182 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 345 



SCIENCE: 



A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF ALL^ THE ARTS lAND SCIENCES. 



PUBLISHED BY 



N. D. C. HODGES. 



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NEW YORK, September 13, 18 



No. 345. 



CONTENTS: 



An Electric Transfer-Tablk 



The Softening of ^Hard Water 



FOR Domestic Use 173 



A Novel Electric Battery 174 



The Brush Electric Hoist 175 



Olive Cultivation 176 



He 



M 



Report of the Par 



Consumption 176 



TuberculoBs Meat 177 



The Air in Edinburgh Theatres.... 178 

 Notes and News 17S 



iinson's Plans 

 d's Fair of 1892 



THE WOR 



An Unknown Organ or Sense 



Christine Ladd Franklin 

 Harvard of To-Dav 



Book-Reviews. 

 A Manual of Machine Construction : 

 Monopolies and the People 1 



Among ti^e Publishers ; 



Letters to the Editor. 



The Law of Population in the 

 United States M. C. Meigs : 



EDWARD ATKINSON'S PLANS FOR THE WORLD'S 

 FAIR OF 1892. 



The suggestions made by Mr. Edward Atkinson, and printed in 

 Science, of Aug. 30, bearing upon the scope of the exhibition to be 

 held in this city in 1892, have attracted much attention from 

 many business men. Voicing the sentiments of those business 

 men and others interested in the success of the exhibition, the 

 president of the Chamber of Commerce of this city requested Mr. 

 Atkinson to present his views more in detail. To this request Mr. 

 Atkinson responded with the following detailed plans for the de- 

 velopment of an historic and economic exhibit on certain lines of 

 industry which might be made a part of the proposed exhibition of 

 1892 : — 



We may begin with the art of spinning and weaving. The origin 

 of these arts is prehistoric. From the earliest dawn of history 

 woven fabrics have been in use. The linen in which the mummies 

 of Egypt are wrapped is equal in the fineness of the thread and in 

 the texture of the web to many of the examples of the finest work 

 of the modern loom. The distaff is classic, but unless the railway 

 has completed its revolution, some of the natives of northern Italy 

 could be brought to the exhibition who would spin linen thread 

 with the distaff after the manner of Penelope. The loom and the 

 weaver are pictured, as I have been informed, on the walls of 

 Babylon and on the pyramids. The hand-loom worked by the 

 native Egyptians in the same way, and of identical type, could be 



brought to the exhibition. Neither the inventor nor the date of the 

 invention of the spinning-wheel is known. The spinning-wheel of 

 the prehistoric type is worked to-day for clothing nine-tenths of the 

 population of China ; the wheel and the spinner, the loom and the 

 weaver, could be brought together from there. The wheel and the 

 loom of the same identical type are to-day in operation in the heart 

 of the Southern mountains, working on cotton and wool, and in the 

 western counties of Ireland, working on Irish homespun. The 

 representatives of these prehistoric arts could be brought from 

 there and from many other points in Asia, Africa, South America, 

 Australia, and Polynesia, with examples of all their fabrics, ancient 

 and modern. 



Such an exhibition as the one proposed in this paragraph would 

 undoubtedly lead to the establishment of a great and permanent 

 textile museum and weaving school, equal or superior to that at 

 Crefeld in Rhenish Prussia, which was formerly open to Americans, 

 but from which they are now excluded. Such schools have only 

 lately been established even in England, although they have existed 

 for a long time in Germany and France. We have made a small 

 beginning in Philadelphia and in Boston, but nothing in any meas- 

 ure adequate to the necessities of the case. A complete museum 

 of textile fabrics and of looms of various kinds would be among 

 the primary elements required for such a school. The co-opera- 

 tion of the Arkwright Club of Boston, of the Wool and Woollen 

 Association, of the Silk Association, of the Manufacturers' Club of 

 Philadelphia, and of other similar organizations, might be called 

 for in determinating the conditions both for the proposed exhibition 

 and for the ultimate destination of the examples of machinery and 

 fabrics which might be brought together at that time. 



Within the same rail on the floor of the Atlanta Exposition were 

 two hand carders, two spinners with their wheels, and one weaver, 

 — five persons who could make in a day of ten hours eight yards 

 of narrow coarse cotton osnaburg. Within the same rail was the 

 carding and spinning machinery of the Willimantic Thread Com- 

 pany and the looms which were sent there from Massachusetts, on 

 which the cotton which was grbwing in the field in the morning, 

 after it had been picked, ginned, and prepared, was spun, woven, 

 dyed, and made into a dress suit which I wore at a reception the 

 same evening. The difference in the capacity of the operatives 

 who worked these modern machines as compared to the homespun 

 art on the same fabric was one hundred to one, by actual computa- 

 tion. 



The first step in the progress from the spinning-wheel of a single 

 spindle to the spinning-mule of twelve hundred spindles was the 

 spinning-jenny of eight or ten spindles. Some of these spinning- 

 jennies are still made use of, I believe, in Africa, to prepare the 

 yarn for a hand-loom which is carried about in the hands of the 

 natives, on which they weave the narrow strips of which their gar- 

 ments are made when they have been stitched together. The 

 African spinners and weavers, with their machines, can be brought 

 to the exhibition. 



In South America, in Mexico, among the Indians of the far 

 North-west, and in every part of the world, are people of various 

 tribes and races who clothe themselves in homespun and hand- 

 woven fabrics, as our grandfathers and grandmothers did in New 

 England only a century since. 



It is easy to conceive of a department in the exhibition of 1892 in 

 which shall be built the cabin of the African, the cobble-stone 

 dwelling of the Irish cotter, the model of the cottage of the English 

 peaAnt, the dwelling of the Chinaman, the wigwam of the Indian, 

 the log cabin of the Southern mountaineers, where each type of 

 each race may conduct the art of spinning and weaving in their 

 own way ; while in the next compartment may be exhibited the 

 finest examples of the most modern textile machinery : in this one 

 section w.ould be given the history of clothing from the fig-leaf to 

 the type of the present day. Even the preparation of the different 

 fibres may be brought into view. The seed of the cotton is cleaned 

 from the fibre in China at the present time by the snapping of a 

 bowstring, precisely as it was done in Georgia, giving the name of 

 " bowed cotton " to the Georgia staple before Eli Whitney invented 

 the cotton gin. 



Again, while the art of weaving begins with the hand-loom in ■ 

 making the fabrics of the coarsest kind, the art also ends with the 



