Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1915 — Page 3

4- - x

OW that scientists have discovered that high frequency electrical currents are powerful stimulants both of plant and animal life, the farm hand of the future may have to be a duly qualified electrical engineer before he can get a job. It will not be enough for him to know how to manipulate the mo-

tors and transmission gear ■ by which

the farm machinery will be run. He will have to be up on the chemistry' of electricity. He will have not only to know the use of violet rays in purifying the drinking water, but will also have to know whether ground wires are better for beets, ruby lights for radishes, mercury vapor for tobacco and electric sprinkling fdr something else. He will have to be something of a plant neurologist, too. When the corn In the south forty Is getting ■“nerves,” or when the oats In the new ground Is becoming too somnolent, he will have, to

make correct diagnoses and prescribe the proper treatment. Electrification for plant growth has arrived. And when the canny American farmer learns that he can double or even treble the output of his fields by the use of electricity, somebody will have to find a way for him to use electricity and make a good profit out of his crops. A few weeks ago there was a convention of practical electricians in Philadelphia. Among the addresses one virtually escaped the attention of the corps of reporters. Yet of all the addresses, none was more pregnant of great possibilities. Tt was really part of the report of the convention’s committee of progress and was read by the committee chairman, T. C. Martin of New York, an authority on things electrical. He gave facts arid figures to show that plarits electrically treated grew much more rapidly than those growing under normal conditions. Why this was so, he did not assume to say. He simply gave the results of experiments. The work was started on Moraine fanp in the fertile Miami river valley, four miles south of Dayton, Ohio. Dr. Herbert Q. Dorsey, an expert, had charge of the experiments, which were fostered by the efforts of F. M. Tait, a former president of the National Electric Light association. In preliminary tests, according to Martin’s report, small plots were marked off for exposure to different kinds of electrification. To insure that the soil of one plot was not better than that of another, top earth was collected, mixed and sifted and then was laid to the uniform depth of seven inches over the entire area. In the soil of plot No. 1 was buried a wire screen. Over the plot was a network of wire, stretched about fifteen inches from the ground. Connecting the network above the ground and the screen below were several wire antennae. The screen was connected to one terminal of a Tesla coil and the network to the other. A transformer stepped a 110-volt alternating current up to 5,000 volts', charging a condenser of tinfoil and glass plates, which discharged through a primary of the coil. About one hundred and thirty watts were Operated for an hour each morning and evening. Plot No. 2 was illuminated by a 100-watt tungsten lamp with a ruby bulb. The light was turned on for three hours daily, beginning at sundown. Plot N 6. 3 was illuminated the samb way, except that a mercury vapor lamp was used. No. 4 had no artificial stimulation of any kind, being intended as a comparison between electrically excited plant growth and that of natural conditions.

Amateur photographers at the seaside or even In London and other big cities must be more careful than ever how they take snapshots during wartime, for a thoughtless use of their cameras may easily cause them to find themselves in prison for a few days, to say the least, Pearson's Weekly remarks. In the early days of the war, for instance, a perfectly innocent Hull ship on a holiday in London, with his wife, was arrested by the police for taking photographs of Battprsea bridge. After being detained the best part of the day, during which inquh*L>s were made, the authorities were satisfied that he was merely a harmless snapshotter, but nevertheless they warned him to keep his camera out of use until the war is over! ■ " There are probably many thousands of amateur photographers-who, wishing to snap scenes In the neighborhood of barracks, or other militaryorniW « if they were spies. If they must take photographs in these war days let them resort’to the woods Mid country lanea, as ter from military

CAMERA MEN IN DANGER

ELECTRIC FARMING

by Robert H Moulton

In plot No. 5 was buried a wire network connected to the terminal of a 110-volt direct current. The positive terminal was attached to a small sprinkling can with a carbon electrode in its center. The can being filled, the water was subjected to electrolysis for several minutes. The plot was then sprinkled from the can, the theory being that the current might flow from the can, through the streams of water to the soil. Plots Nos. 6 and 7 were subdivided into four individual boxes, two feet square, separated by porcelain insulators and arranged with carbon electrodeg-at each end. To these electrodes were applied both direct and alternating currents. After radish and lettuce seed had been planted and germination had begun, the various methods of electrification were tried with extreme care. The result of the experiments showed that the plants in plot No. 1 grew in every Instance far more rapidly than those in the other beds and more than double the normal growth as shown in the upelectrified bed. From this the experimenters became convinced that electrification of the ground by high-frequen-cy currents stimulated plant life to an extent that warranted a more complete investigation. So they selected two acres of flat, rich ground. First a network of - sprinkling pipes was built 15 feet above ground. The pipes ran east and west a distance 'of 200 feet and were spaced at 50-foot intervals. In the northeast corner of the

