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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1931-09-18, Page 6art l�h M sus its f1t • Unciaire ,vp a gov emnent like iliie, , ,' e went on to point out that the =nee' were to reopen' the next Monday.The miners wanted to know' what they were going to live on in the meantime and how they were going to buy keit powder (the miners have to pay for their own explosives) when they did set to work again. The Governor read them the Constitution and ex- plained that it did not authorize him to do anything for them. He said that the government was a business institution and had to be conducted a- long lines that safeguarded the•inter- ests of all citizens.•"'I am," he con- cluded, "turning over $10 of my own money to your presiding officers." .. t the courthouse the marchers met with better success: the country raised some truckfuls of food. When the mines reopened, not everybody was taken back. And soon after, evictions began. As I write, two doz- en families are being put out at Ward. You can see the,men from the com- pany store dangling their legs from the back of the company truck, as they wait for the constable. to evict one of the' families; further along the road, another family is sitting en the ground in the shade of a small tree beside a pile of furniture. They have been -brought a safe distance from the settlement.. so that they won't be able to move back. In carrying the tenants away the company has gone beyond its rights. The road at least is supposed• to be public property, and the company has no authority to drive other people's furniture off. Yester- day some of the young men got sore and, stopped a truck and brought a load of furniture back. The constable was afraid something worse would happen next day, so he had a warrant served and arrested five men on the charge of interfering with an officer in tele performance of his duty. Now the people at Ward are sorer than ever. Many of them have lived' there all their lives, and • they' are dis- mayed at being treated like chickens to be casually dumped out of their coops. They are People; they have nailed 'possum skins to their doors. trained ramblers over their houses. The women, with thin bare legs, sit on their porches like other women on hat afternoons. The men are good- humored, straightforward.Southern- ers, old-fashioned Americans so much in the tradition of backwoods inde- pendence that it is almost impossible to realize that they have been reduc- ed to the condition of serfs. Lately leaders trained in the strikes of ten years ago, have become active amgng them again. The miners hail. the . organizers as wrecked men hail a ship. They are men and the organ- izers are men. Arid the operators— who are they? They are corporations, interests, holding companies, stock- holders, boards of ' directors. The miners never see an operator. The operators merely send out orde from Cleveland or Pittsburgh. or icage that wages have to be cut, an they leave the, rest to the superintendent, who tries to make good to • the oper- stars by paying the payroll down fur- ther—if necessary, by shortweighting the men. The only thing people know certainly about the operators is that they are engaged in cutthroat compe- tition with each other and that some of them are going bankrupt. Even at that they can't sell their coal. N C Rfi OIL" ow MeralryMade . a process which not only revolutionizes petroleum refining, but which is'also a distinct contribution o sc e. oaaluen races trembled in their eaves •ancl leafy' dens, lolling their worlds with fears more deadly than the great beasts ef' the times, were these vague MI ghostly awes but ignorance, the preduet of the beast -man's terrors of the night.? .., This aniimisti faith of which purr scientific sophist write, the earliest religious urge that mere phil- Qs ophy' can. , find, is it, ' as nowadays some say, but just a first step toward the man-made gods:? With woody thoughts our devotees'of facts study the woody facts :of brush and forest growth; hut they will be the first to tell you that ljfe'is not so found. Life meets with life and only thus is known. 'Rightly, of old days, our dim forebears trusted to the lives their own lives 'vaguely sensed. Rightly they peopled all the solitudes with growing souls of growing things. Sitting in the shadow of this hoary fir an eerie •sense .of companionship takes hold upon me. I am not the only soul brooding here, waiting for a transformation. ' Around' the trunk or through it, up from the grounded roots or down from the thin foliage, there Mast be a brown face peering at me. . .. 