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and a higher status for educational institutions under federal control or receiving federal aid. Last, but not least, signs appear of coming national headquarters of sects of religion and of race propagandists.

How the New System Works

The point is that with such headquarters steadily maintained and so managed, the older sporadic, hit-or-miss forms of lobbying, of bringing influence to bear on lawmakers, have passed into comparative "innocuous desuetude." These "group" officials appear on Capitol Hill not to persuade but to command, not to bribe but to name the number of thousands or millions of votes they command. If the legislator asks for evidence that what they ask for is really the willed purpose of the organizations they say that they represent, then they produce the collated results of replies to questionnaires sent cut to the rank and file. "Here," says one, "is the collective demand of my crowd with an estimated voting strength of two million electors, mainly men who work on farms.' "Here," says another, "is my group's minimum desire; we control millions of newly enfranchised women voters." "This is what more than one thousand Chambers of Commerce, voting specifically on the issue before you, want," say the officials of the Chamber of Commerce of America. "The National Education Association, which has 10,000 members plus, at its last convention declared in favor of this policy relative to a Department of Education," say the spokesmen of the publicly-supported educational system of the country.

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Thus the new system registers its opinions, and it goes on working while Senators and Congressmen come and go. Some depart because they die; others because they collide with the "system." For the complex articulation of the new order of things, with its headquarters in Washington and the close watch it keeps upon lawmakers' votes and speeches, builds up a power of "direct action" against any independent, recalcitrant lawmaker, a power that reaches to the nation's physical bounds.

In the old days if a lawmaker defied an "interest," whether good or bad in kind, he might retain his seat by an appeal to a local constituency that agreed with him. He now is beginning to incur the penalty of a home attack by treasuries as deep as the nation is wide; and he or she is compelled to fight organizations that are tempted to think more

and more in terms of sex, class or "cause" propaganda and victory.

Dependence on Special Commissions

To a Washingtonian without the official circle who is studying the trends of governmental activity as objectively as possible there is another change that the twentieth century has wrought, much accentuated by the necessities of the war. It also is working steadily against the prestige of Congress. That trend is the increasing disposition to transfer at least the preliminary stages of investigation of acute national problems, not as of old to special congressional committees, but either to permanent commissions with the status of bureaus in the executive departments or to commissions appointed for specific tasks, the verdicts of which are given wide publicity when submitted to the executive and upon which he has the right, frequently exercised, to comment ere the findings come to Congress for use in shaping new law.

The contrast between the celerity of action of these special commissions, their resort to expert testimony and the dispassionate and judicial character of their reports, as over against the delays of the usual congressional committee investigation, the too frequent partisan character of its report or reports, and the more or less concealed contempt of many lawmakers for evidence of specialists. in taxation, transportation or education, does two things. It helps confirm the rapidly growing habit of reliance on permanent and special commissions, and it works against public confidence in the fairmindedness and "modernity" of lawmakers. They, of course, still open or shut the Treasury purse and they give final statutory form to so much of the commissions' recommendations as they accept. But the public is not oblivious of the fact that real power is passing. Administrative law meantime also waxes in volume and prestige, here as in Europe.

How Legislation Figures in the Day's New

The situation now discernible cannot be even dealt with in the most superficial and casual manner, which is all that is here attempted, without some reference to the reltive amount of space given by the press of the country in normal times to news and opinion emanating from the Capitol on the Hill and from the White House and the Executive Departments. During the prclonged, intense, embittered and often dra

matic debate on the Treaty and League Covenant there has been a return to something approximating adequate journalistic reporting of the proceedings of the Senate and the House. Once more electors have had material furnished them enabling them to decide for themselves as to the ideals and calibre of their lawmakers, a process essential in any democracy resting fundamentally on educated, reasoned public opinion for its operations. But under ordinary conditions our voters do not get these data as completely as their fathers did, or as English voters do

now.

