The Salt Lake Herald from Salt Lake City, Utah • Page 11

THE SALT LAKE HERALD SUNDAY N04EMEEIt 1S91 SIXTEEN PAGES 11 I GOOD SIGNS PAINTED BY THE UTAH PAINT AND OIL COMPANY Call and see our new shades of Ingrain In connection With our largo stook of Paints wewlth Mixed Paints Papers and also prices on all other styles and and Wall Paper we have a full corps of first lXe alit Kalsomining PAPER grades of Wall Paper We have stook of Colors class workmen Including every branch of tho 11 Paper selected to suit all tastes Oar Room It business It is our aim to secure the very best 1X Id Painters and Moulding Painting Mouldings are the very latest Also Paper Decorators and from past experience 1 Mache in all designs We are receiving tho HANGI ii perience we have without a doubt all that wo 5 could ask for to do our work with neatness and Etc Etc Fresco Etc latest goods in our line with the latest nooBRUSHES application Wall Paper from IA 5io to J3CO dispatch We only ask for a trial I ETCo per roll Varnishes caTo I No I ill THE MOST WORK FOR THE LEAST MONEY No 111 East Firsi Sottth9 Opposiie Ciiy Bat1o BUCKLKNS ARNICA SaLY The best salve in the world for cuts bruises sores ulcers salt rheum fever sores tetter chapped hands chilblains corns and all skip eruptions and positively cures piles or no pay required It is gaur anteed to give perfect satisfaction or money refunded Price 25 cents per box For sale by A 0 Smith Ss Company TOUUIST SLEEPERS TO CHICAGO WITHOUT CHANGE The Great Rock Island is now running through tourist sleeping cars from Ogden and Salt Lake to Chicago via the Rio Grande Western Denver Rio Grande and the great Rock Island route leaving Ogden and Salt Lake every Thursday and Sunday evenings Pullman tourist sleepers through to Chicago without change via Denver and Kansas City making direct connection for all points east Through tickets to destination and sleeping car accommodations can be secured at the depot or of Joseph Brinker ticket agent II railway Union tioket omre I THE ONLY THING NOW USED BY FASHIONABLE WOMEN To perpetuate a beautiful complexion is WisdomsFamous Robertine which is as harmless as the morning dew as subtile in its action as the magic wandand invisible save the bloom and delicacy it gives to the cheekas the air we breathe Read he testimonials from famous artistes celebrated chemists and eminent physicians TAKE POLICY in the old reliable North America of Philadelphia Assets over 15000000 GRANT Co Agents GRANT Manager I a I ffI I Recently the falloutna Notice appeared the San Francisco Chronicle Judge had been sick only about two weeks and it was not until the last three or four days that the malady took a serious turn At the beginning of his illness hesufiercd from diabetes and stomach disorder Later the kidneys refused to perform their functions and he passed quietly away Thus ended the life of one of the most prominent men in California Like thousands of others his untimely death was theresult neglecting early of disease symptoms kidney IF YOU are troubled with diabetes gravel or any derangement of the kidneys or urinary organs dont delay proper treatment until you are forced to give up your daily duties i dont waste your money on worthless liniments and worse plasters but strike at the seat of the disease at once by using the greatest of all known remedies the celebrated Oregon Kidney Tea It has saved the lives thousands Way should it not cure you Try it Purely vegetable and pleasant to take 100 a package 6 for 500 I iII I II I a THOMAS 3 I 2628 3032 First South IIII I i HE WARM WEATHER LEAVES US LOADED III THE down with a great surplus of WINTER GOODS which il must be moved before the holidaystherefore we wllimee I The Greatest Reduction Sale Ever Known 4 See Our races on Wraps I I Cloth Wrap 325 worth 750 II I Cloth Jacket 450 II 875 I II Cloth Circulars 375 600 I Cloth Ulsters 475 900 Plush Capes 975 I 2100 Plush Wraps 975 2000 I I Plush Jackets 1650 3000 i Silk Wraps Fur Trimed 475 1500 INFANTS CLOAKS CHILDRENS CLOAKS I8SES CLOAKe I I ALL DOWN ALL DOWN I I a a THOMAS I I I I lew Goods Received I Thls Week Pure Maple Sugar Pure Canada Maple Syrup SWIFTS 1 CELEBRATED HAfdSJ BACON AND LARD French Peas an dM us rooms In nl1 rrencn teas ana wiusnruums in uiass Huckins Canned Soups ITALIAN MACCARONI AND BEAR LAKE CHEESES 2 eet Pick1es 9 BLUE LABEL TOMATO KETCHUP HARDY YOUNG CO 28 aad 30 lXain Street INT THEIR NEV STORE 1 kt tJ r7y y1 4ts SORENSON CARLQUIST Invite their friends and patrons to call and see them at their new store in tint JENNINGS BLOCK 23 FIRST SOUTH STREET Where they carry a much liner and larger line of FURNITURE and CARPETS than their oldstore would allow them to do Prices Low and Fine Goons a a a MR EDISON AT ROME I A Talk With the Great Inventor in His Laboratory HOW THE WIZARD LOOKS AND ACTS Edison Says Onr Patent System is a Fraud and That lie Never Made a Cent Out of Ills Inventions NEW YOUK Nov 3 lS91p5pecial correspondence of THE SUNDAY HERALD Our patent system puts a premium on rascality I have taken out seven hundred patents for my inventions but I have never bad one minutes protection The speaker was the threat inventor Thomas A Edison The place was his experimental laboratory near Orange New