'Ah, but that is only' my human fancy. In reality no com- panionship exists, and only the kin- ship of travellers far apart on the dusty road of life. No dryad of yes- terday dwells here over me. The Hel- lene gods are too youthful for this ancient trunk. The old goods of Pine and Pinnacle aro of a more austere breed. If I am to fancy the spirit of the fir I must think of the Indians, who worshipped it, and of the myster- ious races whose souls were even more closely akin to nature, and of the hairy and silent men of the caves, whom the tree's impersonal spirit vag- uejj,r remembers: IBM The Snake Farm at Salo Paulo The Hopi Indians give their remark- able Snake Dance in our Southwest, and along the Ganges I have seen the natives charm hooded cobras by the spell of a reed pipe, but it was a Negro working for Brazilian doctors who showed me the acme of skill and courage in dealing with sakes and who let me know that even deadly snakes can he .used. to save human lives. Somewhat breathlessly I watched the barefooted man elate over the low stone wall into -the enclosure, where deadly jararacas crawled in and out of concrete igloos. One of the snakes coiled as the Negro approach- • ed. The man kept on until he was a foot short of the distance the snake could strike. Almost carelessly he prodded the snake -with a fork. The jararaca struck, only to fall just a bit short of tie Negro's bare feat. Be- fore he could coil to strike main the forked iron end of the cane had set- tled over the triangular head, and the attendant was bending down to grasp the wriggling reptile. A doctor on the outside of the en- -closure handed over a glass receptacle covered with cheesecloth, and the' Ne- gro, pressing the poison. glands on each side of the snake's head, forced from the long hollow fangs the yel- low venom that dripped through the. cheesecloth. That poison, I was told, `Would be used to make serums for the inoculation of animals and inn against the bites of other jararacas. One after another the Negro caught the ugly, aggressive reptiles, whose fangs can penetrate anything but the thickest leather, and extracted from them 'the .poison accumulated in the •15 days since they had been "milk - fed." 'For much serum is needed by the Brazilian government in its fight against the snakes. Brazil ranks next to India in thedeath rate from reptile poisoning, nd the Instituto Butantan is the government's one nie'ans of defense. Here, in what English and Ameri- cans call "Ihe Snake Farm," at Sao Paulo are. collected snakes from all sections of the largest country in South America. A national law re- quires anyone to ship to the farm from the place of capture all venom- ous snakes Arid any new species of l`ee`r eenornou's snakes. Deadly snakes. rviil not eat its' captivity, and die in appee dnt'ately sin months. To keep teethe tree supPIy needed for serum about 2f1':.rsnakest arrive eaclv,d'ay, transport - tree by the railroads. . "Ns ttirally', the jeb of opening the Mail is rather e* titing but net sought fa"ftert'�, sand nay. friend, 'Senor' f'xoyaz, 1i overfed e.±tt'�ber .plantation on the : Lixta do ,arid who' had fteited• urs i ' a Oat* with,iiim `when l ' a'blit '10, et aeirti & ' : was ��ta t+`ted> en a hobs l Beiteil, eta* an o.d i : '4. Jarlerrb, e hy' 'cafe .$high lir rail due ' lir • snake bite. He began collecting pois- onous snakes, native to his country, studying the effects of their venom and producing anti -venom serums to .fight it. This' serum he shipped for a small fee to the snake -infested ar- eas of Brazil. In this 'way he main- tained his farm until the Brazilian government took it over. The snakes to be avoided in South America, Senor Goyaz told us, belong to two great snake families called "colubrine" arca "viper." ' The "ring" cc "coral" snakes are the only colu- brines in South America. The major- ity of vepomous snakes belong to the viper family. In this group are rat- tlesnakes and the aggressive jararac- as. The latter are very numerous'in Brazil, abhich accounts for the many deaths caused by them. For the colu- brine no anti -venom serum has been found as yet, but the Snake Farm is waging'a winning fight against the vipers. At the Snake Farm there are sev- eral concrete buildings—laboratories, offices and homes for the staff — and mgrouped around them a numbs': of ake pens; half -spherical cement ig- loos like miniature Eskimo icehouses sonke four feet high inclosed in sec- tions by low walls and moats. Look- ing over the wall into this pen we saw hundreds of snakes basking in the warm sunshine. As well as manufacturing serums for snakebite; the a