The Syracuse Journal, Volume 3, Number 48, Syracuse, Kosciusko County, 30 March 1911 — Page 2

Syracuse Journal N. G. CONNOLLY, Publisher. SYRACUSE, - - INDIANA. MALI’S PRAYER FOR A MATE Supplication for Ideal Woman That Surely Seems to Be Comprehensive Enough. “Give me, God, a vibrant flame of a woman for a mate. Make her, I pray The?, a woman of merriment. Fill her with a master love for the strenuous. Enlarge her vision so that it will see all things, and make her wise witt that wisdom which shall let her see naught that demands her forgive ness. >Give her a body compound of strength and symmetry. Send sui D ing through her a spirit elemental. Fill her with a love for the open.air, the high hills, the winding streams, the storms that send snow and sleet acrcss the wastes. Make her vibrate witt the joy of the lightning flash and the crash of the thunder. Let her ever be a silent worshiper of the stars. Make her, I pray Thee, a sweetheart of the natural. I would have her frank and fearless and gentle—fit to play her hand in the game of life in the manner of a master. And when in Thy goodness Thou has given this woman unto me, let me ever find in her something elusive — something that shall ever keep me searching joyously and with wonder. Give me, God, a woman who will demand more of me than I have ever dared.to demand of myself—who shall help me liberate that creative energy necessary for the materialization of my dreams: If it be Thy will that this woman be not given to me in the flest, give her to me as an ideal woman who shall lead me daily to render to my neighbors the service most expressive of my great love for her.” —Hfiman Life. Accommodating Meteor. Oike of the most useful results from the Istudy of sporadic meteors, or fireballs, is the light they throw upon the question of the height of the atmosphere, since it is the friction of the air that sets them on fire, and if their elevation is known at the moment of their first appearance, the probable height,of the atmosphere can be calculated. On August 11, 1909, a brilliant meteor happened to impress its pict jre simultaneously on three photographic plates, at Tashkend, Iskander and Tschimgan, in Russian Turkestan. The| distances between these places furriished base-lines from which the height could be deduced. The calculation, published in the Astronomische Nachrichten, Number 4447, shews that the meteor first appeared at a height of 69.45 miles above the earth, and disappeared, probably by dissipation, at 50 miles. Earth Illumines the Sky. Ih studying the amount of light in the sky on a starlit night a German asfponomer has reached the. interesting conclusion that the luminosity of the sky is caused partly by direct starlight and partly by some other sou|rce of light. This latter he proposes to call earthlight, and he suggests that it may be due to a permanent aurora attending the earth. The light is variable not only on different nig its, but at different hours of the same nights. He has found it to be frojn seven to fifteen times the amount of mean starlight, but it is believed that this ratio is exceptional anc does not prevail everywhere. Some observations indicate that the light had its origin close to the surface of the earth. It has been suggested that it may have a similar origin to that of the light emitted by the coma of a comet. Spanish Painter’s Ideal. i Joaquin Sorolla, the Spanish painter, is in Chicago, where 140 of his J paintings are on exhibition. Describing his portrait of Columbus, painted for Thomas F. Ryan of New York, ths artist said: “How did I paint the great discoverer? Embarking from Palos, of course, with a little of the boat and the sail showing, and a little of the shore and the town. I stud- • iec all the documents I could find, ani painted him in a gray light, for thii sun did hot shine when he set sa: 1, and we must be truthful above all. I could find no well authenticated portraits, so my serviceable model WE.s his descendant, the present Duke of Veragua, who is thirty years old and of the best Spanish type.” Vast Saving Possible. During the panic of 1907 employees of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis ard Omaha railroad were called together and asked how a saving could be made in the management of any department of the road. The need of economizing apparently impresseed tie wqrkm-'n tji P first month aftvt the meetings showed a decrease ir the ramoaus uul oi ipJti.ouo, when practically the same tonnage had been hauled. It is believed that a proportionate saving is possible on a majority of railroads if the employees would d,b their best, and it is figured that there could be a saving o:' $55,000,000 In the use of coal on ,a 1 the railroads of the country in a -single year. Looking Ahead. “I think I had better get a job before we marry.” “Don’t be so unromantic, Freddy. I won’t need any clothes for a long, , l<ng time." "But you may want to eat almost immediately, my dear.”

