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,
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