 years age— July 2, 1644. Marston Moor made Cromwell, and Cromwell made modern Eng land, hence the battle Is more en titled to rank among the Influen tial events of history. The city of York was of su preme Importance In the eye of the King. "It I lose York, I lose my crown,” said he. And so Prince Rupert was sent with » large army to hold the ancient town. The battle, some seven milee out of York, began about 7 o’clock in the evening. With the furious energy that characterized him, Prince Rupert dashed upon the Parliament’s army and complete ly staggered it. Lord Fairfax was defeated and In flight. Levin was paralysed. Two-thirds of the old field TV as won for the King. But Cromwell was there, away off to the left, and when he saw the cavaliers bearing down on the center his eye blazed, and to his Ironsides he shouted, ‘‘Charge, In In the name of the Most Highl”— and beneath the clouds, the storm, beneath the night heavens he scattered the whole mass. The victory was complete. The Royalist Army waa broken and dispersed. Fifteen hundred of them were made prisoners, with all their arms and artlllsry, tent* and wagons, while five thousand lay dead upon the field. It was the bloodiest battle of the whole war. and irretrievably ruined the King's hopes In the north. But more Important than the Immediate fruits of the battle is the fact that It was at Marston Moor the wonderful military ge nius of Oliver Cromwell was flrsi clearly demonstrated. Marston Moor was not Olivet's flrst battle- upon two or three fleids he had al ready given a hint of what wae In him—but at Marston Moor It was proven that he was a. scientific bsttle-vrlnner, a master of the srt i of w ar, »nd that with hie Iron sides he was irresistible. Henceforth he was to be the commsnding mind of the Revolu tion. the guiding genius of the armed fores* of {hg Parliament,