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\ THE OSHAWA DAILY TIMES, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1928 ' PAGE NINE Indnstrial Santa Has His Hand on Throttle 'Whoever has heard the joyous peal _ of bells at Christmastide without kindling a glow in his heart has in- deed lost much of the art of living. The ringing of bells is inextricably interwoven into the fabric of Christ mas. It matters not whether the bell sounds from country church or t cathedral, whether it be rung on the cab of a locomotive or by the hand of a mendicant Santa Claus, its appeal is not lost; it car- ries its message of "Peace on earth, good will towards men" with a sin- cerity which cannot but awaken & kindly response in the hearts of all who hear its tone. Indeed, the stac- catic clang of the locomotive bell at this season of the year assumes an added importance. It 'brings glad tidings of homecomers; of loved ones who have been away for months, pos- sibly for years, returning once more to the old fireside; of reunited fam- flies who have not sat about the com- mon board for a decade or more; and of the happiness brought by these hours of reunion, Or, again, it may . be the harbinger of some coveted gift, an unexpected present, or word from some one well loved yet who through unpropitious circumstances was unable to be present in person. Truly varied are the messages of cheer which the locomotive bells bring at this time and when we re- call the role the steam road has play- ed in enriching the Christmas sea- son in manifold ways, the clang of its bell takes on a new significance. For what would Christmas be with- out its vital help? What would be- come of the greatest festival of the year were it not for the co-operation of the railways? In fact, it might well be said that the hand of an in- dustrial Santa grasps each throttle in the cab and rings each locomotive bell. It is, however, the ancient and honorable order of bell yingers which we most closely associate with Christ- mastide; those cheery souls who make merry peals from lofty belfries or squat bell gables throughout the jand; or the player of the carillon before Nis secluded keyboard. But even though our knowledge of these may be somewhat sketchy and vague; we need not feel abashed, for a writ- er in the London Daily Telegraph finds that even in Old England, where the profession of bell Fingers can trace their history throughou! the centuries, it is often contended that the general public are both ig- norant and apathetic with regard to this art, But when we recall the fact that there are more than forty thousand bell-ringers in England alone, and that correspondence in the columns of one daily newspaper on the subject of the survival of old bell customs, such as the curfew, brought to light records from scores of villages and towns, it is obvious that there is no danger of the race of bell devotees dying out in the old land, There are very few people who fall to be stirred by the sound of coun- try church bells accentuating the peace of a summer Sunday evening, and even a child can distinguish be- tween playing a chime and ringing a peal. It is certainly true that the permutations and combinations in- volved in the intricacies of Grand- sire Triples, Stedman Triples, and Treble Bob Majors must leave all but mathematicians and eampanolo- gers aghast, and that our feeling for the Oxford Diocesan Guild and the Ancient Society of College Youths, who once rang a peal of 21,363 Sted- man Caters in 12 hours 25 minutes, approximates to what we feel for old- time bruisers who were still on their feet after sixty rounds with bare fists; but it does not follow, be- cause we cannot hope to emulate their performances, that we do not admire them, More and more are we beginning to realize that the principal place of historic and ar- chitectural interest in our villages and towns is the parish church, and a climb up to the belfry to inspect the decorations and inscriptions on our ancient bells is becoming part of the ordinary routine of holiday- makers, We have in the Old Country, of course, nothing to compare in size with the great bell of Moscow, whose weight approximates to 200 tons, by contrast with which our biggest bell, "Great Paul," in 8t. Paul's Cathe- dral; weighing 16% tons, seems Lilli- putian, mor can we point, as the Chinese do, to bells 4,000 years old. There was a bell at Whitby, in the year A.D. 680, and St. Dunstan, who was himself a bell founder, drew up rules for the ringing of bells in AD. 977, but the oldest existing ringing company, that of Saffron Walden, has only recently celebrated its tercen- tenary, and the "father of change- ringing," Fabian Stedman, did not issue his classic work of "Tintinna- logia, or the Art of Ringing," until 1668, From it we learn that "it is admirable to conceive in how short a time it hath increased .... for within these fifty or sixty years last past, Changes were not known, or thought possible to be rang." We know from John Bunyan how delectable the ungodly pastime prov- ed, for it was only the fear of Di- vine wrath and the possibility of the collapse of the church tower that deterred him from his favorite ex- ercise. In his day ringers had to pay for the privilege, and were fined if they swore, rang.with hat or spurs on, overthrew a bell, failed to pre- serve strict silence, drank or smoked. "Who wears his hat, or spur, or o'er- turns a bell, Or, by unskilful handling, mars a peal; Let bi pay sixpence for each single m crime, "Twill make him cautious 'gainst an- other time." - The sixpence was often paid in cider or beer, which may have ac- counted for the