Evening Star Newspaper, July 3, 1921, Page 44

FICTION Part 4—8 Page: Modern Celebration of the Fourth of July as Compared to the Old " There Is No Evident Basis for the State- ment That the New Way of Celebrating Dampens Patriot- ism — Independence Day a Generation Ago Was One Occa- sion When the Small Boy Was Unre-{ strain;d. Sometimes! Disastrously.| Many Small Com-| munities Still Cele-| brate With Fire- WOl'l(S‘ | BY i b Y WILLI SELL. {ing the Fourth, the sane and safe wa RULY a day of reckoning was | i the best after all. We paid dear nd accidents, and more than Iy in lives e W the day that followed the old! Fourth of July. Usually if it d not rain, the weather was! grav. as if the clouds of fl:unr-om(l-‘r‘(:FiT‘.T.\l NLY they are wiser. Most of #moke still hovered over the earth, the generation who uvidly drank and while the older folks were read-| the delights of a national celebration ing of fires a alties the young- | uncurbed and unprohibited are fathers, er ones unobirusively got away from ! even grandfathers. today. And to them the house to corners | naturally “sane and safe” is a pleasant tand in empty lots, there to live over juxtaposition of words. They have again the < of the day before.|rexched the time of life which approves which would not be repeated until an- of “safety first.” other year had passed. But listen to It is the generation who were boys |18 that he is on | brought up in W meet on street slor n uil-tiner whose boast of the “bLorn and <hingten. When he fn 1870 or thereabouts that is apt to linger as loni on the me ? e s sad st e it | ith uly as on those ¢ ' e e revalin. the B % on those of th <o mpathy. He revels in the tonal day: perhaps their memori deviltry he cut on that day of d; the the former are mo poignant. Fourth, when every leading string was bex relate the Todaed exents o Fou ol o frentsof the Fonrn i couple of months beforehand calling how Charley deliberatel T e L blank cartridg ¢ L eonite L « lost an eve v 3 n [ saved every o on [l having counte they |, nickel off 1 went and_bought a p 1 out aloud a 4 it al X age of fire the pric Fourth of July of the ordin P Amzx 1-al thing. and DoAY who Was a ! those days tl o was just oo lov then will never forget is. The!ing in. [ stowed 0 4 s gin. 13 ed my purchass in a larg Voiddies of today have no way of real- | shoe hox, which 1 kept under the bed. sing what real excitement ix. What's iund added to my store as the gener the g Fourt Merely ; of my elders allowed. . o arn By the Fourth I usually had at hedze | twoscore ‘L 5 a (o torpedo ir transports sober h even-then 1 ac 0od s th or or our fun. Oh, | pat ’ WASHINGTON, D. ¢, £ot info my th a_rocket or two | And us Fourth of | July would never it came at last. and scarcely had @ the alarm clock of Phoebus Apolle waked ihat God of 1 before | 0y sallied forth to make what noi 1 Juid with the means at hand. Early might be—and you bet I pre- crack of firec s or the bang of & X‘ul;[) e of getting our ammunition > non heard from the vicinity of | #0d cannon " o | lo ‘Il‘lv';.\-\‘ S pinned wings to my The meanest trick that was ever played on « youngster 1 suffered from we t the open lot near where prov eded without business of ionsly . we all preamble to get the dav. We fir nd penurio 3 nted to keep going all day long. ous experience had taught sery of getting too soom out nd having to hang around rile other lads kept on 1d and didn't let ravado betray us into el of us had gener- to last till tw r fireworks were home to dinner. ime to drag us off we went unwill- particular open Tot is unrec- ogznizable as the same place to- We an audience from in that section of to look out for th Al drew one Fourth as proudly 1 sallied up to the meeting place, carrying under onc arm by shoe box, loaded with forty bunches of crackers. There was no doubt in my mind that I had supplies sufficient” for the day. and having taken the precaution to fortify my- ! self with a paper-of sandwiches, I luoked forward to a day of triumph. “As 1 approached the crowd and mingled with them, some Kid tossed a piece of lighted punk into my shoe box. and the next thing 1 was aware of was the explosion of a cracker. It ame from under my arm, and was tantly succeeded by another ex- | plosion, then by othars in_ rapid fire until my siock, counted on for a whole 3 sement. was exhausted in a few minutes. I was. for the first