with which he took the letter from her hand did not escape Belle
Dashiel.
“Got a new girl, John?” she asked lightly, though she watched his face
with suspicious eyes.
“Perhaps,” replied Laney, and all her urging could not detain him.
By the light of the camp-fire Laney and Porcupine studied the list of
names and addresses sent from the office of the matrimonial paper.
“This a-here one suits me,” said Laney. “‘Mayme Livingston, Oak Grove,
Iowa.’ It’s a toney-sounding name.”
“It’s me dat’s gittin’ married,” Porcupine suggested significantly.
“But Mayme’s all right, I tank. Go on ahead and write.”
So Laney, with the assistance of a sheet of ruled notepaper and a lead
pencil which he moistened frequently in order to shade effectively,
composed a letter which he and Porcupine regarded not only as a model
of cleverness but an achievement from a literary point of view. The
legal tone which gave it dignity was much admired by Porcupine. The
letter read:
BELLY RIVER, MONT.
MISS MAYME LIVINGSTON:
DEAR MADAM: Whereas I have paid up five
dollars and have the priveledge of writing to any
lady on the list sent from the aforesaid matrimonial
paper, I, the undersigned, have picked out you, Miss
Mayme Livingston party of the first part, obj. mat.
I am an American, five feet seven, and quite dark.
I am interested in copper mines and cattle. I can
ride anything that wears hair and last winter I
killed two silver-tips and a link. I am engaged
somewhat in trapping also. They say I am a tony
dresser and I can dance the Portland Fancy or any
dance that I see once. I play the juice-harp, mouth
organ and accordian. I have a kind disposition and
would make a good husband to any lady who had a
little income of her own.
Let me hear from you as soon as you get this and
tell me what you think of my writing.
Respy. Yrs.
JOHN LANEY.
In witness whereof that this letter is true I have
hereunto set my hand and fixed my seal.
Porcupine Jim X his mark.
The days which followed the mailing of the above composition were
the longest Laney and Porcupine had ever known. They discussed Miss
Livingston until they felt they knew her. Porcupine thought she had
black eyes, black hair, was inclined to stoutness, but with a good
“figger.”
The name of Livingston to Laney conjured up a vision of blonde
loveliness in red satin, slender, shapely, with several thousand
dollars in a handbag which she kept always with her.
Miss Livingston’s letter came with delightful promptness. There was an
angry glow in Belle Dashiel’s Indian eyes as she handed the salmon-pink
envelope to Laney.
“Who you writin’ to?” she demanded.
“Business,” replied Laney bruskly, and strode out of the house.
Porcupine, who had also come down, lingered a moment to tell her she
looked prettier each time that he saw her.
Miss Livingston’s letter read:
Mr. John Laney
deer sir. i take a few minutes to tell you how glad
i was to heer from you Away off in montana i have
not got Much Noos to rite but i will explain abot
Myself i am a suthoner and quite Dark to my Father
was a rice planter before the war which ruhined us
i hav a good Voice and sing in the Quire i danz
most evry Danc goin i have a Stiddy incom and make
hansom presints to annybody i Like if i met a perfect
Genelman i wold Marry him i cannot rite annymore
Today bekaws i hay Piz to make rite offen to
Miss Mayme Livingston
i think your Ritin is good i wish you wold send
your Fotegraf
Laney’s brow was clouded as he folded the letter. “She ain’t much of a
scholar,” he said. “You hardly ever see a scholar use little ‘i’s.’”
“What differunce does dat make when she’s got a stiddy income?” replied
Porcupine quickly. “And den what she said about handsome presents.
Sure, she’s a hairess, I tank.”
Laney brightened at these reminders, and immediately set about
composing another letter calculated to impress the wealthy, if
unlettered, Miss Livingston.
“Dear madam,” soon developed into “Dearest Mayme,” and “deer sir” as
speedily became “darlig John,” and, with each salmon-pink envelope’s
arrival, Laney’s coolness toward Belle Dashiel became more marked.
