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Show I i GOVERNMENT 1 IS DOING MUCH - I ,d (By Raymond W. Pullman) ! ' More than 11 per cent of the pas- j 2 tensor cars of the United States now i in service are of all-steel construc- ) ' . tlon, and nearly 77 per cent of the , ' f passenger cars which have come out I i of the shops this year are of tho I $ I samo type. The old-style wooden car I will soon join the stagecoach and the ! horse car in tho list of trnnsporta- tion discards. , ' Many Steel Cars in Passenger Service ! ( Before another ten years will have ! 7 f passed, wrecks will have lost much of their terror, for railway experience of the last four years shows that the ' : , danger of injury in wrecks is reduced rA to the lowest minimum with the flre- K proof non-collapsible all-steel cars in A; I use. Steel equipment, better systems ' 8 of train signals and train control. & I proper building and maintenance of , ! roadbed nnd restricted speed limits, f Ha in the opinion of experts in the inter-j inter-j jj J state commerce commission, will cut l j down the losses of life on railroads jg J to a fraction of what they are toda. lf 1 The government has never collect-1j collect-1j l J cd complete statistics listing sep-rWi sep-rWi aratoly the number of steel passenger $ cars and those of wooden construc-W construc-W tlon, but reports of railroad commit-'M commit-'M tees filed with the bureau of rail-M rail-M J way economics shows that there are ,B , more than 57,000 passenger cars in ; i service over the roads of the council coun-cil try, and that 6568 of this numbor rire J of all-steel construction. ill There are 5806 passenger cars of jjj nteel underframc construction, and 4i while cars of this construction are 5 ""Jls . not fireproof and are not as strong i M as tne all-steel tne' aro far moro IW durable in time of wreck than the 1 rwi wooden coaches. The report of the JtWH Pullman company to the interstate I commerce commission Is the only one which lists the all-steel cars separately, sepa-rately, and it gives the number in tho company's service as 1211. These 1 are Included in the total of 656S pas senger cars of all classes used In the United States. ?M4 There are six bills in congress re- 3 1 quiring that existing wooden passen- ij ger equipment be replaced with steel, ' 1 with time limits to comply with tho 1 proposed legislation, varying from j ,t July 1 915, to January 1, 191S. Tho j 4j present rate of steel construction Is going on so fast, however, that In ;i i 1 few years the wooden car will be a discarded whether legislation is cn- I! acted or not Two hundred and : p twenty-five roads of the country op- Mj eratlng over 210,089 miles, or nine- Iv tenths of the total railroad mileage of I the country, report that of the 1211 I fl new Passon60f cars in course of con- ll struction at the beginning of this mk yoar that nearly 77 per cent of tncir ( Bj new cars were all-steel, while 16 per 1 ERj cent were of steel-frame construction '11 ant on' 7 per cent were of wooden 1 construction, I Just three years ago more than 51 per cent of the new cars manufactured manufac-tured were wood. In 1910 the number num-ber dropped to less than .10 per cent and last year to 20 per cent While the first car of nll-stcol construction con-struction dates back to 1897, passenger passen-ger onrs of this type were not used much until 190-1. Progress in the Introduction In-troduction of steel cars was at first very slow, and on January 1, 1909. there were only G29 steel cars In use. The number passed the thousand mark in 1910, and was almost trebled at tho beginning of 1911. The Pennsylvania railroad is today using more all-steel cars than any other line, running 2S72 in its service. serv-ice. This is virtually one-half of the total steel equipment in the United States, nnd the value of the com-panv's com-panv's steel cars is approximately $-10,000,000. All of this equipment nas been put In since June, 1906, when the Pennsylvania road announced that all additional equipment would be all-steel all-steel in construction. The cost of a steel car runs from 12,000 to $15,000 for coaches to $30,000 for heavy Pullman Pull-man sleepers. Car6 of peculiar types and construction will cost more, and a few days ago announcement was made of the construction of a private car for Charles Schwab that cost $135,000. Tho advantages of the all-steel car are obvious. When properly constructed con-structed and coupled they have resisted re-sisted the impact of other cars in countless wrecks in cases whoro the ordinary wooden coach would have telescoped and have been shattered to' splinters. All-steel construction is, of course, fireproof, and the new conches woighing nearly 120,000 pounds contain only 125 pounds of wood, and this Is used entirely on arm rests anu winaow irames. oiwi cars have some disadvantages, but railrcads today do not consider these as serious. One disadvantage is increased in-creased radiation, which makes the enrs harder to heat in winter, and Increased In-creased weight, which requires moro power to move. The heavy steel cars are ?'fo making It necessary to build heavi . rails and employ the very best methods of roadbed construction. After 1916 all cars used in the