October 1, 1905

View Full Issue Table of Contents

The Orient Appraised.

WITHOUT transportation there can be no commerce. As civilization has advanced, commerce developed, transportation cheapened, and the wants of man expanded, the importance of the commercial prize of the Orient has increased until its value has to-day reached the enormous sum of nearly 3,000 millions of dollars per annum. By HON. O. P. AUSTIN7 min

Pigs is Pigs.

MIKE FLANNERY, the Westcote agent of the Interurban Express Company, leaned over the counter of the express office and shook his fist. Mr. Morehouse, angry and red, stood on the other side of the counter, trembling with rage. The argument had been long and heated, and at last Mr. Morehouse had talked himself speechless.

By ELLIS PARKER BUTLER14 min

How We Are Being Poisoned.

IN England, if you poison a man with metallic poisons, wilfully and from motives of greed, you get hanged; but, by going about your murder in another way, you may poison an unlimited number of people with metallic poisons, and grow rich and respected. By ROBERT H. SHERARD21 min

Christie’s.

Romantic, indeed, in many ways, is the story of the rise and growth of the foremost auction business in the world. Though no longer does a Christie preside over its destinies, yet from father to son, four generations of Christies managed the business. The description of the sales, attended often by the aristocracy, anecdotes connected with certain articles and the fabulous prices brought by various lots are recorded to the edification of the reader.

By MARY SPENCER WARREN13 min

Shopping in Paris.

THE whole plan of shopping and shops in Paris might be traced back to the Middle Ages, when all trading was done in the open market-place. Just as there is a “market day” once a week in every small village throughout France, so there still are in Paris the flower-market, the bird market, the ham market, the rag market, the stamp market . . . and in the ordinary shops a concentration of trade according to its nature. By MRS. JOHN VAN VORST9 min

The Cost of Life Insurance.

THE recently published evidence of the extravagance and misconduct of the officers and directors of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States has aroused the interest of the general public and directed attention to the question of the proper organization and management of life insurance companies. By ALLAN H. WILLETT40 min

Paul Morton, Human Dynamo.

ON a steamer crossing from England there was a man whose face seemed so strangely familiar that two-thirds of the passengers bowed, more or less uncertainly. They knew him and yet they did not. It was evident he must be some great personage. He was He was a chewing-gum manufacturer, whose omnipresent portrait adorned walls, fences, magazine pages and newspaper advertising columns. By EDWIN LEFEVRE17 min

106

A Canadian-Named Automobile.

MR. T. A. RUSSELL is no stranger to the automobilists of Toronto. When a man invents an automobile he figures on going down to posterity. Mr. Russell has done this. Therefore he is a modern young man and the product of the twentieth century, which is no disgrace.

108

The European Parcels-Post.

THE American is tolerant enough of foreign criticism of his ways; for such criticism he is persuaded is due either to presumption or to ignorance, and is therefore rather amusing. The ideal of civilized government—a fair distribution of happiness—is doubtless more consistently pursued and more nearly attained in the United States than in any other country,—with the possible exception of England. By J. HENNIKER HEATON15 min

James R. Keene Reads the Future.

PROSPERITY is reasonably sure to remain ever with us for some time to come, if the prophetic vision of James R. Keene be a reliable touchstone. Gently but firmly crossing lances with no less a champion than he of Standard Oil, the Ivanhoe of the Street, as the eminent market master is admitted to be, sees no reason to believe with John D. Rockefeller that, the tide being now at the flow, there is liable to be a sweeping ebb within the next two or three years— unless the country be stricken with agricultural paralysis, which he deems improbable. By WILLIAM GRIFFITH13 min

A Night in a Travelling Post-Office.

EIGHT o’clock in the evening at Euston Station. At a humble, out-of-the-way platform, a long train, gay in its colors of white and chocolate, is drawn up. So quietly it waits on its side track that few give it a passing thought. Yet it is, perhaps, the most wonderful train in the world. By MARCUS WOODWARD12 min

Fortunes in Advertising.

SOME day a clever artist, wise beyond his generation, will draw a new allegorical conception of Success. It will not be a scantily-clad figure of a woman with golden hair floating in space and distributing favors from a clumsy-looking cornucopia, but a gray-bearded man with spectacles and a bulging forehead scattering an infinitude of microbes shaped something like dollar marks. By HENRY HARRISON LEWIS12 min

George Westinghouse, Genius.

ONE of the most interesting characters in the industrial world to-day is Mr. George Westinghouse. In this age of wonderful achievement his name stands in the first rank in at least three great fields, as an inventor, as an organizer and active manager of great industrial enterprises, and as a financier. By A BUSINESS ASSOCIATE IN AMERICAN INDUSTRIES8 min