nstituto Butan- tan also breeds and distributes the natural enemy of the jararaca, — a Brazilian snake called the mussur- ama. This useful reptile is black and from five. to eight feet long. To man- kind its bite is not deadly. It lives on other snakes—by preference pois- onous ones. It can also be fed and thrives in captivity. - ' For our benefit the attendant start- ed a snake -eating contest. Into the compound' of the mussuramas he threw a jararaca about four feet long. A black snake' sprang at him, .. and feeling with his tongue to see if he was alive, knotted himself around the viper so closely that, except for their difference in color, they appeared to be one , snake. The viper opened his hugs mouth, displaying his erect fangs on the upper jaw, wriggled' a- round and 'bit savagely into the back of the black snake until the yellow venom ran down its scales. The jararaca could neither tear with his teeth nor crush with his coils, the poison was all he had for defente. And the black snake was immune to bis venom! 'Gradually the black snake coiled himself around his en- emy's head, carefully protecting his own head in another fold, until he. caught the jaw of the viper in his mouth. The poisonous snake's eyes still gleamed wickedly, 'but he was dy- ing.Chewing hard the blaek snake began crunching his enemy's head fiat by pressrir`e of his powerful mouth, twisting'hlVnself around trteanwbile so as to break the viper's spinal column. 'Whet the jararaca', head was crushed, tele black snake be'ga�i swal- lowife ilia' ooppa ent heed first by cr v'lifrg outside 'hint. the y once in a while he wriggled his body appar- 1 ently to increase his capacity. Aside1 from that he just masticated steadily, and in five minutes after the swallow- ing had begun, we saw the white tail, of the jararaca disappear down the throat of the black snake. Satisfied, our black cannibal crawled placidly off to his igloo- to sleep off his ban- quet. 'Down the hill beyond the stables where the' animals were kept to be injected with the poison and produce serum, we found the museum of the Instituto Butantan. In this building exhibits taught how to gaard against snake -bite and how to use the differ- ent serums. , In glass cases were ar- ranged bottles containing specimens Df the yellow venom of the iararaca; the smaller quantity, but more dread- ly, white venom of the rattlesnake, and poison of other reptiles. "I keep every known serum at the plantation," Senor Goyaz told us. "If my workman can describe the snake that has bitten him and comes to me in time, 'I can usually cure him with rhe serum for that particular serpent. Pat if he was too frightened to re- member the snal:e, I can only inject him with the general remedy, which is nc,t as effective." A few days before he had left his plantation to come to •Sao Paulo, Senor Goyaz went on to say, a child was brought to him who had been bitten two hours previously. She was al- ready blind and suffering horribly. Put she managed to give him a descrip- tion of the snake, He' recognized the serpent and 'irij•ected the Instituto's serum for the jararaca:' When Senor Goyaz left for Sao Paulo, the child was running around his plantation— cured! COAL DIGGERS The people who work at Ward live in little flat yellow houses on stilts that look like chicken houses. • They seem Mean and flimsy on the sides of the magnificent mountains. Througb the middle of the mining settlement runs a road' with, on one side, a long row of obsolete coal care and, on the other, a meager trickle of a creek with bare yellow banks. There are 800 or so families at Ward,, two or three in most of the houses and eight ot ten children in most of the famil- ies. ,And they arena much prisoners as if 'they did hicleed live in a chicken yard with a fence around thetn. Ward is situated in a narrow val- ley which runs back among the.West Virginia hills. Tbe Kelly's Creek Col- liery Companye owns Ward and the Paisley intereste own Mammeth, an- other settlement further back in the hollow where the houses .are not even painted yellow and where the standard of living loWee than at Ward. The peeele Who live in these hotises mine coal from the They .work froro 8 to 12' hours a day and get from $2.60 to $8 fer it. They get paid not hi United' tates currency, but in chicken -feed Apecially eoined the companies—little fake aluminum coins --thin anti light and some of them with holes in the middle like the de- based French currency at the end of the war. Even Andrew Mellon, who cwns one of the mines in this field, pays his men in this imitation money. The goods sold at -the company store, which is