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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1931-01-23, Page 37 .11 L reatinent For Bladder Weakness Brings Swift Relief. While serious, if eogiectedeit UAW., ordinarily an easy matter, to clUielnY relieve Bladder Weakness: and "niter; tion, Pains in Baek and" doWn through, groins, frequent daily annoyance and troublesome oighte—bY the pleasant home use of Dr. •Southwordes "Ura - tabs," which any druggist will furnish on guarantee of money hack on first box purchased, if results are not fully eatiefactOsT. No matter how stubborn, or trou- blesome ;your case may be, you can • easily prove the value of "Uratabs" in a few days? time. Start the test to -day and you may look for improve- ment inside of 24 hours. FLOPS OF FAMOUS INVENTORS Even the greatest inventors have had their failures. The fact that the man who gave the world electric light, talking machines and the Edison stor- age battery was responsible for a ver- tical flying machine which didn't ."work," should encourage inventors whose first attempts have failed. Edison invented his helicopter , in 1902. It consisted of a number of box kites, attached fore and aft, by two strands of piano wire to a disk around a central pole. A gasoline engine was mounted on a platform below each kite. In theory the motor was supposed to rotate the upper disk and the lower platform as a unit, swinging the kites about the central axis, as a 'boy swings a tin can on a string. The invention might have been a success, but Edison missed two vital features. He neglected to pro- vide a means of pre -venting the motor from turning itself instead of rotat- ing the kites; and he forgot to include a rigid member by which the.rotating force could be transferred to the kites. Hence, if the motor started, the shaft would rotate and immediately wind the wires around itself, thus pulling in the kites and reducing the whole contraption to a tangled mass of wire and fabric. That was Ediso'n's first fiasco, but it was not his worst. His "vocal en - ,gine" is easily last on his list of 1,100 patents. The idea was to attempt to harness the energy of our vocal sound 'vibrations. A diaphragam behind a mouthpiece was connected by a small link with a ratchet so constructed that the motions of the diaphragm, caused by the ;voice vibrations, would turn a wheel. To this Was attached a grooved' pulley, around which a belt could be placed. The belt could be applied to the driving of a small ma- chine. The device did not work for the simple reason that the vibrations created by one human voice do not possess sufficient energy to set in mo- tion anything worth moving. A brass band playing as loudly as the lungs of its members will permit would generate about one watt. An ordin- ary electric light bulb is rated at 40 watts. Imagine the many, many persons, shouting at the top of their voices, it would take to drown out forty brass bands, and you have an idea of the number of men who would 'have to yell into Edisen's vocal en- gine to light a single lamp. But Edison is not the only famous inventor who, at time, has descended from the pinnacle of genius to 'become for the time being, a fallible mortal. Inventors who have devoted endless labor and much time and money to de- vices that later proved impracticable or unpopular may well take comfort from some of these random examples of failures, near -failures and triviali- ties which, in addition to Edison's two flops, were found at the U. S. Patent office under illustrious names. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, in 1904, patented a piece of aircraft, somewhat in the shape, of a flying beehive that could fly as a kite, but without value as an airplane. Emile Berliner, whose invention of the .microphone lifted the telephone out of the toy stage, and whose lateral waive groove record did the same for phonograph, took out several patents for parquet floor- ing, the squares of which had mat- ting on tep! So far as is known no floor has ever been covered with this CONSTIPATION BRINGS MANY ILLS DID you know that constipation often brings despondency? Poi- sons spread through the system. You lack pep. Headaches be- come frequent. No wonder you have the "blues." Yet constiflation can be over- come by having sufficient rough- age in your diet. A pleasant way to obtain this roughage is through eating Kellogg's ALL - BRAN. You will enjoy this delicious cereal. And how much better for you than taking habit-form- ing laxatives. Two tablespoonfuls of Are - BRAN, eaten • daily, will relieve and prevent both temporary and recurring constipation. ALL -BRAN also contains needed iron to build up the blood. At all grocers. Made by Kellogg in London, Ontario. 