I
§ The Constitution |
I _WelI Built J
Jg The New Method of Construction Adds <2
L Strength and Saves Weight *
i The Constitution, tl*? yacht built for
She defense of the America's Cup by <
the Herreshoff Manufacturing Com
pany,is probably the lightest construct-
CONSTITUTION ON HER T RIAL SAIL OFF BRISTOL.
Ed vessel of her size ever built, and it
Is largely on the lightness of lier con
struction that those interested in the
yacht expect she will make her great
gains. In model there is vers* little
difference between her and the Colum
bia. The slight differences made are
expected to enable her to carry ten
per cent, more canvas than the cham
pion of IS!)!), which alone should make
her very much faster than the older
yacht, but with the great gains made
In the construction of the hull these
gains will be much more than they
(THE CONSTITUTION'S LONGITUDINAL PLAN, SHOWING FOSITION
1 OF MAST STEP AND LEAD.
torould otherwise be. Those who are
Interested in the yacht think there is
ho doubt of her beating the Independ
ence, and they argue that even if the
models are the same and each yacht
has the same amount of driving power
the Constitution, with less weight to
drive, will go through the water faster
than the Independence, and every one
concedes that in the hull the Constitu
tion saves tons in weight over the In-
Sependence. The Scientific American
gives some detailed drawings of the
construction of the Constitution, and
Shows where the great gains in weight
iaving are made.
NEW SPORT FROM ANTIPODES.
Hx and Saw Contests Are Witnessed by
Shouting; Thousands.
Tasmania may justly claim the credit
bt having given the world a new sport.
In that far-off land, among the men
of brawn and might, whose swinging
axes have felled the towering forests
4nd converted their trackless depths
into flourishing farm lands, has arisen
a. contest tit for kings; a form of ath
letic exercise calculated to bring the
thrill of delight to all who have an
honest admiration for good red blood
and the display of mighty muscle sys
tematically trained to do useful work.
The new sport may be designated as
!'axmanship," and although it is of but
decent origin it has already taken the
premiership over all other sports.
A HANDICAP CHOPPING CONTEST IN FULL SWING.
iWhat thd bull tighter is to Spain and
Mexico, the cricketer to England, the
Bwordsmau to France, ilie hockey
player to Canada, and the football and
baseball hero to the United States the
champion ax man has become to the
brawn loving Australians.
The championship contest or carni
val is held yearly in Ulverstone, Tas
mania, some time during the first two
months of the year, under the auspices
of an organization specially formed for
the purpose, bearing the title of the
"United Australian Axemen's Associa
tion."
The entries to the yearly competition
kre not confined to Tasmania, but
come also from Victoria, New Sontl
: Wales and New Zealand. Each dis
trie? has its champion, and among th«
adherents of these various stars tber«
Is the most heated controversy as tc
the respective merits of each. Foi
months before the great contest thest
brawny axmen spend all their spare
time practicing, until they develop a
speed and strength that is little shorl
of marvelous. This year's carnival is
conceded to have been the most suc
cessful since the yearly meeting was
Inaugurated.
In the championship chopping con-
tests there were six trials and the final.
Eight men participated in each of the
trials, and the winners fought out the
finals. As this contest is designed pri
marily to test a man's skill in felling a
tree, the log, a great piece of tough
wood, six feet four inches in girth, is
placed firmly in the ground, as though
it were a growing tree.
Five minutes before the beginning
of the heat the referee's whistle sum
mons the contestants into the inclos
ure. They are all splendid specimens
of physical prowess—thick set, deep
chested, iron muscled and bronzed
from exposure Each carries his fa
vorite ax, the fullest latitude being al
lowed in the matter of selection. It is
a significant fact that several of tho
THOMAS PETTITT, WHO WON THE CHAM
PIONSHIP.
saws and axes used this year were the
product of American firms. When all
is ready the pistol shot sounds and the
contest is on.
Scarcely less exciting is the sawing
contest. The log used is the same size
as that employed in the chopping con
test. but the time made is much more
rapid, for the great saw cuts through
the wood much more quickly than the
axe can go.
