Golden Age, October 30, 1929
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The Golck.n Age
A JOURNAL OF FACT WA COURAGE
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in this issue -
OCEANOGRAPHY ■
NO PATRIOTS: WHEN?
CANCER .
THE FIG TREE
PAINE AND MODERNISTS
PREACHERS WORRIED
AN IDEAL GOVERNMENT twelfth of a series of radio lectures on good government,by Judge Rutherford
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EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY
5c a copy - $1.00 a year - Canada & Foreign $1.50
Volume XI - No. 264 October 30, 19 2 9
Contents
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Labor and Economics
Civil Versus Military Employees.............75
. : Social and Educational
(Sparks prom the Anvil ............... .
Open-handedness of the West . .
On Tattooing ........
How to Get a Few Smiles ................ 78
Finance—Commerce—Transportation $55,000,000 Profit in Six Years .
The Private Car Graft ...........
Political—Domestic and Foreign
Colby Has No Taxes
Niggardly Food Allowance for Prisoners .......... 76 The Pilgrims from Philadelphia ............. 76 Helping the Baby Jesus ...
There Were No Patriots When All Men Belonged to One Tribe . 77 Organized Minorities in Washington ............ 88
Agriculture and Husbandry Fined Heavily for Raising Wheat .......
The Fig Tree .........
Science and Invention
The New Armored Combat Tank
Home and Health
Cancer: Its Causes and Prevention
Chromium-Nickel-Steel
Conservators of the Casket Business ......... .
Travel and Miscellany A Little Study in Oceanography ........
Religion and Philosophy
Thomas Paine and the Modernists . .
A Book and a Man ..................81
Advises Against Imitating Christ .........
Bible Questions and Answers . .
Sojie Preachers Worried ................ 86 The Government That Will Satisfy ...
Ecclesiasticism and Freedom ..........
The Children’s Own Eadio Story ............. 95
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Golden Age
Volume XI Brooklyn, N. Y.» Wednesday, October 30, 1929 Number 264
A Little Study in Oceanography
OCEANOGRAPHY, in its widest sense, covers all there is to know about that portion of the earth which, in divine wisdom, covers 71 percent of its surface. It would be a study about winds, waves, tides, currents, marine and submarine plants and animals, icebergs, fogs, cables, rains, minerals and gases held in suspension, geology, the formation of islands, navigation and fisheries, and scores of related subjects. We can not hope in the compass of this article to go deeply into these subjects. Some of them we can not even touch.
The lure of the sea! How it beckons! Two years ago a Norwegian 'whaling vessel put in at Hobart, Tasmania, in need of 28 men to complete its whaling force. The wages offered were only $20 a month, with a bonus of %c a barrel of whale oil obtained. Three hundred men stormed the Norwegian consulate to get those jobs. They wanted to leave positions as salesmen, bank clerks, surveyors, engineers, and what not, and only three of them had previously been to sea; yet the call was irresistible.
In one of Victor Hugo’s works he describes the sea:
Those billows, that ebb and flood, that inexorable coining and going, that noise of all the winds, that blackness and that translucency, that vegetation peculiar to the deep, that democracy of clouds in full hurricane, those eagles flecked with foam, those wonderful star-risings reflected in mysterious agitation by millions of luminous wavetops—conf used heads of the multitudinous sea—the errant lightnings which seem to watch, those prodigious sobbings, those half-seen monsters, those nights of darkness broken by howlings, those furies, those frenzies, those torments, those rocks, those shipwrecks, those fleets crushing each other, mingling their human thunders with the divine thunders and staining the sea with blood; then that charm, that mildness, those gay white sails, those fishing boats, those songs amid the uproar, those shining ports, those mists rising from the shore, those cities at the horizon’s edge, that deep blue of sky and water, that useful asperity, that bitter savor which keeps the world wholesome, that harsh salt without which all would putrefy; those wraths and those appeasements, that all in one. the unforeseen amid the changeless, the vast marvel of inexhaustibly varied monotony, that smoothness after an upheaval, those hells and those heavens of the unfathomed, infinite, ever-moving deep.
Chemistry of the Briny Deep
There is no danger that the human family will ever run out of salt. If the whole of the European continent that lifts its head above water were of solid table salt it would then contain only about one-third as much salt as is now in the ocean. If all the salt that is in the ocean were taken out and sprinkled over the United States it would bury the country a mile and a half deep.
There is a mass of other salts in the ocean nearly a fourth as large as that just mentioned. These salts, in the eyes of the chemist, are a great storehouse of treasure, out of which wonderful things for the benefit of man are yet to come.
There is gold in sea water; only 40 or 50 milligrams to the ton of water, but somebody with a penchant for figures has estimated that if it could all be taken out and divided among us we would have about 80,000 tons of gold apiece. For sixty years there have been spasmodic attempts made to work the ocean profitably for its gold content, but, none of them have succeeded.
The following is DitmaFs Analysis of the proportions of the principal salts in the ocean:
Parts per thousand
Sodium chloride.................. 27.213
Magnesium chloride ................ _
Magnesium sulphate.....
Calcium sulphate ......______________________________________. 1.260
Potassium sulphate ...
Calcium carbonate_________________________________________ 0.123
Magnesium bromide............
Every time it rains, the salts in the sea are added to, because the rains gradually leach out the soil and remove it bit by bit to the ocean depths. Fortunately we have earthquakes once in a while which throw some of these riches back up where we mortals can get at them.
Working the Ocean Mines
A Norwegian has been devoting years to the study of sea water, with the result that he has shown it is practicable to extract metallic magnesium and gypsum, common salt and some other minerals from the deep blue.
The deep blue color of the ocean, by the way, is owing to the fact that sea water is ten times more partial to absorption of the red rays of the spectrum than it is to the blue rays. Experiments show that at 900 fathoms there is no light. At that depth two hours’ exposure of a sensitive film produced no effects.
At Summerfield, California, the Department of Agriculture has demonstrated that a plant for treating sea water, to remove its chemicals, is self-supporting. The plant also handles seaweeds. Among the raw materials obtained are potash, nitrogen, ammonia, tar, oil, creosote, iodine, bleaching carbon and common salt. At a similar plant in France there are obtained large quantities of potassium chloride, magnesium chloride, magnesium sulphate and bromide.
