14 HARRISBURG TELEGRAPH A NEWSPAPER FOR THE HOME Founded IS3I Published evenings except Sunday by THE TELEXiKAPII PRINTING CO., Telegraph Building. Federal Square. * "E. J. STACK POLE, Prts't & Editor-inC hirf P. R. OYSTER. Business Manager. GUS M. STEINM-ETZ, Managing Editor. *• ________ * Member of the Associated Press —The * Associated Press is exclusively en- Wtlert to the use for republication of ! *• all news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited in this paper and also the local news published |. herein. 1• All rights of republication of special ! *" dispatches herein are also reserved. [X . Member American m Newspaper Pub lishers' Assocla- Bureau of Circu .M> afil3 latlon and Penn- I Eastern office, tgli |B| Avenue Building, —— "** Entered at the Post Office in Harris- burg, Pa.i as second class matter. '> —— -jjnjrw-i. By carriers, ten cents a ? > week; by mall, J5.00 a year in advance. 3"- THURSDAY. DECEMBER 20, 1917 ' m. ™ Hurry and Cunning are the (wo i apprentice of Despatch and of Skill, * but neither of them ever learn their master's trade. — COLTOX. **. *■ • ■= THE BVDGKT . y* COUNCIL is engaged In the ** I . annual agony of paring down the budget. Like all surgical fj£ operations, if properly performed the I**- patient will recover, perhaps little fcf or none the worse for the exper f#* pnce ' Indeed the cutting away of a r... little surplus here and there may be very beneficial. But right there is where it behooves those who are wielding the knives to be careful. £ Among the items are many re quests for increases of salaries. These are difficult days for the salaried ■ man and none will begrudge the public servant his pay, but in grant- '' ing advances here and there Coun ,-L cil should be careful to go about £ the matter in an equitable manner. It will not do to keep on and on raising pay in this or .that direction without giving thought to those St whose salaries have not been ad vanced in many years. No private * employer could do that and main- Jljjj tain an efficient force, and the city (a is in precisely the same position. •; t'ouncilmen should scan carefully every salary raiser proposed and so NT divide the money available for that purpose that the deserving shall re ceive each his full share and not appropriate all to a favored few. '■ There are, also, the departments to think about. Street cleaning, street J repairs, health, parks—all ef these r i have been created for the public rgood. All have their place in the city government and all must be adequately maintained. Everything **■ told, it is a puzzle of no mean pro ngs portions. \YIIAT A CHRISTMAS! I- p(OME of us are making our Christmas preparations with a touch of sadness and a bit of u homesickness about the heart. For home is not really home with loved w ones off in the training camps and vacant places at the holiday feast. ! Rut we keep on smiling, and re- Hw membering, and ltyiking forward Jjj* hopefully and joyously toward an other Christmas. For what a Christ £'* mas that will be when the boys come ** home! What a Christmas when at IS last there really is peace again on earth! It is something to live for. > = FARM LOAN BONDS *. ENATOIi PENROSE has given notice that he will contest the kJ effort of Democrats in the Sen t.. ate to pass the Hollis amendment to the federal farm loan act authoriz ing th 2 Secretary of the Treasury to \J* purchase $100,000,000 worth of • .. bonds from farm loan banks in 1918 stnd as many more in 1919. The Sen ntor has raised a very proper ob ns jection. A careful inquiry should J- proceed any such legislation, • es r.. pecially as it has been pretty gen u erally understood that some of the farm loan banks have not been as carefully conducted as tjie principles of good business denuuid. At all * events we have gotten "lready too jJJ far along in the habit of voting hun ■' dreds of millions of dollars in a few '7 minutes and without debate. It will be well to go slow with tills latest ir proposal. £ MI'ST MAINTAIN TI'HMMKES * m HE orders issued by the Public I Service Commission in the com plaints against three Lancaster * county turnpikes indicate pretty t Plainly that the highways on which T toll is chargeij must be maintained. There has been a disposition on the Part of turnpike companies, whose *• owners realize that the days of the • stop and pay on roads are nearing £ an end. to let things slide. They h allow ruts and holes and even drains IT to go unrepaired. Practically every thing la permitted to run down on some turnpikes, except the toll gates. The commission has served notice fjj that so long as toll is taken service *• must be rendered. The roadbeds Jg must be kept safe, the drains rnain w tained and other things be fit for £ public use. It may be years before the State takes over all of the turn ip pikes and the commission seems to ijf be determined that pending the re i ) THURSDAY EVENING, moval of the gates the travel ing public shall get smooth and f-afe riding at least for its money, PI'IIIJSH THE DINM>YAI. LET us have a published list of those people