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Show ' This Week", by ARTHUR BRISBANB Distance and Sympathy Still Three Score and Ten Valuable Railroads Gulls Help Farmers Distance kills sympathy. Ten million mil-lion dead on the planet Mars, it tlieie be any inhabitants there to die, would interest us very mildly. News that a next door neighbor has died is more important than today's dreadful news of 1,000 killed by drought in Central China. We tell ourselves our-selves that we are sorry tor those in habitants ot Shensi Province, whose lands, formerly fertile, have had im rain since 1928, and whose suffering Is made worse by outbreaks of canni balism and attacks by wolves and banditry. We may at least learn to take our own troubles less seriously when wi read such news. The Government "Research Com mittee on Social Trend" tells you that babies, children and younger adult? live longer now than they used t live. But their elders' length of life is about the same. When the human machine reaches the Biblical threi' ; score and ten, it usually breaks down But there is comfort for the thre score and ten army that was no: known in ancient days when eye glasses and false teeth were unknown Priam was probably not more than fifty, probably younger, when he weui to beg Achilles for the body of his son Hector. He suggested to Achilla? that he might also have a father "on the hateful road of old age." That age came early then, when there were n-,. n-,. false teeth, or spectacles, no doctor! 'U to regulate blood pressure. Now a mai: of Priam's age might be on the pleas -V ant road to St. Moritz or Reno. ioi The Interstate Commorce Commis 0 slon says United States railroads an worth twenty-six billion ninety-oni million dollars. They will be worth more than tha to their owners, when their invalu able, nonstop rights of way are fulh ; used by light vehicles, going 125 u 150 miles an hour, at less than ha! the present fares. The modern Pullman car, weighin; ISO. 000 pounds, or more, now carrie "" fewer than twenty passengers on th average, or 9,000 pounds of vehicle fo- each passenger. Suppose a small auto mobile, carrying five, weighed 45,00' pounds. It would be in the moderi railroad class, as regards transports tion. Nature contrives ingeniously to con trol "over-production." Farmers around Wolfville, N. S., watching Witl 3 despair the grasshoppers eating thei; crops, suddenly smiled, as flocks oi sea gulls, arriving from far away, be gan eating the grasshoppers by tb millions. Similarly, not long ago, as Mr. Vei non Bailey, of the Agricultural de partment, tells you, gulls flying ovei mountain ranges came to the rescui of northwestern farmers, watchine field mice devouring their alfalfa ! The gulls devoured the field mice, tin crops were saved. How do the gulls know of thes' feasts? Are certain gulls delegated tc fly in all directions, seeking good news prospecting? Doctor McKinley of the Geo Washington School of Medicine and Doctor Soule of the University of Michigan School of Medicine have Iso lated and "cultivated outside of tin human body" germs that cause lep rosy, once the most dreaded of all diseases, dis-eases, now unimportant compared with cancer, tuberculosis, sleeping sickness, heart disease and others. Experiments on two species of mon keys, their blood and tissue closel resembling that of their alleger human "cousins," have demonstrate! the success of the leprosy experimen' The next step, perhaps, will be Im munlzatlon through vaccination and cure. Doctors announce that the most im portant work of medical science, today, to-day, Is iunrnlng how to prevent rather than how to cure diseases. The new born human being a hundred hun-dred years hence may start with a dozen or more "Immunizations" implanted im-planted in his blood. The Bible tells us that man is mad' a little lower than the angels. Exceptionally Ex-ceptionally bad samples seem to b' considerably lower. I A kind-hearted collector for a mill business, sympathizing with a pooi beggar, bought him a hearty meal, re vealing the fact that he carried mone with him. The next day the sam beggar with a friend waylaid the kind hearted collector, heat him dangerous ly, and took $S5 from him. A citizen held up by a young man was robbed of ?18 and told: "Thanks, that will help me througV college." General Hugh Johnson, President Roosevelt's "industrial director." liopcv 'and expects to have four million men one-third of the country's idle, buck a' work not later thau next October. Th( factory payrolls and employment f May encourage the belief that Gcr eral Johnson's hope will be realize' Dorothy Dlx. who knows about me' wipes out the old liW about "bit-strong, "bit-strong, silent men.'' Such men, accord ing to Miss Dlx, "are all right in fx tion and In western film', but in re;-life re;-life they make the mo?t aggravation husbands In the world, about as human hu-man to live with as a store dumim wouhl be." ( Pv Kinp Fojturcs Syndicate Inc 1 |