Jersey The time was about eleven oclock one morning a few days ago Mr Edison had had no sleep for thirtysix hours and during the seventytwo hours before this ho had closed his eyes for less than six Still he looked as fresh as a daisy when the morning sun strikes the dew on its petals and tho sparkle of his eyes and the laugh wh ch shook his frame from time to time Were those of a boy He was in the midst of one of those inventive periods when he tUlles but little rest and works away night and day to accomplish his ends He had left his chemicals to talk to me and he cameo his shirt sleeves with his vest of Scotch tweed open at the front and with his shirt bosom of white linen decorated with spots of all the colors of the rainbow These spots were having a kind of polkadot dance up and down his great chest They went in and out between his gold studs and some were stains of yellow and others of wax and melted brimstone An odor like that of the hell broth of Macbeths witches came from the chemicals in tho room and all of tho surroundings showed the simplicity of its owner During these inventive periods Edison sleeps in his laboratory and his meals are sent down from his magnificent home at Llewellyn park Upon a plain table covered with brown paper lay the remains of his breakfast These were the bones of two mutton chops the crumbs of a muffin and a glass fruit can in the bottom of which was a little coffee of the same brown color as that in the glass beside it out of which Mr Edison had evidently drank instead of a cup In one corner of the room was a washstand with a couple of wellused towels over it and the remainder of the space was taken up with bottles machines and other articles of an experimental kind Tile room in which Mr Edison sleeps when at the laboratory is quite as simple and his bed is a folding arrangement which you could buy anywhere for twentyfive dollars Still this laboratory all told must cover several acres Its original cost must have been more than half a million dollars and it takes it is said more than one hundred thousand dollars a year to run it It is the most complete laboratory in the world and inventor in history has ever had anything like unto it In its store room which by tne way is bigger than any country church in the United States Mr Edison has pieces of every known material substance from as ho says a spool of cotton to the eyeballs of an United States Senator He has everything from moss from Iceland to a hippopotamus tooth and he has pieces of every variety of vegetable animal and mineral substances so that he does not have to go out of his laboratory for anything There are more than twenty live thousand different articles in the storeroom and some of these cost as high as a 1000 an ounce EDISONS PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY The workshops of the laboratory cover I judge more than four acres of floor space and the great brick building with its big windows looks more like a factory than a place for tho making of experiments Everything in it Is of the most complete kind in tho world from its mechanical rooms to its musical department and you will find no finer photograph gallery anywhere inthe conntry Tho head of this Professor Dickson has an international reputation as a photographer and ho brings out every week some new wonder in his experiments He has a wonderful skill in the use of the camera upon objects under the microscope and one of Edisons great suits was gained lately solely through the photographs made of slice of Japanese bamboo from which was shown the fibre out of which Edison makes the carbon for his incandescent lamps This slice consisting of a section smaller around than the smallest slatepencil was magnified to the size of the bottom of a dinner pail and a section of this photograph was put under the microscope and again magnified so that the pictures showed the little fibres of the bamboo which after experimenting with a thousand aifferent articles from all parts of the world Edison decided was the best for bis light One of the last experiments in this photographic department was a photograph of the head of a housefly This photograph lies before me The head as magnified is as big as that of a Newfoundland dog and it has hair standing out from its centre in all directions as though about fifty camels hair brushes with hair two inches long had boon driven into a place the size of a tradedollar Its eyes stand out from tho head and in the photograph each eye of this fly which in the original was not larger than the head of a pin is bigger than the palm of my hand and it is made up of thousands upon thousands of little bits of eyes fastened together lIke a honeycomb and Mr Dickson Edisons photographer tells me that if you will lay your watch face upward down near the eye of a fly under the microscope you can read the time in each one of these ten thousand eyes TESTING ELECTRIC LIGHTS Only an electrician can appreciate tho wonders of the electrical appliances of this aahnr tory Intone large room the machines are so delicate that solid walls thirty feet 1 11 deep have been built under the slate slabs supporting them They rest on solid masonry and are so arranged that nothing near