the only place where the min- ers can trade, are sold so mucro dearer than at the private stores only three miles away that the miners are never tide to come closer than 60 per cent. t' getting their money's worth. If they go out to the nearest little town and .cash their company money at a loss 'and buy some goods at a private store, they are quickly laid off. Nor are the people who work at Ward able to save and try to do bet- ter elsewhere. When they get paid at the end of every fortnight, it is for the work of the fortnight before. From this pay -say $40—the fort- nightly charges of the company for :ent, gas, medical treatment, etc., are deducted. This leaves about $24, .and the bill at the company store turns out just to equal the balance or a lit- tle to exceed it. Rarely the miner manages- to come out 50; or 60 cents ahead. If he does, it is likely tb turn out that he has run behind during the last two weeks; or it may be that his father or his son is in debt, and the gain is transferred to the °thee ac- count. If the company can ' find no pretext for withholding the 50 or 60' cents, the miner gets it in regular cur- rency. As he is always getting paid for his work of a fortnight ago. he is always in debt to the company and al- ways obliged to borrow money to get through the fortnight ahead; and the money which the company advances him is always the imitation money. , When times are hard, as they are at present, the operators cut their rates and make up the difference to themselves and their stockholders by getting more work for less pay out of the, miners. They put in mechanical cutters and lay off as many men as they can. The first to go are men over 45 and men who have been crip- pled in the mines. Other defective workmen are eliminated by means of a medical examination. The result is that the children at Ward sometimes go without food and are sometimes so naked that their mothers can't send ahem to the union with orders for clothes. About a month ago 1'50 miners de- cided to appeal to the 'Governor. They set out to march to Charleston, more than 20 miles away. The Governor received a delegation in front of a filling station on the outskirts of the city, and a sympathetic minister spoke for the men. J ' ltold the Governor that the miners had •ha tato work for weeks and had nothing to eat. The Governor replied' that he was very sympathetic with the miners, that he had once been a Miner himself. "What- ever conditions May be now,' he said, "we have the best gaverhlinlent ,Ort earth. Wie have eliminated all class Asti etions and' any Vit ttg no matter how humble, may spntetirrres hold high office. It Menne something to lien itt• THE SILVER FIR The tree stands on a slight knoll overlooking its lake. It is the most royal living thing of all the wilder- ness, fit companion to the hills, fit -friend of the deep waters, fit sentinel and spokesman of the forest. Below and about it green firs and spruces are gathered as a congregation and choir. Here, too, there are many noble heads lifted, many ancient trunks whose thick barks are mys- terious with nature's hieroglyphics; but not one to equal the silver fir, where, up and over the vassal trees, its white spire grows ever, loftier. symbol and revelation of the upward urge of life. It is white, as with moonlight. Ev- ery branch shimmers. Something of the night, some mysterious essence of the softer hours, clings to it even when the sun shines. The peace, the power and the majestic melancholy of midnight possess it. Looking upon it one thinks of the stars, end. of the ages that will succeed the sun. It is never altogether quiet. Though the lower forest may rest and listen, there is yet some movement in , the crown of the fir, and when all the air seems dead there steals down a flut- ter, as if the tree were putting its secrets into prayer. When the breez- es freshen it is the first to take up the song; its voice swells deeper, and its resonant chords ,grow louder, and always it can be heard like a thrum- ming viol, lending the symphony of the trees. It was old with the Spaniards. They passed under its shade when all the land was canopied by trees as old and as noble. But it outlasted its genera- tigen. - New growths came, and came again, and yet the stately fir crown- ed its forest, patriarch and king. What desires it had• I cannot dreath, though I well know that it could not have ,lived on without some sort ,of longing, however far removed from human hopes. It is never silent, nev- er unaware of wind end weather, night and day, but 'with myriad lips.' praises something greater and more enduring than itself. t' It