The public mind has been greatly stirred upon the subject of monopolies and legislative abuses; but there are some glaring evils, which a short statute might suppress, that are flourishing unchecked.

Speculative dealers in the necessaries of life have learned how to build colossal fortunes by extortion from the entire nation, and the nation submits quietly because gambling competition is the fashion. The late Charles Partridge endeavored to show up these evils and have them suppressed. We need another Partridge to complete the work he undertook.

A despatch to the Boston Herald, March 5, shows how the game has been played in Chicago on the pork market:

“‘Phil Armour must have been getting ready for this break for three months,’ said a member of the board of trade to-day. ‘Since September last he has visited nearly every large city in the country. He knows from observation where all the pork is located, and, having cornered it, his southern trip was a scheme to throw his enemies off the scent, and enable his brokers to quietly strengthen the corner. His profits and Plankinton’s cannot be less than $3,000,000.’

“But if Armour and his old Milwaukee side partner have made money, so have hundreds of others here. A messenger boy in the board of trade drew $100 from a savings bank on Monday last at 11 o’clock and margined 100 barrels of pork. To-day the lad deposited $1,000, and has $300 for speculation next week.

“Those poor snorts who are expecting to have pork to-day to make their settlement, paid $21. Anything less was scouted. ‘You will have to pay $25 next Saturday night,’ was all the comfort afforded.

“An advance of 2 cents a bushel in wheat was also scored by the bulls to-day. The explanation is that the several big wheat syndicates encouraged by the action of pork have made an alliance. The talk at the hotels to-night is that Armour has started in to buy wheat.”

We have laws that forbid boycotting, and they are enforced in New York and New Haven by two recent decisions. Financial extortion is an equal crime, and needs a law for its suppression. Why is the metropolitan press silent? Have the syndicates too much influence? Will editors who read these lines speak out?

In the last North American Review, James F. Hudson, in an essay on “Modern Feudalism,” says:–

“The conquest of all departments of industry by the power of combination has just begun. But the mere beginning has imposed unwarrantable taxes on the fuel, light, and food of the masses. It has built up vast fortunes for the combining classes, drawn from the slender means of millions. It has added an immense stimulant to the process, already too active, of making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The tendency in this direction is shown by the arguments with which the press has teemed for the past two months, that the process of combination is a necessary feature of industrial growth, and that the competition which fixes the profits of every ordinary trader, investor or mechanic, must be abolished for the benefit of great corporations, while kept in full force against the masses of producers and consumers, between whom the barriers of these combinations are interposed.”

From Buchanan’s Journal of Man, May 1887.

Gleanings from Old Journals.

Old newspapers make good reading–if they are old enough. Like the deciphering of moss-covered epitaphs, the reading of journals of other days gives rise to reflections that mingle the sweet with the sad. It shows plainly that time does not alter human nature, much as customs may change.

The Scrap Book, Volume 1, Number 3, published May, 1906 by Frank A. Munsey.

The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, Volume 23, Issue 5.

Volume Bookp(h)ile

There is not a railway man on the New York Central who runs on freight trains that does not believe that the through freight known as A. S. No. 1, is a “hoodooed” train. The train runs from Albany to Suspension Bridge, and in the past few years has met with many accidents. Saturday morning the “hoodooed” train left Syracuse on time. Charles Detsel, a brakeman, who has been running on the road for the past five years, was assigned to make the run as forward brakeman. Detsel did not wish to take the run, saying to his companions that the train was “hoodooed,” and that he believed that he would meet with some bad luck. Everything went right until the train reached Coles’ bridge, between Lock Berlin and Lyons. A brakeman on a westbound local that followed saw Detsel lying in the ditch at one side of the track, and the train was stopped and the injured man taken to Lyons. The entire scalp was torn off his head and he is in a dying condition. It was this train upon which Conductor Gowan was killed at Adams Basin Wednesday of last week. His death was caused in a similar manner. Conductor Orr met his death last summer on this train, and it is a fact that the “hoodooed” train met with five accidents on five consecutive days about a year ago.

