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Seven-Hour Day Stands

Washington, D. C.-Congressman Borland's attempt to lengthen the workday of Washington government clerks from seven to eight hours was defeated by large majorities on three separate votes, after the chair had ruled that the motion to make it a "rider" to an appropriation bill was out of order. Congressman Borland then introduced a resolution which provided for a 10 per cent. reduction of the number of clerks and that hours be increased to equalize the loss of service to the government. This resolution was defeated. A motion to recommit the resolution was also defeated. As the House was sit

ting as in committee of the whole, no record vote was taken.

The attempt to lengthen the clerks' workday was opposed by the American Federation of Labor. President Gompers agreed that hours should be equalized, but insisted that the workday of mechanics and other workers who now labor eight hours and longer should be shortened instead of the clerks' hours lengthened.

The agitation has resulted in the formation of a Federal Civic Service Employes' Union, chartered by the American Federation of Labor. Hundreds of clerks are joining this organization.

High Dues Are Necessary

Indianapolis, Ind.-Writing in the Carpenter on the necessity for high dues, Secretary Frank Duffy, of the Brotherhood of Carpenters, says:

"As a business institution advances and gains in power and influence more money is required for running expenses, and that money, as a rule, is freely forthcoming on the principle that the larger the investment the greater will be the net returns. With labor unions, however, that principle does not seem to apply, at least if we are to judge by the attitude of many union men.

"To their minds, the larger and more influential a labor organization becomes the lower should the running expenses be. They combat every attempt to increase the per capita tax on the assumption that such is not really necessary and that an organization of, for instance, 250,000 members, can be run on the same monetary basis as a union of 50,000 or

less.

"On such a basis they expect benefits entirely out of proportion to the per capita tax paid. They expect strikes to be financed, elaborate organizing campaigns to be undertaken and the business of the organization conducted on the most approved, upto-date lines. Some there are who expect much more, but they never stop to figure out by what means such a financial miracle can be performed with the resources available.

"These members do not realize that the spread of democracy and the demands of the industrial system of to-day have placed greater responsibilities upon the labor unions and exact more from them. The unions have to meet conditions that were unheard of in the past, administration expenses are much greater and strikes cost thousands where hundreds sufficed in former years. . . Cheapness of that kind is in no sense economy, and is dear in the long run."

$736.95 For Family Scant Living

Means

Washington.-A. F. of L. Legislative Representative Arthur E. Holder told the House Committee on Labor that $736.95 a year will permit a family of five in the District of Columbia to purchase a bare existence and that these figures do not provide even for a street car ride on Sunday afternoon.

Representative Holder urged the committee to favor the Nolan bill, which provides for a $3 a day minimum for government employes. The unionist presented figures to prove his point that even $3 a day guarantees only a decent living in the nation's capital, and he handed the committee the following cost exhibit of things that are absolutely necessary without pauperization and dependence on charity:

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"You will observe that I have tabooed every form of luxury," explained Mr. Holder. "Receiving $736.95 a year, there could be no riding on street cars for this workingman's family, no tobacco, no candy, no books, no Sunday School contributions, nothing for the church, no newspapers, no movies, no lodge dues, no insurance, no postage stamps, and no doctor's bills-for, of course on the 'substantial diet' purchased for 75 cents a day a family of five would run no chance of ever getting sick. Moreover, the family must remain stationary-no births, no deaths, no accidents, no medicine, no doctors.

"In regard to the 75 cents a day for food for a family of five, if there is a woman in the District of Columbia who can buy the food for that family with 75 cents, I will take my hat off to her as the greatest financier in America."

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ODDS AND ENDS

WHY HE WASN'T A LAWYER

Sir Henry Irving was at one time a witness in a case of street robbery. He had seen a sneak-thief make off with a girl's pocketbook and he consented to appear as a witness for the girl.

He

The thief's lawyer was of the type that roars and rants at witnesses and attempts to break them down. tried this method on the distinguished actor.

"And at what hour, sir, did this happen?" asked the lawyer.

"I think—" began Sir Henry, when the lawyer interrupted with:

"It isn't what you think, sir; it's what you know that we want!"

"Don't you want to know what I think?" mildly asked the actor.

"I do not," the lawyer snapped out. "Well, then," said Sir Henry, "I might as well leave the witness-box. I can't talk without thinking. I'm not a lawyer."

"Impossible."

"But I saw it."
"Impossible-ridiculous!"
"I tell you it did."

"And I say it didn't because it couldn't."

"I was there and witnessed it." "Do you mean to tell me that he was killed by a bolt from a clear sky? Do you expect me to believe such a yarn?" he shouted.

"That's just what I'm telling you. A workman on a twenty story building dropped the bolt."

-Kansas City Journal.

Probably the most appropriately named young woman in Boston is Miss Etta Bean.

PAT'S CONVERSATION

Pat was called into court to testify to a talk that he had with the defendant in a civil suit, and everything went along as swimmingly as a flock of bullfrogs until the lawyer attempted to bring out the important points of the conversation.

"Now, then, Pat," said he encouragingly, "please tell the Court what you and the defendant talked about."

"Yis sor," answered Pat willingly. "We talked about fifteen minutes."

No, no, no!" interposed the lawyer. "I mean, what did you and the defendant talk over?"

"Yis, sor," was the calm rejoinder of Pat. "We talked over the tilephone, sor"-Philadelphia Telegraph

FRANK

One evening a stern father came rather hurriedly into the parlor and was much shocked to see his daughter and her "young man" occupying the same chair.

