postmaster-general, the president of the board of trade, and the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (one of the defunct posts used to give an able man a place in the cabinet). Other officers can be called in if desired. The prime minister presides, but has no added authority; if he is a strong man, however, no member would remain in the cabinet if steadily opposed to his general policy. All the cabinet's deliberations are secret; no minutes are taken, and it would be a gross breach of faith to reveal the struggles of opinion within it which result in an agreement on a line of policy.

The American Cabinet, or "President's Cabinet," has, of course, grown with the growth of the departments. There were but four Cabinet officers at the outset, the secretaries of state, of war, and of the treasury, with the attorneygeneral. Of these, following the English tradition, in which from necessity, foreign affairs had held the highest place, the secretaryship of state was regarded as the most important and honorable, and its incumbent was considered to be in the line of succession for the presidency, as for several administrations proved to be the case. John Quincy Adams was the last of these, and he appointed his chief rival, Henry Clay, secretary of state with the presidential succession in view. The same notion has lingered to our own day, and caused the secretary of state to be termed the "premier" of an administration; in itself an absurd and meaningless term, but with color given to it by the preference for this post among some of the ablest party leaders ambitious of the presidency. The next officer added was the secretary of the navy, whose office was created in 1798. In 1829 the postmastergeneral was raised to the Cabinet, though the office had existed 35 years, in 1849 the secretaryship of the interior was created and made of Cabinet rank; in 1889 was added the secretary of agriculture, and in 1903 the secretary of commerce and labor. In accordance with Congressional action in 1886 the Cabinet officers rank in order of succession to the presidency, as follows: Secretary of state, secretary of war, secretary of the treasury, attorneygeneral, postmaster-general, secretary of the navy, secretary of the interior, secretary of agriculture, and secretary of commerce and labor. It will be noted that after the original four the others are named in order of the creation of their departments, not of their elevation to Cabinet rank. The term "cabinet" is sometimes used of the heads of our State departments advisory to the governor; but this is even less defensible than our national term, as the officers are elected by the people on the same ticket with the governor, and he has no power of appointment or dismissal. The municipal officers accessory to a mayor are sometimes so called; which has justification in the fact that some of them are appointed by him. See U. S.-CABINET OFFICERS, etc.

Cabinet Organ, a small portable reed organ or harmonium, designed for domestic use or for very small churches or schools.

Cabi'ri. See CABEIRI.

Cable, George Washington, American novelist and miscellaneous writer: b. New Orleans, La., 12 Oct. 1844. His father died when

he was 14 years of age, and he had to leave school and seek employment as a clerk in order to support his mother and sisters. In 1863 he joined the Confederate army as soldier in a cavalry regiment, and served till the conclusion of the Civil War, when he returned to New Orleans and again took to commercial life. But in 1879, being by this time a practised writer, and having had considerable success with his literary ventures, he decided to devote himself entirely to authorship. In 1884 he took up his residence in Massachusetts, where he has originated a system of "home culture clubs." His first important book, 'Old Creole Days' (1879), appeared originally in 'Scribner's Magazine'; and since its publication he has written The Grandissimes (1880); 'Madame Delphine' (1881); The Creoles of Louisiana' 1884), a history; Dr. Sevier (1884) ; The Silent South' (1885), a plea for the negro; 'Bonaventure) (1888); The Negro Question (1888); 'Strange True Stories of Louisiana (1889); John March (1894); Strong Hearts'; The Cavalier) (1901); Bylow Hill' (1902). For most readers the chief interest of Mr. Cable's novels lies in their excellent descriptions of Creole life, a subject which he may be said to have introduced into literature. His pictures of negro life are equally effective, and he handles dialect in a masterly manner.

Cable, Ransom R., American railroad manager: b. Athens, Ohio, 1834. He had allife removed to Rock Island, Ill., where he was most no educational advantages, and early in at first in the coal, flour, and lumber business, but later came to be wholly identified with Illinois railroads, and particularly the Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. He was elected a director in 1877, and was successively vice-president, general manager, and in 1898, chairman of the board of directors.