10" ALL -BRAN 9 ,i040., O 4 e 4 fct, ,pie:. Ank icoless :, powderp,vdniforAi OA .40,4MO 04 Tain,g, fM,Ore giaft .009,7 4 AnAile torp. Oee, atmAte4 Ike, Alaeac Coastal an4 4 game of skill,. reeelrghliog ehetOie WhiehnehodY playa, . Lee Pe Peres% havcnter Of the audiea tube and "father of radio," only. five Years ago patented an auto,. mobile gas: tank gage that blows a whistle when the gas gets low. The shrill voce of this contraption has' not been heard in the land. C. Fran- cis Jenkins, a prolific inventor, re- sponsible for one of the systeras of television broadcasting, in 1919 um successfully attempted to revive -an antiquated type of automobile tire casing patch. He is also the inven- tor of a lawn mower, and of an air- plane that has never flown. Elihu Thcvmson, one of the world% foremost inventors, iperhaps moist famous for his induction' motor, pat- ented a device to take the unpleasant odor out of automobile exhaust gas'. es. That was thirty-three years ago and our roads and streets are still filled with noxious fumes. Heniy Ford in 1921 took out a patent for a tilting device for hospital beds which showed no appreciable improve- ment over existing apparatus. John. Hays Hammond, Jr., noted chiefly for his work in radio, is the inventor of a combination cigarette case and lighter, a toy locomotive and a wind- shield wiper that have added nothing to his fame. But perhaps the great- est drop from the sublime to the rid- iculouS was that of Tolbert Lanston, inventor of the monotype, the almost miraculous typesetting machine that cast and composes single letters in lines of the required length, automat- ically arranging the words to fit each line. Lanston, in 1871, patented—a combination hairbrush and comb! Why did most of these inventions "flop" despite the fact that their cre- ators were men of outstanding me: Coanical ingenuity? In some of the (.!ases notably tile Edison helicoster vr,e vocal eogine, the devices were f silty, and the : nly explanation senile to be that even th smartest sf n en have their "off da'," This also was the trouble with Belly's fly - beehive, which consisted mainly of a large nureber of small kite units clev- erly fitted together. In its construc- tion, however, the inventor did not take into account several of the most important factors since prorved essen- tial to airplanes such as the proper curving of the wing surface. Jen- kins.' tire patch was another example of imperfect design. It was a steel- stedded leather boot to repair blow- outs. Thestuds were put in the lea- ther to take out the wear, but Jen- kins forgot that they would also take the smoothness out of automobile rid- ing. Structural defects are by no means the only reason why inventions fail. An inventor of any versatility who never made a worthless or imprac- ticable invention, who never misread the public pulse or misgaged popular demand, would have to be a man en- dowed with not o/nly inventive genius 'aut with the commercial ability of a merchant prince and the foresight of a prophet. An invention, for instance, may be perfectly sound and useful and yet fail to catch the public's fancy. That was the fate of Lee De Forest's whistling gasoline gage, Berliner's matting -covered parquet Vooe, and Lanston's curious comb and brush combination. On the face of it, it would seem that there must be a de- mand for a gas tank gage giving audible warning when the tank is getting empty, instead of the usual visible means of indication by means of a dial that so often is not watched. Still. motorists did not want it. Lan- ston's innovation in toilet articles might have proved a time -saving de- ice to many men, but they laughed at it. Berliner's parquet floor also may have had mechanical merit and might haye proved a boon to the house wife. However, she did not like its looks, and that was the end of it. Another reason why inventions fail is that, though sound, they are impreseical. Take 'Thompson's de- odorizing machine for automobile fumes. In principle it might have worked, but it was so large and cumbersome; that it would have nec- cessited doubling the usual size of mo- tor cars. Maxim's steam cooker is another case in point. Mechanically there was nothing whatever wrong with it, but it had 'all the complica- tions of a full-fledged steam power plant, which most housewives are un- willing or unable to master. Then there is the question of marketing an invention. This may be impossible because the same thing already has been done as well or better by somebody else, or because the article cannot be made cheaply enough. Many inventions, though impracti- cal and unprofitable in themselves, of- ten are the fore -runners of extremely valuable apparatus. A classical in- stance is a phenomenon discovered by Edison in 1884 and known as the "Edi- son effect." It (brought him no money and added little to his fame, but its principle was used by Fleming in his two -electrode vacuum( tube. Still the discovery did not amount to much un- til De Forest added a third electrode and thus evolved the modern radio tube which is responsible for to -day's enormoue radio development. In order not to. "flop" an invention must not only do the work it is meant to do, it must perform its task better and cheaper than anyone else's, or both. It must be something which the public wants. MILLIONS WAITING TO BUY Over since the first piece of ma- chinery threatened to displaee human labor people have been complaining that the new invention would ruin the future of those who had been doing the hand work. Yet in the face of this false philosophy invention has continued, work has been saved and ----there has been more work to do. People have prospered more and mord and the standard of lviing has been rising steadily. When the first power looms were introduced the weavers destroyed them as an invention of the devil. But the new device's won out, not so much because the quality of the output was , ; 4 ' • • 4,-;) ,i1,1;i.iip;;,1;;;;;;,i;ki;;;r4o, ;;• 1>gtteP Wthe-at WOrgl A•140 jr beeelae eb.00#and99.Y1,00R" ela°0 thattY”I#0.1).044, 'bOttgg' gr,q07"' ed than tneY' ever heta beep; the' koyMelltied ley s4*1 ' UAW tonday there are imadrods