and last time in my life, T think, mad enough to kill the joker. But 1} couldn’t find out who had thrown the punk, and to this day—fifty years after—the affair is a mystery. I guess if the boy who did it is alive and would come and tell me that it-was he I would forgive h fathes of e of our ng “PANAMA CANAL IS GREAT NATIONAL ASSET,” : — - | EW Head of the Zone. in Special Article, | Shows Development and World Value of | One of the Greatest Engineering Feats of | | American Engineers—Latest Information Re- | | garding the Trade and Financial Situation. BY JAY J. MORROW, sectacte, but it b (GGovernor of the Panama Camal Zome. 0N canal traffic. German shipping, afier : (5 that of Great Britain the most important N August 15, 1914, when the jactor in maritime trade. disappeared attention of the world was |from the scas, British shipping was Cotetatiatea. oa y commandeered transportation © ated on the Opening |,¢ troops and nd for auxiliar; phases of the war in Europe, | naval s tral shipping the Panama cnal was opened {0 com- ed by advancing freight merce. In the turmoil of thoss days ades in the north At- this final consummation of an enter eine | aDtic and the Menlteiranean. . e PriSeC The old trade routes were disorgan- which had obsesscd the imagination of ized, and many count which might gradually di men for four centuries and had been |have contributed a substantial tonnage tively prosecuted for more than three |12 the canal. notably thosc on the we: coast of Central and South America since de Lo Adle: ssseps in 1881 turned by 60 per cent cach decade. WRITES GOVERNOR MORROW Unfor- tunately, the nal was closed by . slides from September, 1915, to April, ‘ were so paralyzed by the loss of the the first spade full of earth at the Kuropean markets that their foreign American Isthmus, passed almost un- |COMmerce shrank for the time being to Siotic | negiigible dimensions. As the war pro- | | gressed this was offset to a certain ex- a1t had occurred a few weeks earlier | tent by the development of special war | 1916, o that it is impossible to say what the tonnage for those years might have been under conditions of nterrupted traflic. During 1917, the t full calendar year of operation. tonnage w and the 10.000.000-ton mark was not reach- ed_until 1920, The commercial tonnage in that vear was 10 5. According to Prgf. Johnson's cstimates, which as .\.ffi.\ conditions of peace and normal commercial development, the tonnage ! for e been 13,341,000, The pproximately 3,000, 000 tons, between this and the actua ficures may, be regarded as an index of the rctaiding effect of the war. In spite of this retardatiol of losses resulting from the interruption of traffic by slides for a period of seven months in 1915 and 1916, and of | increased operating costs due to war nriees and war wages, the tolls and other revenue to date (May, 1921), have exceeded by a slight margin the cost of operation and maintenanc The carnings have not yet been suffi- cient to provide for interest payments on .the capital invested or Jfor its amortization: but from now on, unless canal revenues are reduced by legis A GENERAL VIEW OF GATUN LOCKS OF PANAMA CANAL, LOOKING SOUTH. ° .« event would have attracted an inter- | trades, for instance, the resumption of | lation affecting tolls, there will be an s ‘uted by the navi obs o But | manufacture of munitions in Great even | Eritain and France. But it is certain were | that t war and post-war conditions of war, | e greatly retarded the normal of the world happenings ki 5 nav destined ring the unchecked | pansion of canal traffic. « of the Guiman armies on Paris, | reely hecdud e eoening of i great afier careful study ‘that by 1915 there erer | would be available for the use of tne . " X Panama canal 10,500,000 net tons of war not only eclipsed the open- | shipping per annum, and ‘that this of the canal as an international | tonnage might be expected to increase ’ i | 1 Prof. Emory R. Johnson estimated |the Panama Canal Zone, stated: “The canal, in its present state, rep- | {onal gathering, and would have been | nitrate shipments from Chile for the |annually increasing balance which may be so applied. 