Chapter L: F. Hazelton

_Answer._—1. Trade marks secure a proprietary right of a single firm in the article thus marked. They are intended to prevent an unknown manufacturer from palming off upon the public imitations of goods that have acquired a reputation from the original manufacturer; or they are a certain warrant of the quality of articles bearing them. 2. Bacchus, or Dionysius, was the Greek god of wine, and, according to the myth, the son of Zeus and Semele, the daughter of Cadmus of Thebes. At his birth he was carried by Hermes to Nysa, to be reared by the nymphs. Being struck with madness, at the command of Juno, he wandered from land to land, attended by nymphs having their heads wreathed with vine and ivy leaves and bearing in their hands the thyrsus. To him is ascribed the knowledge of the cultivation of the vine and the manufacture of intoxicating wine, for in his wanderings he carried to men of many lands this information. Those who received him hospitably were rewarded, but all who rejected him brought upon themselves some form of misery. This hero and demigod was worshiped throughout Greece, but chiefly at Thebes, with sacrifices of goats and oxen, and many noisy and indecent rites, until, in 186 B. C., the Roman Senate suppressed the mysteries, which were the principal feature of the worship.

APOCRYPHA AND THE SACRED CANON.

ALGONA, Ill.

I should like to know in what year the Bishops of the Church of
Rome accepted the Apocrypha as a part of the canon.

LAURA A. BARSLON.

_Answer._—As early as the latter part of the first century of the present era discussions arose among Christians regarding the books rejected by the Jews as profane, and at the Council of Laodicea (360 A. D.) the Greek Church rejected all books except those in the present Protestant canon. In 474 Pope Gelasius convened a council of seventy Bishops, which confirmed the opinion of Pope Innocent I., recognizing the Apocryphal books as sacred, and rejecting some of the doubtful books of the New Testament. The Council of Trent (1545-1563) finally settled the mooted question for the Roman Catholic Church, accepting the “Apocrypha” as a part of the sacred canon. The Greek Church has much the same books, while the Protestants retain only the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament.

CHURCH REFORMATION—PAPAL INFALLIBILITY.

DANVILLE, Ill.

Did any reformatory movements or discussions occur in the Roman
Catholic Church before the time of Luther? 2. Are all of the Popes
considered infallible?

JOHN SHORT.

_Answer._—After the union of church and state, during the reign of Constantine the Great, as the church attained great temporal power and wealth, imposing rites and ceremonies were added to her service, and, with these, abuses and corruption crept in. The first great evil was the assumption by the church of spiritual dictatorship, and to oppose it arose St. Ambrose, St. Martin, and St. Stephen. Then occurred the great reform within the church itself, inaugurated by Pope Gregory III. for the purification of the clergy; and at the same time came Abelard, preaching liberty of thought in theology. But the growth of new sects specially characterized the four centuries immediately preceding the Lutheran Reformation. Of these the principal ones were the Lollards (1324), the Hussites (1373), the Moravian Brethren (1417), and the Mystics (1340-1471). 2. The supreme authority of the Pope in all religious matters has been generally acknowledged in the Roman Catholic Church from very early times, but the infallibility of the Pope, in regard to faith and morals, was not formulated and decreed by the Vatican Council until July 18, 1870.

A COMPARISON OF NATIONS.

MEDIA, Kan.

What effect does the present system of tariff have upon American
commercial and industrial interests of the United States? How do
the commerce and industrial products of the United States compare
with those of other countries?

J. H. VICK.

_Answer._—There are several articles on the tariff in Our Curiosity Shop for 1880, to which we must refer you; particularly one on page 149, entitled “The Tariff and the Farmers.” According to high statistical authority the commerce and principal industries of this country, Great Britain, France, and Germany in 1880 compared as follows:

Countries— Commerce. Manufactures.

United States $1,505,000,000 $4,440,000,000
Great Britain 3,460,000,000 3,790,000,000
France 1,660,000,000 2,425,000,000
Germany 1,920,000,000 2,135,000,000

The commerce above referred to is mainly foreign commerce. In the case of Great Britain, what corresponds to our inter-State commerce (the trade between the different portions of the one extended government) is included under the head of “Commerce,” swelling the aggregate largely, whereas but a small portion of the interstate commerce of the United States is included in the above estimate of our “Commerce.” Our fifty million people buy and sell among themselves to supply each other’s wants, and consume a much larger proportion of their domestic products per capita for their own comfort than do the English, French, or Germans. The effects of the tariff in building up American manufactures are shown in the above table, and in the table below are indicated some of the effects on mining, agriculture, and the carrying trade:

Carrying
Countries— Mining. Agriculture. Trade.