“Porcupine,” said Laney, who had begun to show some reluctance in
reading the correspondence to his partner, “the lady is gettin’ oneasy
to see me, and when we finish runnin’ that drift in the lead, I think
I’ll take a trip over to Iowa and see her.”
“But where do I come in, mebby?” demanded Porcupine.
“That’s what I’m goin’ for—to fix it up for you. Reely, Porcupine,”
and he looked critically at the rawboned Swede, whose hair stood up
like the quills on the animal from which he had received his sobriquet,
“it wouldn’t be right for you to break in on a lady without givin’ her
warning of what you was like.”
“I know I ain’t pooty,” replied Porcupine unperturbed, “but I can make
fifteen dollars a day at my trade.”
The tenderfoot’s assessment money went toward buying Laney a wardrobe
which almost any one of Laney’s relatives or friends would have killed
him in his sleep to possess.
A jeweler, advertising in _Wedding Chimes_, received an order for a
one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar scarfpin, to be paid for in instalments.
Porcupine, whose nature was singularly free from envy, could not
but feel a pang when he saw the large horseshoe of yellow diamonds
glittering in Laney’s red cravat.
Laney had read that no gentleman should think of venturing into
polite society without a “dress suit.” An order was sent for a
seventy-five-dollar suit of evening clothes to the Chicago firm from
whom they bought their mining tools. When the clothes arrived Laney
dressed himself in them one evening in their shack up the North Fork
of Belly River, and Porcupine’s face showed the admiration he felt, as
Laney strutted like a pheasant drumming on a log.
Laney, who numbered among his accomplishments the ability to draw a
rose or a horse so that almost anybody would know what it was, gave
an original touch to his costume by purchasing at the Agency a brown
broad-brimmed felt hat and painting a red rose directly in front under
the stiff brim.
When the drift was run and Laney’s wardrobe was complete, he and the
Swede set out across the Reservation to the railroad station.
“Pardner,” said Porcupine as he looked wistfully at the broadcloth coat
with satin revers and the tail sloped away like a grasshopper’s wings,
“dey ain’t a friend you got, but me, dat would trust you to do their
courtin’ for them togged out like dat—sure, dat’s so!”
There was a derisive glint in Laney’s small back eyes; he held the
slow-witted Swede in almost open contempt for his innocence. Porcupine
shook hands with him on the platform and wished him good luck. “You’ll
do your best for me, pard?” he asked anxiously.
“Trust me,” replied Laney gaily, intoxicated by the attention he was
receiving from the tourists in the Pullman car.
Porcupine stopped at Dashiel’s on his return. Belle Dashiel met him at
the door and her eyes were blazing. Without being able to define the
process of reasoning by which he arrived at the conclusion, Porcupine
felt that his brilliant plot stood an infinitely better show of success
that he did not find her in tears.
“Where’s he gone at?” She stamped her moccasined foot imperiously.
“I wouldn’t like to say,” replied Porcupine in a voice which denoted a
wish to shield his partner and yet a noble, if unusual, desire to tell
the truth.
“Tell me!” she commanded, and she put her small hand on the big Swede’s
arm as though she would shake him.
“I tank,” answered Porcupine meekly; “I dunno, but I tank he’s gone to
get married.”
As Laney sat in the day coach in his evening clothes, his broad hat
tilted back from his coarse, swarthy face, a constant procession filed
through the aisle and every eye rested upon his smiling and complacent
countenance. He passed two restless nights sleeping with his head on
his patent-leather valise, and monotonous days eating peanuts and
slaking his thirst at the ice-tank in the corner of the car. The farther
he got from home, the more attention he attracted, which was some
recompense for the inconvenience he was enduring.
He had plenty of time to decide a question which had much perplexed
him: Could he immediately address the lady as “Mayme” and kiss her
upon sight, or should he call her Miss Livingston and merely shake her
hand? If too demonstrative, he might frighten her—capital is shy, as
all men know. On the other hand, women resent coldness—now there was
Belle Dashiel. Something which, if developed, might have proved to be
a conscience, gave him a twinge, and he hastened to put the half-breed
girl from his thoughts.
