Read Ebook: Scientific American Vol. XXXIX.—No. 24. [New Series.] December 14 1878 A Weekly Journal of Practical Information Art Science Mechanics Chemistry and Manufactures by Various

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The proposed appeal to Congress to pass some law whereby each producer can compel railroad companies to carry his produce at regular rates, amounts to a confession of the desperate straits of the producers and of their weakness as well; and even if successful, which is most improbable, would not remedy the deplorable existing state of things.

Still lower rates would fail to give relief, with all the present avenues of trade filled to repletion and with an increasing output at the wells. Relief and permanent relief can be found only in the direction we have before indicated: in the general application of petroleum and its products to the manufacture of gas for illuminating and heating purposes, and its substitution for coal in the metallurgic and other prominent industries of the world.

THE LIMIT OF WORK.

In distributing the prizes to workmen at the Paris Exhibition, Louis Blanc, the leader of the French Republican Socialist party, quoted approvingly these words of Simonde de Sismondi:

"If the workman were his own master, when he had done in two hours with the aid of machinery what would have taken him twelve hours to do without it, he would stop at the end of the two."

M. Blanc had been discussing very eloquently, but also very fallaciously, the relations of machinery to labor. If men were properly united in the bonds of association, he said, if the solidarity of interests were realized, "the happy result of the application of mechanical power to industry would be equal production, with less of effort, for all. The discovery of an economic method would never have the lamentable consequence of robbing men of the work by which they live. Unfortunately, we are far from this ideal. Under the empire of that universal antagonism which is the very essence of the economic constitution of modern societies, and which too often only profits one man by ruining another, machinery has been employed to make the rule of the strong weigh more heavily on the weak. There is not a single mechanical invention which has not been a subject of anguish and a cause of distress to thousands of fathers of families from the moment it began to work."

If all this, and much else that M. Blanc alleges, were true, then the condition of all workingmen to-day should be in every way worse than that of their fathers, in anti-machinery days. But such is not the case. There never was a time when the laborer toiled less or enjoyed more than in these days of machinery; and the laborer's condition is best where the machinery is best and most used.

A hundred years ago the laborer toiled long, produced little, and enjoyed less. To-day, thanks to the victories of invention, machinery does the heaviest of the work; the workman's hours of labor are fewer than formerly; his wages are greater; and his earnings will buy vastly more, dollar for dollar, than in any previous age in the world's history.

What laborer of to-day would be satisfied with the remuneration, the food, the shelter, the clothing of the laboring classes of one hundred years ago? The wants of men, as well as their thoughts, are widened by the process of the suns. And in no section of society have the daily wants been more markedly increased, or the facilities for gratifying them either, than among those that live by labor.

"If the workman were his own master, when he had done in two hours with the aid of machinery what it would have taken him twelve hours to do without it, he would stop at the end of the two."

So says the theoretical socialist. The practical workman never has, nor, we believe, ever will, act so foolishly; certainly not until the limit of man's capacity to enjoy has been reached. When the united products of manual and mechanical effort fully satisfy the desires of all men, and leave no margin of want unfilled, then and then only will men be satisfied with the reduction of effort demanded by the socialists. Until then the larger part of every increase in production by mechanical improvements will go to swell the volume of good things for human use and enjoyment. Our machinery enables our thousands of busy workers to accomplish what millions could not have done years ago, and a very large part of the aggregate increase of product comes back to them in conveniences and luxuries surpassing those the wealthiest could enjoy were machinery not employed, or were it employed, as the socialist advocates, without increasing the aggregate of production. The laziness of the savage and the advantages of civilization are incompatible. The chief merit of machinery lies in its enabling us to multiply constantly the scope and variety of our enjoyments without a corresponding increase of toil.

IRIDESCENT GLASS.

Ornamental glassware in many styles, tinted with the glowing colors of the rainbow, is now making its appearance in the shop windows of Broadway and Fifth Avenue. This is one of those brilliant little achievements of science that delights the eye and pleases the imagination. To produce the colors, the glass, while in a heated state, is subjected to the vapor of chloride of tin. Shades of more or less depth or intensity are imparted by adding to the tin chloride a little nitrate of strontium or barium.

RAILS AND RAILWAY ACCIDENTS--NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.

