CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 16074, 31 October 1912, Page 6

CURRENT TOPICS.

“ Hearst’s Magazine,” one of the many journalistic ventures of Mr William Randolph Hearst, who has devoted

THE STANDARD on, trust’s LETTERS.

a large part of his energies to the exposure of political corruption in America, has recently been publishing photographs of a lengthy series of letters written within the last twelve or thirteen years by Mr John D. Archbold, the “political manager” of the Standard Oil Company. Tho letters published in the JntY and August numbers of the magazine created no very marked impression in the United States, as moV of them had been made public by M r Heirat during the presidential campaign of 1905. They referred principally to the dealings between the Standard Oil Company and certain Congressmen and Senators, and if tho letters are e-ermine, which do f s uot seem to he denied they constitute pretty strong circumstantial evidence that the poli-

ticians to whom they v, ere addressed v/ere tho tools of the great corporation and that they wero very handsomely remunerated for their services. In tho September number cf his magazine Mr Hearst publishes reproductions of a liuiiiOor oi letters not hitherto given to tho world, which purport to am. that Mr Archbold took a very setivt part in securing the appointment tf tho Supreme Court bench of judgefavourable to Standard Oil interests One letter of a particularly incriminat ing character is addressed to tho Her J. P. Elkin, Attorney-General for the State of Indiana, in which Mr Archbold states that in accordance with Mr Elkin’s telegraphed request ho is enclosing a certificate of deposit for 5000 dollars “in fulfilment of our understanding.” Other letters are addressed by Mr Archbold to Senators, State Governors and other men of political influence, advancing as a reason for the. appointment of certain persona as judges of the Supreme Court the simple statement that “ it will bo a matter of intense personal satisfaction to me.” Again assuming that the letters are genuine they certainly form a very striking demonstration of tho depths to which political life has descended in the great republic.

AltMENXi’s WOES.

A week before the outbreak of war in the Balkans a despairing cry came . again from Ar-

menia, where the Turkish soldiers were pursuing their old courses cf massacre and rapine. The Armenian people are the worst treated of all Turkey’s illgoverned subject races. They protest in a mechanical way when appalling horrors aro inflicted upon them by their oppressors, but they have come to look upon misfortune and suffering as their lot in life. Their senses have been blunted and their wits dulled by the unrelieved horror of their existence. After the deposition of Abdul Hamid it was believed that tho condition of Armenia would be improved. The Young Turks announced that a new era of freedom and peaoo had dawned, and the Armenians thought that at last' they wero to be protected from attack. But they were scon cruelly disillusioned. The politicians in Constantinople were too busy with their own quarrels to trouble about a dependency that had no idea of helping itself. “ Other nations in Turkey suffer terribly from mismanagement or reckless neglect of elementary duties on the part of the Ottoman Government,” wrote a correspondent of the London “Daily Chronicle ” last month, “but they are capable of offering resistance. They rise in revolt, make heavy reprisals and frequently obtain redress. This is the case with the Arabs and tho Albanians. It is altogether different with the Armenians, who have forgotten how to use arms. Although at one time they were brave and skilled in the art of war, they have become now, through ages of subjugation and oppression, so disheartened that even the ordinary spirit of iself-dcfenco has long loft them.” Perhaps the triumph of the Slav nations in the war now in progress will bring some light into the lives of the Armenians.

A “ PIANOLA ” TTPEWRITER.

Many attempts have been made to give advertising circulars the appearance of handwritten or type-written

documents. Some of these attempts havo been very ingenious, and tho typo founders have produced type which has imitated very nearly the letters produced by a ribbon-inked typewriter. But however close the imitation, it has never been convincing, and advertisers have been compelled to resign themselves to tho belief that it is impossible to givo the appearance of a typewritten original unless the document is in fact what it purports to be. Accepting this dictum as inevitable, a German inventor, Mr Oswald Poppo, has devised a machine which ( produces actual typewritten duplicates of a letter or circular at high speed. The various characters are typed one after the other, lino by line, exactly as in the ordinary typewriter, but ten times as rapidly, and to ensure this acceleration the principle of the pianola or mechanical piano is called into requisition. The letter or circular is first typed • in the machine in the ordinary way, but in addition to the ordinary typewritten sheet the machine makes another record consisting of rows of perforations. Any mistakes made, in the original may be very simply rectified on the perforated sheet. Once the perforated sheet is corrected the machine can be actuated with a handle and will quite automatically reproduce faultless replicas of the original copy, each, as it is actually typewritten, bearing the appearance of an individual communication. A further refinement for tlio use of those who periodically send out circulars to a certain established clientele, is an attachment for automatically typing tlio name and address of each recipient upon the letter and upon an accompanying envelope. Owing to the ease and certainty with which corrections can be made it is proposed to apply the same principle to type-setting machines.