saying: "Singers and Ringers are little homebringers." It is easy to understand that when bells were being constantly rung for prize- money and to celebrate such secular events as Lord Pembroke's success in horse-racing at Salisbury, in 1646, the Mint beginning to coin, in 1696, duck-hunting, in 1712, or, in quite re- cent times, for victories at the poll, there should be an outcry against too much of a good thing; but now that they are rung by seemly men in a seemly manner solely to call congregations to church, to toll sad- ly for a funeral or peal joyously for a wedding, there seems no possible ground for objection. To silence our bells in the day-time would be to de prive us of a music as dear to us as Christmas Trees are _ Trees of Happiness A bright winter night, a silvered landscape curiously mosaiced by dis- torted squares of black and myried stars winking from the dark, velvet background of sky, There was a clearness in the air and a stillness brooding over the woodlands that came of a sharp and heavy cold, a silence unbroken save for the ringing report of a tree split under thé inex- orable grip of the frost king; it was a night that bespoke of sunny, spark- ling days wher the air sought out unprotected faces and hands and nip- ped them with cold fingers, Came the soft crunch of breaking snow crust and the shout of merry laughter--alien sounds breaking the pall of silence that wrapped itself about the evergreen acres. Along the trail these invaders came; two lads in warm homespun and furred caps, expectant eyes going above bulg- ing woolen mufflers which at once protected neck and chin, short axes at the belt, mittened hands dragging un- gainly, homemade sleigh. About them, in grave disarray, stood solemn sen- tinels of the evergreen hosts--spruce trees, large and small, weighted down the song of larks and a custom as cherished as that of Shrove Tuesday and Guy Fawkes' Day, Curfew may no longer, as in Alfred's day, be a signal to "dout" our fires, or, as in Plantagenet times, an order to close our alehouses, but in the many plac- es where it survives it is jealously and proudly maintained. Mote bells, gleaning bells, harvest bells, labor bells, oven bells, storm bells, apprentice bells, pancake bells, and calling bells all have their sev- eral uses in reminding us of the un- broken continuity of our national history. Though we may applaud the ingenuity of such miraculous ma- chines as the "Campanamutaphone" and "autosonneur," which do away with the necessity of human beliring- ers, it is devoutly to be hoped that the old-established method of ring- ing of peals will not be superseded. with the heavy snow fall and await- ing the axe of the pioneer, , e trail they followed was one usual to new lands; in summer, a rough winding lane, deeply rutted by plodding ox-wagons and bounded by grotesque stump fences, whose roots reached upward with despairing sup- plication and whose lads they garded bore mute evidence of -- the orest recently felled by man; in winter, a beaten track through a pal- lid landscape whose blanket of snow mercifully covered the stump-strewn lots and banked in profusion about the fence edges until the stark ghastliness of the uprooted stumps Yere concealed beneath its enveloping olds, The village trail it was, to the un- claimed lands, Once a pioneer set- tlement, the steel highway of the railway had opened new arteries of communication and commerce an where log cabins had stood in motley. array now were neat cottages, a church and general store, or two, From these homes came the glow of light to reflect upon the shadowy snow about them and to give an air of cheer to the deserted street. Yet, but twice a week was there any com- munication with the outer world, for only then did the train steam proud- ly into this outpost station, its bal- looned smokestack, or, possibly, the elongated funnel of the earlier loco- motive, belching smoke and sparks through stack. For the village is a mythical one, typical of the thousand and one pio- neer settlements in the infancy of the country, a settlement whose peo- ple knew little of pleasure but much of hard work and who rarely unbent from their endless routine of toil ex- cept upon such a gala occasion as Christmas, when each diminutive home boasted of its tree and such gifts as the householder could afford to give. And it was to gather trees for this festival that the two lads journeyed so gaily through the stump lots on that night. Throughout the centuries = the Christmas tree has been an establish- ed custom of this joyous season and today its hold upon the people is as great as it was in the days when grandmothers wore bonnets and crin- olines and grandfathers chokers and beaver hats. Its grip upon public af- fection is unrelenting despite the passing hd years and though customs and habits change with the times, the Christmas tree remains as much the symbol of Christmas as Santa Claus himself. ; So it is that each Christmas sea- son sees flat car upon flat car come into the various railway terminals loaded with bundles ©f Christmas trees for the city and town marts. In many instances, these marts are not pretentious affairs but rather an empty lot near a retail section, where the treos are piled to await the pros- pective buyer and so great is the demand that the shipments of such trees have grown to be a factor in the revenue of the steam roads. - In this fact is to be found a small but unmistakable illustration of the growth of the country. Many of the purchasers of such trees doutbless re- member the days when if a tree were wanted for Christmas it was but a small matter to offer a lad a few