Cable, a large rope or iron chain. The term cable is most frequently used in its nautical sense to describe the means by which a ship is connected with her anchor. The large ropes used for towing, or for making a vessel fast to a buoy or pier, are commonly known as hawsers. The term cable is also applied to the large suspensory ropes (usually of twisted or parallel wire) from which suspension bridges. are hung, and to the endless ropes used to operate the kind of street cars commonly called cable cars or grip cars. Rope cables are made of hemp, manila, or other fibre, or of wire, twisted into a line of great compactness and strength. The circumference of hemp rope varies from about 3 to 26 inches. A certain number of yarns are laid up left-handed to form a strand; three strands laid up righthanded make a hawser; and three hawsers laid up left-handed make a cable. The strength of a hemp cable of 18 inches circumference is about 60 tons, and for other dimensions the strength is taken to vary according to the cube of the diameter. Wire rope has within recent years largely taken the place of hemp for towlines and hawsers on board ship. These usually consist of six strands, laid or spun around a hempen core, each strand consisting of six wires laid the contrary way around a smaller hempen core. The wires are galvanized or coated with a preservative composition. Wire ropes are usually housed on board ship

by winding them round a special reel or drum. Hemp cables, moreover, have for long been almost wholly superseded by chain cables; the introduction of steam on board ship having brought in its train the powerful steam windlass wherewith to manipulate the heaviest chains and anchors required.

Chain cables are made in links, the length of each being generally about 6 diameters of the iron of which it is made, and the breadth about 31⁄2 diameters. There are two distinct kinds of chain cables - the stud-like chain, which has a tie or stud welded from side to side, and the short-link or unstudded chain. The cables for use in the mercantile service are made in 15-fathom lengths, but in government contracts chain cables are required to be made in 121⁄2-fathom lengths, with one swivel in the middle of every alternate length, and one joining-shackle in each length. Besides the ordinary links and joining-shackles, there are end-links, splicing-tails, mooring-swivels, and bending-swivels. The sizes of chain cables are denoted by the thickness of rod iron selected for the links. The following table gives certain ascertained quantities concerning the cables in ordinary use:

Compared with the strength of hempen cable, a chain cable of one inch diameter of rod is equivalent to a hemp cable 101⁄2 inches in circumference; 14 inches, to 131⁄2 inches; 11⁄2 inches, to 16 inches; 134 inches, to 18 inches; and 2 inches, to 24 inches. In navigation a cable's length is a nautical measure of distance equaling 120 fathoms, or 720 feet, by which the distances of ships in a fleet are frequently estimated. This term is often misunderstood. In all marine charts a cable is deemed 607.56 feet, or one tenth of a sea mile. In rope-making the cable varies from 100 to 115 fathoms; cablet, 120 fathoms; hawser-laid, 130 fathoms, as determined by the British admiralty in 1830. According to Ure a cable's length is 100 to 140 fathoms in the merchant service. The wire rope used for submarine telegraphy is also called a cable. See CABLES, SUBMARINE.

Cables, Submarine, specially constructed ropes of wire, hemp, and gutta-percha, or other water-proofing and protecting materials, laid on ocean or river beds for the purpose of providing means of electrical communication across large bodies of water.

Until the discovery of gutta-percha such communication was impossible, as water is so good a conductor of electricity that the submersion of current-carrying wires was dependent upon complete insulation. In this gum, however, such a perfect insulator was found that submarine communication all over the world became merely a question of time, experience, and necessity. In 1843 Prof. S. F. B. Morse suggested electrical communication between the United States and Great Britain, but it was not until more than 20 years had passed

that practical telegraphy across the Atlantic Ocean was established.