This year for the first time the ax
men's and sawyers' championships
were won by the same man—Thomas
Pettitt, of Sprint, Tasmania. Not only
did he win both events, but he also
broke the record for each.
In some Italian towns, instead ot
giving books as prizes in public schools
they give savings bank books, with a
small sum entered to the credit of the
prize winner.
Poooooooooooooooooooo
ital For Sick Wheat jf
Cereal Infirmary at Port Ar- 6
l on Lake Superior Won- Q
ierful Cures Effected. 6
00000000000000000000000000
. The latest thing in the hospital line
is an infirmary for sick wheat, where
various ailments of the kernel are
treated and in many cases a perfect
cure is effected.
1 There is an immense annual loss re
sulting from wet or diseased wheat.
The loss from loose smut alone is at
least $18,000,000 a year. The Depart
ment of Agriculture has disseminated
a great deal of information among the
farmers in regard to the diseases of
wheat and the means for bringing
about a cure, but not much benefit has
resulted from the information. In the
large wheat sections of Manitoba and
the Northwest the same conditions
prevail, and it was with the object of
reducing the loss to a minimum that
the wheat hospital has been estab
lished at Port Arthur, at the north
west end of Lake Superior. Here an
elaborate system is in use for restor
ing diseased wheat to a healthy state.
The building is in the form of a large
elevator, very similar to the common
grain elevators of the United States
and Canada. It is supported out in tho
lake upon crib work, so that vessels
may come alongside and carry the
cured wheat directly to the East or
foreigu ports. About 2,000,000 bushels
of wheat are treated in the hospital
every year.
Where the disease of the wheat is
of a very virulent type, it is impossi
ble to Improve it in health. Diseases
cnown as "stinking smut" or "bunt"
'
"WHEAT HOSPITAL," PORT
CANADA.
are beyond all help. In the advanced
stages of those diseases the whole ker
nel is infected with the germ and be
comes a mass of spores, which have
consumed all the nutritive parts of the
kernel, leaving only a thin shell on the
outside. When this breaks there Is a
countless number of germs released,
which have a fetid odor and are ruia
ous to tiour with which they come in
contact. Kernels that are intact in
side the brown skin can be successful
ly treated, even though they are sa
black with smut as to be irrecogniza
ble as wheat. In addition to this un
sanitary or dirty wheat, there are ker
nels that get the dropsy; that is, they
become saturated with water, and are
uafit for anything except stock fodder.
Sometimes an entire crop will be af
fected in this way, and it usually
proves to be a total loss.
The drying plant of the hospital is
capable of treating 0500 bushels per
hour. The plant includes a series of
frames of perforated metal, through
which hot air is forced until the wet
wheat is completely dried. The wheat
is divided into three classes, depending
upon the amount of water it contains,
and this condition corresponds to the
stage of the disease. "Tough" wheat
contains about five per cent, of water,
"damp" wheat about eight per cent.,
and "wet" whsat about fifteen per
cent. Normal wheat contains about
four per cent, of water. After wheat
in any of the stages of the disease re
ceives the treatment given at the hos
pital, it comes out in a normal condi
tion and ready for the market as lirst
class wheat.
Scouring is the treatment given for
smut. The dirty wheat is passed
through rapidly revolving machines of
metal and (he dirt is removed by fric
tion. In one stage of the treatment
the wheat is thrown from the top of
the elevator to the bottom floor, and
the erosion is such that in a few
months pine planks, two and a half
inches in thickness, will be completely
worn out. As a great amount of dust
is thrown oil' from the smutty wheat
in this treatment, the employes in the
hospitals are votnpelled to wear face
masks. These are made of hard white
I' V &
ATTENDANT IN A WHEAT HOSPITAL,
SHOWING FACE PROTECTOR.
rubber, wltli holes iu the sides. In
are placed small pieces of
dampened sponge that absorb the
dust as the workmen Inhale the air.
Over their eyes are worn a lame oair
of close-fitting glasses. With tM«
head dress they look almost like div
ers.
It Is said that wheat passing through
this treatment Is better for milling pur
poses than the normal wheat, from the
fact that a part of the coat, which has
to be removed In milling, is removed
by the treatment. There is none of
it used in the flour mills of this coun
try, however, most of it being shipped
to Europe and Eastern Canada.
