Golden Age, July 22, 1931

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Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE <tTD COURAGE

in this issue

TRAFFIC PROBLEMS

INTEREST SYSTEM RUINOUS SEEDS FROM THE SUNFLOWER CIVILIANS IN NEXT WAR HUMAN VIVISECTION NEAR THE PRIZE WINNER SMALLPOX CARRIERS GOD THE ETERNAL

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five cents a copy one dollar a year Canada & Foreign 1.23

Vol. XII - No. 309

July 22, 1931

LABOR AND ECONOMICS

Twenty Million Idle .... 685

In the Broad Silk Business . . 687

Many Families Own Nothing . 687

Unnecessary to Build to Limit . 688 Senator Couzens Wants to Know 688 Hard Times Increase Suicides , 688 The Billion-Dollar Deficit . . 689

POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN

No Hope for Civilians in next Wab 691

Electric Rates in Wisconsin . . 691

Clergy and United States Army 692

Denied Citizenship ..... 692

AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY

The Corn-Hog Ratio .... 685

Sudden Interest in Weeds . . 686

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

Seeds from the Sunflower . . 685

Nice Bookkeeping, This . . . 685

Platinum May Do the Trick , . 687

Growth of Population Slowing Up 688

Dry and Wet Churches . . . 689

Kelly Creek Company Stores . 690

Our Civilization Crumbling . . 690

Forgot to See the Doctor . . . 690

Badly Tangled Radio Set . . 696

Ox the Firing Line in

Massachusetts ..... 697

FINANCE-—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

Traffic Problems—Past and Present

Whither the Interest System

Leads ....... .

Power Trust Complains . . .

Urges Britain to Leave League .

SCIENCE AND. INVENTION

Another Variable Star Discovered 685

The Auto-Gyro in Michigan . . 686

New Building Materials . . . 686

HOME AND HEALTH

Points Against Testing Cattle . 688 Human Vivisection Only Two

Jumps aavay . . .... 692

The Prize Winner . . ... 693 Further Information About

Smallpox Carriers .... 695

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY

Distress in Cuba ...... 686

Little Island of Porto Rico . . 687

Spanish Jews Invited Back . . 688

From Radio Listeners .... 694

The Radio Witness Work . . .. 698

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

Could Blasphemy Go Further? . 696

God the Eternal ...... 699

“When Thou Prayest” , . .703

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ahe Golden Age

Volume KI Brooklyn, N. ¥., Wednesday, July 22, 1931 Number 309

Traffic Problems—Past and. Present

THE streets of Boston were laid out by the cows, and still follow the devious paths that bossy took in the evening on the way to the barn. The streets of Philadelphia were laid out during* the ‘hay age’, when the utmost traffic that could be forevisioned by the successors of William Penn was the possibility of two loaded hay wagons passing on the same street. In 1829, in Philadelphia four persons were fined $2.00 each for using wheelbarrows on the sidewalks; one person was fined $5.00 for riding a horse on the sidewalk; and another person was fined $3.00 for driving at an immoderate rate of speed: possibly he pushed the old nag up to fifteen miles an hour. Today even the little tots are accustomed to see high-powered cars running through the streets at fifty or more miles an hour, and a horse and carriage looks like some outfit that has escaped from an insane asylum.

In 1829 a newspaper of the period said: “A young gentleman of Cincinnati traveled from Nashville to that city, a distance of 356 miles, in three days and a half. This is an example worthy of emulation of the thousands of idle, dissipated and effeminate young men of our large cities, who pay more for horse and carriage hire than their services to the world will ever be worth.”

Today, if you are willing to eat a little earlier than usual at noon you can have your lunch in Nashville and, if you are willing to have your dinner a little later than usual, you can dine in Cincinnati, and do it every day in the year by the L. & N. Railroad; but if you are in a hurry you can make the trip by airplane in two hours, and there are instances in which an equal distance (300 miles) has been covered in one hour.

It is useless today to think of traffic as it prevailed in New York city less than a generation ago. It would be simply out of the question to do in New York with horses the work that is now done with vehicles driven by mechanical means.

’ 675

Indeed, some of the critics of the hay age are boldly proposing to remove from the streets the silver-haired chauffeurs that but a little while ago were grooming horses in the stables of their employers and were insisting that the autos be kept off the streets because they frightened the horses.

Now the tables have been turned and it is the drivers of autos that need to fear when horses are near as much as the drivers of horses used to fear autos. The cars seem to get around one another very well, but in a traffic jam nobody can be certain just what a horse 'will do.

The Pedestrian Has the First Right

The auto is a new-comer on the scene of action, and a new-comer cannot come in and take away from another a right that has been long enjoyed. Streets are designed for the accommodation of humans, and it is they *who have the first rights to them. Horses have rights on streets only by sufferance of the people as a whole, and autos have rights for the same reason.

It is the pedestrian who is in the greatest danger and is the greatest sufferer from motor traffic. If the streets are to be made safe for anybody they must be made safe for him. Islands of safety are becoming increasingly common, both in Europe and America, and when sufficiently numerous and properly arranged they enable pedestrians to cross lines of heavy traffic without having to watch more than one line of traffic at a time.

In the city of Elizabeth, N. J., when a pedestrian desires to cross Newark Avenue (part of the Lincoln Highway), he presses a button mounted on a post at the curb. This turns on a red light, -which remains on for a sufficient time to allow him to cross the highway, and then the green goes on again automatically. By this

method pedestrians in Elisabeth have become their own traffic patrolmen.

It is believed that this is the only way by which pedestrian control can be brought about, i.e.? each pedestrian must be his owm patrolman. In ri ties in which devices similar to that in use in Elizabeth have been tried, it has been found that no police regulation is necessary beyond that of the usual routine supervision.