Early Cables.-The first under-water cables were short ones laid across rivers; later the English Channel was electrically "bridged" in this manner. In 1852 Dover and Ostend were connected by a cable 75 miles long and containing six wires. In 1854 Sweden and Denmark, Italy and Corsica, and Corsica and Sardinia were linked. In the same year the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company was incorporated, mainly through the efforts of Cyrus W. Field and Peter Cooper, of New York, for the purpose of laying a cable between Newfoundland and Ireland, a distance of about 2,000 miles. It received a charter from the Newfoundland legislature, with an exclusive right for 50 years to establish a telegraph between the American continent and Europe via Newfoundland. In 1856 Cape Ray and Cape Breton were united, as well as Prince Edward's Island and New Brunswick. The same year Mr. Field organized the Atlantic Telegraph Company. It was supported by both the United States and British governments, but the results of its efforts were discouraging for several years. In August 1857 an attempt was made to lay a cable by the American frigate Niagara and the British ship-of-war Agamemnon, but about 300 miles from the Irish coast the cable parted, owing to a strain caused by a sudden dip of the seabottom. In 1858 the same two ships, each with half the cable on board, steamed to a point in the Atlantic midway between Valentia, Ireland, and Heart's Content, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, spliced the cable, and, steering in opposite directions, safely landed the ends at their destinations on 5 August. The cable was 2,500 miles in length, weighed about one mile, and cost $1,256,250. It was composed of seven copper wires encased in gutta-percha, which in turn was surrounded by a covering of hemp saturated with oil, pitch, and beeswax; the whole being protected by an outer sheath composed of 18 strands of seven iron wires each. Despite the success cable was practically useless. The current was in laying, however, the so weak that a message of 90 words from Queen Victoria to President Buchanan took 67 minutes to transmit, and after a few more messages the cable ceased to transmit signals. Two more cables were laid in this year to connect Great Britain with the Continent,- one to Holland and the other to Hanover; and 1859 saw, among other cable_connections, the joining of England with Denmark and France, and of Malta with Sicily. In 1860 a cable was laid between France and Algiers, and in 1861 Malta was connected with Alexandria, and Batavia with Singapore. Failures were met with in attempts to lay cables through the Red Sea and from Falmouth to Gibraltar, and these, with the ill-success of the Atlantic cable, caused great disappointment to the promoters of the latter enterprise. Capital seemed to have made up its mind that a successful cable across the Atlantic was impossible. In 1865, however, another cable of 2,300 miles, and weighing 4,000 tons, was shipped on the Great Eastern, and was successfully paid out for 1,065 miles from Valentia, when it broke, and was abandoned after vain attempts to grapple the lost end. The following year the Great Eastern sailed with a lighter

ton per

but stronger cable of 2,370 miles and laid it successfully. She then grappled the lost cable of the year before, recovering it from a depth of two miles, spliced it, and completed the task by landing the end at Heart's Content.

Advance in Cable-Laying. With two cables now linking America and Great Britain, confidence was restored, and the manufacture and successful laying of submarine cables went on at a rapid rate. In 1869 a line was laid from Brest, France, to St. Pierre, Newfoundland (a distance of 3,100 miles), by a French company. In 1873 a cable joined the cities of Lisbon and Pernambuco, and in 1874 and 1875 two more cables were laid between Valentia and Heart's Content. The latter weighed less than 900 pounds per mile. Another line from Penzance, Cornwall, to St. Pierre, 2,920 miles, was laid in 1879, and one from England to Panama in 1882.

Meanwhile an incident had occurred which greatly influenced the expansion of submarine cable systems. In 1870 the British government purchased the entire land telegraph system of the British Isles, and the capital thus liberated, about $50,000,000, was largely reinvested in submarine cable ventures. In 1872 a number of small competing companies with lines through the Mediterranean were consolidated into the Eastern Telegraph Company, and in the following year the Eastern Extension, Australasian, and China Telegraph Company was formed by the amalgamation of companies owning cables farther east. Since then the Eastern, Eastern Extension, and Associated Cable companies have become practically one immense organiza

tion.

