The Knoxville News-Sentinel from Knoxville, Tennessee • 27

fc -i'i KNOXVILLE TENNESSEE SUNDAY MORNING AUGUST 7 1927 V' Clerk Puts Knoxville at Top of Coal Mine Map 'H- i 'V Mahan Who Helped Build His Own College Made President of the Natioiial Coal Association 'j By SACK BRYAN ways another roar to bo done and could bur ecie three dosen whenever he flntahed any eertaln for 15 oenta lu thoee dare tank he eould be euro that hie Mahan hlmeelf need to eell mother would call on he felt so much a master of his work that It made him angrg when his versions were tampered with When he sent la the storg of a big Ignehlng near Williams SINCE the dags when as general manager of the Southern Coal A Coke Co he toured the South building up trade Mr Mahan has never see a finer lot o' the man agreed "Fact I found out some time back rales a family children" i i i I 1 burg It was printed word for word as he sent It as a front page feature When he was taring bricks Into thy walls of Cumberland college Mahan posslblg hoped to be educated there but ha did not anticipate another event that was to be affected bg this work When Mahan had finished college and had started Bailing Insurance with considerable success a professor of hlstorg and Greek from Ohio was engaged bg the college The "prof" arrived In Williamsburg with-a bride -Aethers were no regular rooming places for strangers the Mahans put the couple up till theg could get settled The goung bride proved to be an unusual woman cultured and Intelligent Young Mahan as YDU IS 0 them at that price to the miners fow rou can hoc tha garden when ae a bor bo tended the Edgar" counter In his father's eommleearr VnM! dayl wondwi-rul III In wilKnhn Vw Inspiration came to him Cloeo hr up Kr the stroke of the hoe ho saw the Mr wife wants some goods for velvet leavee of the tomato vines a drees" a grimy miner with a Up another row he eaw the buihr greasr lamp on his cap would sag slustors of the radish patch And Bo Ed Mahan would tip the bolt another side the nymph-llko u' Hul1 onions pointed green flnaera to of calico oft Its shalf quickly the sky- measure It out on the counter One carefullr careless stroke of edge and charge It np against decapitated a tomato vine the miner account Or If meat was asked ter he took up the the radish Andw-thlrd wclMnle-meat-cleaver and whaeked off a directed whack severed the pale Joint or a side walst 01 0B 01 those nrmph-llke onions MAHAN know whether his mother was Co of the Mahan-Kerr Motor Co reallr taken In br this trick or and of the National Coal Aaaod- whether ehe alien tig saw thru It all on at the age of fifteen was la understood but he does know bis spare Urn butcher beker and CMm to dtoSSd candlestick maker for the little never asked to hoe a garden after steadllg risen not alone la his own organisation but In the coal ln-dustrg at large After becoming president of hie own compang he served two gears as president of the Southern Appalachian Coal association For nine gears he has been a director of the National Coal association having been chairman of the committee on transportation and rallwag relations And last June he was given what one writer with the agreement of others calls "the highest honor which the coal Industry can bestow upon ang one he was elected president of the National Coal association Besides his connections In coal Mr Mahan has become a director of the Holstoa Bank and Trust Co and of the Knosvllle For tlllser Co Just now hla name Is before the public as chairman of the committee to bring out candidates for the dtg council see SINCE he came to Knoxville Mr Mahan has been one of the most earnest members of the First Baptist church where he Is a deacon and chairman of the finance committee One of hla moat Intimate friends sags that nothing is so expressive of him as the fact that thru everg trial and adver slty he has maintained a strong optimistic Idealism When he had Just finished college he decided that the one wag to live waa to give the utmost of one's energg and genius to the task at hand and then be satisfied whatever the outcome Is Worry and anxiety he has sought to reduce to the human minimum Everg fall Mr Mahan goes with a few friends down to the Delta club at the mouth of the Mississippi river for duck hunting Evan tha heat duck hunters use a little lx you without But three gears ago the regular fishing trips were suddenly and painfully suspended Mahan and his fellow fishermen Including Will Ross of Knoxville went up to Devil's Creek off the Cumberland river In the Williamsburg region to fish for blsek bass It Is a wild region there twenty seven miles from a railroad and twenty miles from a telephone The country Is covered with boulders fifteen to twenty feet high Mahan walking along thru a ravine slipped suddenly on a flint rock In an effort to keep a bucket of minnows from spilling be fell heavily breaking hla leg below the hip r' was a dark moment one of Intense suffering with grave doubt as to whether he eould be taken out of the desolate place alive But hla friends set busily to work On an Improvised stretcher theg bore him with agonising slowness and ears over the boulders for a mile and a half until theg reached a stream There theg took him -by boat to the camp arriving at five la the evening four hours after the accident Bg sending a runner twenty miles to a telephone two doctors were obtained bg two o'clock la the morning With the temporary relief theg gave Mr Mahan waa able to be carried two miles to a truck which bore him to the-rallwag over a road so rough at times that ho had to be taken out and carried It