The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-11-04
PRESS ON CHAs. P. STEINMETz

better known because his inventions have made his name a household word. Dr. Steinmetz, however, was recognized years ago as mathemati- cal and electrical master, and his abil- ity won substantial recognition, not through monetary compensation, for he scorned that, but in difference to his opinion and through industrial de- pendence upon his services and knowl- edge. Of late his name has become better known in connection with the production of miniature thunder and lightning, but it is the practical appli- cation of his electrical theories and discoveries that has contributed to the permanent betterment and comfort of humankind.
 Although born abroad and arriving in this country penniless refugee, he was not unequipped, according to the New York Times, for Che brought with him a thorough education as an engineer, and it was his good fortune, not long after he landed, to find em- ployers willing to give him the chance to do the sort of studying and ex- perimenting from which additions to the general stock of scientific knowl- edge were more to be expected than an immediate increase of corporation profits. . There, safe from the ma terial anxieties of life, he was not 50 much permitted as encouraged to pur- sue studies the results of which were in, or very near, the domain of pure science'-the science which to the strictly materialistic seems to be much more interesting than useful"
 The story of poor immigrants who have unfolded into genius under the warming influence of America is al- ways absorbing. Emphasizing this feature the Springfield Republican says: "Aside from his standing in the front rank of scientists, Steinmetz was one of the most interesting of Ameri- cans. He belonged to that distin- guished company of men of foreign birth who found a refuge here from political oppression and multiplied their talents in freer soil. He would never have done as an exhibit for eugenics; it is said that he had diff ficulty, on account of his physical con- dition, in passing the immigrant in- spectors, whose rules were less strict when he arrived than they are now. He was of frail physique, scarcely more than four feet tall, and bent with curvature of the spine. But against these liabilities were extra- ordinary assets. He had well laid down the foundations of his edu- cation in the best schools of Germany and Switzerland and when scercely out of his teens had contributed articles of great value to leading scientific journals of Europe"
 As to the profundity of Steinmetz' thinking the Philadelphia Public Ledger remarks: "Even the titles of the monographs he wrote were too deep for the laity. But the result of his work all who run, or who travel by electric locomotion, or see by electric light, may read. Here was man whose rise could not be denied. Ma ture sent him into the world with 2 miserable physical equipment. The eugenists would have dispatched him at his birth on the Spartan theory of the right of only those that are phy- sically fittest to survival. That little crippled body held spirit that reached into mid-heaven and, like Franklin, leashed the lightning and became Olympian. The flash to the key of Franklin was magnified to bolt of one million horsepower, the weapon of Titan"
 "This electrical age may be said to have begun with the commercial use of current in lighting and with the in- vention of the telephone, and this adopted son has place with dis tinguished group of native sons whose work has given this country predomi- nance over the world in the magic distinctive of the age," observes the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. According to the Columbia, South Carolina, State: "It is rather curious that so great a genius in electricity and math- ematics should ever have devoted his time and study to the propaganda of Carl Marxism. Yet Steinmetz was one of the recognized leaders in the doc- trines of the sort of socialism that was first accurately and firmly established by Marx. He wrote and preached Marxism, and even so generally astute and discriminating a critic as the New York Times seems to consider him more conspicuous, perhaps more inn portant or valid as a political the orist than as an inventor and pioneer in the arcana of the heavens. But, we fancy, the political labors of Dr. Charles Proteus Steinmetz, able, 10 doubt, and interesting, as they were and are, will soon be overlain by the detritus of million pseudo-scientific vapidities, while his name will blaze LA ,Ir -f