Nor is the Washington correspondence of this era, distributed by the news agencies or by special correspondents, as critically interpretative of men and measures as it used to be or as it should be. Neutrality is essential to the service furnished by the one vehicle of information. Independence of thought is not encouraged by the other, the correspondent now taking the "tip" from the main office in Chicago or New York and not the editor getting his cue from comparative study of disinterested, fair correspondents' comments at the Capitol.

The Demand for Group Representation

At the same time from the "news" standpoint the White House and the Executive Departments, under the régimes of Roosevelt and Wilson, have steadily won their way to a large amount of space, relatively considered, in the by no means increased number of columns available for Washington news, which have become fewer under recent conditions of newspaper production. Here is another cause for the decline of interest in the lawmaking body. Ignorance breeds indifference. The phenomena hinted at above, it should be said, are not peculiar to the United States and in all the phases mentioned have been visible for some time past in Europe. We probably have carried to a limit not equalled there the administrative, technical perfection of "group" organization arrayed to influence legislation; and this thanks to our extraordinary capacity for voluntary organization of widely distributed units carried out on a national scale -an art which had its supreme manifestation during the war.

No one can contemplate the significance. of the broad movement of affairs now visible in Washington without wondering how far such facts make for loss of confidence in the historic two-party theory of government which we took over from our British political teachers, and what effect the changes will have in creating a demand for distinct group representation in the lawmaking body as a substitute for the present traditional system based on arbitrary, geographical areas, meaningless in themselves, but still having, of course, much sentiment attaching to them. To change the system will call for a contest with this sentiment of local pride.

A younger school of French, British, and American writers on political science, long before Lenine was heard of or the Soviet form of government began functioning in Russia, assigned the breakdown of legislative prestige throughout the world chiefly to the unreality of a system which in theory imposes upon the lawmaker the duty of representing all his constituents with equal loyalty, when, as a matter of fact, his speeches and his votes usually show him to be unequal to his difficult task.

Nor does the demand for such a change come from radicals alone. Even conservative capitalism is squinting its eyes toward a system which would enable it to pit its ablest men openly against the increasingly able and trained champions of anti-capitalism who are being swept into lawmaking bodies by the present trend of events at home and abroad.

Progressives who argue for more representation of specialists in the executive department of government can scarcely escape the logic of the demand for a lawmaking body similarly constituted, one in which education as education, scientific research as such, banking, transportation, agriculture, sanitation and public health, manufacturing, and labor would be recognized and be represented by spokesmen speaking with authority on proposed legislation affecting their respective group interests. As President Cleveland remarked, it is a condition and not a theory which is facing the old and the new democracies; and America's past record is one of political realism, not of French or Teuton doctrinarianism.

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(This is an aerial limousine, with accommodations for eight passengers. Larger machines are far more expensive to operate, and deteriorate rapidly. The cabin of this airplane is luxuriously furnished-see illustration on second page following. This Curtiss "Eagle" is driven by three 150-horsepower engines. In two months it flew 4400 miles and carried 943 passengers with a perfect record)

SHALL WE FLY TO-MORROW?

A Frank Discussion of the Status of Aerial Travel and Cargo-Carrying, and of What May Be Expected of the Near Future

BY AUSTIN C. LESCARBOURA
(Managing Editor, Scientific American)

WHERE are those airplane and airship

transportation systems that were to be born out of the great aerial efforts of the war? Surely that question deserves to be asked, in view of the many prophecies made. during the war regarding the conversion of much of the military flying equipment into peace-time carriers. And since those airplane and airship transportation systems are conspicuous by their absence, the obvious question that follows is: What has happened What has happened to the commercial airplane and dirigible and why?

