TO INSURE PROMPT INSERTION, all official matter and communications should reach this office before the SIXTH of the month preceding publication. FRANK J. SCHNEIDER, Editor 402-404 Perry Building, Philadelphia, Pa. FRANK J. SCHNEIDER, Editor Volume XIV Entered as second-class matter April 8, 1907, at the Post Office at Philadelphia, 2 Karvard College Library May 21, 1918. Gift of Mass, Bureau of Statistics THE ELEVATOR CONSTRUCTOR A Tabloid of the Flag The Stars and Stripes was raised on the heights near Boston on January 18, 1776, and the British troops believed it to be evidence of submission to the king. The Betsy Ross flag, the official flag, came later, but in 1776. Congress, in June, 1777, resolved that the flag should consist of thirteen stripes of alternate red and white, with thirteen stars. Various theories of its first unfurling are given. After the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, the first salute to it was given by the Dutch Island of St. Eustatious in the West Indies by Johannes de Graff, commander of the port. When Kentucky and Vermont came into the Union in 1794 two additional stars were placed on the field, but they were discarded after much debate in Congress and the original thirteen were restored in 1818. The first flag that floated over a foreign and captured fort was at Nassau, January 28, 1778. The first carried to London was on a vessel February 3, 1788. It floated in China in 1784. It was carried around the world from 1787 to 1790. The first salute to it given by an English vessel was in May, 1791. It was not until after the Civil War that the custom now prevailing of making American flags from American bunting came into practice. The first American flag made of American bunting was hoisted over the Capitol at Washington in February, 1866, and was the gift of General Benjamin V. Butler, who, at the request of the Secretary of War, first undertook to make a good flag bunting in this country. No congressional act ever prescribed the arrangement of the stars. Neither are the size and proportion of the flag determined by Congress, but the army and naval departments which issue regulations fixing the size according to the exigencies of the service. Various names have lovingly been bestowed upon the American standard, Old Glory, the Star-Spangled Banner, the Flag of the Free, the Flag of Liberty, and the Stars and Stripes among them. |