railway rail-way postal service will be of all-stcol or steel underframc construction in accordance with plans approved by the government. The wrecking of mall cars, which are usually placed next to the engine, and the consequent conse-quent loss of valuable mall by the fires which often follow wrecks, have caused serious losses for many years, and It is expected that steel mail cars will materially lessen these. Housewives of the country will "welcome "wel-come the nows that government experts ex-perts have at last discovered an odorless cabbage From the Shan- tung province of China plant explorers explor-ers .i tho Unitetl States department of agrlculturo have brought to this country a cabbage which not only lacks the cabbage smell, but has tho additional advantage over the domestic domes-tic varieties of being a most rnpid-growlng rnpid-growlng plant. Odorless Cabbage Ic Imported by U.S. This new odorless cabbage has wonderful "possibilities, in the opinion opin-ion of the men who are testing it out In (his country, because nothing but the odor of cabbage cooking, thoy say, has worked against the popularity of this nutritious green vegetable, in small city homes nnd In apartments most people prefer to forego (he use of -rtbbago on the table rather than end'irc the odor carried over a house while It is cooking. This new Chinese vegetable immigrant immi-grant is different from the- domestic in shape, being long nnd narrow, ami the mothod of cultivating cultivat-ing it differs materially from that used In cultivating the common cabbages. cab-bages. Ordinary cabbage seed is planted in early spring in a hotbed or cold frame, and the young plants are set out when danger from frost is over. The seed or the new Chinese Chi-nese cabbage is planted the firs' week in August in the open ground and heads up by the middle of No-vem No-vem . , almost at the samo time thai the ii-'.'lnary cabbage is being sold on tho market. David Kalrchild, who is in chargo of the government's work in plant experiments ex-periments with the Chincso cabbage, and with the 200 plants cultivated In i his country placo near Washington ' he has found that the vegetable is , adaptable to sections of the country where the domestic vegetable will I grow and where the soil is rich j enough to force quick growing. Speaking of the new plant, Mr. Fair- j child says: ! "To any one who is willing to give I it a rich soil with plenty of manure, the Chinese cabbage will be a valuable valu-able thing, for he can fir6t grow a crop of spinach and possibly a crop of snap beans before he plants his cabbage in August. It must not bo assumed that the Chinese cabbage i will drive out the ordinary cabbage It will merely supplement It. "I do not think it will ship as well, for instance, as the heads are loose. In cooking it, if the green outside leaves are removed and the while leaves alone are cooked, no odor is developed. For coleslaws and sauor kraut it should be especially valuable valua-ble on account of Its delicate character charac-ter and tho fact that the leaves when shredded hang together better than those of ordinary cabbage do." Heads of government departments in Washington have never been so disturbed over the difficulty of holding hold-ing efficient expert employes as they aie at present. Private and stato in- stitulions an.' each year picking off many of tho most valuable men in the bureaus engaged In scientific Investigations In-vestigations by tempting the federal oni'-loycs with salaries two and three times as large as those received from the government. Many Experts Are Leaving U. S. Posts. The government finds it easy to got clerical help and men to do routine work, but the supply of practical prac-tical scientists who understand tho dollars-aud-cents value of the various InM?stipatIons now carried on is limited, lim-ited, and each year there Is an In - tedpd demand for such mon. Con-most Con-most of the salaries paid to federal employes of all classes, and it is this limit which makes it possible possi-ble for outside institutions to outbid the departments and secure the services serv-ices of ihe best government-trained men. The chieN of the bureau in the department de-partment aro paid a salary of $5000, with a few exceptions, and the scientific sci-entific Investigators employed are paid amounts ranging from $4000 down to $2000 or less. Scores of men have been trained In tho highest branches of experimentation at this rango of salaries, but each year many of them are lost to the government because of the growing outside demand de-mand for experts, and to fill the vacancies va-cancies at the old salaries sometimes proves difficult. In several cases recently experts receiving 53000 in government work have received offers of 6000 to $7500 from state schools and experiment stations, and in two cases positions wldi salaries of $10,000, and a five years contract were used to attract men doing constructive work In tho department of agriculture. In one bureau alone In tho agricultural department de-partment there have been twenty-seven twenty-seven resignations this year by men who have accepted positions on the outside which pay higher salaries than the United States 'government .s willing to pay. tin |