A meeting of the Section of Physics, New York Academy of Sciences, was held November 25, 1878. President J. S. Newberry in the chair. Numerous publications of learned societies were received and acknowledged. Professor Newberry read a letter from Professor Agassiz stating that sea lilies, which had hitherto been very rare--a single specimen bringing as much as fifty dollars--have been found in some numbers by dredging in the Gulf of Mexico. Their colors are white, pink, and yellow. Professor Newberry also exhibited specimens of garnet from California, lamellar quartz from North Carolina, sharks' teeth belonging to the eocene and miocene tertiary ages from the phosphate beds of South Carolina, and a number of shells.

Professor Thomas Egleston then addressed the Academy on the subject of "The Structure of Rails as Affecting Railway Accidents."

The destruction of rails is due to three causes. 1. Defects in the manufacture; 2. Improper mechanical or chemical composition; and 3. Physical changes.

A very large number of rails are annually made which should never be put in any track. Their defects are often imperceptible to the naked eye, but they very soon begin to break. Statistics show that the breakage from defects in making increase until they have been used 18 months; then it decreases to zero, and after that rails break from different causes. In France, breakage usually begins in December, reaches its maximum in January, and becomes normal in April. As a more intense cold would be necessary to explain such breakage than that which is felt in that climate, the cause must be sought in the stiffness and inelasticity of the frozen road bed. The impact of the locomotive is then apt to break the rail, very much on the same principle that is taken advantage of in breaking them up for the manufacture of smaller objects. A nick is made somewhere, and the workman then strikes a blow with a hammer at a point between the nick and the place where the rail is supported. This will sever the rail at the nicked place. Sometimes more than a second intervenes between the blow and the fracture. Now, whenever holes are punched in rails for the fish plates, flaws are apt to radiate from them; and if these flaws are not planed or filed out, they may cause the rail to break, just as the nicks above mentioned. Such rails have been known to last no longer than 18 months, and some have actually broken on the way from the manufacturer to their destination. There are establishments in this country and in Europe where they "doctor" such rails by filling up the flaws with a mixture of iron filings, sal ammoniac, and some adhesive substance. Beware of them; a poor cheap rail is dear at any price. The French government stipulates in its contracts for rails, that flaws shall be planed, drilled, or filed out; that the rails shall not be allowed to drop on the ground, but shall be carried by men and slid down. The Lyons railroad does not pay for its rails until 15,000 trains have passed over them.

The effects of chemical composition are but little understood. Some of the purest irons have turned out utterly worthless. Apparently the absolute quantities of carbon, silicon, aluminum, phosphorus, etc., present are not of so much importance as their relative proportion. One specimen containing carbon 0.16, silicon 0.08, and phosphorus 0.012, could be bent double when cold, while another, containing carbon 0.58, silicon 0.56, and phosphorus 0.011 broke at once.

The physical tests for tensile and torsional strength, usually made on a portion cut out of the head of the rail, are not sufficient, because the flaws before spoken of exist mostly in the flange of the rail, and fracture usually begins there.

The effect of cold rolling and shocks that a rail is exposed to was shown by a piece of rail made by the Campbells, Sheffield, Eng., which had been worn 3 mm. by a traffic of 60,000,000 tons at Spuyten Duyvel. The head had been somewhat flattened, and the flange driven down into the foot to a certain extent. Under such usage an iron rail would have gone to pieces long ago.

Sometimes steel rails crumble all at once and pieces fall out of the head. This is probably due to some physical defects or to crystallization from shocks. The cause has not yet been definitely ascertained.

Mr. Collingwood stated that of a rail only a section of 3/8 square inch was pressed by the wheel of a locomotive, the effect being to cause this portion to act like a wedge, and thus to contribute to the disintegration of the rail. He also exhibited a hook which had been used to hoist stones of 10 to 12 tons, and then suddenly broke with a weight of only 6 1/2 tons. It had been worn from a thickness of 2 inches to 1-7/8. The pressure at the upper surface crowded the particles and caused them to act as wedges. Their fracture was crystalline, while that of the lower surface, which parted more slowly, was fibrous.

Professor Egleston asserted that there was no such thing as fibrous iron; what appeared so being simply crystalline with the ends drawn out. A sharp blow would cause this to fall off and show the crystalline structure beneath.

The discussion was continued by Professors Trowbridge, Egleston, and Newberry.

