The Metal of the Standards.

1895

There are no products of human skill on which a greater degree of care is expended than the standards of weight and measure in use among the civilized nations of the globe. Two things in particular have to be considered — accuracy and durability. Nature does not furnish any single metal or mineral which exactly answers the requirements for a standard of measure or weight that shall be, as nearly as possible, unalterable.

The best substance yet produced for this purpose is an alloy of 90 per cent of platinum, with 10 per cent of iridium. This is called iridio-platinum, and it is the substance of which the new metric standards prepared by the international committee of weights and measures are composed.

It is hard, it is less affected by heat than any pure metal, it is practically nonoxidizable, or not subject to rust, and it can be finely engraved. In fact, the lines on the standard meters are hardly visible to the naked eye, yet they are smooth, even, sharp and accurate.

If our civilization should ever be lost, and relics of it should be discovered in some brighter age in the remote future, there is nothing which would bear higher testimony to its character than these standard measures of iridio-platinum, for the production and preservation of which the science of our day has done its very best. — Youth's Companion.

Metal Building Material

1895

It is well within the memory of many persons when metal as a building material was practically unknown. But within a few years building has been almost revolutionized by the use of metal in various forms and for various purposes.

Iron beams, columns, girders, rafters and window sashes have come into use, and now we are to have as a regular addition to our list a great variety of stamped out sections. These have heretofore been made mostly of galvanized iron or some composition of the spelter sort, or, in fine and high priced work, bronze has been employed. Steel is, however, found to answer all demands far better than any other metal used for this purpose.

Door and window casings will be made of metal, and indeed all parts of a house may be constructed of something besides wood. With paper pulp doors and floors, metal frames and finish, slate or tin roofs and portland cement or concrete walls, our houses may in time come to be actually fireproof, as they have for a long time unjustly claimed to be. — New York Ledger.

Recent Events

1916

According to Seattle Times, a $22,000,000 fleet is to be built in Pacific coast ports for A. U. Anderson & Co. of Copenhagen, Denmark, which will be placed under American flag. 14 vessels already have been contracted for.

Citizen soldiers who attended earlier camps at Plattsburg, N. Y., as well as those now in training there, will receive from government their traveling and subsistence expenses under army appropriation bill passed by Congress.

Mexican de facto government has promulgated decree requiring companies engaged in production of crude oil in Mexico to register in the tax bureau of ministry of finance before Sept. 15.

Department of commerce reports that 221 firms are holding nearly 5,000,000 cases of eggs — about 143,000,000 dozen — in cold storage, or 10 per cent less than a month ago.

Herald New York despatch says railroads may delay attack on eight-hour law. Prominent officials believe President Wilson's statement to Congress Friday was a pledge of remedial legislation and are inclined to await outcome of election.

State department has received information of an agreement between Great Britain and Norway whereby latter will place an export embargo on raw copper and will receive without interruption imports of copper from this country.

Copper is now chief article of export from Alaska. Export value for year to June 30 was $26,488,000, compared with $5,182,000 in 1915. Receipts of copper from Alaska aggregated 117,000,000 pounds.

A new labor union, composed of government employees, has decided to ask President Wilson to make Saturday a half-holiday for all government workers throughout the year.

Arrangements are being made for formation of a $50,000,000 automobile company in France to manufacture cheap cars after war capable of competing with Ford.

New revenue bill makes income tax returns public records, with proviso requiring an order by the President before such records can be seen.

London Times says that Swedish harvest will be finest on record, crop yield being from 50 per cent to 200 per cent above average.

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 12, 1916, p. 7.

Pigeons' Nests

1901

A curious preference of certain pigeons for the use of metallic objects in building their nests is noted by M. Maurice Dusolier in The Revue Scientifique.

He assures us that several pairs of these birds that he has observed in Paris have raised their young in nests made entirely of hairpins! These articles they collected in the paths of the Luxembourg.

The young pigeons grew up normally as they would in a softer nest. M. Dusolier believes that there is a useful suggestion in this for pigeon fanciers, who are often overanxious, he thinks, to see that their charges have soft material for their nests.

Steal Gold Cargo

1919

Scrap Iron Is Found in Boxes Packed With $50,000.

SAN FRANCISCO, California — A box supposed to hold $25,000 in gold coin shipped by the Anglo and London Paris National Bank of San Francisco on the liner Korea Maru Aug. 2 was found to contain scrap iron and metal washers when opened by the consignee in Hong-Kong, according to advices received by the bank and steamship company.

The bank, acting as agent for a New York firm, packed two boxes, each containing $25,000 in gold and the correctness of the shipment was certified to by three trusted employes.

Both boxes were put in the strong room of the steamship, but only one of them arrived at its destination with gold in it.

Officials of the bank said they believed the substitution of scrap iron for the gold was either made on board the steamer or after the consignment reached Hong-Kong.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 7.

