Volume 147

Chicago's Perennial School Row

W

ILLIAM MCANDREW'S career in Chicago has been stormy. Coming there from

New York to become directing head of Chicago's school system, he was greeted

been chosen by a school board appointed in the main by Mayor Dever. Before long those who had hailed him began to complain that he was arbitrary. The criticism was due largely to the establishment by him of discipline which was sorely needed. Thus trouble was brewing early. Then ex-Mayor Thompson, running as a candidate against Mayor Dever, boldly declared that if he were elected he would oust Mr. McAndrew. He declared that under Mr. McAndrew's Superintendency the Chicago schools were permeated with pro-British teachings, and he fulminated against King George V. But under the law the Superintendent is not removed except by trial and on charges. Mr. McAndrew's term expires on the first of next February. Without waiting for the term to expire, the Board of Education has brought charges and has suspended Mr. McAndrew pending the trial.

Nominally, the charge against Mr. McAndrew is that of insubordination. There are nearly three hundred teachers employed in clerical work which Mr. McAndrew says can be done only by persons with the training and experience of teachers. Mayor Thompson's Civil Service Commission demanded that those teachers be replaced by clerks selected under the Civil Service Law. As there is no eligible list, the first clerks to be appointed would be chosen by spoils methods. Mr. McAndrew declared the order ambiguous. In litigation started by the teacher-clerks Mr. McAndrew was called as a witness and testified that, in his opinion as an educator, the positions should be filled by persons with the training and experience of teachers. This testimony, counter to the views of the Board of Education, defendant in the suit, angered the Board's attorney. It was inconceivable that an official of the Board should subordinate the will of the Board and its attorney to his own professional standards.

Are American public schools to be conducted for the sake of the children or for the sake of politics? This is the

old "Jenny" airplanes, which have been the training ships of volunteer

Underwood & Underwood

William McAndrew, suspended Superintendent of the Chicago public schools aviators in the Reserve Corps, took off on September 1 for the last time. Their nickname came from the letters J-N by which they were classified, but "Jenny" was too gay a name for them. Designed in 1915, of wooden construction, and often under-powered according to modern standards, they had a record of nose-diving crashes that won them the unenviable title of "flying coffins."

These antiquated planes have now been scrapped in accordance with an army order of last April. During the summer training-camp period intervening between that order and its date of taking effect there were two fatal accidents in these "Jenny" planes. At Pine Camp, New York, on July 6, the fall of one of these planes killed Captain Curtis Wheeler and Lieutenant Carl Sack. At Wichita, Kansas, a little over a

Number 2

month later, Lieutenant C. A. Pearson lost his life when another of them plunged to earth.

Neither of these costly casualties has been satisfactorily explained, and probably neither can ever be explained. All we know is that young men of incalculable value to their country were allowed to risk their lives in airplanes admitted -by the fact of the army order retiring them to be obsolete and dangerous. Why their continued use was permitted. is the real mystery.

"Petey" planes, that take their nickname from the letters P-T classifying them as preliminary training planes, will replace the "Jennies." The "Peteys" are up to date in design, construction, and power, and bid fair to make a better record than the ill-fated "Jennies." The lamentable thing is that they are coming into service so late. If the importance and merits of the National Guard service had been recognized, the civilian volunteers would have had the modern planes they have needed and the "Jennies" would all have been on the junk-heap at least a year ago. From now on, it is to be hoped, the Guard will get more of the sort of attention and equipment it deserves.

Air Flights, Actual and Planned

TH

HE transatlantic, no-stop airplane flight westward is, as we write, still in the future. Hope for the St. Raphael and its voyagers-Colonel Minchin, Captain Hamilton, and the Princess Lowenstein-Wertheim

- has been abandoned; one theory for which some evidence seems to exist is that the St. Raphael was actually sighted on the Newfoundland coast, but by some strange confusion of compass or pilot flew eastward until her fuel was exhausted. Levine may try the feat any day, and there is a rumor that he too may carry a woman passenger; his pilot, Captain Hinchcliffe, has a high reputation for daring and skill; he was a fighting aviator in war time and has lost one eye. Courtney abandoned the non-stop idea, started for the Azores and came down in Spain. Others may this year brave the fate of Nungesser, Coli, and the St. Raphael's voyagers, but it is doubtful. The reason of the greater danger in the east-to-west flight is succinctly put in an editorial comment of the New

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dations had been made the basis of a Federal program at the time when pressure for farm relief first became heavy, the Government might have done by now the greater part of what Government can do toward the solution of such a problem. The cry now will be from the McNary-Haugenites that agriculture cannot wait for so slow a cure. course, it must wait, since the quick cure is no cure, and it is to be hoped that the President will embody some such sound principles in his recommendations to Congress and to his administrative assistants.