them can affect thoir motion either in I sympathy or by vibration In one room I found hundreds of these little globes with I wires of lights insIde of them all blazing I away though it was the middle of tho after noon These lamps said Mr McGuire I are all made differently and we are testing them Everyone of them has its biography I It is closely watched from hour to hour i and the brilliancy and the time it will burn I without breaking or wearing out is care fully noted Through this in time we hope to get the perfect lamp and the perfect car1 I bon which will burn forever In another room lamps were being exhausted and filled I In another the glass was being blown and in a third I found a chemical laboratory devoted I voted to the assaying and reduction of metals and hero Mr Edison is working away on the reduction of iron silver and gold In our conversation he told me of tho vast iron fields of New Jersey out of which tho companies with which he is connected are now making fortunes and as soon as he completes his experiments in iron ho is gong to devote himself to the more precious metals of silver and gold Other rooms were devoted to heavy machinery and there is hardly any kind of a machine from a steam engino to a pin that could not be made in this laboratory It is Edisons pet The inventor is worth millions but he prefers this to steam yachts coaching oxcur sions polo and the amusements of other millionaires and his greatest delight is in hIs work During our talk I asked him how he felt when he discovered a new principle or something important invention and he told me it made him happy all over and that he grasped at it like the botanist does at anew flower or the bugologist at a bug which he discovers and knows is new to science INVENTORS AND PIRATES Returning to my interview and the patent system Mr Edison went on The people suppose I have made money out of my inventions The truth is I have ever mado one cent out of my inventions All I have made has been out of manufao turing My inventions have not been protected tected by the patent office The companies with which I am conn cted have spent mil lions in trying to defend them I have pent about S600000 myself and I believe I would be 800000 better off if I had never taken out a patent What I have made has Dean becauseI have understood the inven tions better and have been able to manipulate late the manufacturing of them better than ho pirates I could not have made any thing had I not had large capital back of me and the ordinary inventor has no protection tection whatever His coruscate of patent is merely a certificate to tho poor house and hundreds of inventors are ruined They spend all they nave in getting out their inventions and they die poor Let me tell you how it works Che inventor has a good thing He takes out his patent thinks he is safe and organizes a plant to manufacture it He has to have special machinery and he makes special experiments and like as not it costs him 200000 before he is ready to begin tomanufrcture The pirato sees he has a good thing He decides to compete with him organizes a company with no responsibility whatever bribes his men and starts in opposition He can in most cases now put up for 50000 what has cost the inventor 200000 and he feels in a few years he can make enough to retire having gotten the cream of the invention Ho begins to manufacture The inventor prosecutes him but the court takes three years before they will hear the case If they decide against him ho carries it to the supremo court which is three years behind hand and it is from six to twelve years before he can get a final decision By this time the pirate has made a fortune and the original inventor is in most cases bankrupt If the case is decided in his favor the pirate is found to be irresponsible and there is no chance for the inventor What the courts should do is to prevent the pirate from manufacturing until he can prove that he bus a right to manufacture The origh ale C1 the man who has the papers the man who has spent his monoy should be given tho benefit of the doubt When this is done our inventors i will have some protection Then invention will increase in the United States The country will jump a generation in a decade and everything will hum GREAT INVENTIONS OF THE FUTURE Do you think Mr Edison said I that the inventions of tho next fifty years will be equal to those of the last fifty I see no reason why they should not replied Mr Edison It seems to me that we are at the beginning of inventions We are discovering new principles new powers and new materials every day and no one can predict the possibilities of the future Take electricity When we pet electricity directly from coal a lump as big as this tumbler will light and heat a whole house for hours and a basket full would run a factory a whole daj In the generation of steam we only get fourteen per cent of tho energy of the coal In electricity we get ninetysix per cent When wo get our eleo trical power direct from coal a few hundred pounds will carry you across tho Atlantic and a few basket full will take a railroad train from New York to San Francisco I believe this to be one of tho great pr blems of tho near future and I have no doubt