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tN the summer of 1909, when gold was discovered In the Porcupine Lake mining district of Canada, about 500 miles north of Toronto, the region was so inaccessible and the conditions of life were so hard that nothing except the lure of gold could have brought white men to the spot. Everywhere was a trackless, low-lying forest. Perhaps it would be more nearly accurate to say that everywhere was a great marsh filled with trees. In the winter the temperature dropped to 60 degrees below zero arid the snow rose to the forest branches. In the summer there was a pest of insects. Poisonous black flies —almost invisible because of their smallness —buzzed all the day. At night the black flies laid off and the mosquitoes came on. There was never a summer hour, by day or night, when a hu-

man being could have lived at peace; when his face would not hdve been stinging; when his swollen features would not have made him grotesque. But few had ever suffered, because there were only a few to suffer. Only an occasional trapper ever penetrated the wilderness. The prospector had not come, because the prospector, as a rule, goes only where mountains beckon. The prospector did not know that mountains, like teeth, may wear off until only their roots remain. Nor did the prospector know that, in the great dentistry of nature, these mountain roots afe sometimes filled with gold and silver, nickel and Iron. Yet such is the fact. When the world was young a mountain range

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jextended from Minnesota, across Ontario, to Labrador. Nobody but geologists make the statement with confidence. They say these mountains were the oldest mountains on the continent; that they were old when the Rockies were yet unformed; that the glacial drift and the disintegrating effects of untold millions of years of heat and cold have worn them away until only the “roots” remain; and they point to the roots as proof of their theory. The roots are there. Anybody can see them. Some of them are below the surface, some are above. Over most of the roots, are a few feet of earth, but, here and there, a huge shoulder of rock thrusts itself above the surface; here and there a great ledge plows its way through the forests and then disappears in the marsh; and nowhere can one dig far without coming to rock. A singular incident explains, perhaps, why these mountain roots were not permitted to remain untouched for another hundred million years. The incident had its Inspiration in politics. The Ontario government felt that it was ; losing strength with the farmers. Wise men in the ministry looked around to see what could be done. The farmers in the “clay belt” had been clamoring for a railroad. The ministry decided that It would be good politics to give it to them. : So it was decided to build a railroad from North bay, on the shores of Lake Nipissing, to connect ; with the great transcontinental line, under con- ; structlon farther north. It was while this railroad was building that Fred La Rose, a member of the construction i gang, blasted his way into an old mountain root, made himself rich, made Cobalt, made more than a score of multimillionaires and caused Canada, ■, which had produced almost no silver, to produce 12 per cent, of the world’s output. Two men, in I six days, trundled out $57,000 worth of silver with a wheelbarrow. As an Indirect result Sud'bury became the world's chief producer of nickel. All of which seemed to be against the rules made and provided by nature. Canada had never been known as a silver country. Near Cobalt there was nothing on the surface to indicate that silver might be near. But no eye had seen below the surface. No mind had dreamed of the gold and silver filled roots of worn-off mountains. An explanation was required—and geologists who examined the formations gave it. The geological assurance that the entire region might be sprinkled with precious metals quickly caused the country around Cobalt to be prospected. But prospecting In forest-covered marshes does not proceed rapidly. Not until the summer of 1909 did prospectors push 250 miles ■ northward, to the region of Porcupine lake. There is about as much uncertainty with re-