who won't buy Liberty i;onds, who decline to join the Red Cross and who refuse to subscribe to Y. M. C. A. or Knights of Columbus war work funds. Let us know who they are, so that we may treat them for what they are. By that wo do not mean poor folks who cannot buy bonds or those who can glvo reasonable excuse for fail ure to assume a share of the private citizen's burden of the war, but those who are prompted to withhold their means by mere perversity of spirit. The time has come when those who are not for the nation must be regarded as against it. The sheep must be separated from the goats. As the Providence Journal says: Every German or Austrian in the United States, unless known by years of as sociation to be absolutely loyal, should be treated as a potential spy. Keep yours eyes and ears open. Whenever any suspicious act or dis lcyal word comes to your notice com municate at once with the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice. We are at war with the .most merciless and inhuman nation in the world. Hundreds of thousands of its people In this country want to see America humiliated and beaten to her knees, and they are doing, and will do, everything in their power to bring this about. Take nothing for granted. Energy and alertness in this direction may save the life of your son, or husband, or yotr brother. A sure sign of dis loyalty is failure to purchase a bond or to subscribe to the war funds. pr#viding of course, the person so licited is financially able to do so. By all means let us have the names of those who insist on aiding Ger many by withholding their dollars from the United States, so that we may file them in our notebooks for reference. Our people have a right to know who's who, patriotically speaking, in Harrisburg. THE WAR AND BASEBALL FORMER GOVERNOR JOHN IC. TENER, discussing the possibili ties of the coming season, says that despite the war "the people must have baseball." There have been and are those who believe that all forms of enjoyment, fecreation and sport should be dis continued for the period of our con flict with Germany, but Mr. Tener is not one of them. A hard worker from his childhood, the former Gov ernor plays just as hard as he works. That is why he is still young at an age when many men are beginning to feel their years. It should be so with all of us. We shall grow stale if we do nothing but work. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." The harder we work the mpre are we in need of diversion, and the American public's .great outdoor re creation is baseball. The boys took their baseball outfits with them to Erance; where is the harm in con tinuing the game at home? SOL'TH .MAKES RIO SLAM REPRESENTATIVE FITZGER ALD, of New York, .will re tire from Congress at the end of the year. His assigned reasons are that he feels the need of mak ing provision for his family r-nd that his private affairs have been neglected through the service which his Congressional membership en tails. Mr. Fitzgerald will practice law in New York. It is no secret at Washington that Fitzgerald has found his position irksome since the Wilson admin istration came in. He is a Tam many man and as such, despite his great ability, his high character and his powerful position in the House, he has ever had cold welcome at the other end of Pennsylvania Ave nue. This, doubtless, has con- Iributed to his decision to retire. He is chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, and that is the only great chairman ship in the House which is held by i Northern man. It will now go, in all probability, to Representative Sherley, of Kentucky; and Southern domination of national legislation will bo without a single flaw. THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL TO-MORROW afternoon school will let out with a rush and a shout for the holiday season. It has been "some" week. Ask any teacher if that is not so. For child hood recks little of war and the grim figure of the Kaiser is dwarfed to smallboy size and lost entirely to sight behind the collossal presence of the beneficent Santa Claus. And this is quite as it should be, the Kaiser having murdered some thou sands of children, while dear eld Santa has wrought his magic spell and blest the Christmas days of mil lions. Which is why Santa Claus will be making his endless rounds, cheerful, cherubic and smiling, cen turies after the imperial Wilhelm, like Caesar, "dead and turned to clay, will stop a crack to keep the wind away." The spirit of ChVistmas is the spirit of childhood, and so when Christ mas Combines with the boys and girls in a conspiracy against school discipline the wise teacher bows to the inevitable, turns the pages of the singing book to "Jolly Old St. " Nicholas, Bend Your Ear This Way," lets the younger pupils recite "The Night Before Christmas" and enters upon a season of Christmas trees and excitement that winds up Friday afternoon be fore the great holiday in a very orgy of holiday celebration. It's hard on cold-blooded school efficiency, but it's great sport and he were a hard-hearted Old Scrooge indeed who would have it otherwise. Looking back over the years, there is ' a halo of mellow memory about the ' bit of spruce on a school room desk that is a treasure, lndeeil, to him who holds It In his heart as preen and lovely as the day It bloomed gaudily in its dress of home-made trimming from its anchorage in an erstwhile Inkwell. And there is Joy in the recollections of the old school "treats" that thoughts of more pre tentious gifts of later years cannot mar. The riches of childhood fire not measured In dollars and cents and all the lessons are not learned from letters, So let the fun be fast and furious on the final day. Out I upon stupid textbooks! Let Santa reign supreme! 