but that it will be solved 1 have been working on It for years but I havent got it yet When It does come it will revolutionize everything It will cheapen everything and it will be the greatest invention of modern times As it Is now we have to I burn the coal to get the steam and the steam gives us the power which runs the dynamo and produces electricity I Will we ever have flying machines I Yes I think so was the reply but it will not be on any of the plans now proposed I have a different idea in rogurd to I such matters but I am not ready to experiment with them yet How about the making of fuel from water 1 dont beliove it will overpay replied Mr Edison Water is the ashes of nature There is nothing more like ashes It took an enormous degree of heat to make the hydrogen and the oxygen combine to make water and taKes a great degree of heat to revivify them I dont believe it will ever be commercially profitable HIS TELEPHONE TO TilE SUN The conversation here turned to the telephone phone and I asked Mr Edison as to his telephone to the eun This telephone exper mont is the biggest thing of the kind in nature There is in the New Jersey mountains i a vast mass of iron amile long and of about the same width which runs straight down into the earth for a number of miles The telephone said Mr Edison is you know made by running a wire around the top of a magnetic bar and this machine when charged with electricity enables us to register the sounds which come in contact with it Wo are using this immense natural bar of iron of the Now Jersey mountains as the basis of our telephone We have wound miles of wire about its top and have formed an inductive circuit in which wo will have the most powerful of electric currents We expect through it to hear the noises made on tho sun and tho explosions i which are supposed to be constantly going on there will I believe within a few weeks be heard right here We have been working at the matter for some time and havo it just about ready for testing A WHISPER AROUND THE WORLD We have by no means reached the perfection of the telephone Mr Edison wonton Improvements are being made all the time and the day will come when everyone will havo his telephone Long distance telephoning is growing and the only restriction of the possibilities of the telephone is in the sympathetic contact of the electrical wire with the rest of nature If a single wire could be placed so high above the earth that it would not touch the mountaintops you could whisper around the world and you could sing a song in London and havo it heard in Pekin Wherever we get the wire comparatively free from contact with the earth distance seems to make no difference and on a government line a thousand miles long over a treeless country in Arizona we got better telephone connection than we do now between New York and Philadelphia If we could have a telephone from the earth to the sunI mean a wire we could send sounds there with perfect ease and with the phonograph were our language universal we could make speech here and have it recorded and reproduced in any of the great planetary bodies THE KINETOC3RAPH Here I asked Mr Edison as to the pnono graph and he told me that a large number of them were in use and that he believed they would be eventually used everywhere He took me out into his laboratory and showed mo his last invention in connection with the phonograph which he calls by the name of the kinetograph and which is almost as wonderful as the phonograph itself With the phonograph you can take a song of Pattis from the lips of tho Diva and can reproduce it before an audience in all its intensity and beauty a year later and a thousand miles away By tho kinetograph with the aid of a stereopticon you can throw upon a screen a picture of Patti just as she looked and acted at tho time she was singing the song and one of the great exhibitions of the future will be the reproduction of 1 great speeches and songs In this way You can reproduce a pantomine with the kinetograph and you can make Chauncoy pew deliver the same after dinner speech a thousand times with tho same gestures and the same smile if you can once get him before it It is made by instantaneous photography of the man who it to be reproduced The machine takes him in action tion and it so works that it takes 2760 photographs ographs every minute that he is speaking or fortysix pictures of him every second These photographs are taken on a long strIp of gelatine film and in reproducing them they are made to revolve as fast before the oye as when they were taKen Tho result is the eye does not see the forty six photographs but it sees only tho one with the motions or gestures of the man I saw one of these machines in motion representIng one of Mr Edisons employes taKIng a smoke and you can see the man raise the cigar to his lips turn his head and blowout the smoke just as naturally as though he were in life Another set of photographs represented a boxingmatch and it vas as natural as though the men were actually fighting before your eyes and it sometimes took a dozen photographs to make a single motion Mr Edison expects to show this machine in its perfection at the Columbian exposition The machine I mac ne saw was a nickleinthoslot machine amt will probably bo on the market in a short time The strip on which the photographs are taken is about as wide as a tape measure but the figures are magnified through a glass in looking at them THE FUTURE OF THE PHONOGRAPH I asked Mr Edison as to the profits of the phonograph He replied that the invention had not been managed as well as it should be and ho spoke of Mr Lippincolt of Philadelphia the man who sometime ago had the contract to manage phonograph and grapuophono Said he during the talon the subject Lippincott is suffering from a clot of blood on his brain The doctors say this cloyis about the weight of agrambut however big it is it has lost Mr Lippincott a million dollars A million dollars a gram Sixty million dollars an ounce Thats the most expensive material I have ever heard of I dont know whether he will recover or not but the phonograph will eventually pay and pay well I ELECTRICITY AND THE NEWSPAPERS Mr Edison takes pride in having been a newspaper man Ho likes to talk of the days when as a boy ho edited and printed the Grand Trunk Herald He tells me he was a newsboy on tne train when he did it and he believes it is the only newspaper that has ever been published on a newspaper I train He ran it for more than a year and by virtue of it he says he is now a member of the Now York Press club He talked with me as to the newspaper reports which he sent out while a telegrapher and told me that the worst copy he over handled was that of George Bloss of the Cincinnati Enquirer Said hoI was a telegraph operator at Cincinnati at the timo he vas editor of the Enquirer and his copy sometimes came into tho office I remember one piece which none of us could translater and we sent it back to tho Enquirer office and had them copy it for us It was worse writing than that of Horace Greeley and I remember that wo tacked apiece of it upon the wall of the telegraph office and left a standing offer below it often dollars to the first man who could decipher ten lines of it and the money was never reclaimed Such a thing will never happen said when newspaper reporters turn in their copy on the phonograph No replfed Mr Edison it will not The phonograph and the telephone are now I considerably used in newspaper work and we may havo newspaper phonographs in the future and newspaper pictures may be Bent from one part of the country to the other by electricity Will it ever be possible Mr Edison said I to take the page of a newspaper asset up in New York and telegraph such a photograph of it to the other great cities of the country as could bo placed at once on an etching plate and one setting up in this way do for the whole country Mr Edison thought for a moment and then said Yes that could be done though I dont know whether it would bo profitable and the day may also come when a man sitting at a typesetting machine in Now York may by tapping the keys of a typewriter set up the press dispatches by means of similar machines in every newspaper office of the United States There is no doubt but this could be done now and when we have perfect typesetting machines our press telegraphers can do the setting up of their own dispatches THE IRON FIELDS OF NEW JERSEY Mr Edisons new processes of Iron reduction have Wrought avast deal of new ore into tho market Himself and his partners have secured miles of iron territory in the mountains near his home and Mr Edison says there are sixty million dollars worth of iron ore in sight The first order taken by the company was for 100000 tons of ore at five dollars per ton and ho tells me that they can produce some of the finest iron to be gotten in the United States right here within an hour of New York They not only can produce it but are producing it and they have enough ore before them to last many years Ho showed mo an in trumont for determining where iron is It was shaped like a compass and a needle upon it points to figures showing the char acter of magnetic orobelow it This is known by the dip of the needle and Mr Edisons surveyors now make maps of mining countries and tell just about where the veins of iron are located I saw such a map of a country in Michigan and it located with certainty the various deposits There is no doubt but there is a big fortuno in these New Jersey iron mines They havo been worked for yearsj but heretofore the rock hadto contain fifty per cent of iron or it was no good By Edisons process if it contains twentyfive per cent it pays well EDISONS NEW ELECTRIC ROAD Before I left I looked at Mr Edisons street railroad upon which be is working The car and track are in the yard surrounding rounding the laboratory and the invention I understand ready for use It is intended for large cities which will not permit tho use of the overhead wire It will be much cheaper than the cable but will be more expensive than tho trolley system and it maybe used on a regular railroad as well as on a street car Its locomative will have one thousand horsepower and it will take up the eleotricity from a rail which runs along through tho centre of the track and between the two rails on which the cars move It will not be expensive to putdown and Mr Edison says the streets will not have to be torn up as they are for the cable He belives it will be the street railway for cities of tho near future and says he is making the invention for Mr Villard THE STOMACH A CHEMICAL LABORATORY As we talked in this way running rapidly from one subject to another my wonder as to Mr Edisons wonderful vitality increased As I said above though he had had only six hours sleep in seventytwo he showed no signs of weariness and his health seemed to be perfect What man of fiftytwo who reads this paper could act and feel fresh after thirtysix hours out of bed Edison is fiftytwo and he looks as though he would live to be a hundred Said he in response to my question I feel that I am in my prime and I suppose I am a better man than I have ever been have the knowledge and experience of the past to go upon and I dont know why I should not do good work for tho future How about your stomach said I Thomas Carlyle you know says he did not know ho had a stomach until he was twenty two How about I11iJ Do you know that you have a stomachl Yes replied Mr Edison with alaugh I am like Carlyle that have discovered the fact I find that I have indigestion sometimes but I can easily cure myself I do this by change of diet The stomach is a chemical laboratory and digestion is merely a chemical operation If Ifind that my stomach is not working rightly I know that the right comical notion is not going on inside of it and I change my food If I have been eating meat I drop flesh foods altogether and confine myself to vegetables pnd in a short time 1 find myself all right If Ive been eating more vegetables than meat I drop the vegetables and the meat brings me back to my normal state How do you get along with so little sleep I asked 1 dont beliove said Mr Edison that man needs as much sleep as is generally supposed I think we sleep too much and eat too much Six hours or six and a half are plenty for me and I seldom take more If I sleep eight hours 1 find that after breakfast want to go to sleep again whereas five hours puts me in splendid condition and I am ready for anything I inherit a good constitution My grandfather lived to more than a hundred years of age and my father is ninetytwo Neither of them were long I sleepers and I think sleep after all is more of a matter of habit than anything else and that in the far future if we should have an artificial light which would make the world like day year in and year out we would never sleep at all This remark concluded our interview and after a walk with Mr Edison through his laboratory I drove to tho station past Llewellyn park where Mr Edison has one of the most beautiful country residences in New Jersey Hero simple and unpretentious he lives comfortably with his family devoting the most of his time to his lifework of invention His greatest happiness he tells me comes from his workand among the millionaires of toduy his lifo stands I out as a lesson for the young men of the future FRANK CARPENTR THE NEW CABINET OFFICER Stephen Elkins of West Virginia Secretary of War For THE SUNDAY HERALD Copyrighted Tho resignation of Mr Proctor of Vermont secretary of war will not take effect until November 1 He has been selected by Governor Page to fill out the remainder of Mr Edmunds unexpired term in the United States Senate The portrait is of the gentlemans successor in the cabinet Stephen Elkins of West Virginia Mr Elkins is one of our millionaire statesmen He was born in Missouri fifty years ago and is a graduate of the university named after that commonwealth For a time he served in the Union army with the rank of captain In 1863 he removed to New Mexico and served for a while as 1 4 1 i Il ELKIN3 driver on a ranch Being a bright genial young man and acquainted with Spanish he gained influence and popularity and before long was on the roll of attorneys By the prosecution of it is reported 10000 Mexicans who broke the law by holding servants in slavery he laid the foundation of his great wealth tho United States government paying him 25 each for convictions He was elected to the legislature of Now Mexico and subsequently to the Forththird and Fortyfourth Congresses While at Washington he became an intimate friend of James Blaine and of Senator Davis of West Virginia and married a daughter of the rich Senator He mado a great deal of moneyby investments in silver mining in Colorado Later he bought an interest in the coal fields of West Virginia and has his country seat at PIedmont that state His wealth comprises property in New Mexico Colorado and West Virginia Ho spends a great part of his time in New York city whence he directs his vast business interests In the campaign 18S4 Mr Elkins superintended operations for his friend Mr Blaine His conversion to the Republican party took place in 1S70 so that he has attained his majority in its membership Mrs Elkins and other members of his household are reported to be Democrats but he has an able business adviser in his wife who inherits from her father superior judgment and capacity As Mr Elkins is one of tho most prominent and wealthy citizens of West Virginia his appointment as secretary of war is regarded as good politics on the part of the administration that Commonwealth being among the doubtful states.