Iodine exists in the proportion of one part of iodine to about 500,000 parts of water, yet it is calculated that its value at present prices would be about a thousand times the total value of all the real property in the world. Iodine is obtained from the ashes of seaweed. The principal producers are Britain, France, Norway and Japan.
The salinity of the oceans is greatest where the rate of evaporation is high and the rainfall small, as in the Red Sea, and it is least where opposite conditions prevail, as in the China Sea. An electrical device of the Bureau of Standards automatically registers the amount of salt in sea water as the ship moves through the water, thus aiding in the better detection of ocean currents and the approach of icebergs.
Gardens of the Ocean Bottom
The gardens of the ocean bottom are as real as the wheat fields of a Dakota farmer. The pictures that have been taken of these gardens, especially those about Nassau, in the Bahamas, are like “fairyland”, beautiful beyond words. They can be seen in the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, and have been reproduced in the rotogravure sections of the Sunday papers.
Gardening in the ocean, when the human family gets to it, will be gardening in three dimensions. Land farming is limited to a single surface, but in the ocean there may be farms piled on farms, five hundred fathoms deep. Sir John Murray estimated that the animal and plant resources of the ocean exceed those of the land.
At present we get but little vegetable aid from the oceans. The Chinese and Japanese cultivate seaweeds and use them extensively, and as a result are free from goitre and other diseases. They also make a seaweed glue.
In the West Indies an edible jelly is obtained from ordinary seaweed after it has been bleached and boiled. Agar-agar, useful in medicine, is obtained at the plant in California previously mentioned, and there is a plant in Massachusetts which makes quantities of Irish moss ready for the market. This moss is used in the ■ preparation of blancmange, and is useful as an expectorant.
Many marine products have been utilized from the dawn of history. Fish, shellfish, coral, salt and amber have been used by man from time immemorial. The ancient Tyrian purple, a very beautiful dye, was obtained by an extremely laborious process from shellfish. Wampum, strings of shell beads, served as money among the North American Indians.
Fishes and Marine Animals
A British writer defined man as a mackereleating animal; implying that if some men did not catch mackerel and others eat them, part of us would go hungry. Every year three billion pounds of fish are taken from the waters of the United States and Alaska, but it is a mere fragment.
We have millions on millions of neighbors in the world that none of us shall ever see. These are the denizens of the deeper waters, living down where even the rays of light do not penetrate. If man were to go down to such depths he would be crushed flat. His ribs would snap like pipestems, and all his organs would be reduced to jelly.
From 1872 to 1876, in the ship Challenger, Sir Wyville Thompson and his staff visited three hundred places, and with the long arm of a specially constructed dragnet drew up from the depths the residents of a new world half as large as the earth we already know.
From time to time there have been additions to this knowledge. Creatures that were born and live and usually die at these great depths are sometimes cast up to the surface by earthquake shocks or otherwise, and thus men get to know something about them. It is believed that there are no parts of the ocean too deep for life.
There are sea deserts, such as parts of the Mediterranean and of the Pacific off the west coast of Patagonia, where there are no seaweeds, and hence no other form of marine life. Many bones of sharks and whales are found in these waters, indicating that these monsters sometimes get lost in the deserts and starve.
It is believed that in the Millennium and thereafter wide use will be made of the plant and animal life of the sea and that property fronting on the ocean will become increasingly valuable.
Ocean Drifts and Currents
The Hydrographic office of the United States navy makes a systematic study of ocean currents and ocean drifts. A paper printed in eight languages is placed in a bottle, which is then sealed and thrown overboard. These bottles have been known to drift from five to five thousand miles and to stay in the water from six days to six years. When recovered they always have an interesting story.
The winds have much to do with the formation of ocean currents. The effect of a wind blowing regularly and continuously over the surface of the ocean will in time penetrate deeply into the waters and impart a certain amount of forward motion to the whole mass blown upon, but the effect will be principally at or near the surface.
Where the trade winds in the Atlantic and Pacific blow with great regularity all the year around we find currents on the ocean’s surface, called the North and South Equatorial Currents, respectively. These currents have a mean velocity of about 15 miles a day. The northern current moves a little more rapidly than the southern. Variations in density and in temperature are important factors in the circulation of ocean waters. Moreover, the oceans are of different heights, due to tide, etc., and for that reason flow from one into the other.
The Ocean Temperatures
At 100 fathoms the mean temperature for the whole ocean, based on observations in all latitudes, is 60.7° Fahrenheit. At 200 fathoms it is 50.1°; at 300 fathoms, 44.7°; at 400, 41.8°; at 500, 40.1°; at 600, 39.0°; at 700, 38.1°; at 1100, 36.1°; and at 2200, 35.2°. Below that the changes are slight.
The waters around Japan, Newfoundland and the Cape of Good Hope are successively occupied by waters of polar and of equatorial origin. In many other places the surface wrnters change but slightly. The hot surface waters around the equator, averaging 80 degrees, occupy only a comparatively small depth even in the tropics. It is believed that these great differences in temperature between the surface waters and ■ the deeper waters at the equator constitute a boundless source of power that will some time be available.
The details of how this difference of 40 degrees in temperature within 300 fathoms of depth may be utilized by vaporizing and condensing a liquid, as is done in a steam engine, have been worked out in great detail on paper and sometime will be applied. Such a source of power would be sufficient to run all the machinery on the earth, and much, very much, more. Over 80 percent of the bulk of the ocean remains at a temperature of less than 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
Tides and Tide Predictors
When all the figures of mass and distance are taken into consideration the pull of the moon on the surface of the earth causes about 2% times the tide-producing power exerted by the sun. The principal reason for the moon’s greater effect is its proximity. The sun’s total pull on the earth is, roughly, only 183 times that of the moon. The reason is that it is so far away.
Most of the time the sun and the moon are pulling in different directions, but twice each month they pull in the same line and then the tides are higher than usual. Spring tides they are called. Theoretically, every planet and every star has some effect on the tides, but the effect is so small as to be negligible in the calculations.