scenes as they can get. At the outset of the war the military authorities issued an order that no aeroplanes or airships must be photographed at a distance of less than forty yards, or of an air station at all. without the permission of the authorities. v Germany has always been the most dangerous country for the amateur photographer, and more than one, tourist has found himself roughly handled by the German police for innocently taking photographs. w A special bill was passed a few years ago threatening tourists with a fine of £SO or two months’ imprisonment who took photographs without permission. The French officials in the towns on the Fran-co-German frontier have always objected to anyone taking snapshots, and, indeed, many a tourist has had his camera temporarily confiscated, to find afterward that his plates have all been rendered useless. . Italy net only bars people taking photographs near fortifications, but forbids the use of a camera in most of the picture galleries and museums.

yield 10,000 volts. A choke coil and a Tesla coil .were used. The whole thing was connected up so that by means of antennae current from the wire network was sent to the network of sprinkling pipes, which, of course, furnished proper connection with the ground. By the latter part of last July the system was in readiness and the currents were tested. At that time a pressure of 50,000 volts was obtained and the frequency of the oscillatory currents was estimated to be about thirty thousand cycles a second. Birds alighting on the wires were stunned and thrown the ground, but none was killed. The ground was planted to radishes, lettuce, beets, cabbages, cucumbers, turnips, muskmelons, watermelons, tomatoes, parsnips, beans, peas, corn and tobacco. All were planted in rows running east and west, so that one-half of _each row was electrified and the other half was not. As a result it was found that practically all the plants in the electrified area grew much more rapidly than those out of it. In almost every case the electrified vegetables were ripe two weeks earlier

the nation in a single season would be tremenIn his formal report to the-association, Martin said that many questions had yet to be answered before the use of electricity for the general stimulation of plant life could be considered economically possible. He .declared, however, that many of these questions are being worked out in greenhouses over the country. Just as these American experimenters proved the importance of electrification to plant life, a group of English experimenters proved its importance to animal life. They took two large brooders, filled with newly hatched chickens of the same breeds. One of them was subjected to the influence of high-frequency currents and the other was not. Those in the former were found to grow much more rapidly than those in the other. *" , Following Is a tabulation of the results of electrical stimulation of vegetables. It will be observed that In every particular the plants in the first plot, where the high-frequency current and Tesla coil were used, excelled those in plot No. 4, where natural conditions prevailed: u 2 3 Oo EJo o “o “i Mr r fl Radishes (ten plants se- i 2 : e • ? o = w lected at random): : : : • £ f :2- : : • : 3 - : « . • • • Total plant weight, grams.26s.TO 137.80 109.50 180.00 78.50 Edible portion, gram5,.139.50 57.40 40.90 79.40 31.00 Edible portion, per cent.... 51.15 41.65 87.34 44.11 39.49 Tops and leaves, grams... .12f >.50 75.70 65.90 95.00 41.50 Tops and leaves, per cent.. 43,35 54.92 60.18 52.77 55.66 Roots, grams 9.30 4.70 3.20 5.60 6.00 Roots,' per cent.. 3.50 3.43 2.48 3.12 4.85 Lettuce (ten plants selected (at random).. 67.00 52.60 56.50 46.10 31.30 Edible portion, grams 60.70 47.30 50.30 41.80 28.20 Roots, grams .....*. 6.30 6.30 6.30 4.30 3.10 Roots, per pent 9.41 10.08 11.15 9.33 7.99 Edible portibn. per cent..... 90.59 89.92 88.87

Hampton—Dinwiddow told me his family is a very old one. They were one of the first to come across. k . Rhodes—The grocer told me yesterday that now they are the last to come across.—Judge.