Of

Farming as a Problem in Surplus

ON

N the same day on which the agricultural engineers came to see him, there came also to visit and advise the President a delegation of co-operative dairymen and a group interested in the development of the Columbia River Basin irrigation project.

The dairymen urged the fostering of co-operative farming organizations and an educational program among their members to get more butter fat from each cow. The President is reported to have urged them to milk more cows. If by this he meant that the problem of farming is how to produce more, not per acre or per cow, but per farm worker, he was simply stating a sound principle in concrete form. But of course the farmer who merely milks more cows that do not pay in milk for their feed and care is like the cheap John who argues that he can afford to sell suits below cost because he makes so many of them.

The irrigationists certainly offered no solution to the farmers' problems. To add 1,800,000 acres to the farm land of the country at a time when the farm land now in cultivation does not pay the farmers an adequate profit would be to increase the difficulties with which the farmers are contending. The trouble with the farmers is that they do not know how to dispose of their surplus crops. The irrigationists, if they had their way, would add more land to grow a larger surplus. The way out is to find new ways to dispose of the crops that our lands already produce. One of the most significant suggestions of the agricultural engineers was to find one of those ways in new uses for agricultural products in industry.

Real Help for the Farmer

ricultural chemistry-the Bureau of Chemistry, the Bureau of Soils, and the Fixed Nitrogen Laboratory. The new name is the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, and the appointment of Dr. Henry G. Knight as Chief was recently announced.

The tendency heretofore has been, naturally, to have one of these units in charge of a chemist, another in charge of a specialist in nitrogen fixation, the third of a specialist in soil surveys and the like, each devoted, necessarily, to his own specialty rather than to the promotion of agricultural practice in general. The new bureau is now under the direction of a man who is a chemist and a student of soils, but, above those, an agronomist. He comes to the Department of Agriculture from the University of West Virginia, where he has been Dean of the College of Agriculture and Director of the Experiment Station. He has served in somewhat similar capaci

The Outlook for

woman tennis player of the world. She has proved this in her playing on the Continent of Europe. She proved it at Wimbledon, in England. She again proved it on August 30, at Forest Hills, New York, in winning for the fourth time the Women's National Championship. Her English opponent in the finals, her junior by five years, Miss Betty Nuthall, is, however, at sixteen years of age her not unworthy rival not only in tennis but in deserved popularity. The match which ended the tournament was never in doubt; but Miss Wills had good reason for employing to the full both her power and her skill. The doubles championship was won by two English players, Mrs. Kathleen McKane Godfree and Miss Ermyntrude Harvey. Again Miss Nuthall was in the finals, this time with her fellow-countrywoman, Miss Joan Fry.

Calles Reviews the Year in Mexico

the University of Oklahoma, and Cornell University, has acquired a broad experience in addition to thorough college training, and is in position to direct the chemistry and soils work of the Department along the lines of greatest practical benefit to agriculture.

Nothing of the proficiency of the specialist is, however, to be lost. Dr. C. A. Browne, who has been Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry for several years, will continue to direct the fifteen divisions doing the chemical research work. It was at his own request that he was relieved of administrative duties in order that he might devote his energies to research. Likewise, Dr. F. G. Cottrell, who has been at the head of the fixednitrogen and fertilizer group of divisions, will remain in charge of that work. The soils work, so long under the direction of Professor Milton Whitney, will be in charge of Dr. A. G. McCall, who has been executive secretary of the International Congress of Soil Science.

In the field of agricultural chemistry, though it is by no means a new field, there is large opportunity for usefulness to American farming, and the Department of Agriculture is in better position than it has been before to render the needed service. If it does, indeed, render it, and if other bureaus do the like, we may be rid in a generation or so of the recurrent cry for quack remedies for the farmer.

second session of the Mexican Congress on September 1 with a Message that was distinguished for its quietness of tone. The important aspect of his address was its clear indication that there will be no change in the policies of his Government which have caused most trouble in the international relations of Mexico.