There was begun in the last week or two a very thorough revision of the telegraphic cipher codes in use by people in this city doing business with european countries, says the New York Sun. The revision is in order to conform with a new regulation of the International Telegraph bureau, designed to put an end to the difficulties, disputes and inconveniences that have been connected with international telegraphing for very many years. The International Telegraph bureau is a telegraphic clearing-house and intelligence office located at Berne, Switzerland, of which all the governments of Europe, and all the important nations of the world, with the sole exception of the United States, are members. “Berne,” as the bureau is generally referred to, is the central information bureau of the telegraph service of the whole world. Any interruption to a cable or land line, the opening of a new line, or rearrangement and shortening of an old one; all delays to telegraphic communication, anywhere and from any cause, such as storms or earthquakes, or censorship on telegrams because of war or civil disturbances in Cuba or Armenia, or anywhere else; anything or everything that improves or disturbs the telegraph service in any part of the world, is at once reported from the affected locality directly to Berne, and the information is promptly sent out from there to the headquarters of every government and telegraph company, and so on to every telegraph office of importance in the world.

The bureau was first established as a result of an international telegraph convention held at St. Petersburg in 1875, to settle all matters of rules and regulations for the interchange of telegrams among the various countries; to collect and apportion the charges on international telegrams, according to the proportion of work done by each country, and generally to do the work of the telegraph companies and systems that the clearing-house does for the banks. Every five years a convention is held, at which all the governments are represented, and the rules to govern Berne are considered and revised and enacted.

There has always been difficulty between the telegraph service and its customers over the use of cipher words. Of course, where the cost of telegraphing runs to several dollars a word, every effort is made to be brief. Most elaborate and really wonderful codes have been constructed, some at a cost of thousands of dollars, by the aid of which one word is made to express a whole sentence, or paragraph, of commercial information. To such a science has this matter of codes been reduced that the bulk of telegrams passing between this country or England and distant places like China an Australia rarely consist of more than two or three words. Many hundred contain only one word, besides the name and address. And one word often sums up a whole day’s business. To insure accuracy and speed the convention decided many years ago that only legitimate words, belonging to one of eight languages, should be allowed in codes, and no word should contain more than ten letters. Arbitrary combinations of letters, such as xqp, or wzy, are only accepted on a basis of three letters to a word. While cable operators are not expected to know eight languages, yet there is something about legitimate words of a modern language that makes it easily recognized. It sounds all right on the Morse instrument and looks all right on the cable slip. A mutilated word is as readily distinguished and stopped. The sender of a foreign telegram of eight words may use a word each from English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Latin, but they must be good words and not over ten letters long. The receiving clerk in a cable office will almost infallibly spot an illegitimate word, and, as he is held responsible at the rate of several dollars a word for any wrong word he may pass, he lets very few indeed get by him.

The cold backward spring weather which we are experiencing has led to much surmises as to the cause of the failure of the earth’s heating apparatus to do its work. In regard to the matter a contemporary remarks:

Some have supposed that we are entering upon a change of seasons, and the rather appalling theory has been broached that the poles are changing position, and that the arctic region is to swop places with the equator. The astronomers have, however, brought forward an explanation of the late “cold spell” somewhat less disturbing to the nerves, though not altogether tranquilizing. They say that the sun’s disc is at present riddled with holes, in other words, with spots, one of which is of very considerable size. It is a deep cavity in the photosphere, and so wide that the whole terrestrial globe would find room in it without touching edges. There is another spot which, though much smaller, still has one of its diameters as large as that of our earth. Herschel and Arago having conceived the idea of comparing the annual price of corn to the number of solar spots observed each year, found on comparing a series of twenty-five results, that the greater the number of spots the higher was the cost of bread-stuffs. This shows that these phenomena may reduce the heat of the sun considerably.

On this theory a piece of smoked glass will be a handy thing to have about the house; and in laying in the coals or providing for winter clothing the first thing in order will be to take a squint to ascertain the dimension of the holes in the solar atmosphere.

