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Show I Noted Diver Has An Ambition to Salvage War Wrecks I WITH MR 5 J0NE5 AT LINES G - . -. '. )Xf ' BY LOUISE LEXOIK T1I0JIAS. WHAT a tremcnaoua lot of of houseclcaning this world jl Is going to have to do 'when the "war ends!" Mr. Brlttling said that England didn't -want to light, but it was as if a groat mass of filth had been spilled across Belgium and Franco and it wasn't decent to leavo it so that's i why they had to get to work and push f j the dirt back. f. 1 1; It Isn't only Belgium that haB to he ! cleaned up it Is just about every cor ner of the continent rather as if soma wicked boy had done his worst I 1 to play havoo In tho household and )! ; succeeded most ingloriously. Nor must wo forget the sewers and j "water systems which tho terrible boy 1 has stopped up with debris and down which ho has thrown all manner of valuables which we've got to rescues not only because they are treasures that we want back again, but because they are clogging up the water system bo that we'll not be able to clean I houso until it Is opened once more. One Is reminded of tno nursery J rhyme didn't we used to sing It? i 'A mother was chasing her son 'round the room, She was chasing her son 'round the room, 'And whilo she was, chasing her son 'round the room She was chasing her son 'round the i room." 1 So It has been in the world war a ! futile chasing of the wicked boy (let I us not say "son") 'round the room" j availing one nothing. Those of a san guine temperament Bay that the lawless law-less boy haB been cornered and that we need do no more chasing "round I the room," for he is ready to quit and bo good. It Isn't quite safe to leave him bo and begin our cleaning up after aft-er him yet awhile, but after ho is thoroughly thor-oughly subdued, the vacuum cleaner must be got out, and restoration begun. be-gun. Diver tho "World 1'lumber. ' Everyone knows moro or less of the manner in which the housewife goes about her task of superficial house-cleaning house-cleaning there Is the dust rag, the hroom, tho mop, the vacuum device, the scrub bucket and the brushes. The bachelor who will have none of it, and the hotel habitant who flees when tho broom enters, has a certain degree of knowledge thrust upon him, but even the consecrated housewife has vague ideas of the ways and workings or a plumber and the whys and wherefores of the implements he wields how then can the layman know the mysteries of his pursuit. It is tho deep-sea diver who is the World Plumber, and whom the world must employ to clean out the waterways water-ways and' set to rights the impaired system, and to rescue the valuable treasures that the terrible boy has so ruthlessly hurled down our once sanitary san-itary sewers and pipes. The analogy need bcicarried no further. fur-ther. . Since the unspeakable event on May 7, 1915, when tho palatial Lusitanla was sent to the bottom of the Atlantic with Its precious cargo and,its priceless price-less lives $12,000,000 and 1,198 people the amount of tonnage that has been sunk up until the 1st of last February, segregates something over 8,000,000, Unhappily, the human lives cannot be restored, and it is futile to take ac count of that cargo, but of the rest there is much to bo thought of and acted upon. When ono stops to think of the things that lie at tho bottom of the Atlantic At-lantic Ocean, the English Channel and the Norwegian seas, awaiting salvage, it is then that one realizes that there aro but few products of nature or industry in-dustry which have not settled in the sands. Clothing, foodstuffs, cotton, silk3 from the Orient, beasts these shall have long sinco rotted away when the diver searches for the lost treasures. Coal, ammunition and machinery ma-chinery many of which may be not worse off for their long standing in water and can bo made use of as soon as the diver brings them to land once more. Guiding Hands Itcuuired. Considering the millions of dollars lying at tho bottom of tho seas that would bo eternally lost were it not for tho men of courage and daring who have made the practice of diving their careers, our interest will doubtless be drawn toward those men of whom we know and hear so little, and tales will be told which will quicken our desire to know something of tho diver's life. Now and then wo read in some journal jour-nal of a ship being drawn up from a harbor bottom, or we stand on tho warf and watch the building of a great bridge that spans a powerful stream of water. "It is all dono by machinery," we say, "how wonderful is this mechanical age In which we live!" Truly, tho sunken boat is raised by machinery and the wooden piles are sunk Into tho river bed and fastened by steam or hydraulic power, but machinery ma-chinery has no mentality, and we cannot send an iron hand into tho water wa-ter and expect it to mako an Intelligent Intelli-gent grasp on tho thing we dcslro It, to fetch up, nor can we train a steam hulldcr of bridges to do its work under un-der water without guidance. More to -be wondered at is tho work of the man who subnfits himself to be sunk to tho water's bed and thero guides the machinery by which "it is all