The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1906-04-09
COSBY NOTES.

There is in the pose Office depart
ment an employee who has been on
the rolls for upwards of thirty years
at an annual salary of 1920 and who
has, in spite of his small income,
educated large family SO we'll that to-,
day each and every one of them is
able, and does, earn from three to six
times as much as the father.
In 1873 Postmaster General Criswell
appointed Edwin Hodge as Il Waterman
in the department and assigned to him
the care of the official carriage. Hodge
was coachman, who had been train
ed in England, and for nearly twenty
years he sat on the box seat of the
postmaster generals carriage with
ministrations of Messrs Creswell, Mar
shall. Jewell. Tyner, Kek, Maynard,
James, Howe, Gresham, Hotton, Villas,
Dickinson and Wannamaker, he con-
tinued to guide the reins of the official
team OF the postmaster General. Mr..
Bissell succeeded Mr.. Villas and he
concluded that Hodge had borne the
hard brunt long enough and in con-
sequence assigned him to an easier
place inside the building, and Hodge
is there yet. Anyone who gets off
the elevator at the fifth floor of the
post office department will find the old
gentlemen at 4 little table just op-
posite him as he alights. He will
find a courteous public official SER
want ready to guide the stranger to
the room of the postmaster general
or any of his assistants, and no one
will ever forget him. But not one
visitor in ten thousand will ever dis
cover that the courteous little gentle
man is the father of two young men
who occupy important positions in the
federal service besides four other
children who fill responsible positions
in the business world. MI Hodges
Oldest son is the chief chemist of the
Army Medical Museum, whose duties
require him to test every package of
drugs purchased for the medical de-
partment OF the army. His second
son is the chief ethnologist Of the
Bureau of Ethnology, and there is no
man more competent for the position
in the world today. A third son is
engaged as master plumber in this
city and has a business which nets
him an income four times as great
as that Of his father. The fourth son
has been connected with the Fidelity
Life insurance Company of Philadel-
phia for the past seven years and has
just been promoted to the position of
assistant secretary at salary of $1,000
per annum. Mr.. Hodges two daughtesr
have been employed for years in one
of the biggest business concerns in
Washington, one as cashier and the
other as bookkeeper. This record
would seem to indicate that there are
still opportunities for the children of
poor men even in this Trust ridden
country.
For the past ten years the COM
missioners of the District of Columbia
have been trying to abate the smoke
nuisance in the city of Washington to
such an extent as to insure clean as
we'll as pure air. They have succeed
ed to marked degree but not to their
entire satisfaction. Scarcely a week
passes that the revenues are not in
creased by the collections of fines of
fifty dollars each from the proprietors
OF department stores, managers of the
street railroads and various other bust
ness men who have heretofore found it
impossible to prevent their smoke
stack from belching black smoke to
greater period than the law allows.
But on Wednesday of this week the
district commissioners were invited
to test smoke consuming furance
which had just been installed in one
Of the power houses of one of the two
electric railways doing business in
the District of Columbia,
This new furance is designed ex-
actly on the principle of a kerosene
lamp. The inventor claims that he
discovered that when lamp chimney
is taken from burner the carbon in
the oil and wick of lamp escapes in
the form of dense smoke; when, how
ever, the chimney is returned to the
burner that smoke, is all consumed.