Discovery of Extraordinary Plant.
What is probably the most extra
ordinary plant ever discovered has
now been found by E. A. Suverkrop,
of Philadelphia, who, during trips to
South America, has for some years
been contributing to the collection of
ui.s friend, Professor N. E. Brown, of
the Herbarium, Kew Gardens. Lon
don. The amazing plant -which Mr.
Suverkrop has now found is an orchid
that takes a drink whenever it feels
thirsty by letting down a tube into the
water, the tube, when not in use, being
coiled up on top of the plant.
"One hot afternoon," says Mr. Su
verkrop, "I sat down under some brush
wood at the side of a lagoon on the
Itio de la Plata. Near at hand was a
forest of dead shorn trees, which had
actually been choked to death by or
chids and climbing cacti. In front of
me, and stretching over the water of
the lagoon and about a foot above it,
was a branch of one of these dead
trees. Here and there clusters of com
mon 'planta del ayre' grew on it, and a
network of green cacti twined around
It.
"Among the orchids I noted one dif
ferent from the rest, the leaves, sharp
lancehead shaped, growing all round
the root and radiating from it. From
the centre or axis of the plant hung a
long slender stem about one-eighth of
an inch thick by one-fourth inch wide,
the lower end of which was in the
water to a depth of about four inches.
"I at once went over to examine my
discovery. Imagine my surprise when
I touched the plant to see this centre
stem gradually contract and convul
sively roll itself up in a spiral like a
roll of tape.
"But more surprising yet was the ob
ject and construction of this stem. I
found on close examination and dissec
tion that it was a long slender flat
tube, the walls about 1-32 of an inch
thick, cellular in construction, open at
the outer end and connected at the in
ner end to the roots by a series of hair
like tubes.
"By subsequent observation I found
that when the plant was in want of
water this tube would gradually un
wind till it dipped into the water. Then
it would slowly coil round and wind
up. carrying with it the amount of
water that that part of the tube which
had been immersed contained, uutil
when the final coil was taken the water
was dumped, as it were, direct into
the roots of the plant. The coil re
mained in this position until the plant
required more water. Should the
plant, however, be touched while the
tube is extended, the orchid acts like
the sensitive plant (mimosa I the
coiling action is much more rapid.
"I found many of these plants, all
directly over the water or over where
the water had been. In the latter case
it was almost pitiful to see how this
tube would work its way over the
ground in search of the water that was
not."
t.!ttle Known About Morocco.
Xobody knows what the population
of Morocco is. Estimates place it ail
the way from 2,500,000 to 9,400,000,
says a correspondent of the New York
Press. A large part of the country is
totally unexplored. The French lately
have gone in behind Morocco and ex
tended the boundaries of Algiers, so as
to take in the Tuat region, a chain of
fertile oases through which run the
caravan rotes. The Sultan has expos
tulated and is still expostulating, but
with no effect so far as can be seen.
Morocco is sometimes called the "sick
man of the West," but those best in
formed believe that It is a pretty lively
sick man.
England Fears Timber Famine.
If it were not for the foreign sup
plies England receives a timber fam
ine would have overtaken the country
long ago, because the home-grown sup
ply has not been able to meet a tithe
of the demand for long enough, and
that only of inferior kinds of timber,
says a British agricultural Journal. If
the foreigu supply of tir alone was to
fall off sensibly now the whole building
trade of the country would come to a
partial standstill and the wagon com
panies would be next to idle.
The steeple of the Cathedral of Ant
werp, Belgium, is 470 feet in helghi,
which makes it the highest church
stMinle in the world-
DB. TALMAGES SERMON
SUNDAY'S DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED
DIVINE.
Subject: The Curse of Speculation—ln
tegrity and Villainy In Wall Street—
Leisom Drawn From Gambling Craxea
Which Have Swept Over the World.
[Copyright 1901.1
WASHINGTON, D. C.—ln this discourse
Dr. Talraage arraigns the spirit of wild
speculation and gives some account of
the financial ruin of other days; Proverbs
xxiii, 5, "Kiches certainly make them
selves wings; they fly away as ar>. eagle
toward heaven."