The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey has a tide-predictor, which does single-handed, and with unfailing accuracy, the work of sixty human mathematicians. This machine, which is the only one ever made, predicts the exact time of high and low tide, and the height of the tide, for any given place, for an indefinite time in the future. It is kept busy constantly figuring tides for all the principal ports in the world a year ahead.
Near the shore the tides provide the most important of the ocean currents, but at a distance from the shore the'tidal motion is secondary to that of the winds.
The lifting power of the tides is now regularly utilized at East Saugus, Massachusetts, for the generation of electricity for industrial purposes. One cubic foot of salt water will lift 64 pounds. At the Knowlton plant the power is derived from the upward thrust of a large float or piston, lifted by water. The larger the float, the greater the power.
A Little on Kumatology
Kumatology is what a Yankee would call hvave-ology’ and let it go at that, for it is no hardship to a Yankee to compound words from two tongues to make a third word that nobody but himself will understand. But lexicographers view such words with horror and dismay. They call it slang, and so it is.
Well! A kumatologist, an officer of the French navy, carefully measured 4,000 waves in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The largest were seen in a gale in the Indian Ocean. Of thirty different waves there seen the average was twenty-nine feet in height, the largest being thirty-seven.
The largest waves, carefully measured, rarely exceed or even reach fifty feet in height, but they seem twice that high to a ship in the open ocean; and on a rockbound coast, when they strike the rocks they do rise to an incredible height.
The Beil light on the Scottish coast, 115 feet above the sea, is often hidden by foam and spray. The Eddystone lighthouse, formerly 72 feet high, had to be rebuilt to a height of 132 feet to prevent the waves from riding over the top of the lantern. The great bell of the Bishop Rock lighthouse was once wrenched from its fastenings by a sea, although fixed at a level 100 feet above high-water mark.
The waves produced by the moon, tidal waves, are more than a thousand miles wide from front to back and travel at the rate of hundreds of miles an hour, their very speed making them imperceptible of height.
This wave, moving eastward, splits on the west coast of Ireland, then sweeps around Britain both ways, and the two parts meet and neutralize each other at a point in the North Sea, midway between England and Holland, and no tide occurs there in consequence.
A wave caused by an earthquake is a very different proposition. On the coast of Chile, in 1835, the ocean first withdrew, leaving ships which had been anchored in forty feet of water, on dry land. This action was succeeded by a wall of water thirty feet higher than high-tide level. Then came a higher wave, and finally a still higher wave. Great flocks of birds flew in from the sea more than an hour before the disaster occurred.
Frequently, tidal waves are not preceded by a negative undulation. South American populations, however, never flee until the ocean has first retreated, and thereby much unnecessary loss of life has been occasioned.
Plumbing the Depths
Having now made fairly good maps of most of the land surface of the earth, and the development of the airplane and zeppelin having laid bare most of its remaining mysteries, it is but natural that man would wish to map the lands that lie below the seas, and he has many good and sufficient reasons for wishing to do so. Navigation considerations are first of all, but there are many others.
It used to be a slow, laborious job to let out miles of heavy piano wire with a heavy lead attached, to sound the deeps. And even when, at the expiration of two hours, one sounding had been made, the results were not accurate.
Now the sonic depth-finder, placed in the bottom of a ship, sends down rapping noises and catches their echoes from the ocean bottom at the rate of 14,000 soundings an hour, while the ship is at full speed. The speed of sound being known, the depth is calculated accurately from the time between transmission of the sound and reception of its echo.
There is still a great deal of work to do. There are oceanic areas as large as the United States where no soundings have been made, and many others where present soundings have been widely spaced. Frequent charting of ocean depths is desirable, on account of changes brought about by earthquakes.
Perhaps some wonder how the exact position of the ship is determined, so that when the map is made it can be known that it is correct. A bomb is exploded twenty feet below the surface of the vessel. The sound travels under water to two hydrophones located miles apart, near the shore. The sound is then broadcast back to the ship and recorded on a tape, so that, by a little calculation, based on the known velocity of sound through sea water, the exact position of the ship as respects the known locations of the two shore hydrophones is soon established.
The Ocean’s Floor
If anybody tells you that he knows just how the ocean’s floor looks at seven miles below the surface, it is more benevolent to smile in a kind way than it is to tell him what you think; yet there are some that know something about it.
Occasionally there are earthquakes that lift parts of the ocean floor to view; and it is quite well established that the deepest parts are covered with a soft substance called “ooze”, described as the settling down of the dust of the sea.
In many places there are great gorges in the ocean floor ten to fifty miles in width and two to five miles deeper than the surrounding bottoms. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is dwarfed into insignificance by these tremendous canyons, into some of which Mount Everest could be tumbled and would sink out of sight without leaving a sign.
There is life at the greatest depths, but there is no decay. If the body of a whale sinks to the bottom, its flesh pressed together by the tremendous pressure, it is either devoured or dissolved. Bacteria do not live at such depths, and it is intensely cold. There are no storms down there, nor any swift-flowing currents, although these deep waters do gradually work their way toward the Poles where at length they emerge as polar currents.
Perfect silence and perfect darkness are always in these vast canyons, except that some of the inhabitants have organs in their bodies which greatly resemble eyes. These are used to produce light rather than to receive it, much as a cat’s eyes give light in the night.
The Atlantic Ocean
■ Most of the world’s great rivers flow into the Atlantic. It is the saltiest of the oceans; it has the largest icebergs and the greatest number of them; it has the greatest traffic; its Gulf Stream carries more water than all the other currents of the world put together; its quiet pond without a current, the Sargasso Sea, exceeds all the other calm spots of the oceans put together; it has a submerged mountain chain six hundred miles. long from north to south; and yet with all of these claims to our attention the oceanographers are mean enough to say that it is not a true ocean, but simply the greatest of the inland seas.
The Atlantic is not so deep. Its biggest hole, the Nares Deep, is off north of Porto Rico. It drops down 27,972 feet, only a little more than five miles, but it is a large hole. The state of Maine could be dropped into it and would go down four miles out of sight, before it struck bottom. There is another deep spot off the coast of Mexico. The South Atlantic is a slightly deeper ocean than the North Atlantic.
