OUR AMERICAN LETTER

Otago Witness, Issue 2895, 8 September 1909, Page 16

OUR AMERICAN LETTER

(Fbom Oub Owh CoaaispoKDiiinr.) NEW YORK, June 20. Just at present, we are. shading away from things earthly, and if we do not j.pproach things spiritual at the same time it is because we are thinking intently on Mine schemes for a chat witli Mars borne Lime lifixt September. At tha-t time the corth.wili be only some 50,000,000 odd juiies distant from its nearest planet, and sour scientists aver that Mars will then be in a most advantageous position for the flashing oi messages. ' Professor Wil-"; iiam Henry Picke&nfc/ of Harvard University, js immensely interested in . the signal scheme/ does not think it at all possible to be «dop.fced,^ because of -the ■ enormous cost — some 10,T30G;0Gpdols — but | he does say that it is entirely practical. ) ■' Practically all astronomers,'' he says, j " agree- that Maie has" snow, atmosphere, , jlouas,,- vegetation, aud possibly animal life. Mr Percival Loweil also believes that there is intelligence thfcre. * As a general thing the public agrees with him in this, but mjst astronomers are of the ■ opinion that it- has not been proved. My idea is that the way to.- settle the ' matter is to send messages. If retufn messages come to the earth in answer, they would prove that there are intelli- ' gent 'beings on Mars. My scheme for sending signals to Mars first occurred to me when I was at-the Harvard Observatory at Arequipa, Peru, in 1892. I never thought then that it would attract the attention which it seems to be attracting now. The scheme is this : To fix 50 mirrors, each mirror 25ft square, on a shaft like 'the polar axis of an equatorial tele- . scope. Each large mirror should be made up of 100 little ones, 2£ft square. There would be, in all. a quarter ot a mile square of mirrors. The shafts wbuld be mounted parallel to the axis of th-. earth and caused to revolve by means -^ motors in a direction opposite to that in which the earth revolves. In this way a steady Hash of light bright enough to be visible through a telescope would be sent to Mars. The question of the number of mirrors necessary for sending this flash is a simple matter of astronomical calculation-, which any astronomer can ' figure out in five minutes." I Professor Pickering thinks that the flashes should be sent steadily for three or four months then discontinued for a .year, perhaps, in order to give Mars an opportunity to arrange a plant and signal 1 back. After that there could be systems of flashings, - perhaps a dot and dash alphabet, after the *nariner of the tele- j graph. The precise manner in which he is going to gain access to an interplanetary code that would be intelligible to Earth and Mars alike, has not been explained. From -talking to Mars to the eternal tariff problem is a quick drop from airy flction to hard fact Congress still sits and continues at the supplications of the powerful Republican manufactures, tc reTise the tariff downward by raising the schedules, a somewhat paradoxical performance now put into practical operation. In the meantime President Taft watches closely but says nothing. The Administration of Adjectives has given way to an Administration of Fact. There are rumours that President Taft wil' bs a big enaugh man to exercise his great power of veto on the emasculated measure that is fast becoming a thing of derision. If so^he may cave the Republican scalp. For there are no two sides about the qu-e&tion of living in the United States at the present moment. The manufacturers, not satisfied with their great recent export growth seem disposed^ to put the screws upon their own counitry_; the consumer suffers at every turn Even foodstuffs increase in cost each year, while r»ay rolls, if they move upward at all, fail to keep the ratio. If the Republican Congress be dumb enough not to see this, the President must. He has close at hand the most golden opportunity that can come to any statesman ; to rise above a floundering party and make himself an executive of real strength. Those who know Taft •wbU, say that he does not let opportunities — the big golden ones or the little silver ones, either — slip through his capable fellows. ~ When Henry H. Rogers died the other flay, the operating genius who worked out - the tremendous detail of Standard tZSI was gone. It remains to bs seen