C. F. K.

SANITARY SCIENCE IN THE UNITED STATES.

The following is an abstract of a paper on the Present and Future of Sanitary Science in the United States, read by Professor Albert R. Leeds, of the Stevens Institute of Technology, before the New York Academy of Sciences at their meeting, November 11th, 1878:

Sciences, such as the one under consideration, that have in them a side largely practical, are sure of a welcome in our midst. The study of the laws of public health grew into prominence in this country during the war, when the Sanitary Commission undertook to supervise the camps and hospitals. Sanitary associations were then formed in many States and smaller communities, and these have led to the establishment of State and city boards of health, clothed to a greater or less degree with executive functions. Every epidemic has been the cause of wider dissemination of sanitary knowledge by the daily press. The yellow fever plague, by which more than twelve thousand people have perished, has thoroughly aroused public interest. During its continuance the papers were full of homilies on private and public hygiene, the people everywhere sent aid and sympathy to the afflicted, and a lady offered to defray the expenses of a scientific commission of sanitary experts to inquire into the cause and prevention of the scourge. The proper execution of sanitary laws depends on the free and intelligent co-operation of individuals much more than on the influence of a strong central authority. A general health department at Washington could not legislate pure air, pure water, and pure food into use throughout the nation. The people themselves, in each community, must be educated to demand these requisites of health and to secure them in their own way.

The registration of marriages continued so defective that a writer on the subject declares it would be impossible for a large portion of the adult native population of the United States to prove by any legal document that they have a right to the name they bear, or that their parents were ever married. The mortality returns of 1871 were probably nearly perfect, and their very accuracy told against New York city, whose death rate was 28.6 per thousand, while St. Louis reported 17, Rochester 16, Buffalo 14, and Jersey City 7 per thousand. To secure accuracy in the returns of marriages and births, etc., more stringent legislation will be necessary.

In New Jersey the State Sanitary Association has conclusively shown the utter worthlessness of the State vital statistics. They memorialized the legislature, and caused the passage of a law which gives to New Jersey one of the best systems of registration yet devised. It owes its excellence to the following features, which should be universally copied:

An attempt was made to deprive the inhabitants of New York of their public parks, and to occupy them with buildings devoted to military and other purposes; but the people had already been sufficiently educated up to an appreciation of their sanitary value not to permit it. Dr. Seguin eloquently advocated the improvement of the parks, to make them not only pleasure grounds, but places of aesthetical and practical out-door education of the public school children.

It appears that both the system of ventilation by aspiration and that by propulsion have had great successes and great failures. Many authorities have declared in favor of mechanical ventilation, yet in most institutions where fans had been introduced they are now standing still. In Roosevelt Hospital, New York, they ran their fan backwards for months and then stopped it.

The sea shore of New Jersey from Sandy Hook to Cape May is becoming an almost continuous city, and harbors a multitude of visitors every summer. Those whose interest it is to retain this patronage cannot have it too strongly impressed upon them to preserve their healthfulness by introducing cemented cisterns, by causing garbage to be removed daily, and by encouraging local boards of health.

A discussion followed, which was introduced by Mr. Collingwood, who remarked that the problem of the sewage of cities was still far from being solved. Though the recent experiments in England on utilizing sewage for agricultural purposes by filtration and otherwise were reported to be successful, we had only dodged the question in this country. Our sewage is still emptied into rivers to poison the water of cities further down their course. When the country becomes more thickly settled, this will answer no longer.

It was also stated that while gas in large chandeliers could be made an effective means of ventilation, there was another objection to its use in the fact that the soil of the city was everywhere impregnated with it from leaky mains, thus causing poisonous exhalations and an insufferable odor whenever the ground was opened. Attention was also called to the evil effects of the system of tenement houses, which led to an unfavorable comparison of the health and morality of New York with those of cities like Philadelphia and Cleveland, that abound in small homes.

Dr. Minor attributed disease to what Richardson calls "ultra-microscopic molecular aggregates," which always exist in the air, but take hold of us only when our vitality is reduced to a certain point. It has been shown that decay is absolutely impossible in vessels from which they are excluded. But for them the earth would now be heaped with the undecomposed remains of animals and vegetables. According to this view, the future efforts of sanitary science must be simply in the direction of learning how to protect ourselves against the "ultra-microscopic molecular aggregates."

