University of South Carolina Libraries
■ * .. , - 1 Thursday, July 3, 1930 McCORMICK MESSENGER, McCORMICK, So util CuroJlnm. Page NumEer TEf9| 99 Oppoi'tunity School Proving Successsful WASHINGTON, D. C., July 1.— In the quaint little mountain town of Due West, far baek in rural South Carolina, the tenth summer session of an “Opportunity School” which has attracted national- at tention, has begun. The Office of Education, Department of the In terior, is watching the results ob tained by using a college plant when it is idle for getting a bit of education to these who have little of it but high ambition for work. The department is wondering if thousands of such plants, scat tered throughout the country, might not be doing likewise. Erskine College, in Abbeville County, a devout community of Covenanter origin, is a co-educa- tional institution with a capacity of 1,000 students. It is located in that Southern Appalachian region where the people are poor and ed ucational opportunities limited. It is a farming section in which mill towns recently have grown up. Contributions The Opportunity School has been developed through the leadership of Miss Will Lou Gray, of the State Department of Education, who has specialized since 1918 in adult el ementary education. The college contributes its plant, which is cap able of taking care of 500 men and 500 women. The state provides guarantee funds for teachers, but voluntary contributions for the support of the school usually make this up and take care of incident als. Those atteilGing bring their own linen. Other costs to the students, including board, amount to about $20 for the term, which las{s but a single month. Those who come to the Oppor tunity School aye mostly people who have missed their chance for education. They range in age from 16 to 70. Many of them are ambi tious young people froirf the cotton mills. Many others are mountain youths from the vicinity. Farmers and their wives of middle age come and are assigned to their respective dormitories, and take their first steps toward literacy. Old people, treading the lonesome, sundown road, with little time left to use the smattering they may get, present themselves and no one has the heart to turn them away. The students who come here are intensely in earnest. They grasp at every straw of learning. The experience of a month of the sort of community life they live here may well be more educational than what they get from books. Much stress is laid on food, its proper preparation, and on sanitary ^liv ing. A thread of citizenship train ing runs through it all. X — More Traffic Needed (A. C. L. Ry„ Bulletin.) In the first four months of 1930 the Class I railroads of the coun try had a net railway operating income that was at t he annual rate of only 3.56 per cent on their property investment, according to the Bureau of Railway Economics. The earnings of the roads of the South were at the ra^te of 2.94 per cent on their property investment and were next to the lowest of any group of roads in t he country. Thirty-one Class I railroads op erated at a loss during the four month period. In spite of the d ecrease in their business, which amounted to 10.7 per cent as compared with the same period in 1929, the railroads paid $118,479,946 in taxes—rather a substantial contribution to the cost of government. What the public is most directly concerned with is the fact that the railroads have maintained their service at the top notch of effi ciency, and that freight shipments move with a speed and certainty never excelled, while passenger trains uniformly run on time. Right now the railroads, like so many other industries, need an in creased volume of business. They have hundreds of locomotives stored because they are not need ed, and hundreds of thousands of idle box cars waiting on grown sidings for traffic to de velop. For many years some people have preached the doctrine The Valve of * Sound Design New Ford engine gives outstanding acceleration speed and powver without sacrificing reliabilitg or economg THE good performance of the Ford car, so apparent on every highway, is due largely to the sound mechanical design of the engine* It has outstanding acceleration, speed and power, yet that is only part of its value to you* Greater still is the fact that it brings you all these features without sacrificing either reliability or economy. That is the reason the Ford car has given such satisfactory service to mil lions of motorists all over the world and has been chosen by so many large companies that keep accurate cost fig ures. In every detail of construction it has been carefully planned and made jr' for the work it has to do* The design of the compression cham ber is an important factor in the effi ciency of the Ford engine. It is built to allow free passage of gases through the valves and to thoroughly mix the fuel by producing turbulence within the cylinders during compression. The spark thus flashes quickly through the whole fuel charge, resulting in quieter and more effective engine performance. Other factors are the direct gravity gasoline feed, the specially designed carburetor, the new hot-spot manifold, aluminum pistons, chrome silicon alloy valves of larger diameter, statically and dynamically balanced crankshaft and flywheel, the simplicity of the electrical, cooling, lubrication, and fuel systems and accuracy in manufacturing. IK "*/'*« li/l *AU w >1,1 ■a:> r/>^ //* tuv MViU, NOTE THESE LOW PRICES Roadster • Phaeton • • Tudor Sedan