The Crime (?) of Jaywalking

New' York has always been a city of jaywalkers, and is to this day. A New Yorker always tries to take the shortest distance between points, and if that leads him diagonally across a street, then diagonally he goes. It often seems to the pedestrians that they have a better chance to cross safely in the middle of a block; but the facts are that the number who meet death that way is almost twice as great as of those killed at regular crossings. In the year 1928, in New York city, 323 adults were killed and 9,271 were injured; while a year later 412 were killed and 11,091 were injured when they tried to cross the streets at other than the regular crossings.

The jaywalkers have their defenders. There are those who insist that in the middle of a long block there should be a crosscut ten feet wide for pedestrians to use, where they would at least be free from the danger caused by cars turning corners, and when the lights stop traffic all the cars caught in the block before reaching this central lane should stop there instead of proceeding to the end of the block.

As it is now, the pedestrians often have a hard time of getting across the streets at intersections because the cars come from every direction in what appear to be endless streams. In numerous instances the lights change before very many pedestrians can get across.

In these days it is hard enough for a young, active and alert pedestrian to get across a street at a busy intersection. These are especially difficult for women seeking to care for two or more children; for women who, caught in the middle of a street, turn and run back to the side from which they started: to men over sixty years of age who are beginning to lose some of their alertness, and to absent-minded professors and day-dreamers who do not sense what is going on around them. New York city has laws against jaywalking, but we have heard of but one jaywalker who was convicted, and he was given a suspended sentence.

The Death Toll

The four principal causes of accidents are: Jaywalking, crossing against the lights, failure of drivers to keep to the right, and failure to yield the right of way. Every six seconds there is a new auto in the United States, and every seventeen minutes there is a traffic death. In 1929, the state highway accidents took 33,060 lives. This was the record for 1929 in the United States. In the streets of New York eity one person is killed every eight hours, and one person, injured every 7 3/4 minutes. The figures show one car out of every 8| cars involved in an accident every year.

One encouraging feature is that accidental deaths among children have decreased nearly, thirty percent in the last decade, in spite of an almost steady increase in fatal accidents to adults. This decrease in fatal accidents among children is believed to be due to safety education through the schools and other agencies.

The Personal Factor in Accidents

An auto is a. dangerous thing, as deadly as a gun, knife or other instrument of destruction., Only one person in a car can assume the responsibility for driving the car. Back-seat driving has been declared illegal in the courts of the land, and properly so.

If the driver drinks even a little alcohol he is unsafe. If he is a slow thinker, he is unsafe, because the driver of a car must think and act instantly. If he has poor coordination he should let others do the driving, for his own safety as well as for theirs. ’

If one is given to fits of temper, he is unfit to ’drive, for in driving there are many things to try one’s patience. Many an auto driver’ has made a one-way trip to the cemetery/ because he insisted upon his rights. It is better to yield a point and live than it is to have a nice dirge played over one ahead of time.

Traffic Violations

Students of accidents, such as are to be found among the insurance people, claim, that 95 percent of all accidents are the result of human failure rather than of faulty mechanism or engineering, Undue pride or undue affection may make a person an unsafe driver, because driving calls for the exercise of all one’s faculties.

The notion that driving is a right is a mistake. It is not a right, hut a privilege; and its exercise _ should be restricted to those who are able to use the privilege without abusing it. Nevertheless, in eighteen metropolitan districts in 1927, there were 614,232 persons arrested charged with violations of traffic laws; and one can imagine the additional violations which escaped attention.

In New York and vicinity many accidents are caused through boys’ hitching on behind cabs, riding from one red light to the next. The rear bumpers provide excellent footing for hitchers, who can stand on one of them while the cab goes cruising through the streets looking for business.

In metropolitan areas in the United States one out of every five motorists is charged with violations of the traffic laws each year. This record was compiled from a questionnaire sent to police authorities in fifty cities ranging in population from 50,000 up.

In the state of Connecticut, one in every twelve of the operators licensed to drive in the state was tried by the courts of the state for violations of the motor vehicle laws during 1929. These ..... cases include only offenses against the state law, and not violations of city ordinances.

Prosecutors of traffic cases say that they experience much difficulty in securing just punishment of the guilty. It would almost seem as if the people in general really look upon the traffic officers as their enemies instead of their friends and are glad to see violators of the traffic ordinances escape unpunished.

The Traffic Must Move .

The traffic is here to be handled, and some way must be found to keep it going. In some of the older cities where the streets are narrow and crooked, magnificent new highways have been cut down through the center. This has been done repeatedly in New York and Brooklyn, and both New York and Brooklyn have elaborate and expensive bridges and tunnels for carrying street traffic in the air and underground.

It was once thought a wise thing to bring through-traffic through the heart of the cities along the way. It is now generally held that this is most unwise, and the great cities are pursuing a reverse policy and making by-passes to carry around their edges the traffic which now congests their busiest streets to the confusion and irritation of everybody. The great arterial highways are being built wider and wider. Many of these are now able to carry three or four lines of traffic.

The speed limits which were first fixed for auto travel have been increased but have become virtually a dead letter. Speeds up to fifty miles an hour on good highways are not considered excessive, and in Rhode Island there are signs to the effect that “if you cannot make thirty-five miles an hour, get off the road”.

The tendency today is not to penalize speed, but to penalize sloth. In San Francisco and various other western cities the police are constantly on the watch to speed up the ‘'snail drivers’ who impede all traffic and constitute a real danger. In the year 1927, in New York city 26,000 summonses were served on slow-moving vehicles which failed to keep to the right.

A truck going at fifteen miles an hour but with inadequate brakes may be much more dangerous than a car with proper brakes going at fifty miles an hour. No one, unless driving at the extreme righthand side of the road, has any right to drive so slowly that traffic piles up behind him.

In Mexico City burros may not be driven on the streets except early in the morning and late at night, as their deliberate movements impede the auto traffic.

The Parking Problem

The parking problem is being gradually solved in the only way by which it can be solved, namely, by taking the idle cars off the streets and finding places for them either on vacant lots or in garages built for the purpose. In Los Angeles most of the first-class office buildings that have been built within the last few years provide for internal storage facilities for motor vehicles.