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son, or one of his subordinates no two on this point are alike —found the grea , that bears Wilson’s name. The Dome i ridge of rock, 550 feet long, 40 to 80 feet wide, 20 to 30 feet above ground, and no one yet kno how deep, that is heavily laden with g° • the moss from it anywhere and there is gold. Nothing in the history of gold mining better illustrates the eccentricities of gold miners than the discovery of the “Dome.” The discovering party consisted of three men, headed by JacK Wilson. The expedition was financed by a Chicago man named Edwards, who was engaged in the manufacture of lighting fixtures. Edwards was to put up all the money in return for a half interest in anything that might be discovered. Wilson was to have a quarter interest and each of the other two an eighth. For several weeks they prospected, first to the east of Porcupine lake, in Whitney township, then to the west, in Tisdale township. They found gold and staked some claims. But the great “Dome,” although they camped, some of the time, within sight of it, almost escaped them. It was finally discovered, according to the story that is generally believed, only because one of Wilson’s subordinates stumbled across it. He was not a miner, knew nothing about geology, but did know enough to scrape oft moss. Also, he had eyes. When the moss was off he could not help seeing the gold. The great ridge that was henceforth to be known as the “Wilson Dome” had been found. Stakes were driven and claim laid to the huge boulder. Perhaps the most remarkable story, however, that has come out of the Porcupine was told by a prospector named “Bill" Woodney. A mining man whom I believe to be reliable told me that Bill came to him one day and showed him a remarkably rich piece of gold quarts, at the same time asking him where he supposed it came from. “Not from anywhere in Canada,” was the reply. “I thought you would say that,” was the comment, “but you are wrong.” Then “Bill” told his story. He said the quartz was given to him by a widow. Her husband had been accidentally killed a short time before she gave it to him. The widow told him that the quartz came from a vein near Lake Abitibi, a frigid sheet of water up toward Hudson’s bay, 300 miles north of Cobalt. Her husband and two other men whom she named had found the vein. They had not staked their claims and registered them with the government at Toronto, because such registration would have been a notification to the world that they had found gold in the region. Winter was near when the discovery was made and they wanted to return in the spring,

gard to who first discovered gold In Porcupine as there is with regard to who discovered America. George Bannerman, however, appears to be the Columbus of the occasion. Bannerman, an old prospector, in July, 1909, scraped the moss from a bit of the surface of a projecting rock and saw wet flakes of shining gold staring up at him from the quartz. But the first great discovery was made by a gang of prospectors headed by Jack Wilson. Wil-

prospect the country thoroughly and stake out everything in sight. During the following winter the husband of the woman who was so soon to become a widow w-as seriously injured in a mill. In a few days he realized that death was near. He sent for the two prospectors who had accompanied him to Lake Abltibi. They came. , “Boys,” said he, “I guess I’ve got to die. I can’t go back with you in the spring to stake the claims. I want you to promise me that if I die you will give the old woman a third of what we found last year.” The men promised. The wife heard them. But she didn’t believe them. The widow had told Bill who the men were. He knew them. He knew where they were working. Bill hired out in the same place. In the course of a few weeks one of them told him that they were going to quit at a certain time in the spring and take a long canoe and hunting trip in the country far to the north. That v.-as good enough clew for Bill. Two weeks before the announced time for the men to start Woodney quit his job, packed his kit and started for Lake Abitibi himself. When he reached the lake he drew his canoe from the water, hid it in the “bush,” as Canadians call a forest, and prepared to wait. On the eighth day of his vigil, as he was peering out of the bushes, he saw the sight that he had w'aited so long to see. Down the placid river came two canoes, cutting their ways through the cool waters and leaving flatiron w r akes in the rear. Late in the afternoon Bill saw the two specks disappear in what seemed to be an inlet. The first night there was no fire, but the next “ day Bill saw a blue spiral of smoke curling from the, bushes back of the lake. For five days and nights the fires burned. Then there was no more fire, day or night. Evidently the inen had gone. Bill wanted to be sure, so he waited three more days. Then he went dowm to the lake where his canoe was hidden, put it into the water, topk pains to observe that there was on the lake no sign of human life, then slowly paddled his way along the shore, looking for-The inlet. Bill was paddling as quietly as he could when, at the “knuckle” of the water finger—a point where the inlet was not more than 50 feet wide —he suddenly saw on the left bank —the two prospectors! The next instant one of them threw an ax at Bill’s canoe that all but cut it in two and sunk it as qu’ekly as a mine could sink a battleship. Woodney doesn’t know yet why he is alive. He seemed to have no chance to live. It was two against one and the one was in the water. So were his food, his weapons and his tools. If he were not murdered during the next second it seemed certain that he -would starve during the next month. Not that he thought out all of these things while he was i sinking. He thought out nothing. All he did was to ! act first and think afterward. A few strokes with j his hands and a few kicks with his feet put him against the bank. No rabbit ever took a trail faster , than Bill took to the brush. The rest of this story can be told in short sentences. Hunger, within the next forty-eight hours, drove Woodney into the very camp of the men who would have slain him. He crept up to them, late at night, and stole their food. He could not steal much at a time, but he stole enough to keep him alive. He stole, not once, but three times. The next time he went to steal they were not there. They had pulled up camp and gone, bag and bag- - gage. He took his life in his hands the next day and went down to see the claims they had staked. He’ didn’t find a stick or a sign of a claim. He couldn’t even find anything himself that seemed worth claiming. The prospectors never returned. Whether they ( were upset and drowned in one of the many rapids; whether they fell to fighting and killed each * other, no one knows. Nor have they ever filed a claim to ore bodies along Lake Abitibi. J

