The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-10-31

NY day pieces of work in the world - Is the printing of a Japanese newspaper. Like the Chinese the Japan csc employ a language in writing differ ent in many details from that used in ordinary speech-in other words, instead Of following the European custom of writ ing cute as one speaks, the Japanese author must needs translate his thought into a kind of literary dialect And so instead of the mere handful of letters that supply the needs of an American newspaper. the Japanese typesetter must handle ordinarily from 4000 to 5000 differ ent characters. The compositors must not only be considerable of a scholar to know the possibilities of So many differ ent characters. but he requires also the services of a number of zoys to find and bring them to him.
 The Japanese compositor sits at a table by himself. On receiving his copy he cuts it up into several small strips and dis tributes it among a number of boys who immediately begin collecting the charac- ters necessary to reproduce the article in his newspaper columns. To aid their memory each boy sings to himself the name of the character for which he is looking, the result being a curious dirge- like chant to which all the characters are finally assembled on the compositor's s table. The musical accompaniment. more- over. is an indispensable part of the en- tertainment, for few Japanese of the lower classes can even take in the mean ing of paper or book unless he reads it aloud. When the characters are all assembled, the compositor further as- sisted by a pair of goggles, proceeds to set up his article, the proofs of which are then sung by one proof-reader to another, thus adding another note to the vocaliza- ton of the chorus of small boys now busily selecting the characters for the next column.
 The editorial management of at least one prominent Japanese newspaper, how ever. is much more American than is the composing room, the editor in this case being a Japanese graduate of the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology in Bos- l ton.
 oilF LII CAC ldltSl iilNtiIliOiih pdltiltu III ! the United States is an ingenious mechan- ism for the stamping of laundry articles l and so bringing them safely back to their owners after their disappearance into the washtubs of a large miscellaneous laun- dry. The invention is intended to solve | a problem that has disturbed many a housewife and has found almost as many | different solutions 1 c lbarp laI1n6ripq the difficulty being 70 provide a mark | that won't come orl in the wash and that will come off afterward. In Russia, foI example, the laundries mark their liner with threads in the shape of arrows and by changing the position of one ol more in row of half dozen arrows hundreds of different combinations are | devised to identify the linen of as many i different customers. In Greece the same end is obtained by the use of small safety pirs, each bearing a little tag stamped with a number. In Austria the laundries | stamp the soiled linen with patent ink that is promptly removed by a bleaching powder after the regular washing-a scheme that is probably not fully ex. plained to prospective patrons who wish | to be assured that the laundry doesn't use bleaching powders. And in Egypt al | the AIohammedan laundries use a secret mark of their own to distinguish the linen of an "unbeliever' from that of the Faithful" and the two reliigons are kept carefully apart even In the washtub
 According to an old English law pass ed hundreds of years ago and never of ficially repealed, although it has natural ly become a dead letter, King Edward VII is the legal guardian of every young person in his kingdom under 21 years oi age and no longed provided with a father And if the old law were not a dead let ter, as well as an obvious absurdity, tho crown would be thus responsible for the maintenance of all the children in Eng land whose parents had not left money enough to support them. Any man who