Most cities of even moderate size in the United States either have at least one example of a garage built in as part of an office building structure or are considering such a combination. Many modern garages are very artistic in appearance and are in every way desirable additions to the neighborhoods in which they are built.

It seems to us that the tendency to build 100 stories in the air and then have garage accommodations for four stories or more below ground, is growing in the wrong direction. It seems as if there would be better opportunities for light and air if buildings could be kept down to a reasonable height, and certainly there would be less danger of pandemonium in the streets when five o’clock' comes and everybody starts to go home.

It can be very truthfully said that parking is a privilege and not a right. The streets of the city belong to the city, that is, to the people as a whole, and not to any individual; and no individual has any right to divert the streets from the purpose for which they were made, Proportionately as the people are inconvenienced by the parking of cars on the public streets, in that proportion the. privilege of thus storing their cars on the public streets is bound to be withdrawn.

In New York city a citizens’ committee estimated that fifty percent of the available street space on east and west thoroughfares was taken up either by the abuse of parking privileges or by openings in the street surfaces or the storage of building materials or other goods in the streets and on the sidewalks. The same citizens’ committee made an investigation of 100,000 parked cars, disclosing that 25,000 of them were violating parking ordinances.

Bus and Cab Enterprises

At first we hauled passengers through the streets in stage coaches; then we changed and carried nearly all of them by rail. Now we put them all back in the streets again; but instead of having living motors with mane and tail attachments, we are running up and down the highways and from one city to another by buses and cabs that are carrying loads of passengers greater than a generation ago anybody would have supposed would be traveling in that way.

One wonders at the great size of the buses. Some of them are apparently almost, if not quite, as large as the railway passenger coaches of a few years ago. It takes a skillful and courageous driver in a good car to run around one of these huge vehicles.

These buses are economical of space, however, because they have passenger-carrying capacity of one passenger for but 6.7 square feet, while it requires an average of 53 square feet per passenger to move a given number of people by private autos. So then, while the bus really seems to take up a lot of space, it actually requires far less street space per passenger than the private cars.

The taxicab drivers constitute an important factor. Though there are 20,000 cabs in New York city, there are said to be only 700 officially designated hack stands in the city and these will accommodate only about one-tenth of the cabs. It thus becomes necessary for almost 90 percent of the cabs to cruise this way and that way looking for business. The cab drivers in New York estimate that half their mileage is dead mileage; that is, if they average to go a hundred miles a day they have passengers for only fifty miles.

There seems to be a more or less clearly defined war on between cab drivers and the police. A cabby is really a skilled artist. In New York he penetrates a traffic jungle with an unrivaled technique. There are scores of cab drivers that run 50,000 miles a year without accidents of any kind, and hundreds of them who make 30,000 miles a year without their names’ ever coming up in the traffic court.

However, there are some who seem to be marked mem-One taxi driver in New York city whose name is Ennis is on record as having been in traffic court twenty times in ten years and as having contributed $306 to the city’s treasury for convictions on about all the charges for which a taxicab driver could be convicted,

Congestion: Causes and Remedies

The primary cause of traffic congestion is business congestion, the effort to- crowd all the offices and business of the community into one small locality. The higher the skyscrapers go, the worse the congestion in the streets and the more necessity there is for subways and elevated railways.

There are other causes, some of which have been already mentioned. There is the parking of vehicles, legally and illegally; there is the cruising of empty taxicabs looking for fares ; there are bottle necks in the street systems: there is the effort to close all places of business at the same hour; there is lack of enforcement of traffic laws.

There are communication and industrial buildings that handle their merchandise on the sidewalks instead of under their own roofs; there are deliveries of merchandise in rush hours; there are improperly located traffic signals, and signals of the wrong kind; there are streets so jammed with pedestrians that vehicles can hardly move; and then in the midst of it all there are traffic accidents, fires and other emergencies that make confusion worse confounded.

There is an instance of traffic’s being tied up on a busy street in a big city in the peak of the rush hour by so small a thing as a dainty French heel wedged in a trolley slot. If there were any way of knowing, it would be interesting to ascertain the total cost in lost time caused by that young woman’s getting her foot in the wrong place. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were inconvenienced. Some may have missed the trains they intended to take. Others may have failed to keep business engagements, and so on, all because the little girl wore the wrong kind of shoes.

The losses due to traffic congestion are much heavier than appear on the surface. Traffic congestion checks the growth of a city and gives it a bad name. As soon as the congestion has been removed by the opening of a new boulevard through the area, desirable results are almost instantly manifest.

.....New York has gone insane on the subject of skyscrapers. It is very conservatively estimated that traffic congestion in New York costs at least a million dollars a day, which means that New Yorkers are losing the interest on $6,000,000,000 a year through trying to imitate the builders of the Tower of Babel.

One of the things that helps to cause congestion on the streets is the unsteady and uncertain navigation of gas-driven and rubber-tired tin scrap rescued from the junk pile, miscalled "autos”. It is too soon for it, but without a doubt the time will come when there will be periodic inspections which will result in the destruction of vehicles that are unsafe to their owners and to others and are liable to tie up traffic. The state could afford to make some concessions in taxes on newer cars for vehicles thus condemned.

The cities that are engaged in street widening-are finding it an expensive operation, not only for the laying of pavements and sidewalks, but especially for the costs of condemning valuable buildings, all or parts of which have to be removed.

Suggestions for Improvement

The suggestion is sometimes made that traffic conditions in congested areas would be improved by the elimination of street car lines. It might be all right to take up the tracks and let the street cars run on rubber tires as they are now doing-more and more, but it would not at all help traffic to eliminate both street cars and buses.

A single street car will carry as many seated passengers as thirty-six private motor cars, and, the way they travel in New York city at the rush hours, will carry about as many strap hangers and others as could he squeezed into one hundred ordinary autos with a shoehorn.

