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Public Opinion Throughout the Union
THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF THE
WIRELESS.
For three weeks a New York paper
has published in its Sunday edition
a full page of dispatches from Eu
rope carried by Marconi’s wireless
system of telegraphy. This is the
most significant and satisfactory dem
onstration of its practical value that
has yet been made; it shows the pos
sibility of the invention as a factor in
the work of the world.
One can not form an estimate yet
of its use as a daily means of news
paper service, owing to the fact that
the dispatches for the Sunday paper
are probably received several days in
advance of publication, and come in
a more leisurely manner than the live
news of the hour must be carried.
But at least the fact is established
that across the many miles of ocean
etheric waves are bearing tidings of
another hemisphere so consistently
and intelligibly as to admit of their
being printed for the eyes of a great
newspaper’s readers.
It is a most remarkable develop
ment of modern science in its atmos
phere of mystery. It seems to bridge
the gulf between the visible and the
invisible; to be one of those strange
links of fact that are gradually being
forged by men in various departments
of research to unite the material with
the psychic. Who knows but the day
may come when every man will be
his own wireless receiving and dis
patching station, and the emanations
of the brain cells will be carried on
the tenuous medium of the ether as
surely as those of the electric bat
tery I — Louisville Herald.
CAR FAMINE AND HARD TIMES.
It is dillicult to imagine how hard
times and freight traffic congestion
can possibly go together, but that
seems to be the situation at Buffalo,
where there is more wheat than the
railroads can move. There is not a
district in the. county in which freight
is moved promptly. There are not
cars enough. There is a downright
scarcity of locomotives, and, as for
terminal tracks and even tracks in
general, there are not enough to meet
the transportation wants of the vast
general business of the country..
The car congestion is so great in
New York the public service commis
sion of that state has cited the rail
ways to show why they do not fur
nish a shipper a car within four days
of the filing of a request for one, and
the railroads propose to answer that
they are helpless and have resorted to
the “embargo” as the only way to
provide the maximum of service to
the public. By the word “embargo”
is meant a refusal to accept during a
given time any shipments of wheat
to Lake Michigan points.
And yet the prices of railroad
stock are “criminally low”; the scar
city of the currency is felt, and the
land is full of predictions of dull times
for a short while. All this can be,
and yet the railroads can not move
the business that is offered them, and
the country is full of great crops. The
talk of hard times under such circum
stance seems paradoxical, bat we will
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
have to take things as they come
along in these strange contradictory
days.—Age-Herald.
INTERNAL NAVIGATION.
Navigation has been opened on the
Illinois and Michigan Canal, connect
ing the waters of the Mississippi and
Illinois rivers, and the first steamer
passed through last Friday.
Plans are now under discussion to
enlarge greatly this waterway so that
ocean-going vessels will be able to
pass through from the Great Lakes to
the Mississippi and thence to the
Gulf.
This is only one of numerous simi
lar enterprises for- the development
of internal navigation that are be
ing contemplated or prosecuted in dif
ferent parts of the country.
Wherever there is available w’ater,
plans are being considered to develop
and to utilize its resources, both for
purposes of power and navigation.
Our own great river is one whose
potential resources have up to the
present time been least developed; but
our people are now rousing them
selves to the great importance of the
subject, and earnest efforts are be
ing put forth to inaugurate a compre
hensive system of improvement that
shall extend from the mouth to the
source of the James.
At the request of the Upper James
River Valley League, the Board of
Directors of the Chamber of Com
merce has called a special meeting of
the Chamber, which the public is in
vited to atend, for 8:15 o’clock to
night.
Incalculable as w r ould be the value
of navigation and the development of
water power on the James to the peo
ple of the entire valley, Richmond,
seated as she is at the head of deep
water navigation, would necessarily
reap the greatest benefits. She would
be the market and exchange place foi
the trade and products of the valley.
Not only would agriculture and
manufacturing industries receive a
powerful stimulus from the cheap
transportation that navigation would
supply, but men would be encouraged
to develop the undeveloped treasures
of mineral wealth that are known to
underlie so great a part of this sin
gularly neglected territory.
The natural resources of this valley,
if properly developed, would be capa
ble of maintaining in comfort a popu
lation greater by far than that now
contained in the entire State. The
influence that such development would
have upon the fortunes of Richmond
can be at .least vaguely understood by
the least thoughtful and reflecting.
It is to bring home to us a better
and clearer appreciation and realiza
tion of this that General Hardin has
been invited to address us to-night.—
Richmond Journal.
TIME AND ITS RESULTS.
Time, the gauge of everything, is
eternal. Now is but the morning of
the countless ages to come. The
world has lived but a moment if es
timated by the never ending future.