FRNMFffI Post office Department Has Closed in on Schemes. Not So Many Attempts Being Made to Carry on Illegal Tricks by Mail—Old Fakes No Longer Worked. ' Washington.—The mails of late years 1 have become the channel for many 1 .'raudulent get-rich-quick concerns. If i a band of sharpers discover some hole In the ground they Immediately advertise a great mine discovery and i through the mails appeal to the gulli- , hie public and in the end relieve the easy ones of their money. Three or i tour crooks organize into a shady ; realty company and after advertising marvelous land values by a persuasive system of letter writing induce ignorI ant and hard working people to invest I all they have in some barren and isolated swamp district that will never have the slightest commercial value. , These concerns have succeeded in one -or two cases but Uncle Sam has become aware of their fraudulent use of the mail and has instituted rigid prosecutions of their offenses. The United States government is an instlI tution that will not be tampered with and the crooked ones who thought themselves foxy enough to outwit the shrewd men whom the government has placed in charge of the mails have had reason to regret their transgressions. The postal service Is supplied with a board of detectives whose duty it Is to keep constantly on the watch for all wild cat schemes that aim to separate the easy mark from his loose change. These inspectors are constantly working to secure evidence of such frauds and their work is by no means easy. j Upon receiving satisfactory evidence that a company or individuals are defrauding the public through the mails the postmasters of all offices are notified and all registered letters addressed to the crooked concerns are I stopped and sent back to the sender ' with the word fraudulent plainly stamped on the envelope. In this man- , aer the easy mark is protected. : Licentious and -obscene literature Is ' also kept out of the mail by a rigid ' system of inspection. The postmaster ; general has among his deputies a Aboard of censorship and all question- . able books and pictures are passed ! upon in this department. The books i are read by unbiased judges and the author as well as the public is given fair play. Once a book has been pronounced unfit it is placed in a library with other volumes of its kind and kept constantly under lock and key. In this manner Uncle Sam looks after the moral as well as the financial interests of his citizens. 1 There is also a division which looks after mail arriving from foreign countries and inspectors who are able to read and understand foreign languages are appointed to watch out for shady mail coming into the country. A great many cases have been detected in this division where foreign concerns have been practicing frauds on the foreign element. These have been’ effectively dealt with- and the immigrant protected. i The postal laws of the United States . are very rigid and the government is constantly on the lookout for cheap, crooked concerns that are ever striving to take advantage of the lately popular mail order business scheme. The bunco steerer and gold brick man are always looking for Mr. Innocence In order to sell him something that Is absolutely worthless, but Mr. Bunco doesn’t get very far these days before Uncle Sam has him spotted. I Old Schemes Disappear. Among the old types of schemes which have now practically disappeared are those which depended for their revenue on what may be termed “catch penny” advertisements. For example, articles offered for sale would be described in misleading language, but so ambiguously as to render it possible for the advertiser to answer complaints by saying that the complainant had misconstrued the advertisement. These advertisements were printed in a certain class of weekly or monthly publications. Readers were induced to believe that they could obtain valuable jewelry for a small sum of money. The jewelry actually furnished, the postoffice inspectors say, was invariably of cheap variety. so-called “work at home” schemes, through which women were victimized for years, have been pretty nearly abandoned. These enterprises, the inspection department of the postal service says, were particularly i odious because they usually preyed on women in poor circumstances, who were seeking some honest way of helping out their insufficient incomes, and i who actually suffered in being, robbed ' of the money of which these schemes swindled them. The plan was to print advertisements in periodicals in which the statement was made that the advertiser wanted women to do work at home and would pay a reasonable compensation. It was always a condition precedent, however, that the worker buy from the advertiser a typewriter or a sewing machine with which to do the work. The investigations of the postofflee Inspectors reveal that few women who bit at this ; scheme ever got any work to do, and almost invariably the machines they were required to buy were or next to worthless. Another fraud practiced extensively I through the mails and somewhat simI liar to the “work at home” scheme,