We have already discussed some of the problems which the skyscraper has brought. As we continue to build these monstrosities, we must expect to build double-decked or triple-decked streets to get the people in and out of them at the rush hour.

As it is, in New York, there is one place, 33d Street and Broadway, where traffic is moving in every direction on six different elevations. New York is already honeycombed with subways, but engineers are talking of an entire new system of subways, buried hundreds of feet beneath the city in solid rock and going in straight lines beneath the streets and skyscrapers overhead.

A practical problem is how to make the best of conditions today without waiting for the improvements of tomorrow. An experienced driver states that his method is to pick a competent leader and folIoAv the leader through the traffic. By following the leader who is making the greatest progress, the greatest speed is maintained through heavy traffic. If one gets behind a laggard, he is blocked everywhere the laggard is blocked, and then some.

An experienced autoist in Nerv York states that he has recently noticed while on city streets that when approaching an intersection, if he looks at the window pane of the store on the corner to his left he can see during the daytime a car approaching from the street on his right, and in the evening the headlights; and also, if he looks on the opposite side of the street he can see the cars approaching from the left. There is; a suggestion here that municipalities might be. able to install metal or glass mirrors on dangerous corners, which would reflect the approach of ears from the side streets.

Signs and Markings ■

Wonderful progress has been made in safety signs and markings. A study shows that white contrasted with black gives the highest lightreflection values; cream comes next; and then in order, ivory, buff, light green, yellow, gray, light blue, pink, dark tan, dark red and dark green. For this reason white is now being most largely used as the color for highway signs and markings.

Fences, posts, tree trunks and rocks are now painted white contrasted with black in order to reflect warning gleams of light on rainy and foggy nights, to help reduce hazards at curbs, y/hite markings on the road surface are an additional help. The most usual mark is the center line, first painted white in Massachusetts. This custom spread over New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Illinois, and now in some sections the white strip is built into the road itself, not requiring periodic painting.

Philadelphia is trying to guide pedestrians aright by white lines showing where it is safe to walk. A count recently made on a busy Saturday afternoon showed that out of 318 pedestrians there were so many as 127 who seemed to pay some attention to the white lines. The remaining 191 were just the usual contrary, independent Americans who -were willing to take a chance of being killed rather than have anybody tell them what thej7 must do. That is the way we are over on this side of the water.

A Rochester firm manufactures a canvas impregnated with white paint. It has adhesive on the back for application to the pavement. The strips are put on when the pavement is hot and the sun is shining brightly. The traffic soon vulcanizes the strips to the pavement. By the use of these markers there is no delay to traffic except the brief time required to lay the strips.

An Iowa furniture dealer paints the back and and body of his delivery trucks white to protect them from rear collisions on winding country roads at night. Motorists who have narrow driveways to their garages find it desirable to paint white lines for the wheels to follow, with a white stop line inside the garage.

Another good way to stop a ear at the right place in a small garage is to abut two' short pieces of plank against the rear wall and nail a board across their beveled ends. This automatically stops the car in just the right place. Vie heard of one autoist, new at the game, who drove into a garage not too well built and, when he reached the rear wall, said Whoa I to his car, which, not having been properly instructed, went right on, taking the rear partition along with it.

At dangerous intersections signs should be erected to protect against high hedges, trees, high walls or fences which obscure the vision.

It is a reasonable suggestion that warning signs may be overdone. That is, there may be too many of them. The signs should be erected where they are needed, and then they are a real help; but if a driver has too many warnings his mind may become accustomed to the idea that the sign ahead does not indicate anything to be taken seriously into account.

Mechanical Policemen

In the last two years, mechanical policemen, otherwise known as ‘■'vehicle-actuated control”, have been employed in twenty-one states and over 150 municipalities. This form of control is bound to spread. It has greatly reduced the accidents at crossings, and automatically discloses unnecessary delays. It may be adjusted to suit particular conditions. The control operates a standard traffic light in exact accordance with the flow of traffic in the streets.

The principle of the thing is that there are rubber-covered sensitive strips placed in the pavement at each street adjacent to the intersection. As the autoists pass over these strips they automatically convey to the controlling apparatus the speed of cars approaching; the intersection, the number of ears, the density per hour, the arrival of each vehicle, and how long each has waited. The result is a mechanical decision that admits of no errors.

When first installed in Philadelphia a mechanical policeman which set the “Go” sign automatically in response to the toot of an auto horn was such an object of interest to autoists that many drivers went around and around the block, again and again, in order to test their mechanical abilities. They made so much noise in the neighborhood that residents got this efficient cop moved off his post temporarily.

A device similar to that used in Philadelphia, and referred to as ‘a traffic semaphore with ears’, has been tried out in Baltimore, and is claimed to be a success. A motorist wishing to cross the main highway stops at a line ten feet from the intersection and sounds his horn. Microphones tuned to pick up the sound from this spot reverse the signal for eighteen seconds, to allow him to pass. The signal is designed to avoid delays when there is no traffic on a cross street.

Camden, N. J., has installed loud-speakers in many if its most important traffic towers, so that the presiding cop can make himself heard above the roar of the traffic.

Cambridge, Mass., has a cop that is semi-human, semi-meehanieal. He wears on his stomach a large red light, which he turns on and off at pleasure. When he permits the cars to pass, his stomach, flashes green; when an auto runs over him the light probably turns a golden color, but we are not sure of this.

Uniform Traffic Signals

"Uniform traffic signals,” said you. and everybody laughed. At the present time there is only one thing about this traffic signal business that could be said to be uniform, and that is that it is different in every city and town in. the country. How it would be possible for the ingenuity of man to contrive as many different kinds of lights, and as many different ways of placing them, and as many different ways of understanding them, is a problem that can be worked'out only by calculus.

