Part 39 (1/2)

[38] The process of vulcanizing was made practicable during the ten years ending in 1850. It was invented and perfected by Goodyear in the United States and by Hanc.o.c.k in England; for ordinary purposes, where both strength and elasticity are required, about five per cent. of sulphur is added. The addition of about fifty per cent. changes the rubber to a hard black substance known as ”ebonite,” or ”hard rubber.”

[39] In 1823 a Scotchman, Mackintosh, applied the discovery, that rubber gum was soluble in benzine, to the water-proofing of the cloth that bears his name. This invention was about the first extensive commercial use to which rubber had been put.

[40] From the fact that most of the dwellings in the United States are built of wood, the United States is a very heavy consumer of turpentine.

[41] A slender strip of metallic lead was used instead of graphite in the first pencils made. The use of graphite did not become general until about 1850. The hardness of a pencil is regulated by mixing clay with the powdered graphite.

[42] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat less.

[43] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat less.

[44] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat less.

[45] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat less.

[46] The limestone has no essential part in the smelting of the ore except to produce an easily-flowing, liquid slag; hence it is called a _flux_. Some ores smelt and flow so easily that a flux is not required.

[47] Under ordinary circ.u.mstances about two tons of coal, or three-quarters of a ton of c.o.ke, are required to produce a ton of pig-iron.

[48] Terne plate is sheet-iron coated with an alloy of lead and tin.

[49] Heredity is likewise a factor. The seeds of knotty, scraggly trees are very apt to produce trees of their own kind and _vice versa_.

[50] This sum represents more than ten times the amount of gold coin now in existence. Less than five per cent. of the business of the great industrial centres is a cash business. Even if the money existed, the transfer of such immense sums would greatly r.e.t.a.r.d commerce. In order to effect a speedy settlement of payments, clearing-houses are established.

At the clearing-house the representatives of the various banks meet daily and liquidate the checks drawn against one another; and although the total yearly volume of payment aggregates the sum mentioned above, the _balances_ for a year are but little more than two billion dollars.

Even this does not always represent cash payment, for a bank that is a debtor to another at the close of one day may be a creditor for an equal sum on the next.

[51] These roads are financed by the Northern Securities Company and form a link in the Hill-Morgan lines. Their intercontinental traffic is large.

[52] Their dividing line is the centre of a street.

[53] The brand consisted of any specific device, such as an initial, a monogram, or a conventional form that might be easily recognized. The device was registered and imprinted with a red-hot iron on the flank of the animal. Ear-marks, such as notches or similar devices, also indicated owners.h.i.+p.

[54] In many cases Government land, not owned by the rancher, has been fenced in. No objection was made, however, until the sheep-grazier came.

He demanded the removal of the fences, claiming that he had an equal right to graze his herds on public lands. But inasmuch as a range once grazed by sheep is ruined for cattle-growing, the quarrel between the grazier and the rustler has become one in which both the grazier and the rustler turned upon the sheep-owner.

[55] It is one-third of their capital stock plus the bonded indebtedness.

[56] The high lat.i.tude of the wheat-region, which in most cases is too cold for the growing of food-stuffs, in this region is tempered by occasional warm winds known as ”Chinook winds.” These winds are the saving feature of wheat-growing. They prevail also in British Columbia, Was.h.i.+ngton, and Oregon.

[57] Freight rates from Coatzacoalcos to San Francisco are already fixed at $6.50 per ton; by the transcontinental railways they vary from $12 to $15 per ton.

[58] The entire Cuban crop is comparatively small, being but little more than one-eighth that of the United States.

[59] Vegetable ivory is the seed or nut of a species of palm (_Phytelephas macrocarpa_). The kernel of the nut gradually acquires the hardness and appearance of the best ivory, for which it is employed as a subst.i.tute.

[60] The leaves of this shrub (_Erythroxylon coca_) contain a stimulant substance that in its effects is much like the active principle of coffee. They are much used by the native laborers to ward off the feeling of la.s.situde that comes with severe labor in a tropical climate.

A native porter will carry a load of one hundred pounds a distance of sixty miles with no food or rest, but merely chewing a few coca-leaves.

The plant yields the substance _cocaine_, now in demand all over the world as an anaesthetic in eye and throat surgery.

[61] More than a score of species of the tree from which this bark is obtained grow in the higher eastern slopes of the Andes, but a very large part is obtained from the tree, _Cinchona calisaya_. The medicinal substance, quinine, is extracted from the bark, and in the past half-century it has become the specific for malarial fevers. So great is the demand for it, that the cinchona-tree is now cultivated in India, Java, and Mexico.