Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 | Page 2

four spirited steeds harnessed abreast. She holds a wreath in her raised right hand, and her left hand is represented as holding the lines for guiding the horses. The group is full of expression and life, and will add greatly to the beauty of the building to be surmounted by it.
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The strongest wood in the United States, according to Professor Sargent, is that of the nutmeg hickory of the Arkansas region, and the weakest the West Indian birch _(Rur seva_). The most elastic is the tamarack, the white or shellbark hickory standing far below it. The least elastic and the lowest in specific gravity is the wood of the Ficus aurea. The highest specific gravity, upon which in general depends value as fuel, is attained by the bluewood of Texas _(Condalia obovata_).
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GLAZED WARE FINIAL.
[Illustration: GLAZED WARE FINIAL.]
This grand 16th century finial is a fine example of French ceramic ware, or glazed terracotta, and it is illustrated both by geometrical elevation and a cross sectional drawing. This latter shows the clever building up of the structure by means of a series of five pieces, overlapping each other, and kept rigid by means of a stout wrought-iron upright in the center, bolted on to the ridge, and strapped down on the hip pieces. Its outline is well designed for effect when seen at a distance or from below, and its glazed surface heightens the artistic colorings, giving it a brilliant character in the sunlight, as well as protecting the ware from the action of smoke and weather.--_Build. News_.
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WAGE EARNERS AND THEIR HOUSES.
MANUFACTURERS AS LANDLORDS.
Among the more prominent movements of the day for the improvement of the condition of the working men are those which are growing into fashion with large manufacturing incorporations. Their promise lies immediately in the fact that they call for no new convictions of political economy, and hence have nothing disturbing or revolutionary about them. Accepting the usages and economical principles of industrial life, as the progress of business has developed them, an increasing number of large manufacturers have deemed it to their interest not only to furnish shops and machinery for their operatives, but dwellings as well, and in some instances the equipments of village life, such as schools, chapels, libraries, lecture and concert halls, and a regime of morals and sanitation. Probably the most expensive investment of this sort in the United States, if not in the world, by any single company, is that of Pullman, on Lake Calumet, a few miles south of Chicago, an enterprise as yet scarcely five years old. It is by no means a novel undertaking, except in the magnitude, thoroughness, and unity of the scheme. Twenty years ago the managers of the Lonsdale Mills, in Rhode Island, were erecting cottages on a uniform plan and maintaining schools and religious services for their operatives. More recent but more extensive is the village of the Ponemah Cotton Mill, near Taftville, Conn. These are illustrations merely of similar investments upon a smaller scale elsewhere. But the European examples are older, such as Robert Owen's experiment at New Lanark in Scotland, Saltaire in Yorkshire, Dollfuss' Mulhausen Quarter in Alsace, and M. Godin's community in the French village of Guise, which are among the more familiar instances of investments originally made on business principles, with a view to the improved conditions of workmen. New Lanark failed as a commercial community through the visionary character of its founder; the Godin works at Guise have passed into the co-operative phase within the past five years, but Saltaire and Mulhausen still retain their proprietary business features.
The class of ventures of which these instances are but the more conspicuous examples has peculiar characteristics. They differ from the Peabody and Waterlow buildings of London, described in _Bradstreet's_ last August, from Starr's Philadelphia dwellings, and from the operations of the "Improved Dwellings Association" of New York in these particulars: the latter are financially a pure question of direct investment; are mainly concerned with life among the poor of cities, and, whatever philanthropy may be in their motive, are capable of adaptation to any class of citizens. The former, while investments also, are composite, the business of manufacturing being associated with that of rent collecting and sharing its profits and losses; their field of operations is almost invariably rural, and tenancy is restricted to the employes of the proprietor. On the other hand, they differ from all co-operative and socialistic communities in that they are an adaptation to existing circumstances, propose to demonstrate no new theories of economics, are free from all religious bonds, do not depend on any unity of opinion, and do not touch the question of the proper distribution of wealth.
It is, of course, no new thing for