C. F. K.

FELLING TREES BY ELECTRICITY.

Some years ago a Doctor Robinson of this city obtained a patent through the agency of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN for Felling Trees by Electricity. Subsequently a description of the invention was published in this paper, soon after which the newspapers in this country and Europe teemed with the account of a gentleman in India having contrived an apparatus for felling trees in the same manner. Since these several years have elapsed we have heard nothing of the gentleman from India till a few days ago our papers have taken up the subject anew, and annexed is the account they give of the inventor's progress in developing his discovery.

The electric fluid in the form of lightning oftentimes proves itself a very efficient wood cutter, and it has occurred to some ingenious gentleman in India that artificial electricity may be so applied and controlled as to cut down trees a good deal faster than the clumsy ax or that American notion the chain saw. The two ends of the copper wires of a galvanic battery are connected with platinum wire, which of course instantly becomes red hot, and while in that state it is gently seesawed across the trunk of the trees to be felled. When arrangements were made for the experiment, it turned out that the thickness of the thickest platinum wire that could be got was only that of crochet cotton. It was at once seen that such a wire would be consumed before the tree was half severed from its trunk. However, the attempt was made. The burning wire performed its task very well as long as it lasted, but, as anticipated, the wire continually broke, and at length there was no wire left. There can be little doubt that, with a stronger battery and a thicker wire, the experiment would have been entirely successful. As it was, the tree was sawn one fifth through.

AN IMPROVED VISE.

The novel vise shown in the engraving was recently patented by Mr. William Starkey, of Pittsburg, Pa.

CULINARY USES FOR LEAVES.

"With the exception of sweet and bitter herbs, grown chiefly for the purpose, and parsley, which is neither bitter nor sweet, but the most popular of all flavoring plants, comparatively few other leaves are used. Perhaps I ought also to except the sweet bay, which is popular in rice and other puddings, and certainly imparts one of the most pleasant and exquisite flavors; but, on the other hand, what a waste there is of the flavoring properties of peach, almond, and laurel leaves, so richly charged with the essence of bitter almonds, so much used in most kitchens! Of course such leaves must be used with caution, but so must the spirit as well. An infusion of these could readily be made, either green or dry, and a tea or table spoonful of the flavoring liquid used. One of the most useful and harmless of all leaves for flavoring is that of the common syringa. When cucumbers are scarce, these are a perfect substitute in salads or anything in which that flavor is desired. The taste is not only like that of cucumbers, but identical--a curious instance of the correlation of flavors in widely different families. Again, the young leaves of cucumbers have a striking likeness in the way of flavor to that of the fruit. The same may be affirmed of carrot tops, while in most gardens there is a prodigious waste of celery flavor in the sacrifice of the external leaves and their partially blanched footstalks. Scores of celery are cut up into soup, when the outsides would flavor it equally well or better. The young leaves of gooseberries added to bottled fruit give a fresher flavor and a greener color to pies and tarts. The leaves of the flowering currant give a sort of intermediate flavor between black currants and red. Orange, citron, and lemon leaves impart a flavoring equal to that of the fruit and rind combined, and somewhat different from both. A few leaves added to pies, or boiled in the milk used to bake with rice, or formed into crusts or paste impart an admirable and almost inimitable bouquet. In short, leaves are not half so much used for seasoning purposes as they might be."

NEW SHUTTER FASTENER.

We give herewith an engraving of a new shutter fastener, recently patented by Mr. P. F. Fernandez, of San Juan, Porto Rico, West Indies. This fastener is designed for holding doors or window shutters in position when open, to prevent them from closing or swinging in the wind.

The hook, A, is provided with an eye for receiving the cord, C, which extends to the window casing and is within easy reach, so that when it is desired to close the shutter the hook, A, may be readily disengaged from the hook, B, by simply pulling the cord.

Further information may be obtained by addressing the inventor as above.

AN IMPROVED GARDEN SPRINKLER.

A novel garden sprinkler, which may be carried on the back, is shown in the accompanying engraving. The cylindrical vessel has a removable cover, and contains a perforated plunger which is operated by a hand lever from without. The cylindrical vessel is provided with shoulder straps, and it has two sprinkling nozzles connected with it by flexible tubes.

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