wKether his wonderful systematic plan- , nings have provided a like steersman for j the gia»t crafty Rogers,'like Rockefeller, had bis beginnings in a small way. He ■ began by selling newspapers^ in the small New England town of Fairhaven, Mase. After that he -drove a grocer's waggon, worked 1 * as a labourer upon the railroad, and finally decided that he wanted to be a machinist. He tried to get a start as an apprentice, only to find that the ma- ■ chinists of. that vicinity were a close • combination, and that they would not admit him to it. After that his restless mind began to look beyond Fairhaven. Tlie k *deveiopment of the petroleum in- ! dustry 'wasJjust beginning.- >; The oil • business, was a wjtld-cat affair that' rivalled the goM-mining Grazes of previous years. , It appealed^ to Rogers simply as an oppor1 tonity. - He made it such. ' -When the ; wil3-cat features had disappeared and it j had settled down to being a business — 1 and a great business at that — Rogers was ' known. . The newly-formed and already 1 powerful Standard Oil knew him. He 1 was a dangerous- competitor and antago- ■ nist. Then Standard Oil, which, translated, means the brains and ability of ■ John D. Rockefeller, took Rogers in, t The trusts learned long since . to buy i brains. They form their chief foundations of success. From that time forward Rogers' s 1 record was a record of money accumulation. Like Rockefeller, he was generous with that which: , had been given him. Only, while the president of Standard Oil endowed great colleges and built? wonderful institutions for the checking of the dread diseases that mow down little children by the thousands, Rogers's gifts went in prodigal offerings to the little town of Fairhaven, that remained so close to his heart. He built it a town hall, a high school, an hotel, a system of model roads* His benefactions to the town in one way or another went into the millions. Then to these he added a great memorial church iff memory of his mother, costing nearly 3,000,000d01, and one of the finest bits of ecclesiastical architecture in America. For all of these things he was lionised in Fairhaven. Mark Twain lionised him, too. When Twain, with the proverbial lack of business tact that goes into literary heads, became involved in a frightful pubhsh1 ing house failure, it was Rogers who reached down and helped him upon his feet again. Not all of Rogers's life was a triumph. With that rare transportation genius that enabled him to devi&e the great pipeline system* for Standard Oil to handle . its product across the country, he ' set out in the final years of his life to ' build a railway from the oneat new softcoal fields in West Virginia, several hundred miles to tidevraler and ocean navigation at Norfolk, Virginia. For an important railroad to be the entire personal property of one man was a novelty, even in America accustomed to great single fortunes. It was probable that he would have easily succeeded in his enterprise if it had not been for ttaa great panic of October, 1907. That embarassed Rogers ju.st as it had embai&ssed thousands and thousands of smaller men. He turned to his friends for help. Many of them, with the characteristic jeo2ou»v of rich men, refused to lift their fingers to assist him. Rogers, in the evening oi his life, was forced into an unexpected battle to save his half-fini.<=hed railroad, even his g-neat foitune. At a time when other old fellows were shaking the caree of business and beginning to loaf he brought his efenitis into activity once again. That hastened his death, but he did not die jntil lie knew that he had been successful, that if he had paid the price mi hie life for the Virginian railroad It was wholly his, to be handled down intact, to his eon. A month before h«e died he made the fii .-4 through trij: over it.« rails. The gieat triumph of liifi life hed be-en accomplished. Sometimes it is a woman who achieves that vague thing we term success. Over in New Jertsey. within an hour's run by train from this citj . stands a rustic .smithy. Automobilists remember it dimly — the blacksmith and hia helpers. The thing that they are apt to remember most clearly is the robust, handsome girl who stood there with the men at the anvils, who could shoe a horse as quickly and as well as any man. When some of them go to the Metropolitan Opera House next winter they will see that same girl — Anna Case — facing them from the &tage of that great temple — in ihe role of prima >

donna soprano. The blacksmith's daughter had a hard time of it at first. H«er father was very poor, but finally, after personal appeal, the girl got a country music teacher to give her a lesson each week at 25 cents a lesson, and she had to- borrow that 25 cents each week from the village grocer. She had to walk fofe mile-s to and from her music lessons, but it was, only a little time after that Before she secured an engagement in a church choir in a nedghbouring' smalJ • city. .From that time forward- her Tp^grees was steady.,. Folk of musical appTfeciartdon^ heard her voice, and 1 "were fascinated by -it.- ,She took -more lessons, first in New York, afterwards in Berlin,.. Munich, and Paris. Her marvellous voice carried her forward all the while, and she waS'-offer-ed ao engagement at the Paris -Opeia. She shook- her head at that. " I wajiit to v make my debut in my native land,"- she said. So it has come to pass that she will, at the age of 24, sing "Marguerite" in America's greatest opera- house. When she was 17 .she was actually shoeing horses, and an opeia house was not more thrn a girlish dream. ' Sometimes the scale reverses. A woman was admitted to. the afmshouse at Wheeling, West Virginia, the other day, with little to distinguish her from other supplicants for help at such a place. A keennosed Teporter found by a slip that there was mucb to distinguish her. " That is Mollie* Doty," he said in astonishment, 'and the woman admitted the fact. You ,go back 30 years in our Brisk days to get the real perspective of Mollie Doty. Her father, Calvin W. Doty, was a great iron founder of the hills of the Ohio River Valley. His fortune was enormous, and black-eyed Mollie Doty was a catch of national note. She refused young men by the s*core, and finally married Baron L. Frederick Lagerfelt, scion of a fine old noble Swedish family and Vice-consul of Sweden at Pittsburg. The wedding was a brilliant affair, and at least two of the reigning monarchs of Europe sent presents and comjrauilations. Calvin Doty made young Baron Largerf-elt vicepresident of his great iron companies. Three years later the Baron was in disgrace and a fugitive. He had stolen great blocks of the Doty stocks and committed wholesale forgeries. Eventually his thefts sent the Doty industries into bankruptcy, and Calvin Doty into a broken-hearted old age. Mollie Doty divorced her husband, and he passed out of sight until the cable ticked off the news of hus death in an obscure garret of Brussels four years ago. Mollie Doty drifted helplessly against life, her money gradually wasted away; the almshouse is the last chapter of her life. With the death of Dr Edward Everett Hale, last week, the latt of a generation of Bostonians, whose influence on national character is one of the great chapters of American development, passed away. He was patriot, clergyman, philanthropist, author, lecturer. As a nephew ot the great orator and scholar whose name he bore, and ?.s a grandson of the brother of Captain Nathan Hale, he derived by direct descent both his literary talent and his fervent patriotism, which found expression in many directions, but in most concrete form in his " Without a Country." That celebrated romance is at once a model of the short story and the political tract, the great proie msoiration of the Civil war. He was a contemporary of Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, Wliittier. Wendell, Philhps, and Charming. He became immsU-r of the Second Unitarian Church of Worcester in 1846, and occupied the pulpit of that church until his death, at the age 01 W years.