Every device that would aid in obstructing and confusing the tourist seems to have been carefully provided. It is impossible for a driver to know what the traffic laws are: he is never under the same law for an hour at a time, in some places you can turn right on red; in other places you can not. In some places you can turn left on green; in others you must use yellow for this purpose. In some places green means that every car can go in any direction it cares to. In some places red means that all ears must stop, while the pedestrians go.

In some cities, like Indianapolis, there are numerous intersections where the streets run six different ways, and for fear that the traveling public will get so thffi they understand the rules, they change every few' weeks, so that nobody could really understand them even if they tried. We Americans, especially we Hoosiers, do. more things dumbly than any other people on the globe that have been left to live.

Having apparently learned all there is to learn in the irregular and contrary and impossible traffic laws, rules, regulations and the like, the American is well prepared for a trip to Europe, where, if possible, conditions are worse.

Wouldn’t it be a fine thing if, instead of some of these conferences of militarists to see how much bigger they can make the armies and navies, and thus how soon they could bring on another world war, we could get together half a dozen sensible men who know something about traffic problems and would make up a simple and uniform system of traffic laves, rules and regulations that could be put in force all over the world? '

Less than half the American states require that drivers be licensed; and where licenses are required, the minimum age of drivers varies from twelve to eighteen years. There are about as many speed laws as there are states, and the authorized speeds on open highways range from twenty miles an hour up to as high as the machine will go. In the cities the limits range from eight to thirty-five miles, with speeds up to fifty miles or beyond in actual practice in every city.

There is no doubt that the great number of traffic deaths would be materially cut down if the laws for the whole country and for the whole world were uniform and such that they could be readily learned and obeyed. At present it is too much like every man being a law unto himself.

Some of New York’s Problems

On Fifth Avenue, New York, in certain sections and at certain times one can walk faster than he can ride. In the worst periods of the day buses may move as slowly as two miles an hour. In the five years between 1925 and 1930 the time required to travel between 125th Street and Washington Square under rush-hour conditions increased from 52 minutes to 57 minutes.

A firm of engineers has stated that the avoidable delays are costing the users of New York streets at least $5,000,000 a day. A detailed study of airplane photographs showed one of the greatest reasons for this heavy expense, It appeared from these studies that the number of parked and of moving cars on the streets at any one time were the same.

The island of Manhattan is so limited in area that traffic problems must become increasingly acute as skyscrapers multiply. Every agency of transportation reveals this fact. Thus on an average day in 1924 the Queensboro Bridge carried 35,085 vehicles in twenty-four hours. Six years later the twenty-four-hour average was 86,000 vehicles, or nearly two and a half times the number,

New York was the originator of the traffic light system, having erected a series of handsome bronze traffic towers on Fifth Avenue ten years ago. In 1920 it expended $7,573 on its traffic light system. In 1930 it expended more than $230,000. Its traffic lights are controlled by about 350 miles of cables beneath the street surfaces. It is estimated that the signal light system, though not now nearly as fully developed as in some other cities, is, nevertheless, doing the work of 15,000 policemen and is saving the city approximately $45,000,000 a year in salaries.

New York needs a light at each intersection as most other cities have, ana it will eventually have to install the automatic vehicle control system previously described in this article. The city is handicapped by the fact that uptown the blocks are only 250 feet deep in the direction in which the bulk of the traffic flows, namely, north and south.

If it could only have been foreseen, what a fabulous sum would have been saved in New York city by placing the north and south streets close together and the east and west streets far apart instead of as at present arranged! New York is also placed at a disadvantage by the fact that Broadway cuts an oblique path across the through traffic which is moving by other thoroughfares north and south.

It is hard for pedestrians to get across the streets of New York, and it is going to be harder. There are over 100,000 traffic offenses which come up in court every year. Many autoists seem to forget that pedestrians have the first right to the street. Some of them drive as if they resented the fact that there are any such things as pedestrians at all.

New York pedestrians complain of the rule which permits right-hand vehicle turns on red traffic lights. A pedestrian waits at a broad crossing for the beckoning green light and is often forced to stand with one foot on the street while vehicles swing around past him until the signal is again set against him. Meanwhile all the "character” that he has "developed” is swallowed up in wrath.

In many outlying sections of the great city there are private thoroughfares which have never yet been dedicated to the city even though used for traffic. The city cannot move against any who use these streets for parking purposes. Certain blocks are closed at certain hours for recreation purposes, and more of them should be similarly closed for the same reason.

W ashington—Detroit

Like Indianapolis, Washington has difficult traffic conditions; not because there are not enough streets, but because there are too many; nor is it because the streets are crooked or narrow, for they are both vride and straight. But there are diagonals which transverse the city in every direction and then, too, not only is it the capital of fifty Amerjcan states, each with it s own peculiar kind of laws, rules and regulations in every city in such state, and it therefore has all kinds of American motorists to handle; but, as the capital of the country, it is also the home of our foreign diplomats (consisting of fifty-five diplomatic missions with more than 500 members), and the custom or rule of diplomatic immunity enables these diplomats and their households to do about as they please, i.e., to be a law unto themselves.

Washington has had the unique distinction of one traffic cop who served the traffic interests and necessities of but one person, namely, the secretary of agriculture. He ushered him into a certain driveway at. 8:30 every morning, and returned to usher him out at about 4:20 in the afternoon. Just what would have happened to the secretary had he emerged from his office ahead of time has not been stated.

Detroit autos drive through its streets at a dizzy pace. Many children are slain in its streets. In Detroit, motorists are commended for fast driving and censured for slow driving.

The traffic across the Ambassador Bridge, between Detroit and Windsor, Ont., is watched and controlled by an electric eye. As tolls are paid each car automatically records itself, while signals flashed to the general manager notify him of the density of traffic at all times and indicate at which points assistance is needed to avoid traffic jams.

Chicago and Los 'Angeles

In the Loop district of Chicago all parking has been abolished, with excellent results. Under the new rules the number of autos entering the Loop actually doubled, with no corresponding increase in congestion.

