Fort Worth weekly gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-10-30
That nGraat Air shlp :"

1t is safe to 81 ate that every newspaper within
the United States Of America has lately had
something to say about great air ship invented
by someone at Mount Carmel. III. powerful
company hos been organiz ed to put the inven-
tion into practical working shape. end the HI
nois legi 'lature has, by special act granted the
company charter. 1t looks, therefore. as if
tn are must be something in the thing. Are We.
sure enough, on the very eve OF successful
aerial navigation, as seems to be so confidently
claimed by the people interested in this remark
able discovery The Fort Worth GAZETTE an
pears to b. handling sc ientifc well all other
useful and interesting subjects hence. put the
above question to THE GAZETTE, hoping to OBJ
tain through the paper an EXPRESSED opinion
sands OF your readers would be pleased to read
of what you know think concerning the
coming great air ship of Mount Carmel, III.
The whole thing is doubtless a gigantic.
and certainly well planned. advertising
scheme; and 1t is more than highly proba-
BILE that this scheme is the only invan-
tion existing in the case No advertising
scheme ever set on foot was more clever,
and its extreme simplicity leads one to
wonder why Its like was not sooner re-
sorted to. While we have no kind of
idea that there is any inventor of air
ships living at Mount Carmel, we must
still give the place full credit for having
a genius interested in Its welfare.
The town or rather village of Mount
Carmel is a little out-of-the way place To-
Gated on Wabash river at point known
as the "rapids'' or "falls.' The river
is navigable for small steamers during
portion of the season-during the dry
season of the year it is not nav gable at
all. In earlier times these rapids marked
the head of navigation at all seasons;
and since river navigation was every
thing In those DAYS ere the railroads had
been thought of for the then far West, a
little town sprung up at the rapids.
About the beginning of the "f1fties' the
Federal government threw a dam across
the rapids, and put in q lock to pass
steamers, which carried the head of
navigation further up and soon threw
Mount Carmel into state of dilapida-
tiou. The place has never amounted to
much since.
The government dam at the rapids of
the Wabash made fine water power,
however, but up to the present time il
has not been much utilized. Doubtless
the person inventing the air-ship adver-
Using scheme is attempting to bring
Mount Carmel into notoriety, hoping
that such notorietv may in some way
contribute to utilization of the water
into a great manufacturing center. In
the notoriety part of 1t he has certainly
succeeded, for the name of the place is
now in evervbodv's mouth, whereas a
few months ago 50 per cent of che people
of the United States had never go much
as heard that there was such a place as
Mount Carmel, Illinois. To have adver-
tised the name of the place IN a legiti-
mate way, as 1t has been advertised free
through this scheme, would have in
volved an outlay of at least million
dollars.
The charter granted by the legislature
amounts to nothing beyond adding an
apparent back bone to the thing, thus
causing the press to bite at the bait more
readily than might have been the case
under other circumstances. A charter
OH any kind of organization is one of the
cheapest and most easily obtained things,
usually, among all things obtainable.