Coupe • • Sport Coupe De Luxe Coupe Three-window Fordor Sedan De Luxe Phaeton • a Convertible Cabriolet De Luxe Sedan • • « Town Sedan • • • All prices f.o.b. Detroit, plus freight and delivery. Bumpers and spans tiro extra, at lets cost. Universal Credit Company plan of time payments offers another Ford economy. The New Ford Town Sedan Ask the nearest Ford dealer tor a demonstration of the heaviest volumes of traffic ' taining the waterways. . THINGS WORTH KNOWING Seven out of ten Palestine last year America. visitors to were from Diamonds have been discovered in thirty-five places in the United States. Chile now produces four times as much copper as before the Eu ropean war. Club Women Back Forest Service In Con servation Of Timber Resources of American banks are five times as great as they were in 1910. Many wild animals swim across the Mississippi river, according to government Diclogists. A queer cargo recently shipped from. New York City was fifty tons of live eels to be used in restocking the Baltic sea. All mines in Turkey the government. belong to France is to have national school of aeronautics. A cubic inch of air taken as a sample in London one morning contained 340,000 particles of soot. A fire bell has been abandoned by Augusta, Ga., after seventy- eight years of service. i The Chicago river, for the first time in several years was frozen over this winter. Nitrates used in making fertilizer are among the‘Aost important by products from coal. Victoria, British Columbia, has an annual music festival of com positions dealing with fisher folk songs. Eiderdown ducks are strictly pro tected in Iceland in order to main tain the eiderdown industry. The weight of the General Sher man tree, in Sequoia National park, in California, is estimated to be more than 12,000,000 pounds. It takes nature 10,000 years to form a foot of fertile soil from the rocks of the earth’s crust, accord ing to H. H. Bennett, government soil expert. Argentina has wild horses that are descended from Arabian steeds brought to South America by the Spaniards in the sixteenth cen tury. ever known without car shortages or delays. Today the railroads could handle every pound of traf- “Both the political and business propagandists of inland waterways constantly give assurance that Combines Increas- i ingly Popular Pupils in big rural schools made better arithmetic scores than chil dren in one-teacher schools, in a recent series of tests in a number of states. Women’s organizations are ac tively interested in forwarding the forestry movement, the Forest Service, U. S. Department of Ag riculture believes. This' is indicat ed by the many requests from wo men’s groups for information and aid in developing forestry pro grams. Some of the outstanding nation al organizations of women have created and developed active de partments devoted to the study of conservation, according to reports to the Forest Service, and have worked for the organization of State forestry departments. They favor the securing and setting aside of forest areas for public use, md the general encouragement of he national forestry program. To aid the various women’s or- •anizations in preparing programs m forest conservation for club and >ther meetings, the Forest Service aas available Miscellaneous Cir- ;ular No. 91-M. “A Forestry Pro gram for Women’s Organizations/’ The booklet; contains brief state ments on Federal, State, municipal and private forestry, which bring out what has been done and what remains to be done in forestry in the United States. Other material in prose and verse suitable for a forestry program is included. Cop ies of the publication may be ob tained without charge while the supply lasts uphn application to the Office of Information, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Wash ington, D. C.p X Little Talk On Thrift TWO MILLION AMERICANS ABOVE 85 NOW OBJECTS OF CHARITY (By S. W. STRAUS, President American Society For Thrift.) Canadian airplanes have tripled in the last year. Nutmeg trees grow in only two of our states—California and Flor ida. A potato peeling machine has been adopted for use in French army kitchens. fic that moves by water or motor they do not wish to hurt the rail- and still have surplus equipment ways, but railway . officers who left. have studied the subject are unan- The truth is that at times like the present there is not enough traffic to support adequately all the transportation agencies that are available. The railroads are i certainly not earning a fair return on their investment and the Gov ernment barge service last year showed a substantial loss, and while the tonnage handled by the trucks is, in the aggregate, large, it is divided among many lines, none of which are particularly prosperous. Neither the water lines nor the motor carriers could have handled the traffic of 1929. For that mat ter they could not begin to handle the present light traffic of 1930. But every pound of traffic that grass-1 they get that would otherwise move by rail, increases by that much the overhead charges of the railroads on the traffic thfey act- that ually haul. imous in the opinion that practi- The “combine” has come into such general use that last year more than one-third of the hard cally every ton the waterways take winter 'wheat, one-fifth of the will involve a reduction in the traf fic that otherwise would move by rail.” the railroads could not expand | As to costs, the Railway Age fast enough to handle the normal points out that the railway