The copper era., 1909-11-11
AN INTERESTING EXHIBIT.
Newspapers FrOmDiStant Lands Oddities
 of the fOreisn Press.

UT tne TOTelSu FTCSS.
 We extend a cordial invitation to the public to examine collection of parts of the world now on exhibit at our office. These papers were sent to us by the Chamberlain Medicine Company, Des Moines, Iowa, manufac turers of Chamberlain's Cough Remedy, and one of the heaviest ad- yertisers not only in this country but in foreign lands. A copy of each issue of every newspaper containing their advertisements is sent to the office of the Chamberlain Medicine Company as proof of the insertion of the ad- vertisement. The package sent to us is selected from these voucher copies. Some of the papers bear names of places which require us to recall for gotten geography or refer to the atlas to locate. Some of them are particularly curious as they are pub lished in the vernacular or native languages which might be likened to the carefully written notes of a..short- hand writer.
 We find the we'll known Chinese characters arranged in vertical lines reading from top to bottom, the lines arranged from right to left. "Sin Wan Pao' published daily at Shanghai is printed on strip of tissue paper fifty inches long and two feet wide. The paper is extremely thin and IS printed on one side only. It is one of the most readable" papers pub- lished as one can read the entire paper by a sort of unrolling process without having to turn page or fold and unfold the sheet.
 The Burmese language, as printed, is composed principally of a combi- nation of circles. Some one wittily suggested that for this reason cir culars would be properly printed in this language.
 Cingalese, the language of Ceylon, is also curvilinear. Japanese and Siamese are composed largely of vertical lines connected by loops at either top or bottom but rarely at both These languages bear some re- sem blance to the vertical writing now practiced in our public schools.
 The four hundred million people of India nave nearly fifty different dia- lects or vernaculars. The Chamber lain Medicine Company advertises in ten of the principal ones, as follows: Beng ali, Gujurathi, Hindi, Kanarese, Malayalam, Marathi, Sindhi, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu. The Sindhi and Urdu are written from right to left i1 the Hebrew fashion. The Urdu is sort of script and is so chaotic in shape that it is impossible to reduce it to the movable type form. Papers printed in the Urdu language are therefore first written out by hand and plate made by the lithograp phic process. The "Oudh Akhbar," six teen page daily published at Lucknow in this language, claims circulation of about 5000. It is said that in or I der to handle this circulation it re- quires an office force of about POO. Fortunately for the managers, the wages paid 10 natives are only few cents day. The "Chabya Pulau" is an Arabic paper published weekly at Georgetown on the Island of Penang, Straits Settlements. The Arabic is also a ''backward" language.
 We are informed that the Cham berlain Medicine Company advertises in newspapers printed in thirty languages. Besides the ve.naCulars and the well known European lam guages, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, German, etc, the list embraces number of languages which until comparatively recent times possessed no alphabet but for which the Roman alphabet has been adopted. Among these are the native Hawaiian Samoan TagAlog Philippine Island-l. ]. Kaff1r, Zull and Basuto, of South Africa. There is also a m odern form of the Mally language u,ing RoTan characters, known as ROmanized Malay. This is used in Java and the Elst Indies.
 It is difficult to conceive how the readers of some of the papers man. age to handle them. Imagine a man