'Po&ttca- Ik By the Ex-Comniittccnian The manner In which the friends of Superior Court Judge William D. Porter, of Pittsburgh, have taken hold of the proposition of renominat ing the judge and the emphatic en dorsement given him by the bars of a number of counties, has raised the hope of many Pennsylvanlans that the state may be spared in 1918 a repetition of the recent primary and general election scrambles for places upon the appellate benches. In a number of counties members of the bar have given hearty approval to the course of Judge Porter and the sentiment manifested in favor of his renomination has been so general that there is now not much doing in the way of opposition. Men active In politics in Pennsyl vania have upon a number of occa sions expressed the hope that when the state is engaged in strenuous contests for the nomination of party tickets for state offices next year that it would be a tine thing to keep the single state-wide judicial elec tion out of partisan politics. The Por ter candidacy will furnish an oppor tunity for testing the strength of this feeling and also of the popular at titude toward the nonpartisan act. —lt is very evident from what is being said and done at the State Capitol that Governor Martin G. Brumbaugh proposes to take a hand in the primary campaign. The Gov ernor has told friends that he will make speeches in behalf of candi dates for the Legislature pledged for the "dry" amendment* and many look for him to depart from tradi tions connected with the last years of gubernatorial terms and go 011 the stump. The Governor is fond of cam paigning and with his well-known personal predelietlons In behalf of antiliquor legislation he will not want for a theme. —Men opposed to the "dry" amendment are already setting up pins about the state and are bending their efforts to sew up the nomina tions for the Legislature in both parties. Some of the Democrats are in a quandary as they fear to openly take up the amendment because of effect on some of their most ardent supporters. —Mayor Smith was indicted by the Grand Jury yesterday on charges of contempt of court and conspiracy to violate the Sher*n law in connection with the outlawry in the Fifth ward last primary election day, which re sulted in the' killing of George A. Eppley, a special policeman. Isaac Deutsch the political opponent of James A. Carey, a Mercantile Ap praiser, and one of the principals alleged to be responsible for the reign of terror that swept through the ward on that day, was indicted on charges of murder and man slaughter, together with Lieutenant David Bennett, Policeman John Wirtschafter. Michael J. Murphy, Emanuel I'ram, Lewis Feldman and Clarence Hayden, his political fol lowers. ' —Retween 30.000 and <O,OOO votes are expected to be added to the strength of the Town Meeting party through plans which will be placed in operation at once, says the Phil adelphia Press. It is the purpose of the new party leaders to secure a complete list of names on the as sessors' lists, which closed last night. These will be compared with the names of those who are registered on the voters' lists of last fall. A dif ference of more than 40,000 is ex pected to be revealed. Every man who failed to register for the recent election and who is now on the as sessors' lists, will be subjected to a personal canvass, with the idea that when a large number failed to enroll in August and September, they rep resented the Independent element who lack interest in elections when there is no prospect of a vigorous right at the polls. —The city of Scranton has started to cut down expenses and three II , department battalion chiefs have been dropped. —General regfet is being manifest ed at the Capitol on the retirement of Deputy Attorney General Horace W. Davis. He had many friends here and made a fine record. —Mayor-elect Babcoek has every one guessing on his appointments in Pittsburgh. Announcements are due next week. —The fight against Representative John E. Arthur, of Philadelphia, ac cepting a Philadelphia city office ap pears to have been sidetracked. —J. O. Mulhern, well known here, has been made an assistant fire mar shal in Philadelphia, —Auditor General Snyder's notion in ordering a new audit of the state insurance fund finances is attracting much comment as it is taken to in dicate'a policy of much activity on the part of the