was that in which a position as R salesman with a guaranteed salary was offered the prospective victinj. The prerequisite here was that the would-be salesman should make a deposit with the promoter as an evidence of “good faith,” and the man seeking the job had to agree to engage in a preliminary canvass of a week or month. After he had obtained, during the preliminary canvass; all the orders he could from friends, anxious to see him succeed in the undertaking, he found it impossible to carry out the terms of the contract because of the inferior quality of the goods supplied, or by reason of other obstacles put in his path by the promoter. The fraud order division of the postofflee department relates that in recent years hundreds of men and women throughout the United States have been gratified to receive a letter in which they were informed that for some reason they have been se lected as the “donee” of a beautiful set of silverware, which was to be given away for advertising purposes. All they were required to do to obtain the present was to remit to the writer the sum named in the letter for the expense of packing and shipping. Many persons availed themselves of what they thought was an opportunity to get something for nothing £nd sent the money. They did not realize that they had been flefrauded until they received some cheap and shabby ware. ( During the last year a large num- J ber of self-styled “astrologers” have been driven out of business. These men advertised in periodicals, appealing to the credulous to have their “fortunes told by the stars,” and promising to read the past, present and future of the patron for a small remittance. Strange to say, many persons sent money to these “astrologers” before the postoffice department interfered. No was cast and the “reading” furnished was a form of letter identical with that sent every other person whose date of birth fell within the sign of the zodiac. These letters were prepared in large quantities and comprised, as a rule, twelve forms, one for each sign, and the only service performed by the “astrologer” for the money paid him was to select the form letter covering the sign finder which the patron was born and send it to him. ‘ Besides fraudulent enterprises, a large number of lotteries and schemes of that nature have been driven out of business since Mr. Hitchcock became postmaster general. The “endless chain scheme,” which formerly flourished throughout the country, is now practically a thing of the past. “Guessing contests” are now projected only sporadically. The old “diamond contracts” have allso disappeared, and many investment propositions modeled on the same principle have gone out of existence. BAD ROADS CAUSE VAST LOSS. That the United States suffers a dl-f rect loss of $40,000,000 annually on ) account of incorrect and inadequate methods in the construction, maintenance and administration of publicroads is the assertion of L. W. Page, director of the United States office of public roads and president of the new American Association for Highway Improvement. This enormous loss is nothing compareti with the indirect loss, through excessive cost of transportation, which is caused by the burden which bad roads impose upon farmers and others who use the highways, and this amount, accordirig to Mr. Page’s report, reaches the impressive total of $250,000,000 every year. The American farmer is paying two or three times as much to get bls products to market as the man who tills the ground in Europe, and this added cost of transportation is known to be an important factor in the high cost of living problem. France is said to use her fine system of roads just one and one-third times as much as her railroads for transportation, whereas in this country the public roads are so poorly maintained and administered as a whole that the highways carry only between one-third and one-fourth as much produce as the railroads. Road experts say conditions here and abroad are almost exactly reversed, due entirely to bad roads. Director Page has described the condition of the roads of the United States in making an announcement that the American Association for Highway Improvement has opened offices in Washington. The organization of this association followed a conference in this city several weeks ago of many of the leading road engineers of the country, the presidents of five of the largest railroad and representatives of automobile manufacturers and publishing interests. FIRE IN THE PENSION OFFICE. There was a fierce scare at the United States pension office the other day when it was discovered, about 3 o’clock in the morning, that the rooms of Pension Agent John R. King were all ablaze. It Is believed that spontaneous combustion caused the fire. The damage to the records and furniture of the office, handling pensions for West Virginia, Virginia, District of Columbia, Maryland and Delaware, is placed at $6,000. The work of the office was pretty badly disorganized for a day or two, and the desks, chairs, screens, rugs and such things as that were very badly damaged. None of the important papers of the office were hurt in the least. No Nature Fakes. "Did You ever see a catnip tea?" "No more than you ever heard a bark.”