done," than tho machinery itself. To the average inlander tho diver is a rare species of human found mostly in the Southern Ocean and Indian In-dian seas, whero corals, sponges and pearls arc gathered sometimes appearing ap-pearing In river waters and lakes after aft-er disaster, picking over the debris like vultures after carrion. The wharf rat knows better. To him the diver is as familiar a figure as is the fireman, though less often. The diver is as necessary, quite, in the New York harbor and at all anchoring places, as the fireman is among the tenement districts. He is an established institution in-stitution and not a rare occurrence. In Ills headquarters are men forever on the alert day and night for the signal that shall call them forth and Into their grotesque calling, to go down into the black water of the ship's resting place to repair a leak in a dock to stop a boat from sinking. sink-ing. Not only is there the emergency diver, who is called to repair disaster, but there is the diver whoinakcs the , practice his .avocation and is sent for : on various "jobs." Of such an one, James L. Jones of ! St. Louis is worthy of note, for ho It . was who alone was successful in , bracing all of the false work for the . great free bridge spanning the Missis-s Missis-s ' sippl river at that point. The work consisted in diving to the bed of the : river and boring holes in the wooden 1)11 os by means of an auger run oy air power and inserting the 'bolts for the cross timbers that braced the double piling. This is the first work of the kind ever known to have been successful suc-cessful under water, and Jones has the signal honor of having accomplished accom-plished a task at which several other divers were set and failed. Jones, however, docs not say, "I accomplished the job." He says "we" did thus and so. for wherever he takes over a "Job" his wife, Mrs. Mary A. Jones, accompanies him, acting as his "tender;" nor will he go under the water unless she Is holding the life line and air hose and watches tho men who turn the wheels of ihe air pump, for if ever a man's life "hangs by n thread" It Is the diver, whose lire depends upon the rope and hose from which he dangles in the water. There is no bravery wanting in the make-up of Diver Jones. He has gone down where others less lion-hearted lion-hearted have hung back. "But," ho says, "with Mary at the life line 1 can fear nothing, and when she says 'Go' no earthly power could hold mo hack." It was eleven years ago that Jones, a Texas farmer from Dallas county, grew restless of his work and sought an opportunity to quit ranch life for tho life of the city. He moved up to St. Louis and got employment as a bridgeman on the McKInlcy bridge, which was then being constructed across the Mississippi. He would watch with interest the divers who went into the river to do the underwater underwa-ter construction work, and the desire to become one of the clan grew until he ventured to request that he bo allowed al-lowed to don tho ponderous underwater underwa-ter attire and go under the muddy currents cur-rents of the river. The request was granted, and at midnight of that same day he took his first plunge. "I don't remember my first sensations sensa-tions as the dark water closed over ray helmet. I only thought of it as an adventure, ad-venture, but one which I wanted to make a success of, for I was anxious to follow the diver's life. Well, I guess I made a success of my first attempt, for after that I was called upon, to do all sorts of jobs and have now been at it for ten years. The DItcs Suit Described. Jones describes the grotesque garb that the diver has to wear in defiance of the water. "A man can't put on the suit alone, for- it is of ponderous weight and ho has to be screwed iul6 It and buckled down, airtight. First he slips into the 'dress' made of solid sheet India rubber rub-ber between specially prepared, double-tanned twill that draws over the feet and completely envelopes the body from the neck to tho soles, save at the hands, which are left bare. In order to draw the tightly fitted vulcanized India rubber cuffs over the hands they have to be soaped to make the 'slipover, 'slip-over, possible. They arc tho only exposed ex-posed part of the body in warm weather, weath-er, but the diver wears heavy rubberized rubber-ized canvas" gloves in winter. "Over this dress the driver puts on his booths, heavily weighted, gun-metal protected, with gun-metal or brass toes and buckles, each boot weighing 80 pounds; then tho breastplate and helmet of tinned copper with gun-metal gun-metal fittings whic'i. is fastened to the gasket (a rubber joint) with thumbscrews. thumb-screws. The helmet looks like the body of an octopus three eyes glaring glar-ing out, which are three windows of heavy plate glass in glass frames with wire guards In front to provent any heavy object that mighty strike the glass from breaking it. "Tho 'front window is round, and screws Into place Just as the diver Is ready to tako his last breath of free air before the air pump is put into action ac-tion and he makes his descent. The back of the helmet is fitted with an outlet valve with an adjustable cock, by