The highest peaks of the Edward VII range in the North Atlantic are only 6'00 feet below the surface. Mount Laura Ethel comes within 200 feet of the surface. About Sainthill, a mountain farther west, not fewer than seven thousand wrecks lie scattered, showing the tremendous influence these submarine mountains have on ocean currents and ocean storms.
The Bermudas and Porto Rico are mountain tops. A mile off shore the waters of Porto Rico are five miles deep; and a mile off the Bermudas they are two and one-half miles deep. The waters near St. Helena were three miles deep twenty-seven years ago, but now are only three-fourths of a mile deep.
Greatest Tides in the World
The greatest tides in the world are in the Bay of Fundy, between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Twice a day the water in this bay rises over 35 feet, and comes in with such suddenness that escape from the flats is impossible except by boat.
The head of this tide finds its end at Moncton, and comes in like a solid wall of water. The Moncton Bore, so called, is one of earth’s strangest sights, as is also the reversing falls at St. John. One passes the falls at a given hour and sees them behaving as any falls ought to behave, pouring their waters into the sea. Returning a few hours later he finds that the waters are bewitched and are flowing the other way, and over a generous falls too. The tides have risen meantime. Many suggestions have been made for utilizing this vast power.
The Atlantic is stormy, and half the storms originate at sea. The waters of the Bay of Biscay and those off Cape Horn are considered the roughest in the world. Traffic in the Atlantic is so considerable that seven twenty-mile-wide lanes are recognized, each of them divided into an east- and west-bound section ten miles wide.
The sonic depth-finder, mentioned above, is now being used to chart accurately waters heretofore inaccurately charted. Incidentally, the men doing this work found an oil field beneath the Gulf of Mexico.
The w’aters of the Atlantic are warming appreciably, the cold waters about Greenland, Baffin Island and Labrador being now about five to seven degrees warmer than usual, indicating great climatic changes in the near future.
There are phosphorescent seas off the western edge of Cuba, often reported. Fish disturb minute phosphorescent organisms, which flare up suddenly in response to the irritation produced. Untellable trillions of them produce such a brilliant band of light that sometimes a newspaper can be read on the deck at night.
The Sargasso Sea was so named by the Portuguese, and in their language signifies ‘The Sea of Little Grapes’. The reference is to the floating seaweed buoyed up by thousands of tiny gas-filled bladders which look like a fruit but are in reality only the device by which the seaweed is kept afloat.
The Gulf Stream
When the Nebraska fanner goes to the village store and comes home with a piece of salted codfish he may be bringing back part of his farm that slipped into the Missouri the previous spring. The cod off Newfoundland live indirectly from the mud which the Mississippi pours into the Gulf Stream in its circuit of the great gash in the American continent which we style the Gulf of Mexico.
Benjamin Franklin first gave its name to earth’s most mighty phenomenon. Imagine a river forty miles wide and a half a mile deep, of a deep indigo blue color, great clearness and high temperature, flowing through the ocean at fifty to a hundred miles a day. Hundreds of miles after leaving the coast of Florida the edges of the stream are sharply marked.
It is calculated that in one hour the Gulf Stream carries 90,000,000,000 tons of water past a given point and that all the ships of the world wrnuld be inadequate to transport the salt alone that would be contained in such a quantity of water.
As it proceeds north and east the Gulf Stream rides over and forces down a wedge of cold water, the Labrador current. The western edge of the stream is chilled by this current. Its waters can be penetrated by the eye to a considerable depth.
The Gulf Stream flows from the Caribbean Sea into the Gulf of Mexico partly because of the difference in level of the two bodies of water, and for a similar reason flows from the Gulf into the Atlantic.
Opposite Newfoundland the stream breaks up, fan-shaped, and in the summer its influence can be discerned as far as the west coasts of Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla. The icebergs meet their Waterloo when they hit the Gulf Stream. They begin to come south in February and are gone by August. They come from the west coast of Greenland, moving at the rate of about ten miles a day.
The Pacific Ocean
It seems incredible that the South Sea, as the Pacific was formerly called, was first seen by Europeans less than five hundred years ago, and that it was then seen on its eastern edge. Balboa first saw it in 1513 from the summit of the mountains which traverse the Isthmus of Darien. Nobody denies that the Pacific is a real ocean.
There are a good many deep spots in the Pacific: Mindanao Deep, off the Philippines, 34,000 feet; Tuscarora Deep, off Japan, 32,000 feet; Mariana Deep, off Guam, 31,000; Kermadec or Aldrich Deep, off New Zealand, 31,000; Solomon Deep, off Solomon Islands, 30,000; Fleming Deep, 28,000.
The Aleutian Deep is a gash five miles deep and fifteen hundred miles long. It parallels the Aleutian Island chain, merges into another huge canyon that stretches past Japan and down to the Philippines, and finally to the South Sea Islands, where it splits into various deeps of smaller dimensions.
Like the Atlantic, the bed of the Pacific is uneasy in recent years and shifting about as though some great change were in preparation. Rocks are found to have risen, shoals have piled up where before there were none, and old shoals have thickened.
There are no Arctic currents in the Pacific, and hence no icebergs, but a good slice of the Japan current passes through Bering Strait into the Arctic, rendering the ice treacherous even in mid-winter. In fact, the trips over the ice by the natives of both Asia and America in the depth of winter to visit their kinsfolk on Diomed Island, in the middle of the strait, are considered hazardous ventures.
After leaving the coast of Alaska the Japan Current, or Kuroshiwo, has lost much of its heat and passes the coast of California as a cold current. It is this fact that gives California such a wonderful climate. It is hot in the sun, but the air is cool and invigorating.
Some years ago the Humboldt or Peruvian Current, which formerly bathed the tropical and desert coast of Peru with icy waters, suddenly changed its course, working havoc to animal life. The cold waters killed the fish, and the birds died of starvation. Regions rainless for years had heavy rains, and rivers formed over night in what had been parched deserts.
The Pacific does not have many high tides, but three points are noteworthy in this respect. In the Bay of Panama it rises to fifteen feet, and at Cook’s Inlet, Alaska, to twenty-eight feet.