Money 1 is a gold breasted bird "with
silver beak. It alights on the office
desk or in the counting room or on the
parlor centre table. Men and women
stand and admire it. They do not notice
that it has wings larger than a raven's,
larger than a flamingo's, larger than an
eagle's. One wave of the hand of mis
fortune, and it spreads its beautiful
plumage and is gone, "as an eagle toward
heaven," my textbook says, though some
times I think it goes in the other direc
tion.
What a verification we have had of
the flying capacity of riches in Wall
Street! And Wall Street is one of the
longest streets in all the world. It does
not begin at the foot of Trinity Church,
New York, and end at the East River, as
many suppose. It reaches through all
our American cities and across the seas.
Encouraged by the revival of trade and
by the fact that Wall Street disasters of
other years were so far back as to be
forgotten, speculators run up the stocks
from point to point until innocent people
on the outside suppose that the stocks
would always continue to ascend. They
gather in from all parts of the country.
Large sums of money are taken into
Wall Street and small sums of money.
The crash comes, thank God, in time to
warn off a great many who were on
their way thither, for the sadness of the
thing is that a great many of the young
men of our cities who save a little money
for the purpose of starting themselves
in business and who have SSOO or §IOOO
or S2OOO or SIO,OOO go into Wall Street
and lose all. And if there was a time for
the pulpit to speak out in regard to cer
tain kinds of nefarious enterprises now
is the time.
Stocks rose and fell, and now they
begin to rise again, and they will fall
again until thousands of young men will
be mined unless the printing press and
the pulpit give emphatic utterance. My
counsel is to countrymen, so far as they
may hear of this discourse, if they have
surplus, to invest it in first mortgages
and in moneyed institutions which, though
paying comparatively small interest, are
sound and safe beyond dispute, and to
stand clear of the Wall Street vortex,
where so manv have been swamped and
swallowed. What a compliment it is to
the healthy condition of our country that
these recent disasters have in no wise
depressed trade! I thank God that Wall
Street's capacity to blast this country
has gone forever.
Across the island of New York in
1685 a wall made of stone and earth
and cannon mounted was built to keep off
the savages. Along by that wail a street
was laid out, and as the street followed
the line of the wall it was appropriately
called Wall Street. It is narrow, it is
unarchitectural, and yet its history is
unique. Excepting Lombard street, Lon
don, it is the mightiest street on this
planet. There the Government of the
United States was born. There Washing
ton held his levees. There Mrs. Adams
and Mrs. Caldwell and Mrs. Knox and
other brilliant women of the Revolution
displayed their charms. There Wither
son and Jonathan Edwards and George
Whitefield sometimes preached. There
Dr. Mason chided Alexander Hamilton
for writing the Constitution of the Uni
ted States without any God in it. There
negroes were sold in the slave mart.
There criminals were harnessed to wheel
barrows and, like beasts of burden, com
pelled to draw or were lashed through
the streets behind carts to which they
were fastened. There fortunes have come
to coronation or burial since the day
when reckless speculators in powdered
hair and silver snoe buckles dodged Du
gan, the Governor-General of His Maj
esty, clear down to yesterday at 3 o'clock.
The history of Wall Street is to a cer
tain extent the financial, commercial,
agricultural, mining, literary-, artistic,
moral and religious history of this coun
try. There are the best men in this
country, and there are the worst. Every
thing from unswerving integrity to tip
top scoundrelism—everything from heav
en bom charity to bloodless Shylock
ism. I want to put the plow in at the
curbstone of Trinity and drive it clear
through to Wall Street ferry, and so it
shall go if the horses are strong enough
to draw the plow.