which tho excess of air can be let out and also by -vhich the impure air escapes. Tho stoppage" of this valve (it has been known to freeze shut in Icy water) would mean tho inflation in-flation of the suit with tho air which cannot escape until the diver becomes y so light that he' is shot up to the surface sur-face of the water like a balloon." The two most important things in the diver's outfit Is the air hose and the life line. Tho air hose is of vulcanized vul-canized India rubber, sometimes wire wrapped, which 1b atached to the helmet hel-met with a gun-metal inlet valve, which admits air, but will not allow it to escape or return through the hose. This hose goes under the diver's left arm and the life line a half-inch ma-nllla ma-nllla rope; winds under the right arm. By these two lines ho is pulled to the surface after his work is done. Thoso who work the air pump which supplies the diver with fresh air dare not stop, for, were the supply shut off, the diver's life would last but a moment, mo-ment, or, at tho most, two. Ten pounds of air must be sent down for every 25 feet the diver descends, and a gauge indicates thc(supply he Is receiving. re-ceiving. It is Jones' wife who watches this gauge with a jealous interest, and' at the same time she is sensitive to any signal on the life line which she holds in her hands. Modern helmets arc fitted with telephones, the transmitter being at one side and the receiver fitting fit-ting over the cars similar to the "hello girl," but old-timers in tho diving game scorn all of the new inventions, preferring pre-ferring to carry with them tho least possible paraphernalia, and they cling to the use of the life lino rather than be incumbered with the modern device of communication. Every jerk of the line has a meaning, and these jerks must be familiar to the tender. Mrs. Jones has learned the code of tho diver, div-er, and when she feels the life line pulling once, Instructs the operators of the pump to send down less air. At two jerks she bids them hasten the supply. Three jerks means "slack off tho line, I would go off further." The diver is drawn up at five jerks, and ten, a signal which, happily, he has never had to use, would indicate distress. dis-tress. Each signal is answered by tho tender, and the diver Is assured that his orders are being carried, out. Jones' diving career had' been some four years before his marriage insured for him a permanent "tender," not only In the perils of the .water, hut on the solid land as well. Before that time an old reliable one-legged salt whom tho men called "Andy Anderson" Ander-son" was tho faithful holder of tho lines. With him above. Jones felt secure se-cure In his watery excursions, hut ono day. when "Andy" was absent from his accustomed duty a chap who was rather rath-er fond of his liquor tended Jones, and from that day Mrs. Jones resolved to trust the life of her husband to no one save herself. She has since been present pres-ent at every descent Jones has made, and witnessed many heroic ventures by her diver-husband. Jinttcr-of-Fnct AtlUnde. A good diver lacks, perforce, a 'vivid Imagination, and It is with difficulty that ono can got him into the mood of r-S The last diving that Jones and his wife did was raising the wrecks of the two gasoline boats which were built in Chicago for light tenders in the Mexican Gulf and wcro set on their maiden voyage down tho Mississippi last August. The voyage was an ill-fated ill-fated one, for when they readied the harbor of SL Louis one of the boats caught fire and caused an explosion of her gasoline, which ignited the oil on her twin boat and sent them to an early grave in tho river bed. Jones passed twenty days in raising tho one, but the other had broken in two, and he left all 'save her machinery where it had settled in the mud. Working under the water in the Mississippi Mis-sissippi river is, in most cases, a blind man's task, for no object is discernible in the muddy depths of the "Father of Waters," and in few seas is the sense of sight an available asset to the diver. So sensitive does the touch of the diver div-er become that he soon grows indifferent indif-ferent to the handicap of opaque water wa-ter and, like a blind man, soon acquires ac-quires a sense ofdircction so that he is seldom confused. The wreck to be, raised or the leak to be repaired is found, and the necessary operation performed with a total lack of sight, and at times many tools must be em- ployed in one delicate piece of work. The cfl ver's knowledge of mnchlnerv, carpentry and a variety of other trades must be broad if he be success- ' ful, else the practice may as well be called a "sport" and confined to the faddist of Newport who buys every new invention thrust upon the market ( and keeps them safely on the dry land, in the trophy room or neati boxed among his pole mallet, golf sticks, hunting rifles and billiard cues. 1 Mechanical knowledge is necessarily necessari-ly dlsplaycd-wbere there is a wreck to bo hauled up, for unless the diver knows the parts of machinery, how to tako it apart, where m fasten tho linen V and what is worth salvage and what X is not, he would better never have at- K" tempted