He reviewed the subject of his greeting from all possible sides,
and decided that, in view of the many endearing phrases which Miss
Livingston’s letters had contained and the neat border of “o’s,”
labeled “kisses,” which had ornamented her last letter, he could feel
reasonably safe in planting a chaste salute upon her trembling lips.
Also he wondered how long it would be before he could hint at a small
loan.
When they returned from their bridal tour they would take the best room
in the hotel at the Agency, and he and work would be strangers ever
after. He would send to Great Falls for a top buggy, and buy a mate to
drive with his brown colt. He would get a long, fawn-colored overcoat
and a diamond ring. He paused in the erection of his air castle to read
again the letter which had reached him just before his departure.
“i will be at the Depo in a purple Satin wast with
red roses in my Hat you can’t help but see me,” said
the penciled lines. “i am tickled to deth that you
are coming be Sure an com on the 3.37 thursday o how
can i wait till then.”
Laney smiled contentedly and returned the letter to his pocket. For the
hundredth time he consulted the time-table. “Jimminy Christmas!—only
three hours more!” He hastened to wash his hands and face, having
postponed that ceremony until he should near Oak Grove. The bosom of
his pleated shirt was rumpled, and his dress clothes showed that he
had slept in them; but trifles could not mar his happiness. He oiled
his black hair from a small bottle containing bear grease scented with
bergamot, and adjusted his cravat that the horseshoe might show to
advantage.
When after a century of nervous tension the train whistled at the
outskirts of Oak Grove, Laney’s knees were trembling beneath him and
it seemed as though the thumping of his heart would choke him. He
swallowed hard as, the solitary arrival, he descended the car steps and
looked about him.
There was a flash of purple satin and an avalanche seemed to bury Laney
in a moist embrace.
“Hyar yo’ is, honey!” cried a ringing, triumphant voice in his ear as
he struggled to free himself. “Ah knowed you’d come!”
“Good Gawd!” cried Laney as he broke loose and jumped back. “Black!
Black as a camp coffee-pot!”
“Yes, honey, I’se black, but I’se lovin’!” and Miss Livingston advanced
upon him with sparkling eyes and an expanse of gleaming ivories.
“What for a game you been giving me?” demanded Laney, retreating to the
edge of the platform. “You said you were the daughter of a Southern
planter.”
“So I is, so I is,” replied that lady in a conciliatory tone. “Mah
father planted rice foah Colonel Heywood down in South Caroliny till he
died.”
“But your money, your steady income——”
“Eb’ry Sataday night Ah draws mah little ole five dollars foah cookin’
in a res-ta-rant.”
Miss Livingston’s mood suddenly changed. From a pleading, loving maiden
she became an aggressive termagant; from the defensive she assumed the
offensive, gripping her pearl-handled parasol in a suggestive manner.
“Say, yo’ Wil’ Man of Borneo, dressed up in them outlannish clothes,
what you mean tellin’ me yo’ was an American?”
Laney made a feeble effort to explain that he was of the race of true
Americans, but he might as well have tried to be heard above the
roaring of a storm in the Belly River cañon.
“Black, is I?” continued the dusky whirlwind, her voice rising to
a shriek. “Maybe you think yo’ look like a snow-bank! What kin’ of
a rag-time freak is yo,’ anyhow? If you think yo’ can ’gage mah
’ffections den ’spise me ’cause Ah ain’t no blonde, you’se mistaken in
dis chile! Ah don’ stand for no triflin’ from no man. If yo’ scorn me,
yo’ ‘What is it’ from de sideshow, Ah’ll have yo’ tuck up foah britch
of promise!”
John Laney waited to hear no more. He grabbed his shining valise from
the platform and ran down the nearest alley.
