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GASES, ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES OF

Daughter (1914); A Son of the Middle Border (1917) and A Daughter of the Middle Border (1921). He was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1918.

GARSTIN, SIR WILLIAM EDMUND (1840–), British engineer, was born in India Jan. 29 1849. Educated at Cheltenham College and King’s College, London, he in 1872 entered the Indian Public Works Department. In 1885 he was transferred to Egypt, and in 1892 became Inspector-General of Irrigation in Egypt and Under-Secretary of State for Public Works. He was created K.C.M.G. in 1897 and G.C.M.G. in 1902, and in 1907 was appointed British Government director of the Suez Canal Company. During the World War he was engaged on Red Cross work in England, and was in 1918 created G.B.E.

GARVICE, CHARLES (1851–1920), British novelist, was born in London Aug. 24 1851. He was privately educated and began writing early, acting as correspondent for various English and American papers. He produced a volume of poems, Eve and Other Verses (1873), and two plays, The Fisherman’s Daughter and A Life’s Mistake. It is, however, as a remarkably prolific novelist that he is best known. His first popular successes were made in America, as a writer of serials. Both there and in Great Britain he wrote literally for the million, reproducing again and again the same types and situations, and had the largest circulation on record, as well as a wide circle of correspondents attracted by his books. When told by a friend that his stories were unlikely to live, he pointed to the readers on the seashore with the apt remark, “They are all reading my latest.” Amongst his long list of novels may be mentioned: Just a Girl (1898); In Wolf’s Clothing (1908) and In Cupid’s Chains (1903). He died at Richmond, Surrey, March 1 1920.

GARVIN, JAMES LOUIS (1868–), British journalist, was born at Birkenhead, Ches., April 12 1868, of Irish parentage. When quite young he started journalistic work for the Newcastle Chronicle at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and he became a practised leader-writer during his connexion with the staff of that paper from 1891 to 1899. He also contributed to the Eastern Morning News at an early period when it was under the editorship of J. A. Spender; and even before 1899, when he joined the editorial staff of the Daily Telegraph in London, he had made himself known in well-informed journalistic circles as a brilliant publicist by his contributions to reviews and otherwise, and particularly by numerous articles on foreign affairs as well as domestic politics, mostly under pseudonyms, in the Fortnightly Review from 1895 onwards. He became editor of the weekly Outlook from 1905 to 1912, and of the evening Pall Mall Gazette from 1912 to 1915; and in 1908 he had also become editor of the Sunday Observer, which he converted into a great organ of opin- ion with a much-increased circulation, his association with the Observer having in 1921 been maintained continuously during that period. An ardent Imperialist, and intimate supporter of Joseph Chamberlain from the time when the latter became Colonial Secretary in 1895, Mr. Garvin's championship of the Tariff Reform movement in politics was the most powerful in London journalism from 1903 onwards. Deep in the inspiration of Mr. Chamberlain’s policy and in the Unionist councils, his influence in this respect was felt throughout the political world, and he contributed largely, by his journalistic work and also by lectures and speeches, to the intellectual side of the policy of the Unionist party, especially as represented by Imperialism and Tariff Reform. In this connexion he published volumes on Imperial Reciprocity (1903) and Tariff or Budget (1909), and a striking article dealing with the “principles of constructive economics” in the volume of Compatriot Club Lectures (1906). With Mr. L. C. M. Amery and others he was one of the founders and chief supporters of the Compatriots' Club, which was started in 1903 to provide intellectual backing for the Tariff Reform policy. After the World War, in the course of which his only son, a young man of brilliant promise, was killed at the front, he published The Economic Foundations of Peace (1919), an elaborate plea for reasonable views of reconstruction. In 1920 he was selected to write the official biography of Joseph Chamberlain.

GARY, ELBERT HENRY (1846–), American business man, was born near Wheaton, Ill., Oct. 8 1846. He attended Wheaton College and then after studying law for a time in an office he continued his legal studies at the university of Chicago (LL.B. 1867). In 1871 he began practice in Chicago where he became a noted corporation lawyer. In 1874 he organized the Gary-Wheaton Bank, of which he was president. He was elected judge of Du Page co. in 1882 and again in 1886; was three times elected president of the town of Wheaton and on its becoming a city (1892) served as its first mayor for two terms. He was president of the Chicago Bar Association 1893-4. He early saw the advantages of combination in business and in 1891 was one of the organizers of the Consolidated Steel & Wire Co. In 1898 upon the organization of the Federal Steel Corp., with a capital stock of $200,000,000, he became its head and re- tired from legal practice. This company was merged in the U.S. Steel Corp. in 1901 and he was elected chairman of the board of directors and of the finance committee. The town of Gary, Ind., laid out in 1906 as a model home for steel work- men, was named in his honour. In 1914 he was made chair- man of the committee appointed by Mayor Mitchel, of New York, to study the question of unemployment and its relief. When America entered the World War (1917) he was appointed chairman of the committee on steel of the Council of National Defense. Through his own connexion with a business essential for munitions of war he exerted great influence in bringing about cooperation between the Government and industry. He was interested in strengthening the friendship between America and Japan. In 1919 he was invited by President Wilson to attend the Industrial Conference in Washington, and took a prominent part in it as a firm upholder of the " open shop," of which he was always a strong advocate.

GASES, ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES OF (see 6.864 for Electric Conduction Through Gases). The electrical properties of gases vary greatly with the conditions to which the gas is exposed. A gas in its normal condition is a non-conductor of electricity even though it is the vapour of a good conductor like mercury. On the other hand, when it is exposed to such influences as Rontgen rays, intense electrical forces or the radiation from radioactive substances, it becomes a conductor of electricity. Radioactive radiations are so wide-spread and so difficult to eliminate that it has not been found possible to obtain gases which do not show traces of conductivity under tests as delicate as some of those now at our command. This residual conductivity is, however, so small that we may here leave it out of account.

The most important electrical property of a gas in a normal state is its specific inductive capacity. The significance of this property is best illustrated from the relation K−1/4π = NM, between the specific inductive capacity K, N the number of molecules per unit volume, and M the electrostatic moment which a molecule acquires under unit electric force. As we know N, we can if we know the value of K deduce the value of M, and this will tell us a good deal about the shape and size of the molecule. For example, if we regard the molecules as solid conducting spheres, M = r 3 where r is the radius of the sphere. Thus, on this hypothesis we can find the radius of the molecule, if we know the value of K, and though the hypothesis itself does not throw much light on the structure of the atom, it is probable that the radius of a conducting sphere which would produce the same electrical moment would be of the same order of magnitude as the linear dimensions of the molecule: the radii of metallic spheres which would give the specific inductive capacities possessed by hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and chlorine, are respectively 1.19×10−8, i-6oXio 8 , i-48Xio 8 , 2-o4Xio 8 centimetres. On the more probable hypothesis that the atoms and molecules consist of electrons arranged in equilibrium round centres of positive electricity, the electric force will displace the electrons relatively to the positive centres and thus cause the molecule to have a finite electrical moment. The more rigidly the electrons are connected to the positive charge, the smaller will be this moment and the smaller the specific inductive capacity of the gas.

The values of K−1 for the dements belonging to the same