She Swallowed 1,446 Pieces of Hardware

1911

Editorial Quips on the News

A post-mortem examination of a Missouri lady who had a mania for heavy diet resulted in the discovery of 1,446 separate articles of hardware in her little inside. If there is any truth in theosophy the lady was either a goat or an ostrich in her previous existence. (See note below and photo here. Click the photo for bigger version.)

A New York woman says she lost her respect for her husband when she caught him with five aces in his hand. She is perfectly right. A man who allows himself to be caught that way deserves no respect.

If that Buffalo man who would not give up a counterfeit bill to an agent of the government were to get the full penalty of $100 and a year's imprisonment he might think he had committed some real crime.

We have it from a Germany economist that American women will soon be forced to labor on farms like men. Here we have an outlet for the surplus energy of those fair damsels who seek "careers" in preference to husbands.

Most of those who tell about rearing a family and saving money on $1,000 a year do not have to and hence are better able to theorize in the abstract.

A florist in New Jersey turns his hennery into a summer garden with all sorts of flowers and is getting eggs of delicate flavor and various tints, violet, rose and carnation flavors being in the lead. A hen garden of this kind might be a handsome and useful addition to the combination clubhouse for the Ananias members and the nature fakers.

Note: The item about the Missouri lady with a mania for a heavy diet recalls someone who must have been another Missouri lady with the same problem, who I heard about while touring the psychiatric museum at St. Joseph, Missouri. At this site there's a small photo of the items, said to be more than 1,400, which were taken from the patient in 1929. Since I'm pretty sure my article is from 1911, and it specifically says "post-mortem," obviously this would have to be a different Missouri lady. The photo at the top is a photo I took of all the screws and things they said she had ingested. If you're ever in the area of St. Joseph, the museum is worth going to! Just don't let them keep you, which was what I was legitimately most afraid of.

Beginning of Use of Iron

1910

Origin Thought to Have Been in Central Europe

It is commonly believed that the use of iron commenced in either Africa or Asia. The latest investigations prove that it was not worked in Egypt until the ninth century before the Christian era, or in Libya until 450 B. C., that the Semites adopted its use still later, and that it has been known in Uganda only within the last five or six centuries.

In China iron is first mentioned in 400 B. C. Bronze weapons were employed in China until 100 A.D., and in Japan until 700 A.D. According to a Mr. Ridgeway, who has investigated this subject, the metallurgy of iron must have originated in central Europe, especially in Noricum, which approximately represented modern Austria and Bavaria.

Only at Hallstatt and in Bosnia and Transylvania, from which countries the Achaians and Dorians are supposed to have migrated to Greece, are found evidences of a gradual introduction of iron, at first as an ornament applied to the bronze which it ultimately displaced.

Everywhere also iron was introduced suddenly — a fact which implies a foreign origin. He says that meteoric iron was known in Egypt in remote antiquity, but no doubt it was worked as flints are worked, by cutting or chipping, and was not smelted. In other words, it was metallurgy, not the knowledge, of iron that originated in central Europe.

Ancient Gold Mining in Tubal-Cain

1915

From Their Method Originated the Legend of the Golden Fleece

Country Still Rich in Most Valuable Ores

In the legend of the Golden Fleece lies hidden the record of an ancient method of the Tibareni, the sons of Tubal, for the collection of gold.

The north coast of Asia Minor produced large quantities of the precious metals, as well as copper and iron. Gold was found in the gravel, as often happens still in streams draining from copper regions. The gold in copper ores, originally containing insignificant amounts of the precious metals, accumulates in the course of ages, and sometimes forms placers of astonishing richness.

The ancient Tibareni washed the gold-bearing gravel, first by booming, which concentrated the gold into relatively small amounts of sand. This was then collected and washed through sluices having the bottoms lined with sheepskins. The gold would sink into the wool, while the sand would be washed away in the swift current, writes Courtenay de Kalk in the Mining Age. The skins were removed from the sluices, the coarser gold shaken out, and the fleeces, still glittering with the yellow metal, were hung upon boughs to dry so that the rest of the gold might be beaten from them and saved.

The early Greek mariners, witnessing this process, carried home tales of the wonderful riches of a land where a warlike race of miners hung golden fleeces upon the trees in the grove of Ares. After so many millenniums the metalliferous country of Tubal-Cain is once more coming into prominence. The natives still cull the high-grade copper ore, and break it into smalls, which they cover with wood and roast to matte; they still work the matte in forge-like furnaces to black copper, which they ship to Alexandretta and to Euxine ports. They still make the famous carbonized iron that was celebrated as Damascus steel because it was distributed through this mart to the rest of the world after receiving a finish by local Damascene workmen.

These decadent methods, that give a hint of the approved practice of the father of metallurgy, will soon became wholly extinct, for the modern miner is studying the disseminated copper ores of the Black sea coast, and threatening to rekindle on a magnificent scale the smoldering fires of Tubal-Cain.

Does Europe Face the Fate of the Fabled Atlantis?