In 1884 John W. Mackey and James Gordon Bennett organized a cable system across the Atlantic from Valentia to Torbay, N. S., in the interests of the Commercial Cable Company and the New York Herald. Consolidation of competing companies followed as a matter of course, and now there are practically, besides the French lines, but two competing cable companies in the north Atlantic field-the AngloAmerican and the Commercial Cable companies. There are now 15 cables between North America and Europe, some of which run into New York harbor. The cables of 1858, 1865, and 1866 are "dead," and three others have but a brief tenure of life. Nine are "alive" and active.

Recently another great cable-laying boom has set in. France proposes to connect its colonies by a system under its own control. A German cable has been laid from Emden, Germany, to New York, via the Azores, which works in conjunction with the Commercial Cable Company. That company has recently laid its fourth cable connecting New York and London, via Canso, the Azores, and Waterville in Ireland.

Pacific Cables. In the Pacific Ocean the Commercial Company has constructed a cable 6,912 miles long, and costing $12,000,000, laid from San Francisco, via Honolulu, the Midway Islands, and Guam, to Manila, in the Philippines, with an ultimate extension Shanghai or Hong Kong. The first section, from San Francisco to Honolulu, 2,413 miles, was opened 1 Jan. 1903. This section is the most hazardous on the route, depres

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sions of 5,160 and 5,269 fathoms having been encountered, and the profile displaying mountains of immense elevation and valleys of corresponding depth. A level plain, with an average depth of 2,700 fathoms, extends throughout the second section, from Honolulu to the Midway Islands; the bottom being of soft mud and extremely favorable for cable-laying. Thence toward Guam an average of 3,200 fathoms is found, and favorable conditions are maintained throughout. The last section is similar in its profile to the first, though the depth averages less, being from 1,400 to 2,700 fathoms. The sea-bed is extremely irregular in outline, with many reefs and depressions.

The cable is built around a core formed of copper wire insulated by gutta-percha, around which layers of jute yarn are wound. This, in turn, is sheathed in small cables, each formed of several strands of steel wires. An outer covering of jute yarn, the whole saturated with a bituminous compound, binds together the conducting and protecting wires in one solid mass. The landing of the shore end of the cable at San Francisco was effected thus: A section of 61⁄2 miles was cut from the main cable on board the cable-steamer Silvertown, and loaded on a tender, which steamed toward the shore. On approaching the line of breakers, which were heavy, the shore end was floated on balloon buoys placed every 10 fathoms, and a team of 12 horses dragged it ashore, where it was spliced to the permanent shore connection, and the tender returned to the Silvertown, on board which the shore section was respliced to the main cable. The cable-ship then started for Honolulu in the evening of 14 Dec. 1902.

The Silvertown was specially built for cablelaying purposes. On this trip she carried 2,413 nautical miles of cable, weighing 4,807 tons. She arrived off Honolulu on 25 December and landed the shore end by buoying the cable; but she employed no tender or horses. Two spider-sheaves were sent ashore, and fixed by sand anchors about 60 yards apart. A haulingline was paid out from the ship, reeved through the sheaves, and brought on board again. One end of this line being attached to the cable, and the other to the picking-up gear, the engines were started and the cable was dragged toward the shore.

Another Pacific cable is being constructed jointly by the governments of Great Britain, Canada, and Australia across the Pacific from Vancouver to Fanning Island, Fiji Islands, Norfolk Island, and thence to New Zealand and Australia. It will be about 8,000 miles long, and the 3,600 mile stretch from Vancouver to Fanning Island will be the longest single section in the world. This new cable brings the Australasian colonies 10,000 miles nearer Canada than they were before, and there is now completed a British telegraph girdle of the world which touches foreign territory only at Madeira and St. Vincent, in the Cape Verde Islands, both belonging to Britain's old ally,' Portugal.

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Mention has already been made of the consolidation of competing lines in the Mediterranean and the East into the Eastern Telegraph Company. To this huge organization belongs

a marvelous network of submarine cables practically all the cables from Land's End, in England, through the Mediterranean to Suez,