is Yesterday. Over its roots is spread a Ibroad expanse of brown loam, where ho grasses grow, but only the aromatie'needles fall year by year to make for it a bed where ope day it will sleep. Stepping•into the shadow of the fir. one feels as if with a stride one head bridged the genera- tions backdvard to far and heathen times. There is something in the air here, some occult influence, some tan- gible effluence of the tree itself which one feels as by some' sixth and un- physical sense, but cannot translate into words. It is as if unconscious thought were here, a something less than petsonal, with an instinct for an individuality not as yet achieved. Were the Oreek legends altogether fabulous? Those cool, impersonal thingt, half body acid half dream, com- pact, of moonlight and man's instinc- tine sense of something More in na- ture, were they, after all, but menu- faeturedl poents? Or When, before the ttge• canscioua thought, yet I,I time I t.y.�` A- day's work finished. t But" they are still fresh and bright. They will tell you that the way to keep fresh is tel keep your mouth refreshed. The pure, cool flavor of WRIGLEY'S refreshes ' the, mouth as note ing else can. X61• M�1 N�aMtorete %1- INEXPENSIVE SATISFYINNE Whites May Absorb Whole Negro Race Goidwin Smith once remarked that the greatest of all American problems was the negro problem. He had no idea that it ever could be, solved and seemed to think it would probably in- crease rather than, .de,crease as years went on. But there seems to be r. eossibility that in the course of time it will be solved by the simple process of the negroes becoming white. Of come the individual Ethiopian can 'no more change his skin than in the days of Ham. But the great -great - r rendchild of a negro will be white if on the other side of the parental tree all the progenitors for those genera- ticns have been white. He becomes not only white so far as outward ap- pearances are white, but legally white or what is called fixed white. If he marries a white woman there is no possibility whatever that any of his children will show a reversion to the dark skin.• In • other words, if there were no general prejudice on the part of the whites against miscegenation one hundred year hence there would be no pure black negroes on this con- tinent, and in another fifty years there would be no cross breds show- ing any 'sign of Senegainbian origin. This process is now going forward, and each year some thousands of Deo, pre of mixed negro and white blood Hass from negro into white ranks. These are 'generally octoroons who in most cases cannot be distinguished ?earn t•ure whites. Caleb' .Johnson, writing in The Outlook, estimates the number at 10.000, but of course, this can be no more than a guess. In ad - John Bull is Concerned With convictions for drunkenness in England and Wales showing an in- crease for the first time in six years —and that, too,. despite hard times and. consequent augmentation of the ranks of the unemployed—Students of Bri- tain's ri tain's booze problem are puzzled to know what was the cause of this''lkpse from grace of so many of their coun- trymen. When times are bad and money scarce the "drys" generally expect fewer convictions for such offences.. But their deductions have gone awry. There were 53,080 convictions in 1930. as compared. with 51,996 in 1929. This increase is the first to be noted since 1924. The culprit's included' 44,683 men and 9.397 women. Among the suggestions put for- ward to account •for this state of af- fairs are the following: , . The quickest, if only temporary, way to forget economic troubles was to get "lit -up." The sale of "red' biddy" (composed of the scourings of old port casks). and other bootleg products in poor ad- dition tae fear • of detection. The negroes who know of the transition take pride in it and remain silent. The whites, perhaps, do not know. Mr - Johnson tells us that "only one or two white persons and fewer. than' a dozen negroes know that one of our popular actresses is of negro descent.'