| PACES 8- i2 edd 12 PAGES big YEAR 82 NO, 180 SOME OTTAWA GLIMPSES Special Correspondence by H. F. Gadsby. 'British Columbia Despoiled Ottawa, Aug. 5.--The Ministerial Union of the Lower Mainland of Brit. ish Columbia have sent out a Mace- donian cry to the inion Govern- ment to help them means of a Royal Commission to investigate the affairs of British Columbia. The Union demands that the robbers be brought to justice and tha tthe guilty parties, whether companies, syndi- cates, indivduals, cabinet ministers or goyernment officials who have shared in the plunder, be jailed and forced to disgorge. The Ministe- rial Union i3 a body of meek and long-suffering men, It has no poli tics save the public good, But ten years of McBride rule in British Col- umbia has left it in a state of alarm, bordering on panic, Unless the graft- ing is stopped they see nothing but economic and social ruin for one of the most richly endowed provinces In the Dominion, Their allegation is that the pro- vince with the connivance of lead- ing members of the MeBride Govern- ment, has been practically gutted by the exploiters and the broad outlines of their case are set forth in a pam- phlet compiled by M. B. Cotsworth, an English statist of repute, who has bene several times. called in by the McBride Government as an expert, and who 'consequently knows his British Columbia like a book. Mr. Cotsworth naturally thought he had been called in to tell the truth, but when he found his reports suppress- ed, his work on the Civil service Commission choked off, and his own honor assalled by attempts to bribe htm, he threw up his task in disgust and joined the reformers. In Mr. Cotsworth the Ministerial Union have a splendid ally---he supplies the facts, figures and detailed knowledge; _ Which put their charges beyond ques- "tion. Citizens of Canada were greatly disgusted with the strong-arm gang in Manitoba. Their work was coarse and careless, They did not even take the pains to hide their tracks well. lic by practising any Machiavillian arts of deception, What they wanted | they went out and took, and if there | were eye witnesses they got them Out of the country after giving them their gharé of the swag to keep quiet. Nothing new or delicate about these methods--just plain assault and bat. tery and highway robbery with ab. duction and subornation of perjury thrown in for good measufe, But what they did to Manitoba, brazen as it was, is not a circumstance to what happened in British Columbia. Beside the British Columbia outfit of blackjack artists, highbinders and porch climbers, the Manitoba gang look like a band of Epworth Leagu- ers engaged in an uplift meeting. Manitoba i3 worrying over a matter of a million, perhaps two millions if the Agricultural site in included, but what the looters did to British Col- umbia runs inté hundreds of mil- fons and then some. Sir Richard McBride appeared recenty before the Davidson Commission at Ottawa and pointed out what a patriot he was in purchasing a brace of submarines for $480,000 more than the manu- facturers' price, a bewildering sort of arithmetic, which goes a long way towards explaining the present finan. cial troubles of British Columbia. The people out there have enjoyed that kind of arithmetic for the last ten years, and have at last turned against a Conservative Government which eonserves nothing but its grafting friends and its 'own pocket. Premier McBride, as the son of a prison warden, began life in a Jail, and if a judicial investigation into the British Columba scandal pans out as well as the Ministerial Union expects, it is not unlikely that some distinguished statesmen may spend a good part of their declining years in the same place. The alienation of British Colum- bia lands as traced by Mr, Cotsworth takes shape as a colossal crime which misleading statements by cabinet ministers, cooked statistics and false maps have failed to cover up. The British Columbia people are asked to. believe that there are over 90,- 000,000 acres of and nurveyed and held for the pre-emptor alone; that 45,000,000 acres of this lies within three miles of a railway; that all these lands have been rescued from the clutches of the speculators and that they are free to the settler who is given every assistance to get on the land. The actual facts, as as- corlained by the Ministerial Union's enquiry, are these. There ate per. haps 18,000,000 acres of available agricultural land in British Colum- bia of which 90 per cent. has been handed over to land grabbers and Segulntars Sperating Sunder "dum- names with the connivance and legislative assistance of the British Colum Government. Of this ag- ricultursl land there is not an acre rt Yithian twenty miles of a rail- Or a waggon road, and the "all red folder" Government They did not flatter the pub- | J | districts. The laws of British