In the lower reaches of Puget Sound, called the Narrows, the tides attain a height of twenty feet or more and go surging and boiling down between mountain chains, causing a magnificent sight from the precipitous shores. There are tremendous whirlpools in which many small boats are gripped and sunk each year, while even the large steamboats creak and groan under the strain of breasting the twisting currents. The roar of the tides when running at full resembles the distant boom of the surf.
The Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean was first explored by ti Phoenicians, in the seventh century B. C. Solof mon was confederate with these people, and at an earlier date had a navy at Ezion-geber, on the Red Sea, which brought him treasures from all down the east coast of Africa.
The Indian Ocean is 6,500 miles in length from north to south, and is 6,000 miles wide in its greatest breadth, being therefore 1,500 miles wider than the Atlantic at its widest point. Its greatest known depth is 22,968 feet, only a little over four miles.
The Indian Ocean is noted for the streaks of alternate warm and cold water, caused by the collision of the hot waters of the Mozambique Current with the cold waters of the Antarctic. During the summer months the southwest monsoon sweeps over it, and during the winter months the direction is reversed.
The Arctic and Antarctic Oceans
North of Bering Strait the current which sweeps between Asia and America splits, part of it going westward north of Siberia, and part of it eastward above the American continent. This suggests a continent or large island between Bering Strait and the Pole.
The water of the Arctic is extremely clear, shells being visible at a great depth. The salinity of the waters is less than that of the southern seas. Polar waters contain twice as much oxygen and nitrogen to a thousand parts of water as is found in tropical waters, and for 'that reason the ocean population as a whole thrives better in the colder waters than in the warmer ones. There is more life to a cubic mile of water beneath the North Pole than there is beneath the equator. That is one reason why those great fishermen, the bears, seals and whales, enjoy the cold climates. They like to have regular meals, and not merely a “hot dog” now and then.
Moreover, cold water, far better than warm, absorbs carbon-dioxide from the air, and thus is relatively rich in the materials that support vegetable life, and in summer the Arctics are full of minute forms of vegetables and plants. The birds come for them and for their share of the fish.
The waves of the Antarctic are the banner waves of the world. They go around and around
the planet for ever and ever, without anything to check them, and are seen in all their fury and majesty off Cape Horn. Marine insurance is suspended during the time vessels round Cape Horn. A bottle thrown into the water off Cape Horn was picked up on the coast of New Zealand 10,250 miles to the east. Another bottle thrown into the water off the Cape of Good Hope was picked up on the coast of Chile 8,800 miles to the east. -
Captain Warden, master of pilots of the port of Glasgow, a humble and zealous advocate of the truth as we.see it, relates the following story about the mountainous waves off Cape Horn:
“A British vessel was ploughing its way forward, buffeted by the hard winds and the tremendous waves. There was a missionary aboard. At midnight the first mate found him, with a light in his cabin, dressed in his best clothes, sitting on the edge of his berth. In a voice little above a whisper he asked the mate, Ts there any hope?’ The mate did not know what he meant and said, Hope of what?’ Why,’ said the man, ‘I thought surely the vessel was going down and I put on my best clothes, so as to be ready for the end.’ ”
Captain Warden laughed heartily at the idea of a man’s dressing in his best clothes to be seen only by some stray flock of penguins, and perhaps not even by them. But it is customary to be buried in good clothes, and the poor man wanted to make sure that he would go out according to the rules.
British captains, when conversing with other captains who have spent their lives crossing the Atlantic, if the latter say anything about storms in the North Atlantic, merely ask them if they have ever been around the Horn. If the answer is “No”, they simply say, “Stop talking,” and that is the end of the argument. Yet there is one British liner that rounds the Horn on every trip it makes. Indeed, the vessel does what we have done in this article: it goes around the world. .
Sparks from the Anvil
Bed of Pacific Rising ,
OFF the western coasts of Nicaragua and
Costa Rica the bed of the Pacific Ocean is rising so rapidly that navigation is becoming unsafe. Bottoms known to have been 1,608 feet down are now only 51 feet beneath the surface, and many other similar startling changes are noticed.
Cigarette Smoker Burns a Bus
HIGH-CLASS bus plying between New York and Reading, Pennsylvania, was completely burned the other day, only the framework remaining. It was set afire by a woman. It is said that the woman was a fool, because at the time of the accident she was smoking a cigarette.
Increase in Cancer Rate
HE death rate from all forms of cancer to a 100,000 of population increased from 212 in 1900 to 311 in 1920, an increase of 47 percent. In that period intestinal and related forms of cancer increased 148.4 percent. If you want these figures to grow, cook your food in aluminum and let it stand in it. It all helps.
Decrease of Food Fishes
UROPE is concerned because there is a noticeable decrease of food fishes. A discouraging feature of the present. situation is that cormorants have come to understand the philosophy of nets and know how to swoop down and take the entire catch out of a net, leaving the fisherman nothing.
Features of Times Square
TIMES SQUARE, New York city, corner of Broadway and 42d street, is far and away the busiest spot on earth, judged by the millions of people that pass it. Drug stores, candy shops, barber shops and similar places in the neighborhood are never closed, from year’s end to year’s end.
Openhandedness of the West
SASKATCHEWAN woman lost her husband and oldest son in quick succession, leaving her with eight small children. Seven of her neighbors came with tractors, plowed her 160 acres in a day, harrowed and seeded it in another, and thus made it possible for the little brood to get along.
Colby Has No Taxes
GOLDEN AGE
Settlement of Oceania
COLBY, Kansas, is a progressive town, but, A N AUSTRALIAN writer claims that the log alas, it has no taxes. How is this? Oh! In books of Polynesians show that the islands
Colby the people have not swallowed all the publicity of the power trust, fed to them by the simian press, but they still have and maintain their own municipal electric light and water plant, and that plant pays all the town’s governmental expenses.
The Osservatore Romano
THE Osservatore Romano, official organ of the Vatican, has only four thousand subscribers, which shows how few people there are who care anything about what happens at the Vatican or what the Vatican thinks about anything. From the notoriety which this sheet receives in the American press one would think its circulation must be away up in the millions.
Magic for Ministers
THE -writer of the books “Magic for Ministers” and “The Conjurer in the Church”, and also two other books on magic, is now in the combined church and show business with Rodeheaver, late with the Billy Sunday outfit. Not having any Bible truths to present to the people, this method of doing sleight of hand tricks in the pulpit ought to make a hit.