"My wife, is always asking me what I, would like to eat.” - .."That's kind of her." ' “Oh, I don’t Show; " When I tell her saye "The idea!* and orders something else.” * *■ ’ ■ * • -

tract seven copper wires were stretched north and south, each being 200 feet long and an interval of 15 feet separating them. The wires were elevated sufficiently for the soil to be plowed with horses. The ends of the wires were attached to insulators on top of gas pipes set in concrete. At the eastern edge of the house the experimenters built a small transformer house and installed machinery which would

than those outside the zone. The electrified end of the tobacco crop was cut and it was found that each plant weighed 1,687 grams. It was two weeks before the untreated tobacco could be cut and then it weighed only 1,63> grams to the plant. Taking into consideration that the most rapid growth of the tobacco plant is in its last two weeks before ripening, the experimenters estimated that the actual increase in weight of the plants in the electrified zone was 20 per cent greater than that in the unelectrified zone. If this could be followed out op a grand scale, it is apparent that the effect of elec-_ trification on the annual tobacco output of

THEIR DESCENT.

SUITS HERSELF.

Dr. Marden’s Uplift Talks

By ORISON SWETT MARDEN.

Copyright by McClure Newspaper Syndicate SHOULD NOT BE A DRUDGE Oft A ’ DOLL. "There are some things ft doesn’t pay us to get," said Vice-President Marshall in a recent address. “For instance, it doesn’t pay a man to get so much money that be becomes ashamed of his old-fashioned wife and no longer wants to trot in her society.” Not long ago a man who abandoned his wife and who tried in every way to provoke her to get a divorce from him so he could marry a young and attractive girl, plainly told her that she was not good-looking or stylish enough for him, that now that he had money he wanted a wife who could show off in society. This poor woman had made all sorts of sacrifices in their early days of struggle with poverty. For years she had worked and deprived herself of necessities to help her husband get a start in the world, and to care for and bring up his children without a nurse -or maid. She made a drudge of herself, but when he had become prosperous he had no use for the worn-out wife, with her burned-out beauty and her wrinkles, which had paid the price of a large part of his prosperity; he wanted to cast her aside for a young, fresh and attractive wife. In the trial the wife said: "I worked from seven in the morning until eleven o’clock at night. But now that I am no longer needed in the business, he has heaped' upon me insults untold. He has neglected and failed to properly provide for me. “He repeatedly told me that I was not fashionable enough for him,’’ the wife concluded. “He liked dressy women. He took me to one place and pointed out a Miss K. and said he bad spent |4OO wining and dining her.” The world will never know the tortures, a thousand times worse than death itself, endured by wives of prosperous husbands, who so often prefer suffering to scandal and endure a living death rather than expose their husbands, who have been fascinated by younger and more attractive women. One of the most pathetic spectacles in American life is that of the fadsd, outgrown wife standing helpless, in the shadow of her husband’s prosperity and power, having sacrificed her* youth, beauty and ambition — nearly everything that the feminine mind holds dear —to enable an indifferent, selfish, brutish husband to get a start in the world. It does not matter that the wife sacrificed her own opportunity for a career, that she gave up her most cherished ambition in order to make a ladder for her selfish husband to 'ascend by. When he has once gotten to the top, like a wily, diplomatic politician, he often kicks the ladder down. He wants to make a show in the world; he thinks only of himself. His poor, faded, worn-out wife, standing* in his shadow, is not attractive ■ enough for him now that he has gotten up in the world.

The selfish husband thinks that he should have a clear track for his ambition, and that his wife should be content, even grateful, to be allowed to tag on behind and assist him in every possible way in what he considers the grand life work of both of them —to make him the biggest man possible. It does not even occur to him thgt she could have an ambition welling up within her heart, a longing to answer the call which runs in her own blood, and a yearning to express it in some vocation as well as he. - I do not believe that the Creator has limited one-half of the human race practically to one occupation, while the other half has the choice of a thousand.

“But," many of our men readers will say, “is there any grander profession In the world than that of home making? Can anything be more stimulating, more elevating than home making and .the rearing of children? How can such a vdtation be narrowing, monotonous?" Of course it is grand. There is nothing grander in the universe than the work of a true wife, a noble mother. But It would require the constitution of a Hercules, an infinitely greater patience than that of a Job, to endure such work with almost no change or outside variety, year in and year out, as multitudes of wives and mothers do. The average man does not appreciate how almost devoid of incentives to broad-mindedness, to many-sided-ness, to liberal growth, the home life of many women is. The business man and the professional man are really in a perpetual school, a great, practical university. He is continually coming in contact with new people, .new things, being molded by a vast number of forces which never touch the wife in the quiet home. I believe in marriage, but I do not believe in that marriage which paralyses self-development, strangles ambition, and discourages evolution and self-growth, which takes away the life purpose. Nor is lt necesary that the wife should work llke a slave in order’ to grow.- There is a certainclass of men who go to the other