.' She has not married, because she fears that her children might retreat the negro ancestry of which no trace is to be found in her own appear- ance. It seems r asonable to sup- pose that•there will be less and less objection on the part,of a white person to marrying an oet0000n or ar mestee when the knowledge be- comes general that'there is abso- lutely no chance of a colored child: It' is no doubt this fear which keeps manyeaffectionate liaisons between . members of the different races on the plane +of illicit intercourse rather being the offspring of such a union,. theft holy wedlock. districts. tion to the bleached octoroons there s is that class called the mestee,. Now The ,increased numbet of drinking ranks vu. the W+Pl ucxu'NrvvYq lit a mestee is the, offspring of an octor non and a white parson—no, no, not narson, person—and is • actually and legally white. The product of a un- ion between black and white is called a mulatto. •The product of a mulatta and another. white'is a quadroon, and the offspring of a quadroon and a white i, .an octoroon. The mestee is white by every scientific test and is so regarded' even in those states which hair. laws against miscegenation. When the mestee marries another white there is no biological chance of any but white babies being born, and, of course, with each admixture of white blood in the line up from �� �ie mu 1Lto the chances of dark, e.'.inned babies is lessened. The fact is that the white is dominant need the black recessive. This has been established by the laborious investigations of. Dr. Daven- port of the Carnegie institution, who has incidentally dispelled the bell= that the white and black hybrid ' is les fecund than either pure 'white or pure black. This belief has given rise to Al e hopeful theory that eventually the negro race • will die out because of growing infertility oc- casioned by the increasing white mixture, mid was probably. founded on the false analogy of 'sterility of hybrids. But the mulatto is not a l •ybrid in the sense that a cross be -- twee.' a horse and an ass is a hybrid. He is rather a mongrel in the sense that a cross between an Irish terrier and a foxterrier is a mongrel, no dis- re;pc:t being intended by using the word in this connection. Certainly there ii no loss of' fertility in such cross lneeedings. Indeed, in many cases there has been noticed an in- crease when' a .direct . outcross is mode between two families of the same species. These crosses are proceeding all Kane time with the result, as noted, that perhaps 10,00e people of .negro blood become whites each year. An- other interesting factor in this pro- gressi•on of the people of mixed blood is sex attraction. It is a curious if well established fact that the sex' at- traction of a negro is for a wife • clubs where booze.,,can be pur'chased. at lower prices than in ordinary pubs. The stern view which • the law takes .of cases where ' drivers of meter vehicles have been nabbed when "under the influence." Nevertheless, it is a much more temperate Britain to -day than it was before the war, even' though the na- tion's liquor bill remains almost stabilized around• the bullion -dollar mark. The worst year hi the last twenty was 1913, when the. convr'ctionst for drunkenness rase to 188,877 and the country had a much smaller popu- lation than it now has. But not only was the price of liquor then lower, its strength was higher. A "shot" of good whiskey in 1913 cost 6 cents; a drink of similar size and much lower in gravity would cost to -day between 50 and 60 cents. ' In that period of English drinking history the workingman could often afford to indulge in It "shot" of hard liquor and take; a pony of beer as a chaser. The incurable inebriate could even acquire 'an overpowering load for the expenditure of a shilling (25 cents) in squalid pubs on a concoction known as "swipes." or the dregs of various beverages poured into.a com- mcn container. Accojding to the latest home of- fice statistics, Wtalsall was the sober- est large town in 1930. On the other hand, the Weisalian consumers might be individuals who know when they have had enough and how to hold it - At any rate, there were 'only seven convictions for drunkenness, or one such culprit for every 10,000 of the• population. The cities and towns with the high- est percentage were: Middlesbrough, 45.93; London 42.76; Newcastle -on -Tyne, 37.94, and Gates- head, 32.46 per 10,000.• Of eke convictions, 84 per cent.. were `nen 'and 16 per cent• of wo- men of 21 years and upward Although the number of places where liquor can be consumed on the premises or purchased for consump- tion elsewhere lugs d'eclinedi from 124,883 in 1905 to 98,987 to -day, than - sande of drinking clubs' have come in- to being. A Tennesseean of 85 asks that his wedding be annulled on the grounds that he had been drinking moonshine when he married. Imagine waking up and finding you are 85 and' have a hangover and are married. Our arrts and crafts have reached very high level, and yet we have giv- en to the world the impression that of all the IpoWers we are the most rbilistine.—Mr. H. IC. L. Fisher. t cannon understand how anyone can be bored to -day. Miss Maris T002'04 ' • L.