of,' weavers where there was only one the day eE the *nut loom% 'non the Thrst locentotives were introduced the cartere and handlers af, pack animals thought they were doomed. Instead- there was so much more traffic induced by the lowered cost of transportation that they found more work to do than ever before. When automobiles were invented the manufacturers of buggies and wag- ons were doomed. But there are ten times more people engaged in mak- ing automobiles and trucks than were ever engaged in making wagons and buggies. Machinery has so cheapen- ed everything that work has multi- plied, wages have risen, and the, stan- dard of living has improved measur- ably from day to day.. It is almost impossible for the people of this generation to appreci- ate what the world was like before automobiles, aeroplanes or radios, and yet only one of them is thirty years old. All of them are 'being made by the workers who formerly were producing something else, and in most lines the output is very much greater. In the present period of depression the old complaint reappears, and it; is being seriously urged that 'the mult- iplication of the machine -made pro- ducts is in some way responsible for the unemployment. It is claimed that machine and mass production has pro- duced more than can be consumed. But a brief examination of the true condition will prove that this is not true. Nobody has as good a house as he would like to have; no one has all the furniture he wants; no one has as good clothes as he wishes he had. Not everybody who wants a radio or an automobile has one yet, and, there are still millions without washing ma- chines, vacuum cleaners and other household appliances. There are scores of things used by a few which would come into general use if they were made to sell at lower prices. There is plenty of unsatisfied demand. The only thing that keeps people from having better homes, better clothes, more furniture, better rad- ios, finer automobiles, more washing machines, and more and better of many other things of which they have never even heard is the price. If the price were reduced they would buy more or better things. The prob- lem of employment is the problem of reducing the cost of these things, and the only wayl that can be done is by more and better work. The labor cost per unit must be reduced so as to bring them within the reach of the millions who cannot afford them at their present prices. The whole intelligent effort of civilization is directed toward the raising of the standard of living. The purpose of invention and new devices is to relieve mankind ,as much as possible from the drudgery of work, and so to raise the standard of living. Saving of capital finances invention and production. The more devices that are made the greater the comfort and enjoyment of the people. The greater the production the more there is for everybody. The buying or consuming power of the people grows with the ever-increasing mass of wealth. Greater production lowers the average cost and brings these devices of comfort and enjoy- ment within the range of more work- ers. Cutting down on production in any line will never increase distribution or raise the standard of living; it's absurd to imagine that curtailment of production is any cure for unem- ployment. Invention and efficiency have been constantly lowering the cost of pro- duction. But the retail prices have been maintained at or near the old levels. The spread between costs and selling prices has' been growing wider. Manufacturers and workers in many lines have been making what were absolutely unconscionable profits. The trade of the world reached the point, as it did in 1921, when there came a buyers' strike against out- rageous retail prices. The excessive demands of labor in the building trades has not only stopped building, but has stopped work all down the line instructural steel, lumber, brick, lime, cement and transportation. The people of the whole world have got to learn that they cannot get away with an inequitable exchange either in work or commodities; that wages and money are only commodities us- ed in this exchange; that the stand- ard of living for all of us is raised by increasing the speed and shorten- ing the time now used in making what we all need and so releasing some and then some more to make the things we want to increase our cmofrt and add to the joy of living. WAR ON SLAVERY BEGAN 100 YEARS AGO One hundred years ago The Libera- tor was founded. It was a weekly paper, written, set up and to a cer- tain extent distributed by its editor, William Lloyd Garrison. It became one of the most famous publications of its kind in the world, and profound- ly influenced the minds and hearts of the American people on the question of slavery. It never exceeded a cir- culation of 3,000, and financial diffi- culties caused its suspension in the year that Lincoln's emancipation pro- clamation freed the slaves. Its. editor was mobbed and thrown into jail. A price was set on his head. He alien- ated his friends and outraged his en- emies. His whole life was a cam- paign of what we might call vituper- ation. Yet he is remembered to -day as one of the greatest of Americans, for his influence helped to shape the whole course and thought of his na- tion, not with regard to slavery alone but with regard to other reforms, long ago established and now ac- cepted "unnoticed as the breath we breathe." It is difficult to believe that less than