Toronto in for a Bad Time
THE bones of a saint have been rubbed against fifteen hundred motor cars in front of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Roman Catholic Church in Toronto, holy water has been sprinkled on them and they have been “blessed”. No doubt the records since then will show a great increase in automobile accidents in Toronto streets. Toronto is in for a bad time.
The New Armored Combat Tank
THE new armored combat tank goes 42 miles an hour over rough country. In fourteen minutes it can be converted into a caterpillar tank and go sixty-two miles an hour. We have no information that each tank will be blessed with holy water and will have a chaplain aboard to represent the Prince of Peace, but if either of these desiderata is wanted it can be supplied instanter by those that are in that line of business.
of Oceania were uninhabited until about 400 B.C., when travelers put out from India, gradually spreading eastward until they reached and settled Central America, Mexico and countries to the north. Relapse into barbarism followed, owing to interrupted lines of communication.
Civil Versus Military Employees
TTNCLE Sam’s civil employees must put up 3y2 percent of their w’ages to guarantee a maximum retirement allowance of $1,000 a year. Thus far they have put up twice as much as they have received back. Army and navy men receive higher wages than civil employees, put up not a cent toward their retirement fund, and yet may retire on $4,000 or even $6,000 a year, while still in the best of health.
$55,000,000 Profit in Six Years
ON AN investment of only $11,250 in Central
States Electric shares a Chicago lawyer made a profit of $55,000,000 in six years. This was possible because, in the United States, electric current which costs less than %c a kilowatt hour is sold to consumers at an average rate of 7.4 cents a kilowatt hour, or more than 3y2 times the Canadian rate. The rate charged American consumers of electricity is in the neighborhood of ten times what it costs, and is the nation’s outstanding disgrace at this time.
The Private Car Graft
HPHE Long Bell Lumber Corporation has wide-ly scattered lumber interests. Do its officials pay railway fares when going from one part of the country to another? They do not. They have a lumber railroad down in Louisiana so small that it does not show on the map, yet it is long enough to have a private car, and that private car carries its officials all over the United States free of charge. Forty years ago this very form of graft was exposed and denounced and legislated against; but it still continues, and the public is the loser. One big thief will always help another big thief on the ground that he may some time want a similar favor. Legislation will never make the owners and operators of these private cars into honest men.
Niggardly Food Allowance for Prisoners
FOR more than sixty years the food allowance at the prisons in New York state has been but twenty-one cents a day, despite the fact that food prices have multiplied several times in the meantime. It is believed that this miserable food allowance was the underlying cause of the prison riots recently raging in New York state prisons. The governor of the state has promised to see that the prisoners shall have more and better food.
Fined Heavily for Raising Wheat By W. E. Shannon
Harry Porter, near Custer City, Oklahoma, had five hundred bushels of wheat in the Wheat Growers’ Association, and received $8.65 for it, or less than 2c a bushel. They charge 10c a bushel here for threshing, so you can see how much he made. I am well acquainted with him, and have this right from his own lips.
* * #
We ask our city readers to think about this a little. Think of the cost of the land, the necessary buildings, the fertilizers, the seed, the expense of plowing and , sowing and reaping and hauling to market, and the . hopes built on it all. No need to think of the taxes and cost of living. No need to think of any luxuries or even any comforts. How can this man who has provided so much food for his fellow men possibly contrive to live? The answer is that he can not do it very long unless help comes, and comes quickly.—■ Editor.
The Pilgrims from Philadelphia
FROM the Philadelphia Catholic and Standard we learn that when the pilgrims from Philadelphia recently called upon the pope at Rome they brought with them the following “Spiritual Bouquet”. Just what the pope will do with this bouquet we do not know; but, thinking some of our readers might be interested, we reproduce it. It seems a little bit shy on “Ransom of Pagan Babes”, and overly heavy on “Ejaculations”, but if the pope likes it we have no particular complaint. Of one thing we are sure, and that is that Rome will be as far as it will ever get.
Masses heard
340,156
Holy Communions
199,812
Rosaries
374,471
Litanies
33,779
Benedictions
41,639
Spiritual Communions
96,468
Rosaries promised
58,462
Benedictions promised
38.000
Stations of the Cross promised
7,227
Masses promised
97,571
Holy Communions promised
56,475
Stations of the Cross
36,639
Ejaculations
26,366,867
Mortifications
23,841
Good Works
741,554
Acts of Charity
31,381
Hours of Labor
75,065
Hours of Silence
10,088
Extra Devotions
1,436,002
Visits to Blessed Sacrament
267,989
Ransom of Pagan Babes
Visits to Blessed Sacrament promised
114,776
Litanies promised
4,296
Helping the Baby Jesus
MANY have supposed that the Roman Catholic Church teaches that Jesus Christ is
Almighty God. Indeed we published only a short time ago some evidence from the pen of one of their own theologians making that claim.
We now present additional evidence from the same source that, in their judgment, Jesus is still a baby. No wonder they worship Mary!
The letter which follows was sent out by the Right Reverend John J. Blair, president of the Catholic Church Extension Society of Canada. The letter-head contained a picture of the baby Jesus in the manger. It was sent out by the thousand about Christmas-time.
Dear Friend;
As the Feast approaches on which we celebrate God’s wonderful gift to mankind—His Only Begotten Son—-Who comes each year, with outstretched baby arms, scattering anew the peace and happiness of heaven upon men of good will, it behooves us to show, in a special way, some sign of the love that fills our hearts at the thought of what His Presence means in our lives.
What can we do to manifest this love? His Kingdom is a spiritual one; His only desire the salvation of souls. He commissioned the Apostles and their successors to carry on this work, and wants us to help them. '
How can this be done? Many generous, faithful Catholics send us, each year, $5.00, AS A CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR THE INFANT JESUS, to assist our missionaries in bringing souls to Him. THEY HAVE LEFT HOME, AND FRIENDS AND COMFORTS FOR HIS SAKE. THEY NEED YOUR HELP. In His Name we beg you to send us $5.00 for this Fund and, exchanging a spiritual for a temporal favor, I shall offer, on Christmas morning, a special Mass for the intentions of all who send Him a Gift.