was twenty-four hours from the time he fell until he reached Williamsburg and could get hla leg properly set He reached Xnoxvllle and waa flnallg sent to Memphis where after much pain and anxiety and aome months spent In a nlaater-of-Parla cast ho that Mr Mahane father believer In mining communltg that grow up around hie father's coal mine Mr Mahan's father was a plo- bard work had not such a blind near In that rugged district flth In It that ha eould not see around Williamsburg He helped Importance of developing the eattbllah the first church and the mind as welt He and other old first school and he was one of the residents ef Williamsburg after first to dig after the hidden treas- tbeg had established their chureh ares of earth rather than be con determined to have a college for tent with what It glelded on the tbelr children surface It was a dream almost a pipe The elder Mahan believed In for there waa no moneg work and he knew that a son this region for such a high could be useful as well as orna flown enterprise But theg made mental Mahan therefore their plane themselves theg saved earlg formed habits of hard work end collected moneg and flnallg that he has never since lived theg built In part with their own down hands the original buildings of But even those born to work what Is now Cumberland college grow tired of some Jobe Ma Mahan himself now hen's life was not without these trustee of the Institution laid and one of them hoeing the gar bricks Into Ita walls In his bog iltn aft gill 1 ii I 1 1 1 wilt1! Its hood In so doing he was making seeming futllltgthaCu iea him possible hie own-edudiHBgrTtfIt seeming futllltg A double-barrelled or repeatlng-walned-the- use of his leg to discover how to turn the brain Into the greatest labor-saving do vice ever created see yt)UNO MAHAN had nothing A a against a In fact all raa from this school then called Williamsburg Institute that he graduated at the age of 17 see rf order to get a little moneg on tl A the elde Mahan while still In the chores of a bog were familiar school took up newspaper work to him When he wasn't helping He became a correspondent ter lu the store or going to school the Cincinnati Enquirer and a he was working about the home couple of other papers sent them Water had to be brought Into the eueh news as he eould and wrote kitchen the cows had to be milk- sketches of mountaineer life la ad the eggs bad to be his district be observed her and admired her began to formulate hla Ideal of a wife And at length when he learned that the girl had a sister back In Ohio he decided that she would be Just the girl he wanted see rrtHTS Mr Mahan fell la love with his wife before he even met her As la Victorian novels hla Judgment proved correct and ho and his wife "lived happy ever after" Mrs Mahan has become well known In Knoxville for her charm and talent Besides being mistress of a lovely home and mother of two attractive goung daughters she has done considerable painting of recognised high quality Hugh Fullerton noted American writer la her cousin Flnallg Mr Mahan Joined his father In the coal business In 1I0S the Southern Coal A Coke Co waa organised with headquarters at Jelllco Tenn The enterprise was now destined to grow to national rather than local or even regional Importance so that the next gear Knoxville was selected as the logical center for the main headquarters Today It markets the output of twelve associated companlee having seventeen mines In Kentucky and three In Tennessee Its mala business office Is la Cincinnati with others at -Atlanta Detroit and Williamsburg Its admlnle- shot-gun but when one dag repeating shotgun failed to repeat he used It as a single-barrel firearm and came back with a full bag of ducks HE used to go up near his old home on fishing trips taking several Xnoxvllle friends with him It was while returning from one of these tripe that he stopped In front of a mountaineer's home where he had always noticed a crowd of happy children playing around a fine family of children you have there a fine family" Mr Mahan said to the mountaineer father who leaned against a wlgglg post puffing a pipe Thru out this whole experience hla attitude waa one of courage and fortitude But fortitude did not mean resignation It was doubtless expressive of something Innate In Mr Mahan when last spring three years after hla misfortune ho again went back to Devil's Creek and blew up the rock he had slipped on ML MAHAN enjoys the milder "A nodal diversions Ho Is a member of the Cherokee Country club la a Shriner and Knight Templar and now and then at the Old Colony club he may be seen at a hand of bridge And he likes golf too At one (Turn to Fags Two Please) He made a particular effort to and the garden had to be hoed Now you can milk a cow till acquire the Journalistic stylo In she's empty and you're done for this work a style whose clarity a while You can bring In buckets of water and be two and conciseness has proved a great help to him since he sags trattvo headquarters remain la Knoxville From an output of 100009 tons when It first located here the Southern Coal A Coke Co has Increased Its output to over three million tons The com pany ships coal as far north as Canada as far south as Florida It Initiated trade-marked coal and was one of the first companies to do extensive advertising ably sure that no more will be At first he found hla stories en-naeded for a time But you can tirelg transformed bg the time never finish hoeing a garden Al- theg appeared la print but later i i A-- '( i'i An American Sign Language Is Galled Greatest Traffic Need