CURRENT TOPICS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 18, 17 December 1938, Page 8

CURRENT TOPICS

(By ‘Wayfarer.”)

The censor is a man who leads the banned and makes cutting remarks. « * * * * *

The best time to get married, says, a cynic, is to-morrow.

The mail who has made and repaired walking-sticks for every President of the United States since Grover Cleveland bemoans the passing of the canecarrying vogue as a symptom that the country is “no longer civilised.” irank Jager is a craftsman of the old German school. He was born in Saxony, in the shadow of the Black Forest, and in boyhood apprenticed himself to’ a walking-stick maker near by. In 1886 lie went to Washington and opened a fittle cane and umbrella shop in Eleventh Street, just off historic Pennsylvania Avenue. He still is there, and although not r.uite so active as before, Jager repairs walking-sticks for President Roosevelt, Supreme Court Judges, and the few remaining diplomats and officials who “wear” canes. President Wilson’s wife and daughters used- to go into his shop and talk for hours, he said, while getting the President’s canes and umbrellas repaired. Even as late as President Coolidffe’s day, a great many men in Washington “carried” canes. Only a few still do it. Vice-President Garner uses two teakwood canes from his walking-stick shop, Jager said, and a few diplomats from Germany and the Scandinavian countries use canes.

A cheery little man in dungarees is unofficial pastor to the 2500 men employed in Yarrow’s Shipyard at Scotstoun West, Glasgow. Every Friday, after he has finished liii. “piece,” 50-year-old James McLean goes to the works gate with his little band of a dozen or so workmates and starts the works’ own mission meeting. Hundreds of men gather round to listen to the service, for it’s as cheery as Mr AleLean himself. There is nothing of the long-faced Christian about this little man, who,' four years ago, conceived the idea of starting a mission for the workmen themselves. He gathered a few enthusiasts round him, and they began their weekly meetings at the works gate during the lunch hour. Interesting speakers were booked. Accordion music accompanied the singing. They soon attracted a large “congregation. • The mission is entirely undenominational, and workmen of various creeds attend. His “flock” have a great respect for Mr McLean. Often after a meeting a man will come forward quietlv and confess lie isn’t all he should be and ask for advice. Or ask the meeting to pray for the recovery of some relative who is ill. Apprentices almost reverence him. They call him “Mr,” an honour accorded only to foremen, and go to him for fatherly advice. They even apologise to him if they catch themselves letting some strong language slip out unawares.

The jubilee of an invention that literally made the wheels of the world revolve more smoothly than they had ever done before is being celebrated this year. It was fifty years ago that John" Boyd Dunlop’s nine-year-old son complained to his iather that his tricycle (fitted, of course, with solidtyred wheels) was bumpy. That childish grumble w as the inspiration of thfe pneumatic tyre. Dunlop prepared a disc of wood', put a rubber tube filled with air on it, nailed the tube down with a linen cover. Tests with the tricycle proved that he had solved his son’s problem. The toy was fitted, with three such wheels and became the wonder of the neighbourhood. The invention was patented, and Dunlop’s next step was to fit a bicycle with the new tyres. (Incidentally, it was afterwards found that a similar idea had been patented by a man named Thompson forty-eight years before, but that no use had been made of the patent.) In May, 1889, Dunlop’s bicycle was entered in a cycle race. The rider easily and spectacularly out-distanced his competitors, among whom were two sons of William Harvey du Cros. They told their father; a man of imagination and enterprise, he saw the possibilities of the invention and floated a company to exploit it, The scene of those eiirlv experiments was Belfast, where Dunlop—be was born on a farm in Ayrshire, Scotland, m 1840, and died 'in Dublin in 1921—had built up a successful practice as a veterinary surgeon.

“A new broom sweeps clean” is an old saw, but changes in broom manufacturing methods may be pointing “the way back” for a good many industries." So sa.y buyers of broom-corn as they purchase the 1938 crop in this region, writes an American correspondent. Central Illinois produces about 15,009 tons of broomcorn annually, or about one-third of the United States brooms. In years past, previous to 1935, the trend of broom manufacture was toward big factory production. Now it is toward the oneman shop, or the one man and a helper variety. These shops are known as “buckeyes” to tlie trade. Two out of three brooms sold in the United States are made in “buckeye” . shops, many of which are the homes of the producers. The selling, too, is done usually by the producer and his family, but the growers and distributors have a profound respect for the total volume he will absorb. It is now almost half the total crop. In the last three years the trend has been so definitely to the “buckeye” that many large factories are permanently closed, yet the broom industry has lost only about 5 per cent of its volume in the last 20 years. While broomcorn grows in many States, its commercial growth is confined .. to local areas in Illinios, Oklar homa, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. The average yearly growth of these sections is about 50,000 tons, and the largest broomcorn centre in the world is Lindsay, Oklahoma, a hamlet of 1000 where is received ' and distributed almost half the nation’s crop. Broomcorn culture was introduced in the West ‘and South-West by former Areola County farmers, who moved south-westward half a century ago and took their seed with them. Quality in broomcorn luckily coincides with the usual woman’s- love of colour. The most durable straw is a sandy green, which shows the expert that it has been harvested when the seed was not quite ripe during warm, dry fall days when the suii did not burn the corn. In Illinios the crop is harvested by “neighbour exchange” labour. It. is brought from the, fields on specially constructed, flat-bed “table” wagons across which the'corn is laid in the field before it is cut from the stock.