May the Infant Jesus grant you a plenitude of Christmas joy and blessing.
There Were No Patriots When All Men Belonged to One Tribe (By Robert Quillen. Reprinted from Brooklyn Times)
(Copyright, 1929.)
FpHE greatest enemy of peace is patriotism.
Patriotism is a survival of the narrow provincialism that was universal when cities had walls and every stranger was an enemy.
Patriotism is sectionalism gone mad.
These United States function as one country, yet their people are not one in spirit. East, 'West and South feel superior to one another - and resent one another.
Neighboring states have their jealousies, also; and rival cities in competition for trade or other advantages feel an enmity that is bitter and unreasonable.
When towns, counties and states dislike and envy one another, they may use commercial weapons to wage expensive war, or they may be content to boast of their own advantages and sneer at the claims of a rival; but they do not take up arms or endeavor to destroy one another’s property by force, for the superior power of the Federal Government would not tolerate strife between them.
They do not fight because they dare not—or perhaps because they are too civilized—but the feeling that animates them is in all particulars identical with the “patriotism” that prompts nations to make war.
If it is noble to be ignorant of the world outside your immediate neighborhood, to think your small section and your acquaintances the salt of the earth, to envy the good fortune of other people and other sections, to love the thing to which you are accustomed and hate the thing of which you are ignorant, then patriotism is noble; for that narrowness is patriotism.
If nations inspired by this patriotism should fight, then counties and cities stirred by the same feeling should fight in the same way. The size of the district one loves should not lessen the obligations of patriotism.
Leaders with axes to grind have encouraged and glorified patriotism throughout the whole of history; for they had need of cannon fodder, and men fight best when told they are fighting in a noble cause.
The truth is, there could be no patriotism without ignorant provincialism.
If cities that are rivals can live in peace, and sections of America that scorn and deride one another can remain partners in government, then all nations, despite their differences, can belong to one federation and settle their family quarrels without guns.
Since hatred between units of a nation isn’t patriotic, and the very existence of patriotism depends upon the existence of an outsider, the obvious solution is to make all nations units of one government and leave none outside to hate.
Family pride can pick no quarrels if all are one family.
On Tattooing
ONE often comes across members of the human family who have disfigured some part of their body with tattoo marks. Indeed, I well remember seeing in my boyhood days a side show at the local fair, wherein was exhibited a beautiful woman, of fine figure and lovely complexion, whose whole body from the feet to the neck wTas completely covered with a variety of designs in blue and red.
I have questioned many men upon whom these disfiguring marks are found, as to their reasons for being tattooed; but in no case have I received an answer showing any benefits derived from this practice. In most cases I learned that they regarded it as ornamental, and allowed their bodies to be marked simply because they wished to be in the fashion. A few supersti-tiously believed that in some way it kept them immune from infectious diseases; especially is this the case among soldiers and sailors, who form the larger portion of tattooed whites. Aristocracy has patronized it, even to the royal family. Perhaps this helps to clear up that mysterious expression, “the blue-blooded aristocracy.”
It seems strange that man should have any desire to disfigure his body with these red and blue marks, v7hich, I am given to understand, can not be removed except by an operation. By such practice men do not bring any glory to the Creator; and, after all, man’s chief object in life should be to bring glory to his Creator. Furthermore, I believe that God is displeased v/ith such wrork, because he forbade his chosen people to make any marks on their bodies.— Lev. 19:28.
Tattooing has been practised in many countries, and is still common in Arabia, North and South America, India, China and Japan, being used for a variety of purposes in the different
{Contributed)
countries named. The American Indian tattoed the mark of his tribe or totem, for identification. Among the Fijians and Eskimos it assumed a religious significance. Omitting to tattoo was supposed to incur the forfeiture of happiness in a future world. Australian blacks and African negroes cut gashes and patterns on the skin, filling these with clay so as to raise scars.
Light-skinned people resort to cicatrice. In Japan it became a high art and was often used in lieu of clothing. In all countries in which tattooing is a usual custom, the designs vary according to sex. In some countries it was used as a brand of servitude; in others it was used for the purpose of intimidating foes. What could .be more fearsome or hideous than an army of tattooed warriors brandishing spears?
Among the Maoris, natives of New Zealand, it was, if not now, the rule to be marked at an early age. They are very proud of their marks - -and consider it a badge of bravery, an outward and visible sign of courage and prowess, cer-w . . tain lines denoting certain qualities. ..... .—
Today the marking is done with an electric- . needle; but the Maoris used more crude methods, making the process a very painful one. Instruments made of whalebone, sharpened to a fine point; others made of shell were used. The ? chisels w’ere set in wooden sockets so that a mallet could be used in puncturing the skin. The lines were made from a pattern traced with, charcoal. The pigment used was the smoke from kauri gum. The operation is borne with stoical fortitude, it being considered a disgrace to acknowledge pain.
The superstition attaching to the practice show-s its origin to be from the Devil, who delights in spoiling God’s handiwork; therefore it is a thing to be avoided.
How to Get a Few Sweet Smiles By a Grandpa
FIRST select a little girl about five years old. A few years, more or less, does not matter. In want of a little girl, a little boy wall do, because you can still make out the shape of his fingers, even in vacation time; but you will be more likely to see them clearly if it is a girl that is selected.
Ask her to hold up her fingers good and straight, stretch them widely apart and hold them firmly. If she can’t and won’t do that, the game is all off. You might as wrell give up looking for the smiles. But having pledged her to that, the rest is easy.
You grasp the wrist of your little friend with
your left hand; and then, with a solemn look on your face and a solemn tone of voice, you place the index finger of your right hand on the top of the upturned thumb and say:
This is little Tommy Thumb, Round and smooth as any plum.
Results start right away. The next step is to move your index finger over to the top of the little maiden’s tiny digit of the same relative position and say:
This is Busy Peter Pointer;
Surely he’s a double jointer.
You shift from one smile to another now, finger by finger, as you go on down the line, slowly and solemnly wiggling each of the maiden’s fingers down to the last one:
This is mighty Toby Tall;
He ’s the biggest one of all.