The story of the war is too well known to require much elaboration here, in which we are mainly concerned with the aerial end of the big scrap. Suffice it to remind ourselves of the fact that the airplane, and to a lesser extent the dirigible, benefited to a tremendous degree by the war. And why not? Germany and the Allies were pitted against each other for the mastery of the air; and to be master on high was to dominate down below, for that is the way modern battles go. Naturally, each side mustered its best aviation experts; every facility was placed at their disposal; expense was the last

consideration. Whereas aviation experts had formerly to struggle along with crude equipment, if any, and with little money, they now found themselves provided with everything necessary to realize their every plan. And so there came the wonderfully efficient machines of to-day, ranging from the tiny single-seater with a speed of 150 miles per hour and a climb of over 1000 feet per minute to the 80-mile-per-hour passengercarrying plane which flies with a three-ton load.

Dirigible vs. Airplane

In war the dirigible had a peculiar experience. The Germans, who for years had been piling up a fleet of Zeppelins for the coming war, tried their aerial giants on the battlefields during the early days. The result was that these lumbering targets were shot down one by one. Then the Germans turned their Zeppelins over to their Navy, and immediately they gave their Admirals a tremendous advantage over the British and Allied fleets. For it is a fact that an airship, flying several thousand feet aloft, has a visual range of eighty miles! The British, scanning

the seas from their fighting tops, were limited to twenty! Airplanes were soon used to offset this handicap; but with a cruising range of 200 or 300 miles as against two or three thousand miles, the airplane is not a match for the dirigible in this class of work.

Borrowing a leaf from their German opponents, the Allies soon developed small dirigibles, known as "Blimps," which served to good stead as naval scouts, particularly in the anti-U-boat campaign.

Peace-time flying is an entirely different proposition from military flying. In the first place, expense-first cost and operating expenses-is a very serious consideration. Speed, while important, is not the very quintessence of the contract, as it is in military flying. Weight-carrying, which in military machines did not count for so very much except in the very large bombers, is a prime consideration with the peace-time flier. So with speed relegated to second place and weight-carrying and low costs the main essentials, the airplane must needs give way to the airship, on theoretical grounds, at least.

The dirigible is really a ship that sails in air. It floats in that medium, whereas an airplane does not. If the dirigible's motors fail, the dirigible merely floats along just as a steamer drifts with the tide and current. If an airplane's motors fail, it drops-and drops fast; its aerial buoyancy exists only while its propellers are churning the air and pulling or pushing it through the air at expresstrain speeds. Hence the reason why the dirigible, since its engines do not have to do more than to move it along as against the airplane engines which must first lift the load and sustain it in air and then supply additional power for forward propulsion, is a carrier of great loads.

A British airship designer recently amused himself by making plans for an aerial greyhound. He brought into his calculations all the experience of the great British dirigible, such as the R-34, which crossed the Atlantic both ways last summer, as well as good sound engineering sense which takes little if anything for granted. Here is what he developed-on paper-as the aerial greyhound of the near future.

A cigar-shaped hull 800 feet in length, with the passenger cabins, saloon and deck along part of the top of the bag, envelope or hull, the pilot's house below at the forward end, and an observation car below at the rear end. He figured on 3,500,000 cubic feet of gas for the many gas bags going

to make the buoyancy members of the big envelope or hull, or sufficient gas to carry fifteen tons of passengers and mail for an air distance of 4800 miles, at a speed of sixty miles per hour. He mentions that a rigid dirigible to carry fifty tons of passengers and freight for a non-stop voyage of 10,000 miles, at a speed of eighty miles per hour, is well within the realm of immediate realization. Fare? Well, that is a matter largely of capital invested and the business conditions in general. Our British friend puts the fare at $250 per passenger for the trip between London and New York, which figures out about 8 cents per mile. Mail could be transported for six cents per ounce. The time required would be two and a half days.

Now our engineer friend goes even further. As a dirigible enthusiast he quite rightly makes a comparison there and then with the airplane, which, of course, is at a keen disadvantage when the question is one of long distance, low costs, and moderate speed. The airplane of huge type could be used for the trans-Atlantic crossing, he assures us, but it would be necessary to make stops in Ireland and Newfoundland for replenishment of fuel and thorough inspection and tuning. The passenger rate for the same journey by airplane would figure out in the neighborhood of $575 per passenger, or 16 cents per mile, while mail would cost 15 cents per

ounce.