First of all, Wall Street stands as a
type in this country for tried integrity
and the most outrageous villainy. Farm
ers who have only a few hundred dol
lars' worth of produce to put on the mar
ket have but little to test their charac
ter, but put a man into the seven times
heated furnace of Wall Street excite
ment and he either comes out a Shadrach,
with hair unsinged, or he is burned into
a black moral cinder. No half way work
about it. If I wanted to find integrity
bombproof, I would go among the bank
ers and merchants of Wall Street, yet be
cause there have been such villainies enact
ed there at different times some men
have supposed that it is a great financial
debauchery, and they hardly dare go
near the street or walk up and down it
unless they have buttoned up their last
pocket and had their lives insured or re
ligiously crossed themselves. Yet if you
start at either end of the street and
read the business signs you will thid the
names of more men of integrity and
Christian benevolence than you can find
in the same space in any street of any
of our cities. When the Christian com
mission and the sanitary commission
wanted money to send medicine and band
ages to the wounded, when breadstutfs
were wanted for famishing Ireland, when
colleges were to be endowed and churches
were to be supported and missionary so
cieties were to be equippd for their work
of sending the gospel all around the
world, the first street to respond has
been Wall Street, and the largest re
sponses in all the land have come from
Wall Street.
But, while that street ig a type oi tried
integrity on one hand, it is also a type of
unbounded swindle on the other. There
are the spiders that wait for innocent
dies; there are the crocodiles that crawl
up through the slime io cranch the calf;
there are the anacondas, with lifted loop,
ready to crush the unwary; there are fi
nancial wreckers who stand on the
beach praying for a Caribbean whirlwind
to sweep over our commercial interests.
Let me say it is no place for a man to
go into business unless his moral princi
ple is thoroughly settled. That is no
place for a man togo into business who
does not know when he is overpaid $5 by
mistake whether he had better take it
back or not; that is no place for a man
togo who has large funds in trust and
who is all the time tempted to speculate
with them; that is no place for a man to
go who does not quite Know whether the
laws of the State forbid usury or patron
ize it. Oh, how many rjen have risked
themselves in the vortex and gone down
for the simple reason their integrity had
not been thoroughly established! Re
member poor Ketcham—how soon the
flying hoofs of hiß iron grays clattered
with him to his destruction; remember
poor Gay, «t thirty years of ace, aston
ishing the world with his fortune® and
his forgeries; remember that famous man
whose steamboat and whose opera houses
could not atone for his notorious rides
through Central Park in the face ol
decent New York and whose behavior on
Wall Street by its example has blasted
tens of thousands of young men of this
generation.
I have not so much admiration for the
French Empress who stood in her balcony
in Paris and addressed an excited mob
and quelled it as I have admiration foi
that venerable banker on Wall Street who
in 1864 stood on the steps of his moneyed
institution and quieted the fears of de
positors and bade peace to the angry wave,
of commercial excitement.
God did not allow the lions to hurt
Daniel, and He will not allow the "bears"
to hurt you. Remember, my friend,
that all these scenes of business will soon
have passed away, and by the law of God's
eternal right all the affairs of your busi
ness life will be adjudicated. Honesty
pays be3t for both worlds.
Again, I have to remark that Wall
Street is a type throughout the country
of legitimate speculation on the one
hand and of ruinous gambling on the
other. Almost every merchant is to some
extent a speculator. He depends not only
upon the difference between the whole
sale price at which he gets the goods and
the retail at which he disposes of the:%,
but als« upon the fluctuation of the
markets. If the markets greatly sink, he
greatly loses. It is as honest to deal in
stocks as to deal in iron or coal or hard
ware or dry goods. He who condemns all
stock dealings as though they were in
iquitous simply shows his own ignorance.
Stop all legitimate speculation in this
country, and you stop all banks, you
stop all factories, you stop all storehouses,
you stop all the great financial prosperi
ties of this country.
Sedate England took its chance in
1720. That was the South Sea bubble.
They proposed to transfer all the gold of
Peru and Mexico and the islands of the
sea to England. Five millions' worth of
shares were put OT the market at £3OO
a share. The books open, in a few davs
it is all taken and twice the amount sub
scribed.
Excitement following excitement until
all kinds of gambling projects came forth
under the wing of this South Sea enter
prise. There was a large company formed
with great capital for providing funerals
for all parts of the land. Another com
pany with large capital— £5,000,000 capi
tal —to develop a wneel in perpetual mo
tion; another company, with a capital of
£4,000,000 to insure people against loss by
servants; another company, with £2,500,-
000 capital, to transplant walnut trees
from Virginia to England; then, to car
the climax, a company was formed for
"a great undertaking—nobody to know
what it is." And, 10, £600,000 in shares
were offered at £IOO a share; books were
opened at 9 o'clock in the morning and
closed at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and
the first day it was all subscribed. "A
great undertaking—nobody to know what
it is!"