Chicago has a school to which offending drivers are sentenced, instead of being sent to cells or required to pay fines. The school, which is intended to reduce motor accidents and deaths, has now been going on for seven years and has proved so successful as to be made a permanent feature of Chicago’s traffic administration.

Pedestrian control is more effective in Los Angeles and in other cities of the western coast than in any other part of America. In the downtown districts of these western, cities, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle and Long Beach, any attempt to jaywalk results in a prompt but courteous warning by a traffic officer.

California roads and streets are wide, and are being made wider still. Cars are encouraged to make good time, and do so. Applicants for motor licenses in Los Angeles are examined by the use of mechanically driven toy autos and trolley cars. Chicago’s drivers of mail trucks are taught by similar methods,

California, it may be said, boasts of the first aerial traffic cop. This has become necessary on account of the stunt flying associated with the film industries, dangerous to aviators and home owners. The police plane is a fast black and orange vehicle, and by the blast of a siren the cop warns^ the stunt flyer that he is flying too low or doing something else he has no right to do.

Muddling Through in Britain

Anybody who would come to this planet from any other place and who would see America’s craay traffic system, or lack of system, and then make a visit to England, would know instinctively where to place the blame. It so happens that many hundreds of years ago the farm work of Britain was done with oxen. To keep the oxen from goring one another when they met on the public highway, the ox drivers walked on the right of their oxen and passed one another on the left. This was so that when pairs of oxen met on the highway the two drivers were in between ami could use their strong right hands to protect themselves and their oxen if the emergency should arise. This also enabled the drivers to shake hands with one another and to spend a half-hour talking about the weather or the crops or any other exciting items which might at the moment be in their minds.

Now, because the ox driver was at the right of his team and passed on the left it is imbedded in the soul of every Englishman that for the next ten million years he must sit upon the righthand side of his vehicle and turn to the left, although all the rest of the world has long since left the ‘oxcart era’; but Britain turns to the left and sits on the right because it always did turn to the left and sit on the right. It was always done that way; and because it was always done that way it is the Briton’s definite intention that it shall be done that way in Britain until the end of time.

And when your true Briton gets to heaven, if he finds up there that traffic turns to the right, he will insist on turning to the left or he will not go in. If the traffic turns otherwise than the way in which it always has turned it would not be heaven for a Briton, but it would be, let us say, Hoboken.

Britain has raised the minimum age of motorcyclists from fourteen to sixteen years, and has adopted the American idea of ‘speed cops’, but designates them by the more dignified title of “motor police patrol”. The control of traffic by light signals has also begun. Auto traffic in London streets in a heavy fog is an experience such as most, persons would care to go through but once, -

In Gay Pares

Those who have visited Paris say that the cabs really seem to try to see if they can run down the pedestrians. It is true that a pedestrian is allowed to cross a street, but if he gets knocked down by wheeled traffic when crossing it in a forbidden manner he may be arrested for interfering with traffic. Disks sunk in the pavement show the path within which he must walk. A warning bell rings just before the red shifts from one direction to another.

Paris makes no effort to enforce speed limits for motor vehicles. It has under way a system of synchronized traffic regulation modeled on that of New York. It is expected that this system will be completed within the next four years and that its installation will require about one billion francs.

In some of the narrower streets of Paris parking is permitted on one side only, but the next day parking is permitted on the opposite side. On days bearing an even date the parking is done on one side; on days bearing an uneven date the parking is done on the other side.

Traffic engineers have figured that the loss in time due to traffic congestion represents an annual loss to Paris of 500,000,000 francs, or $20,000,000, '

Berlin, Vienna, and Elsewhere

Berlin’s traffic lights frankly follow the American system and shine thirty seconds red, five seconds yellow, and thirty seconds green, without intermission. The motorist has to learn the meaning of thirty-six symbols which indicate one-way streets, two-way streets, streets barred to certain sorts of traffic, streets where parking is allowed, streets closed to all traffic, etc.

There is a fine of 150 marks ($35.00) or two weeks’ imprisonment for infringements of the motor traffic code. Perambulators may be used on the sidewalks if they contain babies, but the moment the baby is out of the carriage the perambulator must be removed to the roadway.

The German regulations define what a road is, and define the length, breadth and weight of vehicles permitted upon it. The traffic code even specifies the way that an umbrella must be carried. It is an offense to carry one in such a way that it may incommode another walker.

The traffic police of Berlin have a little leaflet containing ten commandments for pedestrians, couched in Biblical language. Pedestrians who cross the streets recklessly are prosecuted.

In Vienna pedestrians must cross within the white lines or be immediately fined two schillings (28 cents). Unless the cash is at once forthcoming he must explain his delinquency in court. Fines of the same amount are levied on motorists or taxicab drivers who disregard stop and one-way signs, parking restrictions, and the movements at certain junction points. These rules, characterized as impractical in 1925, were found in 1928 capable of handling an enormous increase in motor traffic, while reducing the accidents to pedestrians from forty to fifty percent.

At the council of the League of Nations there has recently been held a conference on road traffic. An effort will be made to adopt the same shape for certain road signs; and another provision that will be much appreciated by tourists is that ordinary motoring touring traffic will be exempt from taxation for a period not exceeding ninety days in any one country.

Traffic experts claim that Germans obey an automatic light; Englishmen obey the police; Americans awheel can be counted on to respect a stop sign if it is reinforced by police, and afoot they pay no attention to either; the French have finally submitted to lights, bells, marked-off lanes, and the rule of the police.

Whither the Interest System Leads By W. H. Harvey (Arkansas)

UNDER a monstrous and iniquitous financial system the country has been bonded and mortgaged for interest-bearing debts amounting to 150 billion dollars, more than the fair cash value of all assessable property in the United States, drawing an annual interest of nine billion dollars, more than all the money in the nation. That is confiscating by foreclosure the property of the industrious people, and transferring the wealth of the nation to the money lenders who, as a rule, do not make a blade of grass grow.

