Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1908-09-24
WASHINGTON LETTER.
From our Regular Correspondent

1t is expected that the President will f,
be at the White House by the time this
letter is printed. The majority of the
summer absentees has already return
ed, Postmaster General George Won
l.. Meyer returned to his home in
Washington yesterday. He has spent
part of the simmer outing, hunting
and fishing in the North, at the family's
summer home in Hamilton, Mass 1t
was there that Mrs. Meyer lost by
burglary fifteen thousand dollars
worth of jewelry. Mrs. Meyer and
her daughters, who spent the early
summer abroad, are not expected
home until next month. The Secre-
tary of the Treasury and Mrs. Cortel-
you who have been spending the sum-
mer at Huntingdon, Long Island, are
expected home next week. They have
been living on farm with all modern
improvements, it is said, and their
young family, of whom there are four,
have had very enjoyable time. Mrs.
Robert Mckee, the daughter of a form
or President, Benjamin Harrison, and
the mother of the once famous Baby
Mckee, is expected to spend a portion
of the coming season in Washington.
She is now with old friends, the family
of Senator Elkins, at Elkins, West
Virginia.
There is universal sympathy in the
city for the sad accident which befell
Orville Wright and Lieutenant Sell
fridge, when they fell from the rs foot
elevation in Wright's aeroplane. Dur
ing the past week, thousands of people
from the city and from other parts of
the country have fiocked in auto
mobiles and in carriages to Fort Myer
where the wonderful experiments that
have filled the world with expectation
have been made. Great as has been
the advance in recent months, result
ing in flying feats at which the world
wondered, it is now clear that the ex-
perimental stage has not yet been pass
ed. A test at the hands of so compet-
broken all records, was no doubt as
promising as human ingenuity could
make it, but human ingenuity cannot
prevent accident with wagon, automo
bile, or any machine, and when that
accident happened in midair, it is
necessarily more tragic and disastrous
than on terma firma. Skeptcs with
reference to the success of flying ma
chimes are strengthened-and with rea-
son-in their disbelief and the accident
at Fort Myer has proven almost con-
clusively that it will never be possible
to use airships for long voyages or for
the transportation of passengers. The
slightest accident will force the ma.
chine to the ground and even if the
passengers escape accident. the ma
chine may be miles from point where
it can be repaired. Mr.. Thomas A.
Edison in a recent interview given in
Salt Lake City predicted that in five
years or less airships will be carrying
passengers across the ocean making
the trip in day at the rate of two
hundred miles an hour Mr.. Edison
also predicts that the North Pole can
and will be reached in forty hour trip
by an airship. But imagine an airship
or an aeroplane crossing the ocean
when some mishap occurs such as is
daily occurring with the motor car for
example. Either it would be thrown
into the deep, or, if it were able to
maintain itself in the air, it would not
be possible to move or to repair the
damage. The experiments will go on
They have received too great an i'm
petus to be arrested hut it is probable
that the youngest child to-day will not
live to see the airship, whether aero
plane or balloon, commercially sue
cessful.