Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/814

792 gains to the people at large offer an inducement to capital, while the many considerations of health and morals offer men who desire to use their means for the benefit of their kind an opportunity that has not existed in the past. From my knowledge of some of the men who have been foremost in projecting lines of rapid transit, but who have been accused of doing it for entirely selfish motives, I learn that public benevolence has influenced them to a sufficient extent to induce them to take the great risks which are apparently involved. I believe that could the real, underlying patriotism of such men be known, and the confidence of the public in their willingness to do work for the public benefit gained, the solution of the rapid transit problem would be much easier.

Capital is securing less and less margin of profit through its investments, whether in manufacturing or in other enterprises. The capitalist is satisfied with a safe and sure return of from three to five per cent, and the spirit of altruism, which seems to be growing more and more rapidly among our millionaires, and which is leading them to the establishment of great institutions for public good, will lead them ultimately to such operations as those essential to secure the best results of rapid transit. Private capital, encouraged and protected by public sentiment and municipal enactments, may be capable of solving this problem. If it is not, then public sentiment, interested in the welfare of the people at large, not only from an economic point of view, but from sanitary and ethical considerations, will insist uj3on a public solution of the question. It is an important study, and the officers of the eleventh census are entitled to great credit for their efforts to bring out the partial results they have published, and, later, to give to the country the full data relative to rapid transit in cities.

a paper on the Meteorological Results of the Challenger Expedition in relation to Physical Geography, Mr. Alexander Buchan expresses the conclusion that the isobaric maps show in the clearest and most conclusive manner that the distribution of the pressure of the earth's atmosphere is determined by the geographical distribution of land and water, in their varying relation to the heat of the sun through the months of the year; and since the relative pressure determines the direction and force of the prevailing winds, and these, in their turn, the temperature, moisture, and rainfall, and in a very great degree the surface currents of the ocean, it is evident that there is here a principle applicable, not merely to the present state of the earth, but also to different distributions of land and water in past times. In truth, it is only by the aid of this principle that any rational attempt, based on causes having a purely terrestrial origin, can be made toward the explanation of those glacial and warm geological epochs through which the climates of northern countries have passed. Hence the geologist must familiarize himself with the nature of these climatic changes, which necessarily result from different distributions of land and water, especially those changes which influence most powerfully the life of the globe.