Col- { umbia set a limit of 640 acres for iany one person until he has culti- vated his first purchase to the extent of $3 per acre. But in 1907 the {| McBride Government amended the { Land - Act by adding these words: "Land may be staked or located by an agent under this section." This joker clause permitted any man to stake thousands of acres of land in the names of others who had never seen it, said names being easily ob- | tained for a dollar, or a drink or the mere asking from those who never intended to take up land. . With these signatures and a bogus power of attorney which purported to give an irrevocable transfer of the land from the person. whose name is {used to the grabber, these land thieves sent their agents out to | stake the best lands along the line of prospective railroads, whose loca- {tion had been tipped off to them by friends on the inside. The immedi- ate result of this amendment giving [power to stake land by agent was an increase of 162 per cent. in applica- | tions to purchase land in 1909, and 361 per cent. fn 1910, In the first {three years after the amendment was | passed, a total of 2,274,660 acres | was staked in this way by 117 agents. The average per staker in 1910 was {20,832 acres, in the two 'years fol- {lowing the amendmgnt 33 stakers | cornered 524,720 acres. The rail. { way ' legislation of 1910 practically doubled the value of these stolen {lands and 84 "stakers" cornered 1,- | 749,840 acres in that year. The | Land Act of 1911 doubed the price {of lands and thus seeured the for- tunes of the lucky speculators. Stak- | ing thereafter went on at the rate of 450,000 acres a week. The game was a sure thing and everybedy with a pull wanted to get in on it. As a mater of fact staking was so eager that it ran ahead of the exist- ing surveys, and when Mr. Cots- worth, as chairman of the Civil Ser: vice Commission, drew attention to this abuse he was met with the sug- | gestion from the Executive Council that he hand in his papers, end his worksén the commission, and accept $8,000 for his time and trouble, It was also suggested that Mr. COots- worth get rid of his Chief Engineer, r, F. C. Gamble, who was as incor- ruptible as he was, Commissioner Cotsworth accepted none of the sug- Bestions, stood by his Chief Engi- neer, and brought in a report that wai never printed. Although the Supreme Courts of British Columbia and the Dominion of Canada have both declared 'that this method of staking land i§ fraudulent and ille- gal, the game went right along until the boom burst. The lands are as- sessed at 10 cents an acre, although the Government paid 40 cents an acre for railway subsidy lands in the same districts. The grabbers usu- ally secured this land from the Gov. ernment on a part payment of fifty cents an acre, perhaps paid nothing further on it, not even taxes, and then re-sold it at higher prices--not a bit of it at Jess than seven. dollars and a half an acre--to unsuspecting settlers who were unable to get a proper title to the land. Often en- ough these foreign speculators were not particular about the land they sold, and many cases of hardship have arisen among settlers who thought they had bought farms and found nothing but sand and moun- tain scenery. All of which goes to show that the bona-fide British Columbia settler has a fat chance under the McBride system of exploiting Crown lands. The alienation of the public domain, howesver, 13 only a small part of the indictment against the British Col. umbia Government. Coal lands, timber resources, railway subsidies, pulp leases and company promotions are sources of scandal which have transformed, as the Vancouver Sun remarks, a flourishing province "into a community ich is not far short of bankruptcy and where em- ployment is at a minimum." ~H. F. G. A Poor Man's Offering Canadian Courter. An old man in a faded suit of clothes which did not suggest opu- lence turned up the other day in an office where thay were accepting sub- Toke us of i pocket & ity ro ugged out ot a y ro which contained just $750, t00 old to go," he said: 5. they tell me that one EE a catia" ee aa y out my sav. ings to buy and here they are." The old man made his money, KINGSTON" EXPLAINS NEW MOVE, Evacuation of Warsaw Due to Lack of Arms, In response to a request from, the Associated Press for a statement on the present situation at Warsaw, the Russian Embassy in New York gave out the following: "A vast number of men with full equipment and amply supplied has been directed against the Russian, forces in the Polish capital, On the western front (in Poland) there has-been concentrated nearly-the-en- tire Austro-Hungarian army, except- ing the forces assigned to duty on the Italian border, and in addition sev- enty divisions of the German army supported by nearly all the German cavalry, Furthermore, the Turks have diverted a portion