Auditor General to hold down expenses in departments if it looks like creating a deficit. BOOKS Rooks, books. With golden looks—- Hives of rarest honey! Story—Song, A friendly throng— The world for little money! Rlow, blizzards, blow! The hearth's aglow. No pther comfort needing Than just the light Of pages bright— Sweet sheltered fireside reading. With friends o' mine I sup and dine — The gentle, kind and clever, And though I'm poor In worldly store I'm rich in friends forever! —Frank L. Stanton in the Atlanta Constitution. Learn How to Stoke Furnace [From the Mother's Magazine.] , Learn to fire your furnace or stove economically. If you don't know Just what to do with the drafts, or the best way to fire with the various kinds of fuel, write to the manufac turer, giving the name,date of manu facture. and style number; he will send you the desired information. HARRISBtTRG tfiSSS TELEQRXPH A HANDY MAN AROUND THE HOVSE' .... BY BRIGGS • - / ABSOLUTELY <tQ) ./.NOTHIWG v - x ON 11 ' f ' ' r - HUM I ttssl ' LABOR NOTES Since the war began the employ ment of women in the British metal industries has increased 84 per cent Of the 200,000 women and girls employed in the district of Birming ham, Eng., 25,000 are organized. Missouri, Kansas and Texas Rail road has raised wages of its feder ated shop employes IVa cents an hour. On some of the street railways in Great Britain half the cars are be ing operated by women. Frisco Cement Finishers' Union has negotiated a new agreement which includes wage increases. More than 300,000 girls are en gaged in cutting moss in England, where, after being dried, it is used for fuel. Buffalo. N. Y., has raised wages 20 per cent for city laborers, hy drant men, repair men and foremen. Munition makers in this country say they can operate their plants successfully with TO per cent of wo men as employes. An American army of 1,000,000 men will require the output of 4,- 000,000 men, working in factory, field and foundry. Of the international organizations in Canada the Brotherhood of Rail road Trainmen heads the list with a reported membership of 10,684. The harvesting of the Canadian crops was done mainly by women and girls. Drug clerks in Kansas City, Mo., are organizing to reduce their 90 and 95-hour work week. Mason City( Iowa) carpenters will get the eight-hour day on January 1, 1918. DEAR MOTHER O' MINE I am sitting tonight far away from the place Where I'm sure there are others see a' beautiful face; And as 1 sit here writing line after line, • I 'most hear the voice of dear Mother o' Mine. There's many a Christmas has come and has gone, Since the first one I saw its bright ness put on; But never -a one failed my thoughts lo entwine And affections about this dear Mother o' Mine. Sometitpes there were sorrows that strewed my path thick. And sometimes were griefs that made the heart sick; But troubles could never so thickly combine As to separate Christmas and dear Mother o' Mine, Or might it be joy that was piling tip high And showing to me a cloudless blue sky; Yet the sun of delight could never so shine As to hide the loved face of dear Mother o' Mine. The years have come on and have then fled away, And her locks that were dark are now silvery gray; But itarch through the years and you'll not find a sign That she's ever been fess than dear Mother o' Mine. Her hands are now toil-worn, her Jorm less erect, Her features less plump, her step circumspect. But you can't find another, I care not how fine. That begins to compare with dear Mother o' Mine. In childhood's distress or in man hood's deep need. To each call for help she quickly gave heed. Nor ever was heard her lot to repine, This blessed and sweet dear old Mother o' Mine. Yes, Mother, dear Mother, we're both growing "old," And all our life story will soon have been told; And Christmas reminds of the Savior * Divine, Who gives life eternal, dear Mother o' Mine. And when we have crossed to the beautiful shore, Where partings and troubles can come never more, We'll see how "all things worked to gether" so flr.e For your "good" and my "good," dear Mother o' Mine. B. E. P. PRUGH. The Man For the Job WILD the congressional inquir ies into the conduct of the war—or, to be more exact, our preparation for war—result in the downfall of the Hon. Newton D. Baker as secretary of war? That is the question which, just now, has first place in the public mind: and there are only two an swers to it—yes and no. • Those who give the affirmative answer hold that Mr. Baker s not big enough for this job and that the war cannot proceed as it should until a "more sizal/le" man is put In charge. Those who give the negative an swer. however, appear to rely, main ly upon the well known character istics of the present occupant of the White House, to stick to his own appointees through thick and thin: particularly where the tight on them might imply something of a reflect tion on his own judgment—the Hon. Josephus Daniels being a conspic uous example of a man glued to his job through the cohesive power of opposition. AVhatever may he the outcome of