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Y,
IS.
What the Wright Brothers Could
Do Today---Only Men Who 
Ever Flew---Eye-Witnesses
Describe Their
Astonishing Flights.

Under her present promise as a coming center of aerial navigation few places should be of more interest to St. Louis than Dayton, O.-and few people of more importance than the Wright Brothers, Orville and Wilbur.
For although St. Louis is just now preparing only for balloon races the same conditions that make her a favorable center for that sport apply also in making her available for the more serious business of flying-in contrast to floating in a balloon-when flying shall have become just a little further established as a science.
Orville and Wilbur Wright are acknowledged by the aerial and scientific world to be the most successful students of flying that have ever lived. From their little workshop at Dayton they have sent forth into the air machines that actually fly and that are capable of guidance and control. This they have done not once but many times-and this no one else ever has done.
Next to a life of persistency and final success the most remarkable thing about the Wright Brothers has been their secrecy. It has heretofore been almost impossible to obtain any exact information concerning their operations, their successes, their failures.
Besieged for information they have steadfastly refused to give it, although the work they have done promises to rank in the history of aerial navigation along with the perfection of the steam engine and the steamship: their final triumph of the upper air-now quite within sight-with the conquering of the Atlantic by Columbus.
During the past year or two many theories have been advanced to show why the Wright Brothers have refused to talk about their invention, and their success with it. It has been inconceivable to the public that men should do what they have done and not be willing to tell all about it. To the public only one explanation of their silence seemed possible-that they expected in some manner to profit pecuniarily by keeping still.
As to the manner in which they were to thus profit the most widely accepted belief has been that they proposed to sell their invention to some foreign government. France has been stated to have been negotiating with them for their invention and, indeed, has been reported repeatedly to have concluded arrangements for its possession.
This has brought down criticism of the most pronounced character on the heads of the Wrights. Word pictures have been drawn, showing France in possession of the American secred of flight, in-control of the upper air, ravishing the rest of the world in time of war. To give the proper effect to the criticism of the Wrights prophets have peered ahead to a time when France would turn on the native country of teh Wrights the engine of destruction they had place in her hands.
Now, however, Orville Wright says that they not only have not disposed of their patents to any foreign Government but, although solicited to do so, have refused. And all they ever will do along this lien, if they do that, Mr. Wright says, will be to sell their rights for a short period of time.
"The first Government that agrees to our terms will have a head start in the flying business, that's all." Orville Wright now says.
In securing this statement and others accompanying it, Herbert N. Casson of the American Magazine has broken down the barrier of secrecy and reservation that has surrounded the investigation and inventions of the Wright brothers.
"These two brothers--Orville and Wilbur Wright--have learned to use a flying machine that flies," says he. "Having neither gasbag nor parachute, they have made 160 flights, at a speed of from thirty to fifty miles an hour, without so much as breaking a finger. They have soared and circled above the treetops as easily as though they were twin condors of the Andes. And twice they

THE FIRST MAN-BIRDS.
BY HERBERT N. CASSON.
In the continuous obstacle race which we call civilization, the next barrier is the air. Now that we have tamed fire, and become the overlords of land and sea, nothing but the air is left to defy our authority. And so, after the achievement of a thousand impossibilities-after making iron float and wire talk-after we have found out how to send vegetables to school and put the lightning into harness, we have focused all the light we have upon this baffling mystery of the air.
Instead of recoiling from the difficulties of flying, we are now beginning to consider the advantages of traveling in an element where rights of way and speed limits are unknown-where we shall need no roadbed, no rubber tires, no headlights and no mud guards. There will be few collisions, surely, when there are four ways of dodging another machine, instead of two. We can duck under, or leap over, anyone who is monopolizing our particular fly-way.
The first air-mobiles will be dangerous, no doubt, just as the first trains and steamships were. But the vital fact to remember is that flying is no longer a problem. It has begun to be an art; and we may confidently leave all details to the genius of the men who are rapidly making it a profession.
Not to fly is so humiliating to the inheritors of this miraculous twentieth century! We no longer imagine, as the ancients did, that birds have supernatural assistance. Neither do we believe the solemn calculations of the Italian scientist, Borelli, who declared that a flying goose exerted an energy of 300-horseposer. We know now that birds are mere mechanisms of flesh and blood-a thousand times heavier than the air they soar on. Now that the gasoline engine has been perfected, we know that we can build machines that are light and strong enough to fly. In the name of science, the, why are there no flying men and flying women? 
As a matter of fact, there are. Two men-both Americans-who have mastered the empire of the air and become the first manbirds of the world have recently come to view.