But the natural resources will not
last forever. Yet how improvident
has been the human race. With in
creased education and better civili
zation man has not grown less, but
more, wasteful of the world’s re
sources. Speculation and greed drives
him on regardless of the result. The
claims of posterity are ignored, as he
ruthlessly wastes the iron, coal and
timber, so necessary to the needs of
man.
The last and greatest steamship
afloat, the Lusitania, which is a won
der of success, croses the ocean from
England to New York in four days
and nineteen hours, at a cost of one
thousand tons of coal per day. Just
think of the thousands of steamers
burning from fifteen to one thousand
tons per ’day. Then add to that the
locomotives and factories, and you
can form a faint conception of the
great amount of coal used daily. If
one could see the hole made in the
earth each day, he would have an ob
ject lesson that would make the whole
world pause and think. Today if you
mention to the average man that we
are destroying too fast the world’s
resources, that we are buying progress
at too great a cost, he will invariably
answer that invention will supply
something else in lieu of timber, coal
and iron, when the supply has been
exhausted, that it will last as long as
he will. Such selfish impulses should
not exist in man. While the material
side of life is necessary to a certain
extent, it should not be permitted to
supersede the ideal. England, a small
island, is mining all the coal possible
and shipping it to foreign countries
for speculative purposes. When you
mention the subject to an English
man, he will answer that coal extends
under the British Channel and the At
lantic Ocean, that old England’s sup
ply is inexhaustible, and that there is
no danger of the supply giving out.
Well, in our time it will not be
come exhausted. But should we not
have some feeling, some consideration,
for the generations that are to come
after us? And just to thing of it,
Such waste is called ‘ development.
Our idea of development is to take a
twig and by cultivation bring it to
maturity; in turning the bush to a
tree, and thus produce a value that
did not exist before; in removing use
less weeds and from seed produce
something necessary to human life
and happiness. We can not remedy
the coal question unless we can find
some way to use less. We can in part
restore the timber. If the state, for
example, would award three prizes to
those who plant and cause to live the
greatest number of young pine trees,
in the following manner: $5,000 to the
first, $2,000 to the second, and SI,OOO
to the third, there would be more
trees planted in one year than will be
planted in fifty if the people are left
to their own volition. We can think
of nothing for which the state could
spend money that would give such
profitable returns. A few years ago
our pine forests extended from one
end of the state to the other. Today
they are nearly all destroyed.
Let us have some legislation for
the restoration of our forests, and
thus restore an attraction that has
been lost to our State. —Polk County
Record.
PROHIBITION IN THE SOUTH.
Alabama has now joined the rank
of the prohibition states. After the
election in Birmingham, which result
ed in a signal victory for prohibition,
the action just taken by the Alabama
legislature
most identically a repetition of the ac
tion of the Georgia legislature last
summer, when by a vote that lacked
but little of being unanimous the sale
of liquors in the state was outlawed.
The action of the Alabama legislators
was a little more conservative, giv
ing the liquor and brewery interests
a full year, besides the fraction of
the year remaining, to wind up their
affairs.
This action of Alabama is not to
be the end of the prohibition move
ment. The lead set by Georgia will
be followed by still other states. Ten
nessee, South Carolina, North Caro
lina and even Kentucky, not to men
tion other states, are now practically
where Georgia was just previous to
the passage of the prohibition law.
All these states have local option
laws, and under this law one county
after another has been voted dry un
til now only the larger cities re
main w r et. Prohibition sentiment has
been constantly growing and is un
doubtedly now shared by a majority
of the people of these states. That
prohibition bills will be introduced
when their legislatures shall meet is
certain, and that they will be passed
by several is extremely probable.
The prohibition sentiment which
has been slowly but surely and stead
ily growing in the South for the past
twenty years has now assumed the
proportions of a great moral reform
wave. It has gathered strength with
each local success, until the growing
enthusiasm is making it irresistible
even where formerly it had gained
little foothold. Under the contagion
of this enthusiasm it would not be at
all strange if the spectacle of a solid
South would soon be presented to the
country on the prohibition question as
it has long been on other questions.
It is rather strange that while in
the South the prohibition sentiment
is making such remarkable headway,
it should be making no apparent prog
ress in other sections of the coun
try. Maine in the East, and Kansas
in the West, were pioneer prohibition
states. Maine was made a dry state
by law when there was not a single
dry county in the South, nor any pro
hibition sentiment. Yet in those sec
tions prohibition sentiment has not
spread. They are entirely unaffected
by the great prohibition wave that is
sweeping over the South, and from
present appearances this condition of
wet and dry will soon be another dis
tinguishing feature between the North
and the South.
Whether prohibition shall remain as
a permanent institution time alone
can show. But at the present thia
prohibition sentiment is constantly
growing in the South, and it appears
certain that thia entire section will
become dry.—Augusta Herald,