of the Rus- sian army to the Caucasus, : "As a result of the exceptional de- velopment of German and some Aus- trian industries, the enemies of Rus. sia dispose of enormous quantities of artillery, machine guns, and rifles and 'a most abundant supply of am- munition, Russia has encountered a temporary difficulty in supplying her forces with sufficient arms and ammunition to fight against an en- emy so plentifully equipped as Ger- many and Austria-Hungary. Never- theless, the most Active measures are being taken to remedy this defi- ciency, ' This lack of arms and ammunition is the reason why Russia has adopt- ed a defensive mode of warfare. Al- though not so plentifully supplied with the means of waging war, Rus- sia has succeeded, thanks to the he- roic tenacity of her troops, not only in checking for the space of nearly three months the forward rush of her enemies, but in inflicting count. less losses upon them. We have un- dermined by degrees the strength of their attack, and, as is proved by the poor physical condition of the pris- oners taken by us, we have brought them to a state of considerable ex- haustion. : "A war is not decided by t¥e inva- sion and occupation of any section of territory by one combatant or the other," but rather by the final out- come of the struggle between all the forces engaged. Consequently, the power which husbands its strength until the end must: win, A change of the front line may be regarded as necessary for the purpose of placing the troops in more advantageous po- sition to continue the strife. "Russia's means are inexhaustible and she is only beginning to develop her powers, while the strength of the Germans and Austrians has reached its highest point. They cannot avoid failure in the future. was always the weakest in the strate) gic position of Russia. We did not count in our plans upon holding pos- session, for the first period of the war, of the region within the sweep of 'the Vistula and territory border- ing on this river. Consequently, as far back as 1910 Russia withdrew a portion of her forces from this terri- tory "into interior provinces and es- tablished her principal line of de- fence along the middle reaches of the Niemen, and thence in a southerly direction as far as Brestlitovsk." A Woman's Rights, A woman's rights--to be loved as she should be, Honored and trusted as you are or would be. A woman's rights--to be part of you truly Your hopes and your aims and your purposes duly, Your outgo and income, your losing or winning, All but your evil and anger and sin- ning-- And that she will know by the light of her light, Which is surely a gift ,it it isn't a right . A woman's rights--to be talked to in tenderness, gir Treated with candor and frankness and care; . A comrade, companion through all this dark wilderness, Part of your passion as well as your prayer; : Part of your hoping and planning "and dreamnig, Part of your sorrow and trouble and woe, . Part 'of your: laughter and sunshine and gleaming, . Kgowing you, all of you, all that's know, A woman's rights--to have means without asking for Every five cents that she needs in 'her life; Her gladness He bject. of all you are t, Proud of the comrade you have in your wife; - Proud of her beauty, devotion--and giving her More than a mere casual mention or less-- . A thing to be round when your need something done, pair for at times with a bonnet or dress.--Baltimore Sun. "The line on the western frontier | ONTARIO, THURSDAY, AUGUST 5, 1915 SECOND SECTION -- SAVED FROM LAKE ONTARIO WRECK WITH LIFE LINES. the storm, the sailors' lives row: --Sam Seriver, Ted. was got-to the steamer and in the darkness fev hours after the accident. In one of the worst storms in the history of Lake Ontario the Canadian Alexandria, from Montreal to Fort William with package freight for Western ( famous Scarboro Bluffs, at Toronto's front door. were despaired of. all, U, ORourke, J. Hickey, Jas. Riley, Tom Mills. Steamship Lines' = freighter 'anada, was driven ashore on the For several hours, while the vessel was breaking to pieces in Finally, all were taken off. Back row: --Robert Law, Gibbs, Floyd Duv: through the bravery of farmers on the shore, a life line Above are eleven of the survivors, photographed a George Lovell, Frank Purdell, Wm. Kennedy. Front The Wreck of the Steamer Alexandria. A | The Newest Notes of Science | A compressed alr hammer has been invented for breaking up pave- ments. : ' Cigars are now regularly exported from the Phillippiies to 40 coun- tries. Milk sterilized by electricity will keep sweet in capped boftles for eight days. The British Government is estab- lishing a very powerful wireless sta- tion in Jamaica. Virginia is the leading state in the production of soapstone, Vermont ranking second. In some portions of Switzerland granite is so plentiful that it is used for telegraph poles. 