An old magazine of those days de
scribes the scene (Hunt's Magazine). It
says:"From morning until evening
Change alley was full to overflowing with
one dense, moving mass of living Beings,
composed of the most incongruous ma
terials and in all things save the mad
pursuit whereof they were employed utter
ly opposite in their principles and feel
ings and far asunder in their stations in
life and the professions they follow.
Statesmen and clergymen deserted their
high stations to enter upon this great
theatre cf speculation and gambling.
Churchmen and dissenters left their
fierce disputes and forgot their wranglings
upon church government in the deep and
hazardous game they were playing for
worldly treasures and for riches, which,
if gained, were liable to disappear within
an hour of their creation. Whigs and
Tories buned their weapons of political
warfare, discarded party animosities and
mingled together in kind and friendly in
tercourse, each exulting as • their stocks
advanced in price and grumbling when
fortune frowned upon tnem. Lawyers,
physicians, merchants and traveling men
forsook their employment, neglected their
business, disregarded their engagements
to whirl along in the stream, to be at
last engulfed in the wild sea of bank
ruptcy. Females mixed with the crowd,
forgetting the station and employment
which nature had fitted them to adorn,
and dealt boldly and extensively and, like
those oy whom they were surrounded,
rose from poverty to wealth, and from
that were thrown down to beggary and
want, and all in one short week and per
haps before the evening which terminated
the first day of their speculation. Ladies
of high rank, regardless of every appear
ance of dignity and blinded by the pre
vailing infatuation, drove to the shops of
their milliners and haberdashers and
there met their stockbrokers, whom they
regularly employed and through whom
extensive sales were daily negotiated. In
the midst of the excitement all distinc
tion of party and religion and circum
stances and character were swallowed
up.'
Hut it was left for our own country to
surpass it all about thirty-seven years
ago. We have the highest mountains and
the greatest cataracts and the longest
rivers, and of course we had to have the
largest swindle. One would have thought
that the nation had seen enough in that
direction during the morous multicaulis
excitement, when almost every man had
a bunch of crawling silkworms in his
house, out of which ne expected to make
a fortune. But all this excitement was
as nothing compared with what took
place in 1564, when a man near Titusville,
Penn., digging a well, struck oil. Twelve
hundred oil companies call for a billion
of stock. Prominent members of churches,
as soon as a certain amount of stock was
assigned them, saw it was their privilege
to become presidents or secretaries or
members of the board of direction. Some
of these companies never had a foot of
ground, never expected to have. Their
entire equipment was a map of a region
where oil might be and two vials of
grease, crude and clarified. People rushed
down from all parts of the country by the
first train and put their hard earnings in
the gulf.
A young man came down from the oil
region of Pennsylvania utterly demented,
having sold his farm at a fabulous price
because it was supposed there might be
oil there —coming to a hotel in Philadel
phia at the time I was living there,
throwing a S3OOO check to pay for his
noonday meal and saying he did not care
anything about the change! Then he
stepped back to the gas burner to light
his cigar with a thousand dollar note. Ut
terly insane!
The good Christian people said, "This
company must be all right, because Elder
So-and JO IS president of it, and Elder So
and-so is secretary of it, and then there
are th.ee or four highly respected profess
ing Christians in the board of directors."
They did not know that when a professed
Christian goes into stock gambling he
lies like sin. But alas for the country! It
became a tragedy, and a thousand million
dollars were swamped. There are families
to-day sitting in the shadow of destitu
tion who but for that great national out
rage would have had their cottages and
their homesteads. 1 hold up before the
young men these four great stock gam
bling schemes that they may see to what
length men will go smitten of this pas
sion, and I want to show them how all
the best interests of society are against
it and God is against it and will condemn
it for time and condemn it for eternity.
I do not dwell upon the frenzied specula
tions in Wall Street last month. You
have enough remembrance of that finan
cial horror. I only want you to know
that it was in a procession of monetary
frenzies, some of which hare paaaed and
others are to come.