8 = * ¥ ¥ ¥ his annual report for 1920 Col Chester Harding. then governor of resents a capital expenditure by the United States of $366,650,000, exclu- sive of expenditures for.its military | and naval defense. The investment. rom one point of view, may be re-1 ded ax having been made and jus-| Ufied in the creation of an inwaluable | element of national defense. If this be true, the canal has an additional value in rendering uscful service in time of p id in returning to the -venue more than . ation and mainte; Jle of doing more thin is not an idle prediction to state t that with proper management direct- | ines of a large busines enterprise, it will within a reasonable | period of nofmal world vonditions} I¢arn an actual profit on the cost.™ ! The canal is open on cqual terms ! te the merchant vesscls of the world. | nd all nations having an interest in | maritime trade have benefited by its! struction: but for obvious weo- | giaphical reasons th United States |is by long odds the chief beneficlary. It has ‘given our Atlantic and Gulf ports a short sea route to the Pacific. including the entire American coast frem Alaska to Chile, the Pacific Islands. Eastern Asia and Australasia. | Fer cur Pacific ports it has shorten- | «d the sea routes to the Gulf of} Mcxico, the Atlantic seaboard and urope. Fcrmerly the west coast of South | | America was nearer by sca to Liver- pool, London, An‘werp and Hamburg than to Bosten, New York and Phil- adelphiz; and that, with other fac- tors, cnabled European experters and importers to hold the bulk of the j west coast trade. The same condi- ions arplied to the Eastcrn Asiatic |and Australasian markets. Today the conditions arc rcversed. and in competing for business in these | markets_the castern industrial area of the United States -has an ad- vantage of relative proximiity over Gréat Britain, Germany and Belgium. | i * ¥ % *x | ¥ the calendar year 1020 the prin- cipal trades threugh the Canal in | the relative order of cargo tonnage | were: Trade. West coast of South enst codst of U. Atlantic coast of U. West (Coast of South Enrope East coas . 8. of South America. West coast of U Enst coaxt of America Pacificcoa 3 Atlantic coast of ed along the America to £03.398 Fast coast of U. §. 10 Far enst to east eoast of Australasia_to Furope Atlantic and Guif coa Pacific coast of U, 8. 416919 Of thcse eleven leading trades, the United States, either as exporter or importer, was directely interested Ini | eight. | The coastwise trade of the United| I states, from Atlantic to Pacific and: from Pacific to Atlantic, was small in comparison witlf other trades through the canal. It is still largely undevel- oped. Most of the vessels originally engaged in it were withdrawn to take | advantage of high freight rates to be earned elsewhere during the war and the ‘period following the armistice. This retarded the normal growth of traffic. But the old lines have resumed heir service, new lines have either already entered the field or are being organized, and there is growing com: petition for coastwise cargoes. A con- stantly increasing tonnage of the jJum- ber, grain, fish and fruit of-the Pacific coast will find its way by the sea route to the eastern markets, and the westbound tonnage of eastern manu- factures is capable of a Al‘llnr expan- sion. The practical interest of other na- tions in the canal, apart from the pro- motion of their trade wit hthe United States, is indicated by the traffic be- tween western South America and \ SUNDAY Tons of Cargo. |. MAGAZINE SECTION he Sunflay Stae. MORNING, JULY had a large fe~d store near by. and it was his delight to live over his own youthful days by celebratin the Fourth in <hion. Svery year he put i of . hing that in thos s ed wenderful in the line incan descene: —Roman - cand rocket W pin 2 Cather bents, all the strang. we boys in the where they were openiy on but which we never hoped 1o money cnough to buy. and at he used to join us in the open 1 cet them off - were in our gl reflected glory cither, for he kind man and used to let us do a lot of the firing a joy to us t nd the vlaborate p set half franiie, tco. and in our « ment we often turned them st inte an open window eviicre the curtains blowing. of 5 you know. there order 1 the fire houses to keep the attached o .he engines. In = a ®fire Lcuse on the Feasth you avs saw | humans and znimals in a s aui vive. IEverybody and cvery ng roquired to put out a celebra- ien blaz. :tood ready. And no Fourth Iy 1csembled its prade- ¢ yre unless there had been turned Lo things on the . § ibing more | o