1916

By Dr. Paul Schlieman
Grandson of the Famous Archeologist and Discoverer of Ancient Troy

The war in Europe has filled the world with horror. There are no wars in the past that can be compared with it. It surpasses by far the greatest calamities that ever have befallen mankind. Yet with all that there is another side to the question. There is a cosmic organism besides the one of the individual. Nature cares nothing for the joys and sorrows of the individual. The reason of nature has no relation to that of the man. The war with all its brutalities must be looked upon as a manifestation of natural forces — a cyclone of nature.

It was just as unavoidable as an earthquake. There was a cosmic reason for it. Every great mind foresaw it. It was necessary to what we call evolution.

Nations and countries, like individuals, have their lives and tragedies. Atlantis was a great continent, inhabited by a powerful and civilized nation when the rest of the world was merged in barbarism. Atlantis colonized Egypt and Central America. When at the zenith of their power the Atlanteans became involved in a war such as has befallen Europe, the whole continent was submerged and sank in the sea. All great calamities of nature follow a certain kind of war. When a social organism is poisoned by a wrong doctrine of life, the sooner it dies the better. Like the civilization of the Atlanteans, this of the Europeans is decadent and doomed. The vitality of every living body depends upon its spiritual not its physical constitution.

As much as we may pity the individual who suffers in such cosmic calamities, still we should be glad of the tempest that cleans nature from human rubbish and decadence. The cosmic will has no mercy upon any individual, because in going against nature the individual ignored the cosmic will. The European war is a gigantic purging process of evolution. The present European war was unavoidable, because the social soul of Europe was sick. Nothing but destruction could end such a sickness. The European disease was best reflected in the art and literature that preceded the war. With every year the paintings grew more abnormal and ugly. The music of the Germans, French and English was all discords and unpleasing noise.

The "culture" of Europe came to a climax of artificialities. The government of Europe became materialistic and militaristic.

On the one hand the Christian church, on the other the naked industrialism undermined the old Culture. The logic that invented the printing press and steam engine could not be reconciled with legendary religion. The Christian church that had been of such influence during the feudal period of social life, lost its grip when industrial civilization was created. Money in the one hand — the Bible in the other — this was the picture of a typical Kulturtraeger of Europe. The fatal paradox was to profess belief in the doctrines of Christianity and to make money at the same time in the way most of that money was made. The contradiction of the two doctrines can be considered as the logical cause of the materialistic education, the logical cause of the lack of spiritual ideals.

Before a fool dies he goes crazy. Europe went crazy before the war. Rome went crazy before her fall. The rubbish of materialistic civilization grew so poisonous that it needed an immediate cleaning up.

The fate of Sodom and Gomorrah has befallen Europe. But this is not all.

I fear that a great cosmic calamity will follow the war, a calamity of the kind that made an end to Atlantis. My reasons for this fear are well founded.

I consider that serious results will follow the concentration of enormous destructive energies on the comparatively narrow battlefield. Never in human history have there been employed such energies. All the thousands of guns and millions of rifles that are used every day represent a large percentage of the gas-producing instruments of the world. This means an abnormal transformation of physical energy into a chemical one. It means millions of cubic yards of an abnormal and violent change of elements. What will be its ultimate effect upon the atmosphere and vegetation no one as yet can tell. It may change the meteorologic balance to such an extent that either arctic colds, tropic heats or excessive rains will affect life seriously. This may result either in failure of crops or in epidemics not known to science.

On the other hand, it is a scientific possibility that the abnormal use of explosives will affect the gravitational and rotational laws of the earth. A microscopic change of the earth's axis would result in gigantic disturbances of nature.

My theory of the vanishing of Atlantis leads me, as it led my grandfather, to the conclusion that the inhabitants of that continent made use of the volcanic destructive powers of earth for a long time. When they abused these powers the great calamity occurred. I fear that the abnormal accumulation of metals around the war districts will cause abnormal events of nature. These metals have been brought together from all parts of the world. It is estimated that the United States alone has shipped more than a million tons of war materials to the warring nations. Much of these are metals, particularly iron, copper and lead. To my estimate the surface of the earth around the war district is fifteen million tons heavier than usual. This excessive weight is produced by metals.

It is not only the weight, but the magnetism of earth that is influenced by the presence of these metals.

When I consider the abnormal use of explosives, the abnormal weight and accumulation of metals in the European war, together with the certain change of the magnetic powers, I can easily understand the insignificant reaction that is needed to bring about a second catastrophe similar to that of Atlantis. The same geologic energy that swallowed Atlantis can swallow also war-ridden Europe. To sink the surface of Europe a few hundred feet means nothing to the ordinary forces of nature.

Man in his pride of invention sneers at nature. The explosives that he employs for destroying his fellow-man are stolen from nature. Defying the laws of nature, man defies and destroys himself. I do not need to speak of the terrible threat from the hastily dug, shallow graves of the millions that are murdered in this war.

The physical and spiritual phenomena of this human struggle point to the conclusion that Europe is facing a continental and cosmic catastrophe.

—The Lincoln Daily Star, Lincoln, NE, Jan. 23, 1916, p. 4, society/fashion section.