Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/150

138 door had a pane of wire-glass, eighteen by twenty-four inches, set into a wood, metal-covered frame. The entire roof of the test house was replaced by a skylight. One side of this skylight was provided with three lights of a quarter-inch ordinary rough glass; the other side with three lights of a quarter-inch wire-glass. In order to make the test as severe as possible, iron grate bars were placed in the bottom of the test house, and openings were left in the wall near the ground for the purpose of free draught. The house was filled two thirds full of wood, liberally treated with coal oil and resin. In a few moments after the fire was started the ordinary rough glass began to crack and fall into the fire. The wire-glass in the fire door soon became red hot, so that a piece of paper held against it on the outside was easily ignited. The three plates of wire-glass in the skylight, subjected to the entire heat of the fire, also became red hot, but retained their position throughout the test. At the end of thirty minutes water was thrown on the fire and glass. After the fire was extinguished the three plates of glass in the skylight were found to be cracked into countless pieces, but still adhered together, forming one sheet. The window-light—which, as the result showed, was not properly secured to its frame—was found to be in the same condition as the skylight, excepting that a large crack had developed. The plate of glass in the fire door was cracked the same as the skylight, but, being well secured, it did not give way.

Constitutionality of Time Labor Laws.—The general trend of the decisions of courts, cited by Mr. S. D. N. North, in his paper on Factory Legislation in New England, concerning laws limiting the hours of labor, is against their validity. They are regarded as attempts to limit the constitutional right of freedom of contract. But some of the decisions are conflicting. The Illinois Supreme Court has decided that the effect of a law of this kind would be to deprive men of liberty and property. The Supreme Court of California declared an eight-hour ordinance of the city of Los Angeles simply an attempt to prevent certain parties from employing others in a lawful business and paying them for their services, and a direct infringement of the right of such persons to make and enforce their contracts. In Nebraska, an eight-hour law was held to be unconstitutional, as being special legislation, and as attempting to prevent persons legally competent from making their own contracts. In Illinois, an eight-hour law for women in clothing factories was declared to be unconstitutional because it interfered arbitrarily with the right to buy and sell labor. The mere fact of sex, the court held, would not justify the enactment of limiting legislation, unless there may appear "some fair, just, and reasonable connection between such limitation and the public health, safety, or welfare proposed to be secured by it." These facts are used by Mr. North as an argument against further attempts to limit the conditions of labor by legislation, lest the test of constitutionality should be pushed to the extent of overthrowing the restrictions we already have and accept as just.

Indians of the Paraguay Hirer.—An interesting account is given by an Italian artist, Cavaliere Guido Bozziani, of two Indian tribes dwelling on the Paraguay River, among whom he spent some time, whose civilizations are very different. The Chamacocos are a people of noble stature and fine appearance, wearing no clothing "except rough sandals of peccary skin when on the tramp and a profusion of feather ornaments and necklets of reeds, etc., on festive occasions," and excel in feather work, forming combinations of great beauty with the variously bright-colored plumage with which the region supplies them abundantly. They have, too, the singular taste of making much use of rattlesnakes' rattles for ornamental purposes, wearing them with feathers in diadems, armlets, and leglets, bunching them into pendants for earrings, and tying them on axes and clubs. During their dances they use as rattles small gourds containing stones and belts made of loosely strung carapaces of tortoises or the hoofs of stags. Their pottery is all hand-made and rude. Their weapons and implements are long-handled stone axes—quite singular plain—clubs, wooden spears, large bows for shooting arrows pointed with hard wood, and small bows with a double string,