WE clip the following extract from the
Philadelphia Press. This article should
be of great interest to every true scientist.
" Have we really entered upon the age of
aluminum ? As is well known, aluminum is
the most abundant of all the metals on the
earth's crust; and ever since its discovery
almost every leading metallurgist and chemist
has been working to find some cheap process
for reducing it. In a large measure they have
succeeded. Only a few years ago this metal
cost more than gold. Today, thanks to the
enterprise of Americans, it has been reduced
to the price, block for block, of nickel. At
$2 per pound aluminum is a cheaper metal to
use than nickel. It is nearly four times
lighter than nickel, and will go, therefore,
nearly four times as far.
"Aluminum at twenty-five cents per pound,
and it will surely reach that price, will take
the place of iron and steel in many important
lines of manufacture. Its adaptability to ship
building becomes at once apparent. The use
of aluminum for this purpose would change
the mighty black racers of the Atlantic into
bright silver vessels.
Its chief advantage is its lightness. At
present one of the great difficulties in ocean .
navigation is the weight of vessels. It is im
possible to get engine power sufficient to ob
tain more than twenty miles an hour. It has
been estimated that if an Atlantic liner were
built of aluminum, clr that the weight of the
material out of which ships are constructed
be reduced by one half, and their sides plated
with a highly polished non-corrosive sub
stance, it would have less than one-third the
draught, and be propelled with the same en
gine power at double the speed which charac-
THE FREE LANCE.
terizes the iron-built steamships of the present
" Houses can be built of aluminum ; and,
as this metal never rusts, and is as fire-proof
as iron, a house constructed of it would not
only survive a great conflagration, but always
exhibit a silvery glistening surface. Passen
ger cars made of aluminum would be incom
bustible and would not be readily crumbled
by collisions. The ductility of aluminum will
render it the best of all possible materials for
bridges
" Whether the bright and beautiful alumin
um will sooner or later replace the black and
ugly iron in most of the latter's uses remains
to be seen. There is aluminum in every clay
bank, in every plain, in every mountain-side,
and when it reaches a cost of say twenty-five
cents a pound, it is safe to predict that we
shall have entered an age of aluminum."
yOT long since, the taxpayers of France
were called upon to meet the extra
ordinary outlay of $300,000,000, appropriated
by the French government in order to put
the eastern defences of France in a proper
condition. The excuse for these enormous
outlays, which is given to the people, is that
" France is bound by the fatality of events,
and cannot escape from the conditions that
surround her.
In past times it was considered the high
est work of diplomacy for the government of
a nation to lift itself out of the current of the
so-called "fatality of events ; " but it has
been the misfortune of the French people to
have had no great statesman capable of lay-
THE BURDENS OF A WAR POLICY,