A New England scientist says there’s going to be dickens to pay if the rest of the United States continues to cart away granite and marble from the land of the Pilgrims and Puritans. “It is not unlikely,” says he, “that the equilibrium of the earth is already considerably disturbed, and that we shall shortly feel a pronounced wobble. Of course, if there is to be a wobble anywhere we would prefer it in New England, but perhaps the outlook is not so desperate as at first glimpse. The summer rush of people to the White mountains, Bar Harbor, Newport, and a thousand other New England summer resorts must in a very great degree restore the weight which existed before there were quarries in New England. And there is another thing. It is computed that there were in the Western hemisphere, when Columbus set foot on it, not more than 1,000,000 human beings. There are now, at a very low estimate, 101,000,000. These 100,000,000 of additional persons have increased the weight of the western hemisphere some 5,000,000 of tons, in the roundest of round numbers. Surely there is an opportunity for a wobble in this state of affairs, and we ought to be conscious of it by this time. If there has been no wobble an explanation should be demanded. Some men of science should rise to tell us why we don’t wobble.” Nothing is more dreadful, says the Buffalo Courier, than the uncertainty when and where the commotion will begin. Probably only those who are holding to the car straps at the time will keep their feet.

Uncle Sam acquired some new territory in the Pacific a few weeks ago in a novel manner. It was not acquired by conquest, annexation or purchase, but was a gift from nature herself who pushed it up from the depths of the Pacific ocean and gave it unasked. Geologists say that nature is constantly giving and taking land after this fashion; that some portions of the earth are steadily subsiding and others rising; some coast lines are advancing and others receding. New Jersey is gradually losing territory along the coast, while in other regions new land is being added to the area of the United States. But the usual progress is slow. Once in a while a new island is lifted suddenly out of the sea by volcanic action, and this practically, is what occurred off the coast of California several weeks ago when about 35,000 square yards of rock was added to one of the Santa Barbara islands with a suddenness that surprised the people living on the island. Not only was new land added to the island, but that already existing was moved around in an embarrassing manner. Buildings erected in the shelter of the cliffs, with a seaward exposure, were lifted up forty or fifty feet to the level of the plateau and twisted around so as to face directly inland.

The Santa Barbara group of islands lies about sixty miles off the coast of California, in about the latitude of Los Angles. The island of San Miguel, to which the new land has been added, is one of the smaller islands, and is owned by Capt. W. G. Waters, who has a big sheep ranch on it. The only living people on the island are Capt. Waters and his sheep herders and laborers. Some of the islands of the groups are noted for their scenic beauties, but San Miguel is bleak and comparatively uninteresting. It is plainly of volcanic origin, and it is said that at various times within the last half century stretches of the cliffs along the southern shore of the island have fallen away and been swallowed up in the sea. But no one knows of any land having been given back by the ocean before the event of the second week in March. Capt. Waters was [on?] the island when the earthquake eruption, or whatever it was, occurred. He took the information to the mainland, and the San Francisco Examiner sent a correspondent to San Miguel to get all the facts and some pictures of the new territory of the United States. The picture and information here given are from the Examiner articles.

Capt. Waters lives in his ranch house on the southwest side of the island, a considerable distance from the point where the new land was added. On the night when the disturbance occurred he was sitting in his house reading. He felt the earth shiver, but as earthquakes are not uncommon thereabout he took little notice of the occurrence. The next morning he started out around the beach toward his boathouse to look for his sloop, which was due from the mainland. When he neared the harbor and the place where his boathouse had been he had to rub his eyes because of the remarkable appearance of the surroundings. The beach had disappeared, and where a bay of placid water had been rose a huge mass of broken cliffs. He climbed up on the high ground overlooking the bay, and there on the plateau, forty feet or more above the water line and three hundred feet inland, were the boathouse and sheep corral which the previous evening had been right on the water’s edge. On reaching the boathouse he found another surprise. The building stood as firm as ever, but whereas it had recently faced seaward it was now turned almost completely around and faced almost directly away from the bay. The tracks of the sheep were still plainly visible on the ground, but instead of being on the left side of the boat house, where the path had always been, they were now on the right.

He walked out on the top of the newly formed cliffs toward the water, and found the great mass of rock still trembling and swaying. There was a sound of grinding and churning, and every now and then a chuck of rock would settle a little. The mass was evidently still adjusting itself in its new position. The buoy to which his sloop was moored when in harbor was formerly 400 feet from the sandy beach. Now it was about 100 feet from the abrupt face of the new cliffs. He set up some posts to serve as marks by which to observe any further changes and withdrew to more solid ground. The next morning he found that in its readjustment the land had moved seaward twelve or fifteen feet, and the mass of new land seems quiet and permanently settled. Then Capt. Waters went to the mainland and told of the happenings on San Miguel, and a day or two later some scientific men with surveyors’ instruments and camera went over and verified his story.