d | cents and he would go into the neigh- boring bush, chop down a suitable one and drag it to the customer's house without difficulty, But with the building up of industrial centres and the increasing need of land under cultivation, the wooded areas sur- rounding the densely populated dis- tricts have.gradually been denuded of thir bush and with their passin have gone the days when the point boy could cut a Christmas tree to order. Thus, the land of the Christmas tree has receded northward until to- day the Christmas trees for the old- er sections of Central and Eastern Canada are drawn largely from the northern districts of the provinces. Just what number of trees are cut down each year to meet the demands of season are not known, nor would it be possible to approximate their number but the quantity is a large one; so large, in fact, that a number of years ago, the Grand Trunk Rail- way System had a score of flat cars built to a special length to haul this type of traffic and each year the quantity shipped has been steadily mcreasing. In Toronto, alone, it was estimated by Mr. A. M Adams, General Agent of the Freight Department, Canadian National Railways, that between thirty and forty flat cars arrived from points in Northern Ontario for distribution to neighboring cities and in some cases, to frontier ints, near the Niagara Peninsula, hen it is known that the average flat car will carry about six hundred bundles of trees and that these buudles con. tain from a dozen to a score of in- dividual trees, some idea of the great quantity carried may be gleaned, To strike the av e number of trees at the conservative figure of fifteen and the average number of cars re- ceived at the Toronto Terminals at thirty-five would give the astoundi figure of more than three Yo and fifteen thousand trees. And this capitulation does not include the hundreds trees culled from. the back fields, pi and bush lands of the various agricultural districts which find their way to village, town and city by motor truck. So much for the Torontq district, What must be the t taken throughout the nine provinces of the Dominion! Especially when Montre- al, Canada's biggest city, with its million of population alone is con- sidered, together with Winnipeg, the centre of distribution for the ortile wheat belt of Manitoba, Ottawa, the Capital City of the Dominion, the cities of thé, Maritimes, Hamilton and London, the keting points for the centre of Candaa's destiny of popu- lation, and Vancouver, the shipping point for the Pacific Coast. What would be the total number of trees cut annually for Christmas festivi- ties? Imagination only could guess the answer. ' Although the raids upon the fir forests each year must amount to a staggering total, expert assurance has been given that the cutting by tens of thousands of young trees does virtually no damage to the for- ested lands, The selection of trees for the Christmas markets are made with great care. Man, fortunately, has learned in the hard school of ex- perience that indiscriminate cutting of trees means a big 'economic loss. Where woods were once looked upon as something to clear out quickly so that money might be made by cul- tivating the ground upon which they stood, today they are viewed in the terms of dollars and cents and the system, of selection is carefully done long before the sapling feels the bite of the axe, In fact, it has been said Mrs. Spiteful. that the Christmas. market supply is merely the pruning of the forested areas, 80 that the multitude of trees left will have the necessary air and sunshine to assist them to attain their full, healthy growth and that of the thousands of trees cut each year hundreds upon hundreds of these would droop and die of their own accord from congestion were they not felled or the seasonable market. : It is when these shipments begin to arrive in the centres of distribu- tion that the railway yards take on a real Christmassy touch. The lon lines of "flat cars piled high wit spruce and hemlock and sometimes, cedar--great splashes of 'sombre green and white where the snow cks of their journey settled--give an atmosphere to the terminals not to be found at any other time of the year, Various Lig of trees they are those wired tightly upén the cars and towering as high as an ordinary box car, and range all the way from the tree in miniature, with a base the thickness of two fingers to the veri- table giant, whose trunk dimensions are measured by the foot and whose top will tower almost to the tele- phone wires when set proudly in front of some great store or publie building, But one and all, these thousands of trees come on and the shme joyous mission of bringing hap- piness and sunshine to hearts both old and young. Nor is it alone in evergreen trees that the cities and towns are depend- ent upon the railways for their Christmas festivities. The products of the factories, not only at home but in far-off lands lapped by the seven seas, fruits from the equator and from the soil smiled upon by milder climes, vegetables fresh from the sunny South and furs from the frozen reaches of the far North, all of these are brought to Canadian homes by the railways, implemented 4 the steamship lines such as the anadian National Steamships, whose passenger boats, with special equip- ment, bring the products of the West Indies to the Dominion's shores and whose fleet of freighters sail to far- away ports to bring back gifts and presents for this season. "I have such an band," said Mrs. Doll "Yes, so George says," responded "Sometimes indulges too much, doesn't he?" 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