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Show Great Period of Construction Will Follow the War TT OP.ACE G. CUPPLES, a civil engincor of St. Louis, wants to recon- struct the world and to reform methods of transportation and of living. Cupplos has built railroads, canals and highways In many places. Ho la best known through his pet scheme, tho Arcadian highway, high-way, which he proposea to run from the Greiit Lakes to tho Gulf of Mexico. This road is to be 120 feet wide and 800 miles long, and is to be borderod by an experiment farm on which scientific agriculture will be practiced and taught, crops and trees being cultivated to suit the various climatic zones along the S00 miles. Tho Arcadian highway is but a section of a great all-world highway high-way for which Cupplos has drawn plans and which is to run from Buunos Aires, Argentina, north through South America, Mexico, Texas and couple up with tho Arcad.'an highway near New Orleans. Tho northern section of tho all-world Arcadian hlgnwny will run from Chicago to St. Paul, then through Western Canada, Alaska to Bering1 Strait, tho fifty miles of which may be tunneled, Cupplos says. Tho all-world highway will then turn south along the China Sea, run over Northern Indto. into Persia, through Asia Minor, across the Dardanelles, Darda-nelles, through tho Balkans, Vienna, Southern Germany, Northern France to Calais- Thoro will bo a branch road to Washington. Cupples is 50 yeai-3 old. Ho was born in Pennsylvania and Is a graduate of the engineering school of Valparaiso University, Indiana, and of the University of California. He says the highways aro much more important than railways, that tho operation of tho railroads rail-roads of the United States is $3,000,000,000 annually. The operation of tho highways is $10,000,000,000 annually. Tho highway systom of tho United States could be improved into good roads for tho cost of one year's operation of Its bad roads, Cupples says. Cupples lms some unique views of life and living. He says that a great period of construction and reconstruction will follow tho great wor and that tho next president of the United States ehould bo a civil onglnoer. He advocates largo provision for tho employment of returned soldiers after tho war, when, ho says, a porlod of great commercial depression wjll bogln. Among Cupplos' projects is a plan for diverting divert-ing the flood waters of the Missouri into tho channel of the Meramco just wort of St. Louis, and starting a great hydro-olectrlc plant of 300,000 horse-power, moro than twlco tho power generated by tho celebrated plant at Keokuk, la. The present method of using coal for heat and power Is, Cupples says, ridiculously laborious and uneconomical. Steam locomotives arc. out of dato. Thoy should not bo usod. Electricity Is tho motive-power motive-power of tho future as Cupples plans it. |