oy 1921. PETCHA ggr MORE | 1 admit that with ing of all this bovish freedo the kids have lost something out their Hves, but 1 guess the change i Lettes for the community. Certainly there sheuld bie prohibition le of fireworks in judgment least 1 don't 11 good days those v 1 chastencd rezret is the manifestcd for a vanished ntatives of old A cling curth by repri honoiable eties that_keep the fl.me of patriotism. The ( men are oprnest in their cxpression t that it has been obligatory v discard rome tra 1 ways of fanning this flame. the Revolution. on the contr: at inking that the ndment of the wavs of o he day tinct gain to lar; :r of the svery fifty his tali: with chuckles a of the time when he saved h for weeke in crder to fi brate” and who was broke before |11 o'clock of the great day: the pop of torpeda crack of cap pistols, i that still sound in his f pin wh toman that still dazzle recalls his excitemoent: ot powerful enou wish dhem baek I their troublesome aftermath, has ed_for o The change dy's benc and the olution. i <e wh 1o th war OPERATION OF TH E PEDRO MIG BETCHA FATTYS id an cfficar of thelthe fee i privilezes on the Fourth would di-| i sinish patriotism. Do you recal prompt answer from every ity village, hamlet 1 town. side when the calb went out for troop tn go ovorseas and save our civilization It coull not have been more whole- me or neore genuine, and vet those Lovs of ours all beloni to a4 senera-| ¥ it Knew the cmber rth as | in our tdo no fellows Ter N it would be useles nari to rocall that kind use, although in country } its gelebration 1= not so quict. its sion of 1 and in ¢ i end * % % % i WHE idea of our Fourth now is| o much a celebration ax The voungsters are not sol much in pos on of the day. but! they go with tieir folks to th or to picnic grounds., and ¥ know nothi they m nothing. boyhood days for me was areh fo en inm i uction sion was was 1 ho 1 with day w features ) cour la i ted throughout the ng tha has wd,_and in its holiday. Pre country is me | pretermitt {of of c about their out | Fourth in old-fashion rih ft e of some, not 5 Fireworks, rule. . In small pl however a good deal of what used to Zo on i Portsmouth, N. H. in the bovhood of Thomas Bailey Aldrich still This “amiable author the Fourth meant to bovs of his gern eration in a way ! ppeled 1o most half-centenarians and older mer His book wus called 3 Bad Boy.” a titie that has harmed | circulation of recent ve ter of fact. the story is au and not of a bad v. But s0 many of the ol ebrating our 1 wolild noturally become dated. Manufacturers and works do not admit statements that a_ great tion, and orate i { understood to somewhat out- dealers 1 fi all min 1 made r that Ui declar; business has o d it route, per- ithough not in so w W ple imagine, but what has in the ies’ they say it las gained in country dipiricis “Individua d for fireworks nowa amusement of their guests cou observance of the eve - a of these X 1o cities society would ha + do with emulating them - celebrations ‘on their unusual for a X for firework ral t X order up 10 an ou is that most ¢ nu spend money of but the live ¢ would be lost without them and contribute tn a pretiy steep general fungd As the proprictors of firewe poriums do not wear w1 but. on- th rary over the s of just elosed, it seems Tt to accept is nearly true the ssertion that uiness is still i o and pros- | peron They say of the be accepted in full who has had one under s villages the the gr Still do they and town 1 and ice wives out nd still do tl q rickety rail fences the sky to follow t} of candle. rocket the appropriate cho: ard “Ah's?” A Goiden City. Ind.finit uld b e build lroai I'n ti here val {a i age of {Burope and Australasia and Europe. : The disorganization following the war has prevented the great commercial rations of Europe from resuming their foreign trade on a normal scale, and lit is to be expected that European trade through the canal will be of greater relative importance in future years than in 1920. * k ¥k THE military and naval value of the Panama Canal is obvious. The United States can now maintain pow- erful feets on both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and still bring them to- gether quickly to meet an emergency on either ocean, or else transfer the combined fleet from one ocean to the other. It has at Panama a fortified base in & highly strategic