Codst-To-Coast Similarity In And Ahead" Warnings Being Studied By Road Experts Iren Bounded In addition Use of yellow for this purpose has a dla-vantage that Is Its first appearance Is usually Interpreted as being transition signal and drivers actually get started when It Is the Intention to hold them stopped" TOLORED lights have been In-v traduced to some extent la warning signs along highways because the Illumination Is more striking than flat paint especially at night In recant glass lettered signs however the effect of light Is obtained without use of eleo-tricity The back surface of this glass Is molded at such angles that It reflects the light from head lamps back to the driver even when be looks at It from an angle These glass lettered signboards are being used as caution signals along highways and also have begun to be used In cities as stop signs at the entrance to a boulevard These stop signs are usually red background with the glass letters In white Except for red lights red the color of danger Is not playing so largo a part In traffic sign language as might be expected This le chiefly because the red does not stand out prominently as a color at night Black lettering on pale yellow has been found to be the most effective contract and black lettering on white Is also easily read Incidentally experiments along this same Une show that dark letters and ftguree on a light background make more legible auto-moMle license plates than light automobllesameaavfSdn al colored letters on a dark ground The beet height for signs from the ground so that they can be read by the light of head lampa has been tested and It has been found that many signs are plaeed too high from the ground It has also been act down as a serviceable rule that warning markers at crossroads or curves should bo 900 to S00 feet In advance Result of some of the testing and planning are found In the set of signals developed by state highway officials and federal highway experts for the 8 highways which consist of 10000 miles of transcontinental highways and roadways connecting with them Twenty-four states have marked out the section of these roads that run thru their territory according to the new system and the res expect to follow suit when details of local arrangements are good deal of scientific Information available showing how and why eertaln kinds of lights and paints and lettering carry a message to the eye more quickly and surely than other kinds Take the question of colored lights for example Obviously some colors are more easily seen than others but which? Some data on this subject were gathered by Dr Knight Dunlap at Johna Hopkins University nndsr the auspices of the National Research Council Dr Dunlap took Into consideration the fact that some four per cent Of man and a slightly smaller per cent of women are color Mind and a great many more are color weak that Is they have difficulty la distinguishing colors quickly or when their attention is divided Translated Into figures this means see oral million who might have difficulty la distinguishing traffic sign ala "It advisable ter traffic purposes" said Dr Dunlap "to treat all persons as If they were color blind In the usual way These people see only two colors blue and yellow where the normal person sees the whole spectrum Red orange and yellow appear yellow or brown and blue green and blue both appear blue There Is no difficulty la distinguishing any color of the one group from any color la the other except that pale blue and pink look alike" GREEN lights need In some towns would appear white to the color blind person he pointed out and to some color blind drivers certain red lights la use would be almost Invisible "The automobile driver" he said "la the vary situations where the signals are most Important has to wuteh ovei chinas and pedestrians at thq very moment Irhen the signals are effective and must frequently see the signals In Indirect vision that Is not looting directly at them but with the eyes directed more or lees la another direction Unfortunately the normal eye Is color-blind at certain angles of Indirect vision and color-weak even at leaser angles That la at ear tain angles of vision the normal man has Just the same difficulties In distinguishing ns the eolor-bUad or color-weak man Orange-red light for stop and blue-green ter go (tha bluer the better) are the two signals whteh are most clearly distinguished ter traffic purposes Dr Dunlap stated Yellow light If used at all for caution shouIR bo Hash- By EMILY DAVIS Safaeae Barvtaa Waff Willw TAN the United States -land of innumerable dialects and local mannerisms of develop for Itself an all-American sign language so that Its road and street signs will talk the same easily read code from coast to coastf This Is the huge problem on which engineers and other traffic experts are working Theg Sever expect to see the dag when all traffic signs trill be exactly uniform everywhere That Is a trifle too much to hope for In as Iqipei feet world In the biggest cl lies congestion mag make special regulations unavoidable But the Bureau of Public Roads and state highway officials together have worked out a standard system of signs for rural highways and a committee on dty CflHMU traffic ordinances has begun to work on a standard system -of suitable signals for city streets And this means that the American sign language Is actually beginning to emerge from confusion into an orderly code mHE whdle affair Is one of 1m-X portanee not merely to the drivers of 11000000 Amsrican automobiles but to every person who walks on 'the streets and roadways