United States $360,000,000 $3,000,000,000 $830,000,000
Great Britain 325,000,000 1,200,000,000 805,000,000
France 60,000,000 2,000,000,000 810,000,000
Germany 105,090,000 1,700,000,000 845,000,000

Comparatively few of our manufactures are exported, because our agriculture, mining, manufacturing, commercial, and professional classes consume them at home. So, too, the products of our mines are mostly kept at home, and four-fifths of our agricultural products. If our foreign carrying trade is not so large as Great Britain’s, our coasting and other domestic carrying trade exceeds hers. By division of labor we are creating a world of our own, setting up our own standards of wages, and modes of living, and are, as a consequence, living better, enjoying more of the comforts of life, man for man, than any other people under the sun.

THE JEWISH SCRIPTURES.

ALGONA, Iowa.

I come to you for a little light. In Abbott’s “Life of Cleopatra”
the author states that in early times the Bible was not kept by
the Jews as any other than a vulgar history. I should like to know
whether there is any authority for the assertion.

LAURA A. BARSLOW.

_Answer._—For hundreds of years before the birth of Christ the books of Moses and other works sanctioned by the prophets (whose duty it was to guard the people against spurious writings or the loss of what was genuine) were regarded by the Jews as so sacred that “no one dared to add to or omit or alter anything;” so Josephus tells us. An authentic copy was kept in the Temple, while others copied from it were circulated for use in the synagogues of different places. A Jewish tradition ascribes to Ezra, after the return of the Jews from the captivity, and the college of learned men called the “Great Synagogue,” the collection and selection of writings which form the Jewish and the present Protestant Old Testament canon. There is no good authority for the statement in your question.

SHOOTING NIAGARA.

KANSAS CITY, Mo.

Did any steamboat ever go through the great whirlpool in Niagara
River with anybody on board and without being wrecked?

CONTROVERSY.

_Answer._—The little excursion steamer Maid of the Mist, which used to ply on the Niagara River, between the falls and the whirlpool, ran through the seething rapids and the great whirlpool of that river in 1861, with the captain and two companions on board, one of whom was hurt on the passage. It was a foolhardy feat, and came near ending in the wreck of the vessel and the death of all on board.

THE SUN’S STAY IN THE NORTH.

GILMAN, Ill.

To settle a dispute, state whether the sun stays north of the
equator longer than it does south of it; and if so, why.

YOUNG READER.

_Answer._—The earth’s orbit is not a perfect circle, but an ellipse with the sun in one of the foci, at a point on the long diameter of the orbit something more than a million miles from the center in the direction of perigee, or the place where the earth approaches nearest to the sun. In 1882 the sun was in perigee Dec. 31, and in apogee—the point furthest from the earth—on July 3. For several thousand years to come the perigee point will be south of the equator, as it has been for several thousand years past. As a consequence of this and because the earth moves more rapidly the nearer it gets to the sun, it takes it less time to travel through that part of its orbit south of the equator than through the portion north of it. In the year 1800 the sun was north of the equator seven days 16 hours and 51 minutes longer than it was south of it. The sun crossed the equator, coming north, March 21, 1882, at 12:02 o’clock at night, and crossed it on the return Sept. 22, 1882, at 10:29 o’clock p. m., an interval of 185 days 10 hours and 27 minutes. It reached the equator next on its return northward, March 20, 1883, at 5:39 o’clock p. m., an interval of 177 days 19 hours and 10 minutes. So that the northern hemisphere had a longer spring and summer than the southern hemisphere last year by seven days 15 hours and 27 seconds. The Brazilians and Terra del Fuegans may console themselves with the reflection that in about 6,000 years they will get even with us, and that in a little more than 12,000 years from now the sun will linger in the southern hemisphere a full week longer than in the northern.

AREA OF PALESTINE.

OSCEOLA, Iowa.

What is the extent of Palestine? Where can I get a first-class map
and geographical description of Palestine?

C. M. F.

_Answer._—The area is variously estimated as from 11,000 to 12,000 square miles. The former is Kitto’s estimate, and according to that Palestine has not quite one-fifth the extent of Illinois (56,650) or Iowa (56,025). Maps of Palestine, ranging in cost from $4 to $30, with or without descriptive pamphlets, or geographies, may be ordered of any of the church publication societies in this city by yourself or through the nearest bookseller.

DATES OF CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS.

NEWTON, Kas.

Please give the dates of the amendments to the Constitution of the
United States.