This is dainty Reuben Ring;
He’s too fine for anything.
And this little finger, maybe, Is the little Finger Baby.
Now you start all over again and have them coming in quick succession as you go back and forth from index finger to little finger, again and again, a word or two on each:
All the five we’ve counted now, Busy fingers in a
row*
Every
finger
knows the way How to
work and
how to
play.
Then you fold all the little maiden’s fingers up into the palm of your hand and say reassuringly :
But together work they best, Each one helping all the rest.
By the time you get done all the girls in the room up to 100 years of age will be casting sheep’s eyes at you and wishing you would tell them the same story.
Cancer: Its Causes and Prevention
FROM a little book by Melville C. Keith, M.D., published by W. H. Webb, medical herbalist, Southport, England, we print a few extracts. This little book, published away back in 1907, supports the view often mentioned in these columns, that all man’s bodily troubles originate in his intestines.
Whenever there comes to be too much of anything or any material in the body, which the force in that body can not get rid of by the proper channels, then this material is taken up by the blood corpuscles and deposited in some place (wherever it is most convenient and as far away from the heart as can be) and there this material is deposited as a bunch. Kindly observe this—any old, dead, effete, wornout, or ex-crementitious matters, are deposited, or dumped, in some place: and this dumping ground is actually a bunch of old material.
It is never under any circumstances a “growth”, but is a deposit; just in the same manner that you cleanse out your stables and throw out the debris and refuse, or excrementitious matters from your cattle, into the yard. It is never a growth, but always an accumulation of some old wornout material (or some excess of matters in the body) which should never have been there, but which, being there, has to be carried somewhere out of the way of the blood stream and out of the way of the action of the heart and lungs.
When this accumulation is large enough to be unpleasant, or in the way, when this dead matter is hard, then the life or force leaves these tissues: and we have the dead material, which fills the tissues. Then these tissues do not keep the fresh blood in them, and they become dead. When we have dead tissues, or material in which there is no life, then we have the chemical law taking hold of this mass, and it putrefies, or changes from a bunch to a dead mass. This dead mass, under the chemical law, putrefies: and we have an “eating sore”, or rather a mass which is composed of dead and rotting material. When the veins and nerves are filled up all the way around (for the blood corpuscles Eave filled these veins and arteries and nerves with this old and dead material), then these stiffened full veins and arteries and nerves (as they reach out away from the main bunch) look like “roots” or feelers of the “crab”. Hence this bunch has been called a cancer, from the Greek word kankrinos, crab, or cancer. It appears like a crab, a cancer, because of its supposed roots.
The surgeons may cut out the offending bunch, no matter where it is, and the victim may live for some time. But sooner or later the same conditions that caused the bunch in the first place will cause it again in some other place, and we shall have death as a result from the decomposition, or the putrefying of this dead and poisonous matter and its absorption back into the system.
Now the facts are that these cancerous formations were not due to the cancer germ. They were caused by filth, the disobedience of nature’s laws; and this, added to improper nourishment, brought about the condition of foreign or dead material in the body. Nature deposited this dead material in one place, and they called it a growth. It was not a growth, but an accumulation or a deposit of old material, and it became putrefied: it became a rotten or putrefied ulcer, or a cancerous bunch, and they cut it out. The proper thing to do would have been to eliminate the waste materials in the system instead of cutting out the organs with the supposition that there was a live germ there. We have already stated in a larger work than this how it was that the milk glands became filled with deposits of old material and the cancer of the breast followed.
When one thinks, in regard to these cases of the uterus, ovaries, or breasts, that there is always a deposit (not a growth, but an accumulation and a depositing of waste materials) ; also in the case of osteosarcoma, that there is always a growth or enlargement, and the growth or accumulation continues until the place is dead. The vital force has left the tissues. Then it breaks open and becomes putrefied. When we think of these conditions and think that the medical men have called these things first after kankrinos, a crab, because of its fancied resemblance to a crab, and then in the case of epithelioma, calling it a lupus, or wolf, we can see how little reasoning power they used in naming these conditions.
If they had said in regard to an osteo-sarcoma that it was a manure pile, they would have been much nearer the truth, because the materials which form this osteo-sarcoma are really the materials which should have passed off through the system a long time before. To call the epithelioma a lupus, or a wolf, because it eats and breaks down, is absurd; for it is not a wolf at all, but is simply a weakness of the tissue, because there is not sufficient strength in the tissues to hold it together, and not sufficient strength or nourishment in the food eaten to allow the vital force to build up good tissue.
On the cause of appendicitis the same writer said:
The basic reason for all cases, or nearly all cases of appendicitis, comes from the fact that the ascending colon has been crowded full of material; and as the feces form in the ascending colon they are forced over into the transverse colon. These colons being full and perhaps clogged by excessive dryness in the rectum, or excessive amounts of dry material which have caused constipation, or constipation from any cause—we say, these colons, being crowded full, exude or send through the walls of the intestines a quantity of the thinnest of the fecal matter.
The fecal matter, or the thinnest of it, passing through the walls of the ascending colon, falls down around the ascending colon and fills the groin full of this fecal material in its thin stage of liquid like water, but filled with particles of manure. It is at this point where this fecal material has exuded, or has been forced through the walls of the ascending colon and has fallen into the groin, that the pain, or ache, or uneasy feeling, is felt by those persons who are about to have appendicitis.
Chromium-Nickel-Steel
IT IS claimed by the Lalance & Grosjean Mfg.
Co. (Woodhaven, New York) that their utensils for home and factory use contain no copper, zinc or aluminum, are not subject to rust or corrosion, are not attacked by alkalis, cleaning liquids or powders, impart no foreign flavor or discoloration to foodstuffs, do not affect and are not affected by foods, and that soap and water are sufficient cleansing agents. Out of 126 acids and other chemicals listed as having been stored or used in these utensils, only 21 are reported as having affected them in any way, and 9 of them but slightly. The twelve which attacked them were chloracetic acid, hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, picric acid, sulphuric acid, bromine, chlorine gas, copper chloride, ferric chloride, and combinations thereof. It is claimed that the metal is three times as strong as ordinary steel and equally as tough, that it is solid and not plated, and that it will last indefinitely.
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