This frightful condition is creating general bankruptcy, the farmers losing their homes, the business men their business, millions of unemployed, the breaking down of the organism of government with fear and anxiety among all the people, rich and poor, as to what the coming result will be.

The monopolies, trusts and combines are united to enforce this present wicked system, have the two old political parties under their control, and are but waiting for the opportunity that will be created by the rising increase in bankruptcies, bank failures, non-payment of taxes, the breaking down of the organism of government, the crime wave, rioting and confusion that will warrant them in risking the approval of the people in taking the dread step, a dictatorship, despotism, that will be the end of free government, with a bloody civil war in this land.

Free speech, free press, the right of the people to peaceably assemble to discuss a remedy, will be gone under a dictatorship, as it is now in Italy with liberty-loving men imprisoned on the rocky islands in the Mediterranean.

We here quote from history the result of a dictatorship in Rome, the fate that will come to all nations thus ruled:

Cities were sacked, fortresses leveled, churches burned, monasteries of both sexes destroyed, the fields wasted and the country abandoned so that wild beasts supplied the place of men. (Europe in the Middle Ages. by Dunham, Vol. 1, page 229.)

With untold millions suffering, the responsibility is great of those who are fostering, aiding and abetting this crime within the law’.

This monster Evil Porver has drawn to its assistance thousands of people of limited means, who are investing in bonds, small Ioans on mortgages and drawing interest on savings deposits in the banks; and the interest they are getting selfishly blinds them to support the system that will eventually take from them all their 'wealth, unmindful in the meantime of the coming destruction that the Usury system will bring if permitted to continue.

Seeds from the Sunflower

Mexico Deports Spanish Priests

PANISH priests will not be able to make any more money in Mexico. The Mexican government has sent a half-dozen of them back to Spain for violating the constitutional provision prohibiting- foreign priests from officiating in Mexico.

Only 17% of Business Left

ME depression in South America is so great that in the first three months of 1931 there

were shipped to South American ports only 17 percent of the number of American automobiles shipped there in the first three months of 1930.

'Another Variable Star Discovered

NOTHEB variable star, or Cepheid, has been discovered. The new star flames up

brilliantly every one hundred minutes and then its glow slows down to its dimmest phase. It is quicker in its period of light changes than any other Cepheid so far discovered.

The Corn-Hog Hatio

4 FTEB years of experience the farmers have j,. x vzorked out a corn-hog ratio and demonstrated that it takes 546 pounds of corn to make 100 pounds of live pork, or at the rate of 1,092 pounds for a 200-pound hog. This is ten bushels of corn per hundred pounds of hog.

Net Arrivals and Net Departures

YEAR ago the not arrivals in the United States were 12,605 a month; now the net

departures are 3,551. The aliens deported number about 2,500 per month. The cost of deportation is too great for this item to become much of a factor in the unemployment problem.

Nice Bookkeeping, This

MECHANIC of fifteen years’ experience entered the employ of the Bowser Com

pany, of Fort Wayne, at a basic rate of forty-two cents an hour, but he was to get a lot of extra money, a big bonus, if he worked hard enough. At the end of two weeks he got his first pay, and his bonus check for the two weeks came to exactly four cents. This is nice bookkeeping. The efficiency man who figured out that bonus system must have been a high-priced man. Mr. Bowser taught the men’s Bible class in the First Baptist church for many years. When the Baptists are baptized they believe in being all wet,

Against the Law

owabd Brubaker, mean, naughty, sarcastic writer, says, “It is against the law to say anything snooty about a bank. You might start

a run and cause a bank to fail before the directors have had time to borrow all the assets.” It must be awful to have a sarcastic pen like that.

The Sermon on ths Mount

HE Knoxville News-Sentinel contains an illustration of the Sermon on the Mount, It

consists of a vast heap of cannon, shells, battleships, airplanes and gun carriages, and at the top of the pile is a ragged ex-soldier shivering in the cold, selling apples out of a box,

Glad They Snjoy It

MUSICAL magazine finds The Golden Age so interesting that in a recent issue they

had six of our items on the front page, and even credited one of the six to us. Well, we are glad to see everybody happy and The Golden Age growing in popularity.

Twenty Million Idle

HE total of the world’s unemployed doubled during the past year and is now put at

20,000,000, one-half of whom are in the United States and Germany. The countries where unemployment is not increasing by leaps and bounds are Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, and especially Russia,

Buried Two Months Beneath the lee

HEN the rescuers found the scientist Cour-tauld atop the Greenland ice cap he had

been buried alive two months in his igloo beneath the snow and ice. Only the chimney was open. He could not dig his way out, having left his shovel outside at the time the last great storm started,

■One Percent Dig the Ditch

TN SECTION E of the new St. Louis concrete sewer project thirty-three machine operators and thirty-seven laborers are doing the work of seven thousand piek-and-shovel men. In other words, one percent dig the ditch. Where are the ninety and nine ? The answer is that they are in the ditch itself, and all who will may turn and see that this very moment the walls are caving in upon them and upon our civilization,

Wild Horses in Arkansas

OUTHWESTERN Arkansas is being overrun by wild horses, there being herds of several hundred. These horses are as fleet as deer, and so sure-footed that they cannot be overtaken. They are presenting a considerable problem. The climate is such that they find forage the year around.

Distress in Cuba

HE close of the sugar-gihiding season found ten thousand men, women and children in

Cuba suffering for the necessities of life. These are being housed or rather hived in the parks until they can be sent back to Spain, from which they came. It seems as if the whole world were rapidly degenerating into one vast poorhouse.

The Four P’s in the Pod

HE Rev. E. A. Gardner, rector, is reported in the Toronto Evening Telegram as saying that the World War was caused, not by soldiers, but by the four P’s: the parsons who preached warlike doctrines, the professors who instilled war into the minds of the young, the politicians, and the profiteers.