a hundred years ago in the Unit- ed States the institution of slavery was accepted with perhaps less' chal- lenge than the institution of holy reat Stock - CLOSES Saturday Evening, Jan. If you have not yet taken advantage of these unprecedented price reduc- tions --don't delay --Come Now. The Last Days will be Wonder Days In Bargain Giving. In order to make Final Clearance before Stock -Taking, February ist, many lines will be still further re- duced and you will never buy new, reliable merchandise at any greater Money - Saving Prices. Anticipate your future wants Buy Now and Save S EWART BROS. SEAFORTH 11111111•11111•1111111 matrimony to -day. Those who in- veighed against it were regarded as we now regard men who might be taking up, a subscription to finance a flight to Mars on the end of a rocket. The church was solidly for it. The Constitution of the United States pro- tected it. A slave was as much a man's property as a dog is to -day and there was no organization com- parable to the Society for the Pre- vention of Cruelty to Animals. On the surface there seemed almost com- plete approval and acceptance of the fact that because a man was a black he could be held by another man as a chattel, separated from his wife and children, if occasion arose, worked like a horse, beaten, even executed, with no human tribunal to which he might appeal. But underneath the surface there were millions of people slightly uneasy about the institution, and doubtful even of the texts from the Bible which were freely offered in its justification when this was challenged. It was Garrison's task to release these sufbterranean sentiments whieh were eventually to blaze in 'the fires of civil war. Technically, the Civil war was fought to determine the right of a state to secede. Personal- ly we cannot inutgine a pen* becom- ing more wrought up about this than about the proposition that if the an- gles at the base of two isosceles tri- angles are equal the angles opposite the base must be equal. The north fought the war to free the slaves, and it was Garrison who turned the elec- tric current on. It was through his Liberator, the phamphlet he estab- lished when an unlearned youth of 25, that spread the fire through the land. The Liberator, despite its insignifi- cant circulation, was the power house, the electric spark, the torch from which other torches were lighted. Wendell Phillips, his chief associate in the great fight, has testified that he never said a word or had a thought about slavery that had not been sug- gested by Garrison. He was denounc- ed as a fanatic and atheist, though as a matter of fact he was always a deeply religious men, and found most of the thunderbolts ha hurled in the Old Testament. The greatest tribute ever paid him was from John Stuart Mill who said that he drew two lessons from his career, and continued: The first les- son is: Aim at something great; aim at things which are difficult, and there is no great thing which is not difficult Do not pare down your un- dertaking tVhato, 7,911. can )1PPe! see successful in the next few years It is curious to note that although Garrison was not himself a Quaker it was from the Quakers that he' de- rived most of his earliest support and that many of the beliefs of the So- ciety of Friends he adopted. He was an apostle of the doctrine of non- resistance, and through his influence on Tolstoi, as has been pointed out by Henry Raymond IlVfrussery in The Nation we see his influence continuing in Gandhi to this day. He was able to advocate non-resistance at a time When he had lAen the main personal cause of the Civil War to which he sent his son as lieutenant in a negro The heart and mind of a nation are regiment. He was a prohibitionist, a never stirred from their foundations champion of women's rights when without manifold good fruits. In the were 'such champions, and a protee- case of the grea t American contest, tionist in polities. Probably his chiefs these fruits have already 'been great, strength lay in the fact that he wonld never compromise to the extent of a hundredth part of one percent, with' any evil which he attacked, and that:0 who would compromise with it he re- garded not as his allies but as his 0114 , emiee. The United gtttes has seen, few haters like Williare Lloyd %to 1; rison, and few hatreds have hitil/fitt,3., forth snob fair fruits. We are ,getting VOW Well he &anti* until we began' to tOogt or in the years of your own life. Fear not the reproach of quixotism or fan- aticism; but after you have well weighed what you undertake, if you see your way clearly, and are convin- ced that you are right, go forward, even though yen like Mr. Garrison, do it at the risk of being torn to pieces by the very men through whose changed hearts, your purposes will one day he accomplished. . . . The other lesson. . . is this: If you aim at something noble and succeed in it, you will generally find that you have succeeded not in that alone. and are daily becoming greater. . . The chains of prescription have been broken; it is not only the slave who has been freed—the mind of America has been emancipated. The whole in- tellect of the country has been set thinking about the fundamental ques-• tions of society and goviernmente and that great nation is saved, probably for a long time to come•, from the mrost forraidable danger of a complete- ly settled state of society and opinion —intellectualand pin* etngnatinn.il -eire.1.10i'efek"0 '•0 ,i!