can growth of traffic in this country, transport freight cheaper , than and have called for the develop- carriers upon almost any improved ment of waterway^ and motor river or canal, if, in the cost of in transport to help relieve the “bur- land water transportation there den” on the railroads. Last year, are included the taxes paid by the! however, the roads handled one public for improving and main- Adults Contract Children's Diseases Adults can, and do, contract many children’s diseases. And, usually, they suffer from them much more than children do. For instance, many adults contract worms, an ailment usually associated with children. Sometimes they suffer intensely and take expen sive medical treatments, without reali zing that worms are the cause of their troubles. Yet. tho symptoms are the same as in children, loss of appetite and weight, grinding the teeth and rest less sleep, itching of the nose and anus; and abdominal pains. And, the same medicine that surely and harmlessly ex pels round and pin worms from children will do the same for adults — White’s Cream Vermifuge, which you can get at^ STROMS’ DRUG STORE hard spring wlpeat ,and a smaller part of the soft winter wheat were harvested by the harvester-thresh er. Ripe, dry grain is one of the essentials for successful operation of the combine, says the U. S. De- j partment of Agriculture. Green or damp grain not only interferes with the threshing and cleaning operations but lowers the quality of the grain. Sometimes the com bine does a poor job of threshing and cleaning because the machine is not properly adjusted. A recent Farmers’ Bulletin, 108-F, describes the operation and care of the com bine and contains a “trouble chart.” It may be had by writing to the Office of Information, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Wash ington, D. C. . The mortality tables are said to show that the United States navy sailor is the healthiest man of any in the world. * X Use Oil And Common Sense The best way to get the kind of government you want is to vote for the kind of men who will help make it, but you can’t do that if you fail to register before Tuesday, July 22. Eyes examin ed. Spectacles, Eye Glasses, and Artificial Eyes fitted without Drugs, Drops or Danger. DR. HENRY J. GODIN Optometrists 956 Broad Street Augusta, Ga. Stop and waste cocks often get broken or bent handles or are oth erwise rendered useless because people do not understand how they are made. When bought, the nut on the bottom of the plug is gen erally screwed up tight, making it difficult or impossible to turn the handle and the plug. Long per iods of disuse frequently cause the plug to stick fast, but it may be easily loosened by Slightly un screwing the bottom nut and by lightly tapping the lower end of the plug with a hammer. From time to time the plug should have a drop of lubricating oil. Slight leakage caused by wear of the plug or by dirt around it may be rem edied by cleaning the plug and tightening the bottom nut. A plug badly worn may be reground, but it is usually better and cheaper to get a new plug or a complete new coc^. -— X Wonder what has become of the old fashioned mother who used to pick the narpes of Tom and Jer ry for her twins? An authority on old age depend ence states that there are now 2,- 000,000 individuals in this country above the age of 65 who are whol ly or partly dependent on others for their support. After a survey of the situation among the aged poor in America the man respon sible for these statistics says: “Thrift and habits of saving on the part of individuals constitute one of the most important bul warks against old age dependency but in my opinion something more, something over and above indi vidual thrift is necessary if we are to abolish old age dependency; I refer to an old age insurance or pension system which I believe, would unquestionably raise the general standards of living and eliminate the fear of old age.” Perhaps, as is here indicated, a national old age pension law is ad visable but it is not the purpose of this article to go into this point. We must not forget that society has its obligations to the unfor tunate individual. But what are the obligations of the individual to his own interests? As long as people are taught that thrift means merely saving money and that all the individual need concern himself about is putting money in a bank, we shall con tinue to hear the sorry stories of old age dependents. Manifestly, our greatest need is for individuals to understand that true thrift consists of planning an economically successful life. This means that in addition to saving money, time must be employed in the development of an increased earning capacity; good health must be conserved to prolong the years of productivity; investments must be made that will yield a depend able income; insurance must be carried to pi’otect one’s self in case of accident or illness and to safeguard the future of^pne’s de pendents; and that when one’s earning capacity is secure provis ion must be made against the time when old age or adversity arrive. When the public ceases to regard thrift merely as saving money and learns to appraise it from the broader aspects as here pointed out we shall have reached the period in our national life when old age dependency is much less a public problem than it is today. *XX Recent tests of the amount of energy expended in different oc cupations showed that washing clothes required more energy than any other household task.