When the man on foot who read signs comas walking briskly around a sharp curve Just In time to meet a flying motorist who doesn't read signs either there Is trouble And the man on foot Is apt to faro worse than the man In the ear It la perhaps even more vital that pedestrians should understand the signals along city streets But the percentage of pedestrians who understand what automobils drivers are trying to do at corners and stop signs and left hand turns la still not so very large la spite of campaigns to educate the public along this Una The majority of drivers understand local traffic signals' Their trouble begins when they venture away from home for each town and each state highway system has Its own Ideas as to what certain symbols should moan A government expert on lighting problems ones counted seven different see of the yellow traffic light In different communities And la the country there Is still more variety than In towns Out on the road the motorist happens to pass a striped post which means "Slow down quick eurve On another road la another state he slows down for a striped THE SIGNS BACKGROUND ONE this time painted toMwg elga perched Moreover have the eye which adds the situation effective use of the associated Electric red to night top-get at Mosquito gas after a to beeoms signs an Instant the driver make sore order rpHE symbols the some conferences the problem that the work leaves ALONG these roads which crass the country In every direction will be found shield-shaped signs marked wit number below the letters The number on the shield Is the key to the Identity of the road and conveys good deal of Information to the person who Is familiar with the system All odd numbers for Instance mean roads running north and south Even numbers Indicate each and west roads Route one starting la Mains runs thru to Florida Route 101 parallels the length of the west coast Number 40 Is a cross country mid-eon tlnental route from Atlantia City to Baltimore and thence acroea to Denver and San Francisco Aside from route 101 all three digit roads 'am' cross-over roads leading to the main routes The Individual who finds himself on road marked 140 or S40 will by traveling In a westerly direction find hmeelf eventually meeting main road number 40 Naming roadways has proved confuting to travelers and that la why these routes have been numbered and no attention paid to the names of thw highways with which they may coincide In Mississippi there have been seven Jefferson Davis Highways In Montana one road has had eight different namea all of them In local nse The 8 highway system coincides In some section with the Lincoln Highway and other well known routes but none of the crow country routes fits exactly with the named highways These 90000 miles of standardised road are being marked with a simple set of caution and direction signs Blaek letters on white ground are reserved for Information and direction signs on rectangular boards or on arrows Blaek letters on a lemon-colored background means caution regardless of the exact wording of the sign ON these yellow signs the degree of the haxard Is Indicated by the shape of the signboard A round yellow marker la reserved for railroad crossings A diamond-shaped marker means Blow down and this general message of the diamond ran be read before the driver comes within reading distance of the words eurve or hill An octogon sign means stop And a square sign Indicates a school hospital or other situation which may require nUttle Science Service BLACK LETTERED ON A PALE YELLOW ALL SHOUT the stripes are merely there to make sure of hla eye for the direction atop the pole advertising experts mastered the trick of catching of the motorist a fact to the complexity of Boom of tha very advertising signs make same devices that are with traffic signals signs that change from green and back again at painted boards that say your chicken dinner Not or "Slow station ahead" are undoubtedly good advertising But while the motorist tends leas ksen to the significance of the real warning Instead of STOP carrying unmistakable massage must look again to that the sign Is an official 'and not a clever advertiser's plea chaotic variety of signs and In use began to attract attention of traffic experts time ago So many sommlttscs and re-eearah boards began to woifc on and to confer together It Is hard to say where of one begins and another off The rssnlt of Science Service DREAM AF A ROAMING MOTORIST la the code of eolore and forma for traffic signals approved by a sectional committee of the American Engineering Standards Com-mites the red-orange and blue-green glass mads according to a set formula of color Ingredients are new set down as standard The wisdom of using a yellow light to clear a crossing when the red and green lights change la new being questioned- even apart of color-weakness Dr Lloyd electrical engineer at the 8 Bureau of Standards states that a third color seems to be unnecessary for this purpose "Use of the yellow light baa been discarded In New York City and I am inclined to think It-mlght well be dispensed with In dues" he said display of red In all directions will stop vehicle traffic In favor of po tion exposed for few seconds would serve to dear the crossing on one stream before the green rignal Is displayed to start the other "Similarly If It Is desired to stop traffic In all directions upon the approach of fire apparatus red will do this Just as effevtlvely as yellow or more so and If a special Indication of the condition la necessary the red can bo fldfrA Steal AS-A 4 fjrf a A I 1 i.