Daily inter mountain., 1899-01-18
SMOKE MESSIAHS.

And now comes the city Of Missoula, like
proach of a smoke messiah. His objec-
tive point is Butte and his mission is to
dsperse. dissolve or destroy Butte's smell
ter smoke The Missoula messiah is not
the. first who has come to this city, loaded
down with a large, beautiful theory,
stalwart supply of confidence and a var
led assortment of arguments to relieve
our complaining citizens Of their heroic
doses of smoke mixtures. All these mes
of doing it and when the thing will be
done. With more or less fuss, frills and
feathers of the messiah tackles the job,
wrestles with it awhile, rests to catch his
breath finds a weak link in his theoretical
chain, throws up his contract, leaves for
his home in the clouds and never comes
back. A new one emerges from the wild
erness of anxiety and doubt. the whole
performance is repeated with slight var
iatons, he leaves and never comes back,
and SO the play goes on.
Now there are but two messahs who
can relieve Butte from offensive smoke as
long as such smoke shall be created; the
one is he who can change law of nature
which has thus far been regarded as ire
vocabe and irrepealabe as that of the
Medes and Persians; the other is the man
who will conduct the smoke into a large
lue or series of fues leading to a point
whence the atmospheric conditions favor
the dispersion of the smoke to harmless
space. The former we will never see until
the second coming Of Christ, or the world
shall be made over again: the latter is in
our midst. He applies artificial means
and the thing is done. Let us see if the
proposition is not right
Butte, proper, lies upon the southern
slope of the great Rocky Mountain
range, at an altitude of $500 feet above
the sea level Its surrounding atmos-
phere is rare-exceedngly thin and light,
and, like air at that elevation, is incapa-
BILE of sustaining any substance heavier
than itself. During very cold weather
our air currents are as still as disap-
pointed smoke Messiah. They don't
bulge an inch. The air appears abnor-
mally thin. The smoke from our smell
ters precipitates itself to the ground as
readily and as easily as brick falls from
a chimney. The fallen smoke, obeying
natural law, rides into the city upon the
back-so to speak-of the thin, cold air,
which, obcying the same law, rushes up
here to.fill a vacuum created by slightly
higher tcmpera ture than that in the
vicinity Of the smelters. This higher
temperature is due to the vast amount of
wood and coal consumed in the stoves
and furnaces used in the center or more
densely populated portions of the city.
In word, nature abhors a vacuum, heat
creates vacuum surrounding air rushes
| in to fill it, and there you are, wheeling
coughing and kicking in the smoke.
The long fue plan confines and takes
charge of the smoke as soon as it leaves
| the heap roasters and smelling furnaces.
There may be times when it will buck
and try to find it's way back, but after it
gets faily under way toward the Fourth
of July district or some other district,
it will kindly take to the woods. and, as
sisted by the current Of air it's own
warmth will create. will soon lose itself
among the clouds. That is about the
way one sees it who has closely observed
our climatic conditions and acquainted
himself with the laws which govern
them.
RATTTE Enp SENAT0ne uroc