The Auto-Gyro in Michigan

HE auto-gyro airplane owned by the Detroit News, on its way from Detroit to Chicago

made a landing in Kalamazoo. Its forward speed was so slight that upon alighting it rolled only about four feet. Its ascent too was almost vertical. Great crowds witnessed the descent and ascent. .

New Building Materials

HE house of the future will be as far ahead of the contraptions of the present as the new

Fords are ahead of the first one that Henry built. New wall surfaces, probably of metal, better fitting windo ws, scientifically conditioned air, standardized kitchen equipment, all these are at hand. A new material is aerated clay. One of the most common of all materials, it is filled with gas bubbles during manufacture and becomes in effect a petrified sponge. It weighs one-fifth as much as brick, can be sawed like wood, and can be glazed so as to be absolutely waterproof. The time when mankind will really live is in the future. But it is & lot of fun to see them getting ready for the blessings that will be their portion after the Devil’s kingdom has disappeared. .

The Pennsylvania’s New Rails

AN ITS famous horseshoe curve up the summit of the Alleghenies the Pennsylvania wall shortly have rails weighing 152 pounds to the yard. Fifty years ago the heaviest rails in use were 60 pounds to the yard. The new7 rails are designed for axle loads of 100,000 pounds at speeds of 100 miles an hour.

Chicago Association’s Courageous Position

HE Chicago Building Construction Employers’ Association has taken the generous and courageous position that it is contrary to the best interests of the construction industry and society at large to either reduce wages or establish excessive hours of employment in these times of surplus labor.

American Radios Broadcast Trash

HE Fort William (Ontario) Trades and Labor Council has adopted resolutions declaring that ninety percent of American radio programs are trash and that the quality is steadily going down. They are getting weary of the mush, and want some decent, high-class programs; and who can blame them?

Sudden Interest in the Weeds

HE government, recently aware that most weeds are merely valuable plants of which man does not know the merits, has just started an extensive study of American weeds, with most surprising results. A list of one thousand such uncultivated plants is about to be published, with information as to their food or other values. Many of these plants are of considerable food value.

Suicides in New York City

TN NEW YORK city, in 1920 the suicides were J- 676; in 1925 they were 935; in 1930 they were 1,402. Dr. Frederick L. Hoffman, in the insurance magazine, The Spectator, says: *'Tt is the shams of our civilization that lie at the root of the evil and are the productive causes of the confusion which at present inevitably drives thousands to suicide as the only way out.” This is merely another way of saying that the Devil’s civilization does not deserve to survive and that what it gets in Armageddon will be just what it richly deserves.

In the Broad Silk Business

TN THE broad silk business at Allentown the mill owners lost their heads and made four cuts in wages in four months. They finally got it down to a place where the weavers could not live, and then they all went out on strike. Let’s see. Just how much silk will be sold when everybody is cut down to a wage where all that is left is enough for a rag and a crust?

Forced Labor in. Kenya

HE present British government has solemnly promised that as soon as possible, it will put a stop to the forcing of labor as in Kenya, where, in 1929, 11,000 men were forced to work 108,000 days without pay. This forced labor was exacted as a tax, but it is not popular with the Labor government and should not be popular with any government.

Gentian Railways Slipping

TN THE year 1930, by dint of cutting salaries and expenses, and dropping 30,000 employees from the payrolls, the German railways managed to earn $110,000,000 of the $157,000,000 reparation charge. Speaking of this The Nation says that “No one in Germany believes that a request for a moratorium can be put off twelve months longer’’.

San Francisco’s Beautiful Buildings

HOSE who knew the old San Francisco and have seen the new one realize that the great earthquake and fire of a generation ago was a blessing in disguise. The modern city was greatly improved in the year 1930 by the addition of seven elegant skyscrapers ranging from ten to twenty-eight stories. San Francisco is a beautiful city.

Power Trust Tax Gatherers Complain

TIE Power Trust complains that it is paying $200,000,000 a year in taxes. As a matter of fact it is paying nothing, not a cent. It is merely a tax gathering system. One of its own men. J. B. Sheridan, of Missouri, made this statement in a letter now on file in Washington:

The privately owned industry should be ashamed of itself to permit a municipally owned plant, operated on the square, to undersell it 4, 6, to 7 cents per kilowatt hour. Don’t say taxes ? Taxes are less than twenty-three one-hundredths of one cent per kilowatt hour in this state.

87 Come into the Cage

DISPATCH from California states that at one time recently eighty-seven of the convicts of San Quentin prison, California, were taken into the Boman Catholic church. The dispatch hastens to add that all these, by birth, education and training, were really Catholics at heart; and all of this may be fully believed without further argument.

Many Families Own Nothing

axe Addams, Chicago settlement worker, tells of numerous families within her ken that live in fine homes. There is a large radio, a piano, fine bric-a-brac, and in the garage a $2,000 car. Yet the title to all the property, even the house and lot, is in the hands of installment sellers, and the man has no job and there is no food in the kitchen. The family owns absolutely nothing.

The Little Island of Porto Rico

TIE little island of Porto Rico has a population exceeding the combined populations of

Vermont, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, though these states have a combined area 132 times as great. Porto Rico shows the astonishing density of 449.5 inhabitants to the square mile. The Porto Ricans live on the edge of starvation, most of the annual production of wealth on the island going to the support of idle landlords living in foreign lands.

Platinum May Do the Trick

PROFESSOR at McGill University, Montreal, has proposed that the rest of the world adopt a new currency based upon platinum, on account of the fact that the ‘world’s available gold supply has been so effectively cornered by the United States. Should this be done, gold would be demonetized and lose much of its value. It is just possible that in some such way as this the scripture may be fulfilled which foretells that gold and silver will be thrown in the streets, If discarded for currency purposes both gold and silver would fall greatly in value. A difficulty in the way of having a platinum base for the world’s currency would, be the lack of education of the unlettered millions of Asia. All of these now think of wealth in terms of gold and silver, and it would be hard to get them to change their views.

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