Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/946

856 Sully, James. Studies of Childhood. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 527. $2.50.

Textor, Lucy E. Official Relations between the United States and the Sioux Indians. (Leland Stanford University Publications. History and Economics, 20. Pp. 162.

Tyler, John M. The Whence and the Whither of Man. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 308. $1.75.

Union College Practical Lectures. (Butterfield Course.) Vol. I. New York: F. Tennyson Neely. Pp. 429.

University of the State of New York. (State Library Bulletin. Legislation, No. 60. Legislation by States in 1895.

Wright, G. Frederick Greenland Icefields and Life in the North Atlantic. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 407. $2.



Seven Years of Strikes.—Mr. Wright, the Commissioner of Labor, gives some interesting information in his last report. During the past seven years and a half the number of persons thrown out of employment by strikes was 2,391,203. His tabulation by States shows that the majority of these disturbances took place in five States—Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. These States contained fifty-one per cent of all the manufacturing establishments and employed fifty-six per cent of the capital invested in the mechanical industries of the country. Out of a total of 10,488 strikes for the entire country, more than fifty-six per cent occurred in twenty-six cities. The total wages loss in these twenty-six cities, Mr. Wright estimates, was in round numbers $35,000,000, and the loss to employers was something less than $29,000,000. Twenty-five per cent of these strikes were for an increase of wages, thirteen per cent were for reduction of hours, eight per cent were against reduction of wages, seven per cent were sympathetic, six per cent were for increase of wages and reduction of hours, four per cent were against the employment of non-union men, and three per cent for a recognition of the union. A study of the great effort and loss which these struggles present, says Architecture and Building, will compel the conclusion that some method of arbitration should be adopted.

The Nose as a Germ Filter.—It would seem, from the researches of St. Clair Thompson and R. T. Hewlett (London Lancet, January 11th), that the human nose is a nearly perfect filter for micro-organisms. These experimenters calculated that under very favorable conditions the lowest number of organisms contained in the inhaled air of an hour was fifteen hundred, and that oftentimes in the air of a great city there must be as many as twelve or fourteen thousand drawn into the nose during the same period of time. The fate of the thousands of microbes which thus enter the human body is a question of great pathological interest, and this increases when it is remembered that the expired air is practically free from germs. The fact that inspired organisms do not, as a rule, reach the air cells, was first pointed out by Lister. Later, Tyndall showed by his experiments with a ray of light in a dark chamber that expired air—or, more exactly, the last portion of an expiration—was optically pure—i. e.,that respiration has freed it from the particles of suspended matter with which it was laden. Since then numerous experiments have been made by bacteriologists, which show expired air to be free from germs. Grancher has made many experiments with the expired air of phthisical patients, and has never found in it the tubercle bacillus or its spores. "Now, as the air is practically freed from all germs by the respiratory act, we have to consider where and how the thousands of organisms are arrested in the air passages. The experiments of Hildebrandt would tend to prove that the air is entirely freed from all germs before reaching the trachea. In verifying this we have examined the mucus from the trachea of all animals recently killed in the laboratory, and up to the present have found the mucus to be quite sterile. We therefore commenced with the nasal fossæ, and found that the mucous membrane of the healthy nose only exceptionally shows any 