the profession. There is nl- 9v ways carpenter work to be done In K" the mending of a dock, in the patching wM. of a ship's keel and In Innumcrablo jBjf other places where the under-watcr IK saw and hammer and ax and awl aro AW. active implements. Also, like the old w&i tar, he must "know the ropes," for to dB bo able to tie the half-hitch, the tim- JH her hitch, the squaro knot, tho bolana lK and half a score of others Is as indls- f H pcnsable to the undersea workman as the knowledge of the trade itself lB Wants Deep Sen Work. JH River diving Is even more d i f fici' -' jaMj than deep sea work because of tho JflB force of the current against which the K diver must work. The clarity of tho ocean water is also an aid to tho mat iH spinning yarns of his experiences. 27c will narrate with matter of fact coolness cool-ness a narrow escape from death that would freeze the hearts of the most intrepid folk. "Did you ever have ' a very close shave?" .Jones has been asked some scores of times, and his answer is always al-ways the same: "Oh, I don't know as I have." But It is the wife who breaks in with. "Yes, he has; don't you remember re-member last February, James, when we wore working on the water works in Alton, 111.; how the grent floating cakes of Ice crushed you down -ana pounded against your helmet until you were almost exhausted, and tho sharp ice cut against the air hose until we thought every minute that it would be ripped in two?" "Yes," Jones assented. assent-ed. "But," he adds, with a smile at his wife, "you pulled me out all right, didn't you?" No diver is without a vast fund of harrowing talcs of sights and sounds under the water of which the Ianc-lubbcr Ianc-lubbcr has no conception. It may be his natural or acquired reticence that keeps the tales from being spread abroad or the lack of a colorful fancy such as that of Jules Verne, whoso imagination im-agination could create such a talo as "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." Some stories arc gathered in fragmentary bits, however, as the diver carelessly drops an incident here and there which to him is of negligible negligi-ble concern, but to tho layman of such commanding interest. "I was sent for after the Dayton (Ohio) flood, back In 1913," Jones narrates. nar-rates. "I went down to West Point. Ky., to raise a bridge that had been swept into tho water. The river had brought with it so much mud that 1 couldn't soo what I was doing, but in feeling around I came across soft floating masses that were no doubt victims of the ruthless flood. "Four years ago we went up to Grafton, 111., to get the machinery from the wreck of tho City of Molinc. I had as near an escape then as I ever, caro to have. After I'd got 'the lines hooked to the machinery, somehow I got tangled in the wreck and was drawn under the barge and couldn't 'get up.' "Now, about the most dangerous thing that a diver has to face is the tangling up of his life line and alr( hose, for there Is no chance of 'getting 'get-ting up unless the life line Is intact to give the . signal, and well. If ine hose gets a kink in it there's no use in coming up at all. I managed to give the 'slack off,' however, and in some way got off from the wreckage so that they could haul rac up I never ' knew how." who must search the bottom of the sea ijttj in his assigned task. The greatest 1 Wm depth to which Jones has ever de- 1 fijR scended is 90 feet, but his ambitions JB would lake him thrice the depth. f "I want to be a deep sea diver." ho ! pK?,' confessed, "and as soon as the war is iKM' ended. I am going straight to the coast '''V' perhaps I can do my bit in bringing ! . up some of the treasures that the GeirtJR , man submarines have sent to the boP?W( torn of the pond." vEp Consistently enough, the people who ) !)g have mercilessly sunk so many of our , ships and valuable cargoes arc th,c best equipped to bring them up again. They, with their "kultur" have pro- msi gressed in the technology of salvage iflB quite as far as their "kultur" has We taken them in the technology of dc- fJP struction, and we cannot but look wittf H8 some lively interest at the invention that they have'raade ana successruny f;Jll tested to aid the deep sea diver in his IsB perilous work. Pffg Notable among these inventions is the lastest improvement on the orig- -afflB inal air-lock, ponderous vacuum cham- fffl bcrs which are sunk by chains from ffai the wrecking vessel, containing all manner of apparatus for the safety I fKs and comfort of the diver. These air I Tofe locks arc equipped with the telephone, j? cables, air hose, and a much greater variety of tool3 than the diver couIJn-'" carry about on his already 300-pound- HHb weighted person. 'Wrv An Exceptional Woman. I M-. Magistrate You say your wifo ftlW-:hrew ftlW-:hrew a teacup and struck you on tho Plaintiff Yes. your honor. frlsK Magistrate How far wae she away E'SL :rom' you at tho time? J$ffl6T Plaintiff About ten feet. vf-fflKl Magistrate What did she aim at? , Plaintiff At me, y 1& Magistrate Well, ail 1'vo got to : WBb :ay is that you ought to be proud of frajlw; i wife like that. 33 a?V tf1 ftW,v vvvvwxaw vxXUVNWWVwUxx AXrV.v imx I Si |