January, 1923
THE WESTERN AMERICAN
farm will soon be a potent factor in making attrac­
tive rural life is not an idle dream. Developments of
electrical machinery are rapidly progressing and are
expected to be of special value in view of the shortage
of farm labor, and the use of labor-saving devices in
rural communities where it is gradually becoming a
necessity to simplify domestic work.
“ON THE CULTURAL LIFE OF MODERN
AMERICA”
U7 HILE MANY Americans have read with great
interest Knut Hamsun’s “Growth of the Soil”
in translation to English, from the author’s native
language, few are familiar with the fact that Ham­
sun, in 1899, after his return from America to Nor­
way, published a book in Norwegian under the title
“On the Cultural Life of Modern America.”
: In this volume, which has not been translated, but
nevertheless may be found in the Norwegian lan­
guage on the shelves of some American public li­
braries, the Norwegian novelist and future winner of
jthe Nobel prize, wrote some thirty years ago a critic­
ism of the same general tendencies and conditions
which Sinclair Lewis satirized in his book “Gopher
Prairie.”
Describing the Minneapolis public library Mr. Ham­
sun, in one part of his book, commends it for its
ample supply of almanacs, congressional debates and
patent reports, asserting that one would' ask in vain
for the books of Conte, Hartmann, Schopenhauer,
[Bourget and Zola.
[ If Hamsun today should walk into the Minneapolis
public library or any modem American public library
his views on “Cultural Life in America” from the
standpoint of the library shelves, at least, would call
for a radical revision of his earlier opinion. The
American public library of today, if taken as a
criterion of the “Cultural Life of the Americans,”
will satisfy the most exacting critic and he will be
able in most instances to find the works of his favor-
lite authors.
I America is a wide expand with a large conglome­
rate of peoples largely from the less cultured stratas
■of life in foreign countries who have shown very little
Interest in accepting the cultural standards of Amer­
ica as preferable to their own importations. The
[consequence is that the cultural America, as such, is
las yet a living force in the lives of only a small
I minority of the people who claim this country, at
least in name, as their own.
TIME ZONES IN AMERICA
13
would have thousands of time zones between the
Pacific and the Atlantic, changing the time every
hundred miles or sole, according to the westward
course of the sundial, which controls the day of the
earth, distributing it equally and fairly to all the
earthly inhabitants around the globe in proportion
to the latitudes they inhabit, from the equator to
the frigid zones, north or south, as far as the sun rays
have made human habitation possible.
The time zones in the United States are fixed by
geographically described boundaries. The standard
eastern time zone is from the Atlantic ocean to a
line through Sandusky and Mansfield, and between
Columbus, and Zanesville, Ohio, thence through
Huntington, West Virginia; Norton, Virginia; John­
son City, Tennessee; Asheville, North Carolina; At­
lanta and Macon, Georgia, and Apalachicola, Florida-
Standard Central time zone is from this first line to
a line through Mandan, North Dakota; Pierre, South
Dakota; McCook, Nebraska; Dodge City, Kansas,
and along the western boundary of Oklahoma and
Texas. Standard Mountain Zone is from the second
line to a line that forms the western boundary of
Montana, and thence passes through Pocatello, Idaho;
Ogden and Salt Lake City, Utah; Parker and Yuma,
Arizona.
Neighbors on the opposite sides of these line boun­
daries can not readily understand why they are an
hour behind or ahead with their day of one another.
The explanation is that they are only on opposite
sides of the demarkation line of the standard time
zones.
Uncle Sam is a heavier buyer of foreign produce
than most people think if they do not consult export and im­
port statistics. More than half of the sugar consumed in the
United States for instance, comes from foreign sources. Of
the 5,632,599 short tons consumed during the year ending June
30, 1922, 1,348,190 tons were produced in the United States.
Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the Philippines supplied 1,334,553 tons
and most of the remainder came from Cuba. As long as
Cuban and Porto Rico sugar plantations can be worked with
cheap labor, sugar raising in the United States will not be
increased much beyond the present production stage, but the
United States could ea.sily raise every pound of sugar used for
home consumption in this country.
Denmark has been seriously considering the aboli­
tion of capital punishment for some time. A committee ap-»
pointed to draw up a new penal code, however, has decided not
to abolish capital punishment, but merely change the means
of execution by discarding the old Danish ax and substitute in
its stead the guillotine of French fame. The Danes apparently
appreciates the fact that machines have gradually come to do
the work formerly done by human hands and—are doing it
better.
■ it HEN YOU travel east from the west coast of
I*’ America you experience at certain intervals
■hat your time peace is behind the time a half an
hour, an hour, two hours and keeps on losing time
every so often, as you compare the train time and the
lime of day at the way stations. Move from east to
west and you will discover that in the same propor­
tion your time peace is gaining by hours and that
eventually as the distance traveled increases you
will be hours ahead. In the same proportion day
and night will advance on you or lag behind.
| If we should be exact in the matter of time we
The American Church in Berlin has discarded its
silver offering plates instead using three good sized . wicker
baskets. Since the mark has deteriorated in value and bulky
paper money has become an abundant commodity, the plates
have proven far too small to hold the Sunday service collec­
tions. It takes three thousand marks to buy a pound sterling,
hence the wicker baskets have been put into use.
While parking space for automobiles is having un­
divided attention it might be in order to consider some park­
ing space for the pedestrian.. His only parking place is within
a few “safety zones” where hits don’t count and in an over­
crowded ambulance.