The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1923-10-23
GIVES FORTUNE
To WARD OFF,
famine
Col. William Boyce Thompson
Spends Millions to Heal
Mother Earth.
BY international News Service.

BY International News Service.
NEW YORK; Oct 23.-Future
| generations will not perish from
the earth because Of shortage of
food IL Col. William Boyce Thomp-
sons millions can avert the
catastrophe.
Mother earth, through a copper
cornucopia, poured out bountiful
supply of this worlds goods into
the hands of Colonel Thompson.
Thompson will be no less liberal
In applying the millions yielded by
his extensive copper mines to the
task of healing Mother Natures
Ills.
Builds Plant Hospital.
The copper king already has
spent $4,000, 900 to lay the founda-
tons Of plant hospital near his
home in Yonkers. It will cost
nothing less to establish the ThomD-
son Institute Of plant research.
Thompson embraces the crafty.
ing philosophy that he is merely
diverting into other channels the
bounty that nature so readily yield
ed to him.
] Hanging over the horizon. of the
next hundred years, Thompson and
his scientific assistants visualize
the extinction of the human race
unless the impending destruction of
plant life is averted.
Said DIR. William Croker, director
or research:
''In twenty-five years the United
States population will equal the
capacity of its land, as now farm
worked, to produce its daily food.
We shall have 10000, 900 souls to
feed In 1850 and lao, 200, 900 daily
rations to feed them with"
Their Constant Peril.
Thereafter, DR.. Crocker's predic-
i ton continued, we shall enter a
| period of constant famine peril. The
/ population will go inevitably to 200,-
geo, 0O0-with 10000, 900 chairs lack
ing at the national dinner table.
1t will be too late then to regret
| the follies that wasted and the
rIsts that ate the plant life of 1923.
| At that moment Mother Earth will
| make a summary solution of the DIFF
ficulty-not by taxing her insulted
powers to provide 100000 rations,
but by the simple device of killing
off 60,OO0,O00 humans.
Work Is Under Way.
But 1t is not too late now. Twen-
ty-five years of the labors which
have started in the incomplete first
structure of the Thompson Institute
will, If properly encouraged, humor
Mother Nature into another extern.
sion of her sufferance of human
kind
The scientists grouped by DR..
Croker under the Thompson re-
search administration are doing mar
wells in the diagnosis and treatment
f'of plant disease. Patiently devoting
the same care to- the rotted fruit
and the rusted leaf which the Rookie
Teller Institute devotes to diseased
flesh, they are silently conquering
as great a curse as was ever any
plague.
DIR. Croker paused before a row
of six glass cases containing his
most hopeless diseased patients"
1.-THE rest OF the building is far
from complete, but we, have our
isolation ward In full operation" he
said.
Plants, he explained, have as
many different and serious ailments
as human beings. They are differ
ent. though, in that their caretakers
the farmer, the gardener-have
practically no knowledge at all of
the nature of these ailments.
One Bad Handicap.
Furthermore, the plant is un-
equipped to battle disease, for one
very curious reason which DIR.
Croker expounded:
''The animal has a blood circula-
ton which admirably seconds med
!cal care. A doctor of humans can
introdu-cesa drug into the arm and
know that in few seconds it will
be transported in the blood stream
to the sick spot. Plants have a
rudimentary circulation, sluggish
and full Of the no-thoroughfares
which block the flow Of saps."
Because plants are almost totally
unresponsive to treatment after
they have contracted disease, the
fundamental philosophy of plant
was professor IN Chicago Univer-
sity, is to ward off disease.
Story of Asters.
In a pot beneath an Isolation"
glass stood two asters, and DR..
Croker told a tale Of what these
two humble volunteers had done
| for q billion plants now standing
healthy under the skies Of forty
eight States. -.
! Here DIR. Croker told of the won
derful spirit of cooperation which
animates men of the scientific
world. The cure for aster yellow
was obviously the discovery of
some insect enemy of the brown
hopper, an enemy powerful enough
to fight the brown hopper to extinc-
ton in the warfare Of the insect
world.