So far so good. But the dirigible, under the stern light of practical application, shows up in somewhat different colors. In the first place it represents a huge outlay as compared with a flock of airplanes aggregating the same carrying capacity. Its housing calls for a heavy expenditure and a large landing field. A considerable force of mechanics and a landing crew are constantly required.

As for the matter of safety, there isn't much to choose between airship and airplane. Despite all that has been said regarding the non-inflammable gas available for balloonshelium-the lighter-than-air craft still make use of highly inflammable hydrogen. All airships in everyday use are filled with hydrogen. When air is mixed with hydrogen, a highly-explosive and inflammable atmosphere is created. The slightest spark will cause a violent explosion; in fact, several of the early Zeppelins were destroyed by small sparks, due to the engines, static electricity of the air, and perhaps the wireless equipment of those days.

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Of course, aside from an explosion or an encounter with a gale, the dirigible is fairly safe. Precautions are taken in every way possible. to prevent a conflagration of the hydrogen; but nevertheless one can hardly travel with a free mind when one knows that but twenty-five or fifty feet above is a vast store of potential explosive which requires only a small leak to admit air and some sort of spark or flame. The new gas, helium, developed during the war, is non-inflammable and about 90 per cent. as buoyant as hydrogen, which means that it is an excellent substitute for practical purposes. Until now, however, helium has been produced in very

INTERIOR OF THE LIMOUSINE AIRPLANE

(Comfortable, roomy seats for six passengers, with complete protection from wind, rain and cold)

small quantities only; and three and a half million cubic feet of gas is an order that can hardly be handled in the laboratory!

The airplane, on the other hand, drops when its motors fail. But it is compact, presents less surface to the wind, has more power and speed to combat strong winds, requires small housing accommodations, does away with a large corps of mechanics and ground crew, costs relatively little, and, withal, can be rendered relatively safe at this very writing. The airplane does not necessarily have to use one engine, so that all power is centered in one unit that may fail at any time. The 1000 horse-power of a large machine can be split up into two units of 500 horse-power each or four units of 250 horse-power each. Thus if part of the power fails, the airplane still has sufficient power to at least sustain itself. So the danger of crashing from engine failure is more or less eliminated in the large machines of the present.

For immediate commercial aviation, the airplane is ready and here, while the dirigible is some years away. Ultimately, both classes of machines will be used, since they both have very definite fields of application. The dirigible, with its relatively slow speed and greater carrying capacity, is best suited to long flights where it is not in direct competition with railroads. The airplane, on the other hand, is adapted to the journeys of a few hundred miles at most, in direct competi

tion with railroads, where its superior speed can effect a marked saving in time.

It appears that for commercial purposes, large, rigid airship stations should be established at distances of 2000 to 3000 miles apart, while the airplane could be used as a "feeder" or branch line for bringing passengers and merchandise to these stations from neighboring cities. For example, an intercontinental airship service could run from Lisbon to New York, passengers being taken from Paris, Rome, and other Continental cities to the Portuguese capital by fast airplanes. In this way the airplane would compete with the train and the airship with the steamer, either aerial carrier having the advantage of reducing the average time of transit by at least 50 per cent.

From what has preceded, so far, the reader will certainly pardon the author for taking up the airplane and championing its cause for the remainder of this story.

The airplane, which has been largely overestimated among the aviation laity, is by no means a practical commercial craft either. It requires tremendous power to drive it through the air; it is a frail structure at best, requiring frequent repairs and soon shaking itself to pieces; its range is limited to several hundred miles, except if fuel is piled on board to the exclusion of passengers and other cargo; and the weight-carrying capacity is seriously curtailed, even in the case of the largest planes extant.

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