posision, with coaling stations, dry docks and repair Shops accessible from both coasts. In fnodern warfare transpor- tation and supply are essential factors. The mere control of a trade route.of the importance of the Panama canal is a military asset of the greatest value. Apart from its commercial and mili- tary importance, the canal has at least one other aspect which should net be disregarded in estimating its value to the United States. The construction of an intefoceanic waterway at the isthmus was righty considered a task of stupendous:difi- culty. It.involved the solution .of many problems—the selection of & Iroule‘ the difliculties of sanitation, the decision between a sea-level and a {lock canal, the type of lock canal, whether to let the work by contract o to construct with forces in govern- questions of administrative and engi- neering detail. All of these problems were of a nature to provoke great variety of opinion and in some cases obstinate’ controversy. Criticism of the methods adopted and predictions of failure filled the public press during all but the last years of the construction period. Neverthe- less, from the time the United States took over the property of the French company in 1904 the work progressed steadily and without interraption un- | ti1 its successful completion ten years later. Bach problem was solved as it arose, and of all' the critics who at the time were 8o loud in their dis- sent none is ncw heard to question the wisdom of those solutions. Criti- olsm has been refuted by the event. The canal has been built and its suc- cess is unqualified. It was completed within the final estimates of 1908 and at the time originally contemplated. Béfore ghe war accustomed people to think lightly of billions the cost was considered enormous; but it was realized then, and perhaps even more i clearly now, that the work had been done both honestly and economically. The task and its execution constitute an achlevenfent of which the nation has evéry reason to_be proud. The (] ~¢ | ment cmploy. and a thousand minor | | | efficienc; thousands of strangers from all cor- ners of the earth who view each vear the completed canal and its iniraculously transformed terminal ports carry away ineradicable impres- | sions of the enginegting skill, the ad- | ministrative genius-and the industrial | of the American people, to | ense gain in national prestige. | our im: Importing Insects. EVERY yes- representatives of ou| - great importing concerns g0 abroad in search of new designs and patterns for the American trade. Among the foreign buyers who from time to time visit Europe are scientists from the Department of Agriculture] looking for living insects. They seek the species which prey ori our injurious insects, and their chief purpose is to arrange with trustworthy men there to forward to us the necessary supplies at_the proper time. Most of odr insect enemies have been imported from Iurope., Once here and freed from many of théir natural ene- mies, they have increased and multi- slied at an alarming rate. The balance 5f nature has been upset, sclentists| ¢ in explanation of the peculiar rav-| zes of certain pests. : The gipsy moth, for example, brought into the United States some years ago for purposes of selentific study and experiment.. A few acci- was | l | |a_moth police. dentally escaped, and their prog carelessly allowed to spread. states have spent large sums of money ir. trying to exterminate the pest, of late the moth has done more da here than in central and gouthern rope, where his ways have long been krown. By way of experiment therc has been imported from Europe @ trec- inhabiting predatory beetl In the sa has imported enemies of ited State: the wheat plant louse and the aspura- gus beetle. Of all our exports and imports nene needs more careful watching than live plants and animals. Natural Colored Silk. SXPERIMENTS made in France, it is reported, show that the yellow and green colors possessed by the silk spun by certain caterpillars are due to coloring matter derived from the food and passed through the blood of the spinners. @y impregnatinig leaves with artificial Colors the ex- perimenters uused some species of At illars o produce silk of bry orsnge-yellow and fine pose hoes By the he presence and nature of colored pis ments in the blood of the little cres- tures were established. vd of spe