it all, one thing appears very, clear. It was inevitable that somebody would be under fire before we had progressed very far with our part of the war; and what better target than the secretaryof war—as was the case vith Secretary Alger, in '9B. Which brings to mind, by the way, Mr. Dooley's famous remark, made at that time to his friend Hennessy. "There's a dale of dif'frence," he said, "betwane being secri'tv of war and secri'ty of a war." And so it is —as Mr. Baker is finding out for himself. And it might be added, it is much easier, of course, to find the mis takewnade by the secretary of war —in war times—than it is to avoid them. In other words, being "sec retary of a war" is a much bigger job than the average man is capable of handling without making mis takes, and many of them however easy it may be for him to criticise mistakes after they are made. Nevertheless, a fair criticism of Mr. Baker's administration —and one that covers all of his other mis ■takes as a whole —is, that he, or someone, insisted on getting rid of the one man in the army who could and would have saved him from many, if not all. if the mistakes that have been made; particularly, the mistake of "fiddling" with the busi ness in hand. That man. as everyone knows, was Major General Leonard Wood, for merly chief of staff —now relegated WHEATLESS THERE We are born In this Georgia valley with a "single eye" for three things, the weather, the harvest and Al mighty God. We have had practice in keeping our vision clear and our attention fixed on the main job. We ,heard much, for example, about "wheatlcss days" and "meatless days." But for us, this has been a "wheatlcss" year. The freeze in Feb ruary destroyed all the grain in this section. We live on corn bread. It is the best, most nourishing bread in the world except for Yankees and foreigners who do not know how lo prepare it. And even of corn we have had little enough. Last summer the floods destroyed two-thirds of the crop, so we could noi .tten pig" during the winter. Therefore we have had meatless days a-plenty, and thought nothing tragic about that. For we have had an abundance of butter, milk and eggs. We havo not suffered and we have never had bet ter health. Nearly every young sin gle man of draft age in the valley has been called and accepted in the ■National Army. Not one has been returned to us as "physically untit." We arf! vty proud of this record. We just sent them down to Camp Gordon in their Sunday clothes, and told them to do the best they could; that probably they would not worry about wrist watches and the time of day when they got in sight of the enemy's trenches. We are strongely quiet about these young men. We have uttered not one word of complaint. We are just TO DOUBLE THE ADVERTISING SPACE GORDON H. CILLEY, advertising manager of the Philadelphia store of John Wanamaker, announces that it is planned to use this season double the amount of advertising space used last season. This policy is'adopted in order to overcome selling handicaps imposed by war conditions, to properly educate people as to the new complexion of buying problems, and to establish the great store still more firmly in public esteem as a service institution. The Wanamaker example should be cited, by publishers everywhere, to any and.all merchants who may be inoculated with the virus of timidity and over caution. It is an example which the wise will follow and the foolish ignore.—Editor and Publisher. to a divisional training camp in Kansas. For some reason or other, the administration has insisted, all along, in sidetracking General Wood. First, by removing him as chief of staff and sending him to Governor's Island; next by giving him his choice of positions at Manila, Honolulu or Charleston—with the result that he took Charleston—and then, while he was doing such wonderful work whipping the South into shafje for war, suddenly shifting him to a post out west. Many were the explanations of fered, at the time, for these "pro motions" for General Wood; but the trouble with all of them was, they attributed motives to the administra tion which the administration, itself, never for a moment entertained. In other words, the "move-on" orders, handed to General Wood were not. J necessarily, intended as a recogni tion of his superior ability and ex perience as an organizer—not if the administration knew itself. On the contrary, it is an open se cret that when General Wood—testi fying in his usual frank way beforo a committee from Congress—made bold to say that what the War De partment most needed was to be "sand-bagged," he started something that someone else in the War De partment, felt called upon to finish. And, even though the sand-bag" was not used on General Wood, the means adopted appear to have been quite as effective. The result of all of which is. the Nation has lost the best service of cne of its best soldiers; the one nan. in fact, who had a sufficient gra?p of the situation and energy and finish that goes with it—to get this coun try readv for war in about half the time that will be