The two critical points of Mexican policy have been the application of the oil and land laws and the regulation of the churches. The first has involved Mexico in controversy primarily with the United States, and secondarily with other nations whose citizens own petroleum and land titles in Mexico. The second has involved her in conflict with the Roman Catholic Church.

President Calles makes it evident that his administration will countenance no surrender of the fundamental principles of the new Constitution, declaring the land and the sub-soil rights to be the property of the nation, to be assigned for use by concession. He declares that it is misunderstanding and indécision on the part of the authorities at Washington that have complicated relations. tween the United States and Mexico and kept them unsatisfactory. But his speech is notably devoid of any note of defiance. Instead, he emphasizes the loss occasioned to Mexico in trade and industrial development through inability to attract capital. His remarks on the need of foreign investment and his readiness to facilitate it give grounds for expectation that he will assent to some practical adjustment of the difficulties over oil and land rights.

His comment on the results of the

Helen Wills, who has regained her title as American Women's National Tennis Champion

legislation disestablishing the Catholic Church and making the activities of all religious cults subject to Federal permission was more pointed. Although some Protestant organizations have existed in Mexico, they were comparatively small and made little protest against the laws. The position and strength of the Catholic Church and its undoubted political influence in Mexico made the issue one between it and the Government. How fierce the feeling was when the refusal of the Church to submit to the authority of the state led to the closing of churches and the expulsion of prelates is well known. But agitation has died down, and President Calles now asserts that the Mexican people have shown that they are indifferent to the suspension of cults. His claim-if he is right-may mark a significant victory for the Mexican Government.

British Scientists Meet

THAT the advances and discoveries

made since Darwin's time strongly confirm his original belief that man's remote ancestor was an ape; that scientists and engineers ought to be able to drill or dig holes deep enough into the

earth to tap for power purposes its almost inexhaustible heat energy; and that the cosmic ray made known to the public by Professor R. A. Millikan is still more powerful than was at first thought-these were some of the high lights of the recent meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held last month at Leeds.

This year the President of the British Association is a famous anatomist, Sir Arthur Keith, author of "The Antiquity of Man," possibly the foremost work on man's organic or physical evolution. Sir Arthur chose as his subject man's descent. No scientist is better equipped than he to speak authoritatively of it, while few are better able to clothe their thoughts in fascinating language. Keith upholds Darwin, not merely in the sense of upholding organic evolution, but specifically with regard to the origin of man. Although copies of Darwin's "Descent of Man" are still quite common, it would seem that few take the trouble to read them, for it has now become a commonplace to claim, even in text-books, that Darwin did not mean that man actually descended from an ape or monkey, but simply that man and

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ape "descended from the same stem." Yet Darwin leaves no such inference and speaks without equivocation. Man, he says in his Chapter VI, descended from a monkey. While not every detail of Darwin's outline of organic evolution. is now accepted, "the fundamentals of Darwin's outline of man's history remain unshaken," says Keith. And, said Darwin as the concluding sentence of the "Descent of Man," "Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin." As we have said before, this is to some extent at least a question of words-whether the common ancestor of man and present-day apes should be called "ape" or not.

Untapped Sources of Energy

J

OHN L. HODGSON, a mining engineer

from South Africa, told the gathered scientists that the heat imprisoned in the earth's interior represented 31,000,000 times as much as the coal lying near its exterior. Temperatures of 1,600 degrees should theoretically be met at twenty miles depth. Water poured into bore holes would turn to steam, furnishing for each hole about 4,000 horsepower, and the heat supply should prove virtually endless. Most scientists believe the earth's interior temperature is several thousand degrees. Rock cools extremely slowly, and the earth is still only a few billion years old. The remaining supply of energy is inconceivable. Given money, the proposal is not wholly chimerical.

Professor R. A. Millikan, visiting American scientist, told the meeting that the cosmic ray penetrates eleven feet of lead, not six feet, as he announced two years ago.

What good is it? None as yet, but who dares say, as too many said when X-rays were announced in 1895, that it "is not likely to have other than 'scientific curiosity' value"? Cosmic rays, in nature exactly like light, X-rays, radio waves, and the gamma rays from radium (except that the frequency of vibration is different) come in from outside space; some think they originate in the annihilation of matter in intensely hot nebulæ. The cosmic ray will bear watching.

Critic, Author, and Editor