'The rivers of the United States are wearing down its lands at a rate of about a foot in 9,120 years. reconstructing some parts an English railroad is usir for light work a locomotive buiit in 1847. Clamps have been patented that grip the rungs of ladders and planks form |= block of ice with an electric fan. a with which motion pic- res of the atrora borealls have nade has been built by a Swed- throwing the rays just where needed and with a folding wire guard for holding the tongue down. For increasing the circulation of hot air from a heating plant an elec: tric fan of less speed than usual has been designed. A French automobile alarm con- sists of a pair of bells rung by a pro- peller that is whirled by the air through which it passes. The pen is inserted against a spring in a Oregan inventor's pen- holder and can be adjusted and held in position by a set screw. Russia's first pneumatic postal service will "be established in Mos- cow, followed by similar installations in several other cities. A New Jersey barber is the inventor of a comb that can be attached to one blade of a pair of shears fo save time in cutting harir. Experiments have shown that pa- per pulp can be economically made from the stalks of the millet that grows prolifically in Masichuria. To lessen automobile - headlight glare, a Californian' has invented a paper bag resembling a Chinese lan- tern to enclose an entire lamp. A battery invented by a French electrician is claimed to give six times the usual eurrent by heating its contents to the boiling point. A lock has been invented which is sald to make it impossible for the head of a sledge hammer to fly off the handle, even if it he broken. A 1,000-horsepower turbine, driv- en by the explosion of producer gas and air, §8 running a high voltage dsnamo successfully in: a German ty. AH An Ohio inventor's baby carriage 2b, Toadiring Tee i to pp nd Reman 1 providing equal protection with a causing them to breathe more slowly thinner deposit. {than normally. In Frankfort, Germany, household | A theory has been advanced by a waste is collected and burned in a French scientist that electric cur- plant that provides steam to dynamos | rents can be made to take the place that produce about 1,000 horse- of food in sustaining life to a con- power. siderable degree. A motorcycle street-sweeper for! To enable a person to make the smooth payements has been invent-| correct change in the dark a Rhode ed, carrying in front of the sweep-|Island man has patented a purse ing mechanism a steel brush to loos- | with a properly shaped compartment en dirt. for each kind of coin. : In a new French nutmeg grater,| In connection with a new hotel at the grating portion is - a circular| Honolulu there will be built a glass plate which is revolved by a crank as | walled shaft ia which guests of the a nut is held against it within a tube, | house can descend into the sea and A new French automobile wind- watch its life, ' shield has a hinged center section] A clock run .by electricity drawn which may be opened to any deired | from the earth that has been in cons extent to lessen the resistance of the | tinuous operation in Pennsylvania air. | since 1879 is the nearest thing yet to 'To make meat tender, an Oregon | Perpetual motion, : man has invent a machine that! Although he lost a hand While ex- passes it between a roller and level perimenting with radium a French plate, both covered with corrugated | scientist has constructed a laboratory steel. ! {and will devote the remainder of his A boatman on a shallow Missouri | life to its study. river drives his craft with an aerial For turnipg pages of music on a propeller which is so mounted that piano or organ rack am Ohioan has it can also be used to steer the boat. invented a pneumatic device, operat- By a mechanical process, oil js be- | ed by a rubber bulb that can be pres ing extracted % a successful seale in | Sed with the hand or feet, Italy from © heretofore refuse! * A lumineus paint for automobiles grape seeds of the wine-making dis- | invented in England is said to be so tricts. Siletiive that a car coated with it is A coal shovel lias been patented Visible at night for two miley with- with a reservoir in the handle from Out tlie use of lamps. = which oil can flow upon coal as it is; When sugar first was made from handled to make it ignite more beets it took about twenty tons ef quickly. beets to produce a ton of sugar; now 'More than 35 per cent. of the mile- | it requires but six toni to scien- age of German railroads is laid upon s iron ties, one state, which is rich in Jorems, using them almost exclusive- ly. "An automatic fire-escape has been tific breeding of the be Swiss fo arc light y Danish scientist has designed an electrochemical apparatus for stor- ing up the energy of sunlight and transmitting it in the form of elec-