required by those who needed to be "sand-bagged. The administration could do no bigger tiling, right now, than to re call this great American soldier to Washington and make him chief or staff and turn him loose to cut out the underbrush and dead timber. If it should, by any chance, do such a ! thing, the country would begin to I see a difference at once—and so (would Germany. But. frankly, we don't expect it. And we don't expect it, because, with General Wood as chief of staff and Newton D. Baker as secretary of war, it would be putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. And candor compels the further admis sion that it hasn't been the habit of the AVashington administration, so far, to surround itself with men of the highest capacity. dumb, holding our breath for what may happen. We are not coddling them, nor sending them boxes from home. They can live on war rations. They always have done it on less. And we reckon they will do their duty when the time comes, because they are accustomed to performing hard duties with sublimely uncon scious dignity.—Corra Harris in the New York Independent. 'NOTHER HERO He wears no medal on his vest, No lettered bronze adorns his chest. Ho makes no grandstand bid for fame, The hero stunt is not his game. But he has faced the stress of life And smiled .through tears and pain and strife. While war has put him on the sklus, He's fed a wife and seven kids And clothed and housed his growing brood And never made a comment rude. He goes his humble, helpful way And spends bis salary each day. The war-mad throng won't shout his name, But he's a hero just the same. —Elmira Star-Gazette. LOCAL PRIDE Let bards blurb of Elysian Fields or Terra del Fuego. Both may be fair. I do not care. They're too far from Wamego. There is, indeed, no place like home, as Payne said in his stanzas, None to compare, so good, so fair, as dear Wamego, Kansas. —Kansas City Star. DECEMBER 20, 19) 7. Otfer the uv "~pe>tfuu One advantage a talking machine has over the human voice is that you can shut it off or change the record. • ♦ * Must be some good in the coal barons. We read: "Following their usual custom the Keystone Coal and Coke Company, Jamison Coal Com pany and the H. C. Frick Coke Com pany and perhaps several other t>ig Westmoreland county corporations will distribute tons of candies, or anges, bananas, popcorn balls f.nd other sweetmeats at their stores and mining plants this Christmas or the day before. Every child as well as the parents will be given Christmas treats." The lovely town of Ardmore, Pa., has been substantially put on the map lately by a "movie fan" dog, named Fritz. He is owned by Mrs. J. W. Macßeynolds who takes him to the films every night. Friends of the owner say it is the "cutest thing" how Fritz pays close attention to a Mary Pickford reel and how he moans sadly when a is shown." The hot denial of Austrian news papers that Austria is not a vassal of Germany certainly recalls the eld ballad: "There was a young lady from Niger Who smiled as she rode on a tiger; They returned from the ride With the lady inside. And the smile on the face of the tiger." OUR DAILY LAUGH HORRIBLE. ,SL U . Ist Microbe— What's wrong 7. . (®'®rLviilr with you? ('/<■/> 2nd Microbe —I had a hor- -SC' "si rible dream! I 'sJ dreamed I fell \ , • g into a can of -Jfe , antiseptic ' solu *Wg\\ ONLY THING b TILAT WOUIjD yj N TB Spar row $) I ft | Whatja get in m/kto] B your stocking K/iy ( Christmas? fIWT B Stork Samu a old thing, a | n candy canol breach of prom- J now she has IB | backed out. UNRECOG ABILITY. £ $ / The folks * who are run | ning this war : don't know any : No, my boy's Si P army six weeks now and they haven't madi a ; \ T colonel out of Eirening (ttljal Indications are that hy this ttm next year that substantial progresl will not only have been made on the preparation of the twenty-seven oi so acres embraced in Capitol paib extension for the landscape garden ing which is to make It one of th beauty spots of the state, but that i' will also be possible to see the niß changes which will be made along the streets which bound the park. Specifications will be drawn up shortly for the coping to be placed at the base of the terraces which will rise from a little inside of th present edge of the park in Third Walnut and North streets and it ia •the idea to let contracts for this work withing a few months so that when spring comes around the ac five operations can be started. This work will mean that the sidewalks on the Capitol park side of Walnut ahd Third streets will be abolished \ and there will be materially widet ™ driveways. The city will have to furnish the wider street in North but that will come with the years. At Third and Walnut streets there will be an indentation into the park for highway purposes which will be • semicicular in form and not only afford more room for that busy in tersection of streets, but also per mit of the creation of a formal en trance to the park. With the en larged federal building and the new Penn-llarris this formal entrance and the "circle" will make a very attractive spot. It is hoped to get all this under way in the next twelvemonth and to push things along in the extension. It is also possible that the new highway through the pnrk extension, which will be on the lines of Aberdeen and Fast streets may be opened and Fourth street closed. The Harris burg Railways Company otticiais are ready to begin preparations to move their tracks whenever the Common wealth asks. About the only thing to be adjusted is the strip along the Pennsylvania railroad which is un der discussion with that company. By this time next year it is also pos sible that the people of Ilarrisburg will have authorized the relocation of the bridge at State Street co that it will be part of the great schema of adornment of the city. Rival claims to Fish Island, in the Susquehanna near Wilkes-Barre and underlaid with valuable coal depos its, which lias been before the State Board of Property for twenty years and attracted state-wide attention, will not be opened up again by the Board. Today it decided not to grant a rehearing- prayed by Edwin A. Hoffman, of Wilkes-Barre, who has contended since 1897 that no patents were ever issued to the Mitchell and Shoemaker interests which have held title for years and under whose leases coal has been mined and other operations conduct ed. The present title is said to date from 1811 and Hoffman was refused nineteen years ago on the ground that the title had passed from th state. He was refused a rehearing in 1901 and in 1915 renewed the case, presenting an old map which he contended proved his assertions. The Board, however, held that it was not after discovered evidence and refused to reopen the proceed ings. In another case the Board held that the state could not be a legal intervener and claim 300 acres near Mont Alto for which a patent was issued to John Horner in 1904, but on which it was contended no survey had ever been filed. These two questions have long been pend ing before the Board and will deter mine litigation which has attracted much interest. "We have had more snow and real cold weather up in Erie than wo have ever known in the month of December," said Ex-Auditor General A. E. Sisson while on a visit to tho Capitol yesterday. "This has been a busy year along the lake," said tho ? general, "but we are having winter 1 of the old-fashioned kind." Dr. Charles T. chairman of the commission to select a site for the new State Insane Hospital, says that his commission is now ready to receive invitation to view sites, but is not anxious for midwinter trips. The commission wants to se cure a site which will be amplQ and healthful and wants suggestions. "What is the reason that people persist in driving on car tracks? Don't they know that by going or.ly in the place made by tlie cars that they are really restricting the road way because they do not help make any?" asked a man yesterday. 'The traction company pays for the open ing of the tracks and everyone else uses them; the rails become clogged with snow and ice and the wheels spin around a couple of times, wast ing energy, without making any progress. I can't understand 'why teamers and auto drivers do not try to make paths or tracks and keep them open instead of running in on railroads and filling them with snow." 0 "This snow is too big a proposition for the city as it is now consti tuted,' declared another man. "The snow is really a pretty serious prop ositi-in. It is ahead of time and tr ter than expected. The allow ance for fighting and removing pnow -nras made on the basis of experience in former years. This is an extra ordinary snow and comes t a time when labor and carts are hard to get. The city's regular force is small enough and does fine work consider ing its appropriation, but this snow needs a big force of men o tackle it and Clear it off. And the prob lem is where to get the men r.nd the carts at this time?" These are the days of conserva tion even in Christmas greetings. A rather nicely printed paper bag was received here today from a Virginia city, conveying best wishes for a Merry Christmas. It was just an ordinary paper bag such as you re ceive when you buy peanuts. WELL KNOWN PEOPLE —Dr. Wilrner Krusen, Philadel phia director ctt health, who seized coal for a Philadelphia charitable in stittition, says he would do it again if occasion arose. -—R. S. Taylor, prominent, resident of Bethlehem, will take charge of the antisedition campaign in North ampton. —D. W. Kuhn, Pittsburgh coal administrator, asks heads of estab lishments to lend him trucks on Sunday to move coal from mines. —Cass Morgan is the new mercan tile appraiser of Lackawanna. He lives in Scranton. -—Major Russell Reall, General Pershing's adjutant, is a native of Unlontown. DO YOU KNOW That Harrlsburg people are furnishing considerable material to make soldiers comfortable over the holidays In the big camps? ' HISTORIC HARRISBURG Peter Barbezon, a French trader, is said to have had a trading post at Liocliiel before Harris came this way.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers