Monthly Review

October 1929

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EDITORIAL

As electro-platers our business requires us to fight corrosion of metals and we spend many hours in practice of this research and much money.

Yet, as men, we never stop to consider that if corrosion takes such a prominent part in our industrial life is there ”a human corrosion taking place in our minds and bodies?”

Do we appreciate the knowledge we are getting from research, as we used to, when we were keenly prosecuting the investigations that lead us up to our present positions; or have we just corroded with conceit as to our superior knowledge and become a body of dreamers and theorists, who do not practically apply results of investigations, but just sarcastically criticize from our exalted ideas and ego?

In our daily work we have many opportunities to be helpful to our research associates and to reap many new thoughts if we would condescend to at least familiarize ourselves with the results of their work. Try and practice some of then: and report our findings to either our branch or the research committee, which will be of real interest and help, right up-to-date and of a real reference value of a permanent nature and a sure prevention of human corrosion.

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“LOOKING FORWARD IN THE ELECTRO-PLATING INDUSTRY”

Mr. Charles Proctor of New York Branch, Founder of American ElectroPlaters Society

I think I still retain the key of this city that was presented to us eleven years ago. I have carried it with me for many years, and I still believe that that key is still with me that unlocks many of the doors in this city.

As you notice by the program, I am going to talk to you about ”Looking Forward in the Electro-plating Industry.” Some thoughts I may express may sound a little bit out of the ordinary, perhaps, but still, in my estimation, it is a part of the future of this great organization.

More than a decade has passed away since this great city of Detroit invited our Association to hold its sixth annual convention here, and I believe that I voice the sentiment of every person present here today when I state we are glad to come to Detroit again to hold our Seventeenth Annual Convention, to enjoy its hospitality, to marvel at its wonderful growth in a decade and during our stay to look forward ”towards another decade in the growth of our Society which must of necessity result, in order to keep step with the great advances that have been made in the electrodeposition of metals in this great and marvelous city and will continue so in the coming years.

Our votaries and guests have come from the north, the south, the east and the west and from our great neighbor to the north, the Dominion of Canada, all have come for that one express purpose, to make this Seventeenth Annual Convention a memorable one in the history of the Society and lay plans for its future and the continuation of the work started twenty years ago. As the founder of the Society the milestones that we have passed by during those twenty years have to me been glorious ones and although they are but memories in the infinity of time in their passing, they have made our glorious country greater than we ever dreamed of and our Society greater than its forebears ever could scarcely concave.

We keep ”Looking forward” to greater possibilities as all great organizations must do that are so welded in the commercial greatness of these United States and its future prosperity. Theory is only of value when it becomes the hand-maiden of practice, when they become welded into a great universal unit of production on an economic scale of great magnitude, such as it is possible to behold in this remarkable city of Detroit with its great manufacturing plants.

”Knowledge is Power,” is the motto of our Society, but learning is only valuable when it means actual knowledge, and knowing is only valuable when it means doing, creating, adding to the possessions of the efficiency of men, to the great uplift of your Society and its future.

Members of our Society have had visions that others could actually do its work for them; they have created by their efforts fairly large sums of money to be expended in the exploitation of theory, which every member of the Society possesses himself, but still the years pass on and the results of the labor of theory, without putting it to work in actual practice has, in my opinion, proved negligible and of no commercial value to the industry. Especially is this true in this great commercial city of Detroit.

The tremendous production in the automobile industry in this city and its environs does not depend upon theory, it depends upon practical, commercial, economic results, as all other branches of industry must do if they continue to exist in this age of competitive production.

I believe it was Henry Ford who is responsible for the statement that if the great industrial plants were operated upon the same basic plans as the United States Government they could have never continued to exist. To dream dreams and see visions is admirable if you make the dreams come true; if you translate the visions into stone, marble, iron and glass you accomplish a purpose. But to dream and see visions and then pass away like one of the dreams, leaving nothing behind that is worth while, whatever amount of learning or knowledge you may have absorbed into your brains, even as a sponge absorbs water that can be removed with little pressure, is of no value to industry.

We are still waiting to learn all about chromium plating from Washington, D. C. We still possess the theory. We are still awaiting the solution of the problem of spotting-out copper, bronze and brass plated ferrous and non-ferrous metal goods. We are still anxious to know why articles made from sheet copper, bronze and brass ”spot out” when lacquered when they have never gazed into plating solutions or bathed themselves in an alkaline or acid bath. We may know in a few years if we wait patiently, but in the meantime we might arrange to have our compressed air tanks made from copper and heavily coated inside with block tin so there would be no danger of iron rust forming in the compressed air tanks due to exposed iron which is acted upon chemically by moisture and the acetic acid the lacquers may contain, which causes brownish red spots when articles are sprayed with lacquer contaminated with iron acetate which is precipitated in the final drying operation as the solvent is evaporated upon the finished plated surface by heat.

It might be advisable for the great automobile plants of Detroit to open wide their doors so that our research associates in Washington might enter in and learn how to chromium plate on a tremendous commercial productive and economic scale and they would then throw all their theories to the winds because they would be able to observe results in mass production, the great important factor in the race for commercial supremacy.

The combination exploited theory and practice of spotting out of copper, brass and bronze plated iron and steel can, I feel sure, be eliminated if we visualize correctly the true cause of the spotting out, realize that the spot as due to chemical action of the impregnated plating solution in the pore that absorbs moisture from the humid atmosphere surrounding the porous spot and acts as an oxidizing agent. When the pore becomes filled with absorbent atmospheric moisture it overflows and oxidizes the metal deposit surrounding the port or hole which we so commonly term ”spotting out” which is so disastrous from a financial standpoint in the electro-plating industry.

Have you ever given serious consideration to the value of commercial phosphoric acid when used as a neutralizing factor for the cyanides and the metal cyanides and the free alkalies that are occluded in the pore or minute pin hole in the basic metal? We all know the value of ferric phosphate when applied to steel or iron by the boiling process based on the Coslett patent and a well known rust proofing process for iron and- steel exploited in your city of Detroit.

Is it not possible? I believe it is because in-a measure I have proved it that an aqueous solution of commercial phosphoric acid approximating three fluid ounces per gallon of water heated to 200; degrees Fahr. may solve the spotting problem. Surely the cyanides occluded in the pores of the basic metal would become neutralized by absorption of the dilute hot phosphoric acid’ solution and due to expansion of the metal when immersed in the solution at 200 degrees Fahr. direct from the cold rinsing waters after plating. The time of immersion to be determined by actual tests of the plated product. I have seen copper and brass plated cast iron immersed in such a solution for an hour without any detrimental influence upon the deposits.

If ferric phosphate protects iron and steel from rusting, then it is logical to presume that after the cyanides have become neutralized in the porous spot or pin hole and ferric phosphate remained, the inside of the spot would become rust proof and even if moisture was absorbed later through the lacquer coating during the excessive humidity of summer, no spotting would result because no oxidizing factors would be left behind after the treatment to cause an oxidized spot, surrounding the porous spot or hole, if you so desire to term it, in the basic metal by atmospheric moisture absorption.

Possibly these suggestions may be worth while. Try them out and then make your reports upon your success or failure to the Supreme Editor so the data can be printed in the Monthly Bulletin.

We have all come to this Seventeenth Annual Convention in this- city of Detroit \to work and to play. To work for the up building of the Society, to look forward into the future possibilities of the Society and to the electroplating industry as a whole, and when you come to consider its future in your deliberations as delegates and representatives of your respective branches, give serious thought to the Society doing its own research work. Here in this city of Detroit, establish a working research division for the benefit of our entire electro-plating industry and for the benefit of the entire membership. You will find willing hands and financial assistance to help the cause along.

Your constitution is so written that this work is a part of it. Let us go and do what we should have done years ago. Do not let any member betray its principles for self aggrandizement or for the benefit of any other society or organization. Be steadfast, hold on to its principles, or go down in defeat.

If you can visualize clearly you will see that this is being done to the detriment of our Society, which is a practical society of practical men. May your time spent in Detroit at this annual convention be of great benefit to you all. Profit and pleasure combined in unlimited measure, and it is my sincerest wish that you will all be fully repaid for your attendance at this, the Seventeenth Convention of the Society.

Let us all have faith in the future of the Society. There will be many hands eager to retard its progress, yet those who have faith, who believe that right is right, will triumph. If we stick to the principles and ideals of the Society, we shall always win; though the thunder of misunderstanding may crash above and the lightning of malice blind us now and then, we shall win all that is worth while as a great industrial and educational society and shall accomplish in fact the principles inculcated in its constitution.

Hold on ’become your’ own master of your profession. Master the fundamental principles of chemistry only so far as necessary to be able to make a true analysis of your solutions. You do not have to be a graduate chemist to accomplish your purpose. Yon do not require any knowledge of organic chemistry to analyze a plating solution. Under a competent instruction you can learn in two weeks all that you want to know about the analyses of plating solutions. Better still an instructor that has made a study of electro chemistry. In your spare moments study the engineering part of your profession, how to do things mechanically and control the operations by electrical control. Study from the knowledge you possess from years of practical application the improvement of your plating’ solutions, the maximum metal content that can be safely carried and the maximum current densities permissible in electro-plating defined surface areas as single units or per tank load and the minimum expired time permissible to give you standard deposits. When you know thoroughly these fundamental factors you have traveled a long way in looking forward in the electro-plating industry. A graduate chemist or metallurgist must learn control of solutions under intensive production even as you have done by years of practical application as a plater, before chemical control became such an important factor.

There is nothing extraordinarily new in the art of electroplating in this great city of Detroit so far as the deposition of copper and nickel is concerned, as the basic factors for a rust proof and finished metal surface on steel, satisfactory for a final deposit of chromium as we see such products today. The basic factors were used more than forty years ago, but the metal concentration of the solution has, however, been greatly increased so that current densities are permissible at least twenty times greater than even ten years ago

The control of the hydrogen factor in the deposition of copper and nickel has made these great changes in the rate of metal deposition possible. When you have learned from observation the intensive results accomplished in electro-plating, as I trust you may do before leaving Detroit, you will then understand and realize the reason why that in all the world there is no other city like Detroit that can possibly produce similar results in the electroplating of nickel, copper and chromium, especially on such an intensive productive scale as is now done. But still such results are only in part what a successful master plater should know and what has been acquired by men that have made a complete study of the art in all its details. And then when your work is accomplished and you return to your homes again you should be proud of an art that has a history that goes back more than a century. And you as practical platers have carried on the work through the passing years and made the art what it is today. Looking forward to its future is still with you. You are its masters.

Its destiny remains with you. The society grows in numbers and continually it extends in membership, now numbering one thousand three hundred and has established branches from east to west from Boston, Mass., on the Atlantic Coast to Los Angeles, Cal., on the Pacific Coast, and it will continue to grow in number if we co-operate one with each other for its welfare. Co-operation is the great big factor in this modern world and if we continue to co-operate, work in unity and harmony for the up building of the Society, then you will have earned a just and great reward. You will then be a true and loyal member of the American ElectroPlaters’ Society and all that it represents in these United States.

“EXECUTIVE FOREMANSHIP”

J. M. Carmody

I am inclined to think that if those of us that have been interested in incentive plans the last twenty-five years get our heads together, almost any reasonable question that might arise can be answered—not by myself, but by some of the fellows whom I see around me. I feel quite sure that we can do it.

Some few evenings ago, a policeman on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street saw a naked man running up the street, and he hollered at him, saying, “What’s your name?” “My name is MacDougall.” “And where are you going?” asked the policeman. He replied, “I’m going to a strip poker party.”
(Mr. Carnody removes his coat. Laughter.)

Well, Mr. Chairman and Friends, in my judgment it was too bad to interrupt the discussion that was under way for anything that I might be able to say to you. My speech is not very long; it is a hot light, and I enjoy speaking to you even as little, perhaps, as you enjoy listening to me. However, some of the questions that arose struck me as indicating the necessity for the very kind of meeting we have here tonight.

My subject, as I understand it, is that of “Executive Foremanship.” The kind of responsibility that a foreman has, depends, of course, on the size of the plant, on the character of the product, and, as these Westinghouse men have said, on the company’s standards. And you only have to look about you, you only have to look in store windows, you only have to examine the commonplace things that you pick up and pay for day by day, to realize that we are a long, long way from any sort of standard in our quality of production in this country.

Now the foreman can’t set the standards; the foreman can only attempt to produce, with the men he has, and with the wages he is permitted to pay, the standards that his organization says it is necessary to deliver to the customer in order that the salesman may not be ashamed to make another call. The standards are set as far up in the organization as there is character in the organization. If you have got a four flusher at the top, your standards will wiggle and woggle. (Applause.) If the man at the top of your institution is a man of character, who himself believes in telling the customer what he will get, and then insisting on his organization producing it, you will get that production, because that kind of man has guts enough to talk to a board of directors, if necessary, about quality standards.

Now all men aren’t built that way. A great deal of business is done on the temporizing basis. “Let’s get by. Let’s produce what will enable us to stay in business.” I don’t know whether I can be of any help to you at all, without saying that we have to keep those things in mind.

Let us think for a moment what it means to be an executive foreman in an organization that believes in quality standards An organization that believes in quality standards, in my judgment, believes in treating the men who are employed by that company right,’ as nearly right as they know how to do it. How many of us know what is right ? We come as near to it as we can, but there are standards of right even among people who say they are right.

There is a very good story in a recent issue of either the Atlantic Monthly or Mercury (I have forgotten which) about this old lady Stevens, who ran the community she lived in, and her father ran the community before her, and she had ideas of carrying on that tradition as long as the family should live. The tradition was broken by an experience that it is worth any man’s while to look at if he is dealing with human beings.

Well, a foreman, assuming that there are some standards in the organization, and assuming that you say that you need foremen, it seems to me that a foreman first of all must have some qualities of leadership. And I don’t believe that anybody can he a successful leader unless he is at least reasonably unselfish. And if he is reasonably unselfish, then he will be reasonably generous. And when I say ”generous,” I mean generous in his attitude toward the men who work for him.

A man who possesses leadership possesses courage. Not only courage to fire some poor fellow who can scarcely defend himself, but courage properly to represent that man’s idea to the man above, whether he be superintendent, general superintendent, factory manager, president of the company, or what not.

Just those things alone, those responsibilities alone, throw a very considerable burden on a man who pretends to be a executive foreman.

Now other things are required of him. He must be a teacher, as was pointed out by both men who read papers here tonight, papers that were carefully prepared, as mine has not bee. He must be a teacher. He ought to know at least the fundamentals of the job. He ought to be helpful to new men who come in, and he ought to be helpful to men who have been on the job for some time and who for some reason or another may not be doing the best they can possibly do. He has to do all of that. Not only should he be a teacher in the technique of his job, but in my opinion he should be a teacher in the mode of conduct that will help the men to get the best results from the time they put their feet inside the plant. After all, those of us that started to work some thirty year, ago, when we worked twelve hours a day, and gradually saw the time stepped down to eleven, and ten and nine and three-quarters and nine and a half and eight, and so on and so forth, realize that after all, we spend a very considerable part of our time in the shop, under the direction of some foreman or some superintendent, or some factory manager, or what not,—more tine there than we spend in our own home with our families. We certainly spent more time when I started to work, and we still spend, I think, perhaps more time on the whole.

Another thing that the modern foreman is required to do, even beyond the foreman of thirty years ago, he must have an open mind. After all, science has made tremendous strides in the last few years, and there is scarcely a discovery, either in pure science or in applied science, that doesn’t soon find its application right down to our own job. After all, the strange thing about it is that it takes so long for some of these things to come through. For instance, this electrical control that is reaching perfection, has been very, very slow. Now whether the difficulty is with us, who had not the minds to accept and to apply it, or with the engineers who didn’t think fast enough, or work hard enough to force control through to us, I don’t know. But when we remember that the little electric light is fifty years old, celebrating its golden jubilee this year, the development has been comparatively slow.

And so it is in chemistry. It has been slower than it should have been. I think that is due practically to the fact that those of us that can help in the application of these new ideas did not receive them with sufficiently open minds. We have been too prone to resist the new ideas as they have come along.

I spent three years in the coal mining regions of West Virginia, ending that period about three or four years ago. There were cases in the community in which I lived where men, born in the mountains, left their wives because their wives had their hair bobbed. Now we think that is strange; we think that is peculiar. But to those men it wasn’t peculiar at all. The women got the idea faster than the men. The men resisted, they had no other way out. They couldn’t beat their wives because there was some sign of justice, but they left their wives. But after all, they were no more narrow minded than those of us who, not comprehending some of the scientific productions of the day, say, ”It can’t be true,’’ or ”It won’t work.”

The sane thing is true to a degree with various forms of wage incentives. This group incentive is not especially new; it is having a greater vogue at this moment than it has had for many, many years. But the group incentive is probably one of the oldest incentives in our human experience. After all, we are less than three hundred years from a period where’ all production was carried on under what might be called domestic economy. Almost universally, the things that a family needed were produced by the family as a whole. The exceptions required exchange with other families on the basis of barter. Out of that relationship, there grew up for instance in Europe, such fairs as the Leipig Fair, which carries on to this day. In fact, throughout the continent of Europe, those men who have come from Europe, or are from European ancestry, realize this situation. Throughout Europe the fair, today, is the market place, the bartering place, for a great many products.

And I can believe that there never was a more cohesive group economy than that of a particular family. I can visualize it clearly, because I was born on a farm. I recall very vividly the fact that not only did we raise our own sheep and shear them and scour the wool, but my grandmother carded the wool and skeined the yarn and wove the cloth that we wore. Even in my own time, in a hill farm in Pennsylvania. Now that was as close to that European economy as we could cone; it was as close to this group incentive that these men are talking about as we need to get for an example of what incentives will drive men on.

We have it again in baseball. Where is there a finer example of group incentive than in baseball itself ? While each man has a specific job, if you take the amateur teams, the teams on which you and I played as boys, 110 man’ ever refused to back up another man if he was in the spirit of the game. He went any place that he’ might go. And some of that amateur spirit carries on today, even in the professional baseball field that has become so ‘highly commercialized that the play spirit has almost been completely eliminated from it. I can recall Red Dugan, when he was catching for Philadelphia, going down to third base regularly to take a throw there. And I never failed to see Steve O’Neill, when he was catching for Cleveland, cover first base, and he was a rather heavy fellow to do it, but he was down there. Why? Because of the group incentive, the group spirit, playing for that particular team as against some other team.

I am afraid I have said nothing to you that will help you in your deliberations. We have heard about material control. We have heard about the necessity for setting up standards. I have had enough experience in research to appreciate the necessity for that. I spent many years in time study work on production, and I can appreciate the work that these men have done in trying to set up some specific standards of production, and some quality standards that would be sufficiently or reasonably attainable,—so attainable, in fact, that men were sure, with the right kind of effort, always to surmount the standard. That is the only kind of standard that will get real results, so far as I know. As a matter of fact, that probably is the reason why the Taylor task method has died out in our modern enterprises. Those of you that recall the work of Fred Taylor remember that more than forty-five years ago, he started talking about and writing about incentives based on time studies that were accurately taken. And even the men who succeeded him, some of them, never got beyond the setting of tasks for specific individuals. It was only when Harrington Emerson and Frank Galbraith came along and some men with just a slightly different vision, that they began to appreciate the necessity for setting up standards that would bring the group action together.

I believe, as I look back over my own experience and as I look out through factories that I visit week after week, from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico; and from the Atlantic out beyond the Mississippi, I question whether we still have the guts and the brains to set up the right kind of incentives, incentives that will get men to do their utmost and stay there. If we do it the chances are ten to one that somebody will come along and shave off a penny or two pennies or five or fifteen, within six months, destroying again all the good work, all the co-operation, all the encouragement that these men got.

I got a very interesting example of that some twelve years ago. I happened at that time to be Chairman of a production managers’ group in the city of Cleveland. We had between 100 and 150 men, from almost all the industries in the city We met once a month. We traded experiences, and all of us learned from the others. But one fellow told me how he got production without a financial incentive at all, and this was what he did. He was assembling batteries. The regular hours were from seven to five. And he realized that several fellows, during the week, two, three, four or more, on Tuesday, laid off and went to the ball game. Then he talked to them about it, and they said, well, they didn’t always get a good seat on Saturday as they wanted, Saturday was a big day, and there were big crowds, and they liked the game so well that they would go occasionally anyway, even though they had to pay for it. He said, ”I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You fellows are now getting through at five o’clock; you are making such and such a production. During the summer, while the team is home, every man who has his normal day’s production cleared up at two o’clock is through.” What happened? Within three days, every ma; was through at two o’clock, and had his full production.

Now that is the kind of incentive that we haven’t the guts to apply all the time, you see. One might say of that fellow that he was a rotten production man, that his time studies were bad, and so on and so forth. I don’t think so. I think he was normal. I don’t think he was any worse than the rest of us, not a bit.

I had an experience of that sort myself. We had a slack season. We had to face the problem either of laying off the whole crew, part of the crew, or reducing the hours. We were working eight hours a day. We reduced the hours to six. We reduced the hours to five. And in the five hours we not only got eight hours production; we got nine, based on standards that had been set by fellows who had been setting standards for a good many years in that one industry. It is just one of those things that happen.

I will tell you one more thing, and then I’m through. In 1913, I went to Cuba to take charge of a plant. I was a good deal younger than I am now, and had a great deal less experience, although I didn’t think so; in fact, I thought then that I knew a great deal. It wasn’t an easy job. Almost everybody in the plant spoke Spanish and I spoke none. We had three or four Americans who spoke English, and some of them spoke a little Spanish, but for the most part they had been there longer than I had and wondered why the hell I came, and in one or two cases they had been promised the job anyway, and I couldn’t blame them for not cooperating. But at any rate, I pitched in, like any young fellow will do, three thousand miles away from home without a ticket back, and tried to increase production, tried to straighten up the plant, the yard, and so on and so forth, and to do it we worked from seven in the morning until half past five or six at night, seven days a week, for about four weeks—and Sunday work isn’t very common down there. There weren’t many places for an American to go except on Sunday, and I should have been going I was pretty tired. My chief, who had preceded me, but had been promoted to general superintendent, was away on a two weeks’ vacation. When he came back, he looked around and asked me about one or two things, and there was something that was buried and we didn’t get it out. We were walking over the town. He said, ”Well, how are you getting along with so and so?” And I said, ”George, we are doing the best we can.” He said, ”I will tell you something.” (He was about my age, too.) He said, ”I will tell you something, Jack. No man is ever doing the best he can.” God! I was as hot as could be. If he hadn’t been six inches taller and weighed forty pounds more, we would have fought. But I am glad we didn’t. He was right. When I got home and thought it over I saw he was right. The reason he had a better job than I had with that organization (he had been there seven years and went there a perfect stranger just as I did) and got along, was because he had more brains, more sense, he had a better and a sounder philosophy—he had a harder philosophy for himself. Most of us are hard-boiled with other people but not very hard-boiled with ourselves. He was hard-boiled with himself. He worked like that, and he helped me a whole lot. I don’t think that any single thing that happened to me in Cuba (and I was there a long time) did me as much good as to have George Wall say to me, ”Jack, no man is ever doing the best he can.”

I would like to see the fellow that was dissatisfied with the answer to come back to these Westinghouse fellows and let them clear it up. I think they can. Maybe I have got too much confidence in them; I don’t think so.
(Applause. )

CHAIRMAN KENNEDY: I am glad Mr. Carmody said what he did, and he brought home to us some very vital facts we have seldom heard in a convention like this, and I think that I voice the sentiments of every delegate here when I say that we appreciate everything he said.

A. E. S. PAGE
Assembled Expert Scraps With and Without Significance

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Remember When—

Young people went to bed before their parents.

”Whoa” and ”Giddyap” were the only stop and go signals of city traffic.

Men wore rubber collars and when they became soiled they would clean then with a damp cloth.

Typewriterless offices used to advertise for hell ”with a good handwriting.”

You could get a dish of ice cream and a bowl of cookies for a nickel.

He that is all ”I’s . . .” can’t see beyond his ”KNOWS . . . !”

Years ago some of the wise granddads said everything had been invented that could be invented.

Children were plentiful and many families had their own baseball teams meeting other family teams.

Every first class barber shop had bathrooms and Saturday afternoon we went there, took our bath, and had a shave and haircut, all for 55 cents.

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What Did He Mean?
A gentleman of a very excitable and emotional nature had the misfortune to lose his third wife. He took the affliction very much to heart and fainted at the grave.

His friends were fearful for his life. Among them was a German who spoke English brokenly.

He stooped down and felt the gentleman’s pulse, and looking- up said: ”He’s all right, he’ll re-wive.”

— Mrs.. George H. Hilge.

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Bombs were thrown only by anarchists.

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This is Funny
One day two Englishmen and an Irishman were working on a road. As the day grew warmer, Pat the Irishman took his coat off, and hung it on some bushes. When he wasn’t looking the Englishmen drew a donkey’s head on the coat. In the evening when the men were ready to go home, the Englishmen stood near by to see what Pat would say about the coat.

“Well,” said Pat, “which one of you guys wiped his face on me coat?”

— Emil Zurian.