"Sir," he said, shaking his head solemnly, "when I was courting my wife, she sat on one side of the room and I sat on the other."

"Well," replied the suitor, not in the least abashed, "that's what I should have done if I had been courting your wife!"

"Hello, is that you, Doctor?"
"Yes," says Doctor.

"My mother-in law is at death's door, so come up at once and help me pull her through."

The Visitor-Do you think your baby is going to resemble his father?

The Mother-I shouldn't be surprised. He keeps me up late every night.

The

were it not for the development of the elevator, which has permitted builders to carry buildings to any

Elevator Constructor height.

PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT PERRY BUILDING 16TH AND CHESTNUT STS.. PHILADELPHIA, PA.

BY THE

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Of the millions of men and women who ride daily in building elevators, few ever stop to think of the development of this most useful adjunct, one which has worked wonders in many ways. Without the elevator, the high speeding lifts that carry more passengers in a day than all the transit lines, there would be no tall biuldings of the type of the Woolworth, Metropolitan Tower, Singer and City Investing Building. In fact ten stories would be considered a remarkable height. Indeed, Broadway would be lined with buildings five and six stories, as the renting of offices above that height would be problematical because of the climb that would be required to get to them.

Even the value of skeleton steel construction would be minimized

Though the principle of the present elevator was launched in the '50's, it was not until a decade ago that any real progress was recorded.

Then in rapid succession came inventions and improvements which have brought the office building elevator to its present high state of development. Instead of fifty feet a minute, the best speed for the lifts of the '50s, elevators now travel at the rate of 650 feet a minute, which is as fast as the law in the average city will permit.

Elevators to the tower of the Woolworth Building are permitted to go at the rate of 750 feet a minute by special permission of the city government.

There is quite as much interest attending the humble and calamitous beginning of elevators as in their rapid development in the past twenty years, says the Edison Monthly in a recent article.

"Despite the injured protests of a Louis XVI and an Augustus Caesar, the hard realities are herewith revealed to an unfeeling public. Vitruvius, of first century fame, reverts with enthusiasm to a contrivance of Archimedes which worked by ropes coiling upon a winding drum by a capstan and levers. But this paled into insignificance beside an invention the remains of which were found in the Palace of the Caesars of Rome. This, it appears, was a sure enough lift operated supposedly by horse-power. In it the Emperor, when fortune smiled, was used to ascend from the level of the Forum to the dread eminence of the imperial halls. A hoisting apparatus constructed by Vitruvius himself was made to rotate by men walking inside a capstan.

"Primitive lifts of this sort, curious to say, are still doing duty. One is still in operation at the Convent of

St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, while the ascent to two at least of the cliff perched Greek monasteries in Thessaly is made on the same principle. The would-be visitor disposes himself in a basket of knotted ropes in which he is laboriously and, as far as he is concerned, somewhat uncertainly hoisted by the monks to the convent entrance.

"Villoyer, a Parisian living in the seventeenth century, managed to put together a passable lifting contrivance for a single person. He called it, with good reason presumably, his 'flying chair.' It was simply a chair caught by a rope that passed over a pulley with a weight at its other end to counterbalance both chair and occupant.

"The device continued in great favor at Versailles until something happened. One day just as the King's daughter was mounting to her apartments the thing stuck. In fact it stuck between floors for three harrowing hours before the poor Princess could be rescued by the servants, who had to break the walls away to release her. 'Flying chairs' thereafter resigned automatically.

M.

"A dabbler in mechanics, Thronier, some years later produced another flying chair which he worked from the balcony outside his window. He thus escaped the danger of being stuck in a shaft like the daughter of Louis. M. Thronier kept his arrangement secret and had many a laugh at the expense of friends who came a-visiting. On their leaving him he would make some excuse or other for not excorting them below stairs, and presto! by the time they reached the courtyard there he was in some inexplicable manner awaiting them. To all their questions he would return jesting replies, and then seating himself in his miraculous chair ascend so quickly that they were never able to tell how he did it.

"But Nemesis overtook even him. One morning, instead of surprising

his friends agreeably, he succeesed in doing so very disagreeably. Following his convalescence he is reputed to have used the stairs ever after.

"With the beginning of the nineteenth century steam freight hoists made their appearance. These were operated by a lever within the platform framework, the first one being constructed in 1850 for the firm of Hecker Bros., flour merchants. 1852 the old worm gear was supplanted by the wire rope. Cyrus W. Baldwin of Brooklyn began the experiments that led to the perfecting of the hydraulic elevator some time in the middle '50s.

In

"Of the numerous accidents occurring, one at least was propitious. An elevator loaded with seven boxes of sugar fell into the cellar beneath the hoistway. Yet the boxes were found unbroken. The owner, reasoning from effect to cause, concluded that as the cellar was almost air tight the car in its descent had compressed the air under it. Thus was discovered the principle of the air cushion used to a large extent in connection with passenger elevators today.

"Otis Tuft's vertical screw steel railway came out in 1859. This was the first elevator with a closed gear. Before the end of the year he installed one in the new Fifth Avenue Hotel.

"In 1875 this particular car gave place to a modern rope elevator. The strain on these ropes was equally distributed b ya system of levers, an arrangement which, while hardly electrical in operation, was essentially the passenger elevator of to-day."

Elisha Graves Otis, founder of the Otis Elevator Company and one of the pioneer elevator manufacturers of the country, stumbled into the elevator business. He was superintendent of a bed factory in Yonkers. The moving of material from floor to floor was such a source of trouble that

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