extreme and make slaves of their wives—work them half to death. But physical drudgery does not develop power. The slave wife is as badly off as the doll wife. A wife should neither be a drudge nor a dressed-up doll; she should develop herself by self-effort, just as her husband develops himself. She should not put herself in a position where her inventiveness and resource*' fulness and individuality, her talent* will be paralyzed by lack of motive* Everything in the whole environment of tens of thousands of American wives is discouraging to growth and tends to strangle a broader, fuller life. A healthy mind must be an active mind. Vigor and strength cannot be built up in man or woman by inaction of a life of indolence or monotony. There must be a purpose, a vigorous, strong aim in the life, or it will be nerveless, insipid and stale. For centuries women themselves accepted man’s estimate of them, and were content-to walk in his shadow. But since the higher discovery of woman in the last century a new order of things is being brought abouL Women are becoming less and less dependent upon men and more inclined to live their own lives. They are beginning to see their own possibilities, that they can have careers and ambitions as well as men. The girl of today expects a liberal education and looks forward to a career of her own. Women have at last learned that men have not monopolized all the genius, that ability knows no sex. And the wife is beginning to realize that there is one thing she should guard as the very jewel of her soul; that is, the determination to keep pace with her husband.

HOME* SWEETEST WORD IN THE LANGUAGE. The story is told of a perplexed young man who wrote to the query department of a newspaper to know whether the editor would advise him to buy an automobile or get married. He said he could not afford to do both, and was in a quandary. The editor cautioned the young man to deliberate earnestly and not to make up his mind without due consideration. He was reminded that while an ’automobile costs more it doesn’t talk back, and that a sec-ond-hand automobile could be traded for a new one. It Is not recorded what was the decision of the irresolute young man. There have been men, good men, whose lives, measured by ordinary standards, were successful, who never married; but those who hear or read of them feel that such careers were incomplete. To a certain degree, a young man should look upon marriage from a utilitarian standpoint. A good wife is so much capital. She makes him to be, by- a kind of grace, a great deal more than he is by nature. She contributes the qualities needed in order to convert his vigor Into a safe as well as productive efficiency. She introduces, for instance, into his intellectual nature that ingredient of sentiment which intellect requires in order to be abte to do its best work and makes home an Eden. “To Adam, Paradise was home; to the good among his descendants, home is paradise." Most married men are saner, much more normal and level-headed, economical and careful, on account of their wives. A model home is a great corrective for a man. It keeps him up to standard and saves him from getting blue and discouraged. It develops the affectionate side of his nature and renders his character stronger and more symmetrical. Men can produce very much mor-e because of harmony and affection in-the home. There is nothing else which will call out the divinest qualities of a man or woman like unselfish service. The very consciousness that one has others depending upon, him tedds to call out the best in him. A happy marriage brings sunshine Into the life and broadens, softens and sweetens the character. It is a great educator, a perpetual influence for good.

Who could estimate what civilization owes to man's dream of a happy home of his own! What an incentive to man in all ages has been this vision of a home of his own! It is this picture which holds the youth to his task, buoys him up in times of hardship and discouragement This picture of a home, this vision of a little cottage and some fair maiden waiting at the door —this home vision has ever been the great incentive of the struggler, the greatest incentive of mankind! It is the dream of "a home of my own” that has lifted multitudes of youths out of obscurity. There is no spur on earth which has had anything like the Influence over man that this home vision has. The thought of his home and wife children, dearer to him than life, keeps vast multitudes of men grinding away at their dreary tasks, when they see no other light in the distance. To multitudes of people hotpe is the only oasis fw their desert life. Home Is the sweetest word in the language. It has ever been the favors ite theme of the poet, the author, and the artist. History is packed with the achievements of men for the sake of the home. They cross oceans, they explore continents. They endure the heat of the tropics and the cold of the arctics, they explore mines in the wilderness, cut themselves off from civilization for years for the sake of wife and home- . ® I t-.t.iiaomii 111 - A Women are always eineere engry.