The _Iowa Granger_ said editorially in its next issue:
We had a narrow escape from death last Thursday
evening. We were mistaken by an intoxicated redskin
for the editor of a matrimonial publication known as
_Wedding Chimes_. Had we not pasted the infuriated
savage one with the mucilage pot, and defended
ourself with the scissors which, fortunately, we had
in our hand at the time, undoubtedly the paper of
September 12th would have been the last issue of the
_Iowa Granger_. Our compositor came to our rescue in
the nick of time.
The redskin is now in the calaboose, but refuses
to divulge his name or residence. It is believed,
however, that he belongs to the medicine show which
sold bitters and horse liniment in our midst last
week.
When the coyotes howled that evening on the hill which overlooked the
road, they saw a radiant Swede with his arm about a pretty half-breed’s
slender waist; and Dashiel fed the pinto cayuse a pint of oats, which
was the surest kind of sign that he looked upon the pinto’s owner as
somewhat closer than a brother.
_Equal to the Occasion_
An old darky preacher down South one Sunday found a poker chip in the
collection basket. The minister knew enough of the ways of the wicked
world to realize that the little ivory disk represented more money than
the average contribution, and he was loath to lose the amount. Rising
to his full height in the pulpit, he said:
“Ef de sportin’ gent what done put de pokah chip in de collection plate
will be kind ’nuff to tell where hit kin be cashed in, de congregation
will ax de Lawd to forgib him de error ob his ways.”
* * * * *
Our lives are made up of selfishness and self-sacrifice. Both are much
the same.
The Rivers of the Nameless Dead
BY THEODORE DREISER
_Author of “Sister Carrie”_
The body of a man was found yesterday in the North
River at Twenty-fifth street. A brass check, No.
21,600, of the New York Registry Company was found on
the body.—_N. Y. Daily Paper._
There is an island surrounded by rivers, and about it the tide scurries
fast and deep. It is a beautiful island, long, narrow, magnificently
populated, and with such a wealth of life and interest as no island in
the world has ever before possessed. Long lines of vessels of every
description nose its banks. Enormous buildings and many splendid
mansions line its streets.
It is filled with a vast population, millions coming and going, and is
the scene of so much life and enthusiasm and ambition that its fame is,
as the sound of a bell, heard afar.
And the interest which this island has for the world is that it is
seemingly a place of opportunity and happiness. If you were to listen
to the tales of its glory carried the land over and see the picture
which it presents to the incoming eye, you would assume that it was
all that it seemed. Glory for those who enter its walls seeking glory.
Happiness for those who come seeking happiness. A world of comfort and
satisfaction for all who take up their abode within it—the island of
beauty and delight.
The sad part of it is, however, that the island and its beauty are, to
a certain extent, a snare. Its seeming loveliness, which promises so
much to the innocent eye, is not always easy of realization. Thousands
come, it is true; thousands venture to reconnoiter its mysterious
shores. From the villages and hamlets of the land is streaming a
constant procession of pilgrims, the feeling of whom is that here is
the place where their dreams are to be realized; here is the spot where
they are to be at peace. That their hopes are not, in so many cases,
to be realized, is the thing which gives a poignant sadness to their
coming. The beautiful island is not possessed of happiness for all.
And the exceptional tragedy of it is that the waters which surround the
beautiful island are forever giving evidence of the futility of the
dreams of so many. If you were to stand upon its shore, where the tide
scurries past in its never-ending hurry, or were to idle for a time
upon its many docks and piers, which reach far out into the water and
give lovely views of the sky and the gulls and the boats, you might
see drifting past upon the bosom of the current some member of all the
ambitious throng who, in time past, has set his face toward the city,
and who entered only to find that there was more of sorrow than of
joy. Sad, white-faced maidens; grim, bearded, time-worn men; strange,
strife-worn, grief-stricken women, and, saddest of all, children—soft,
wan, tender children, floating in the waters which wash the shores of
the island city.
And such waters! How green they look; how graceful, how mysterious!
From far seas they come—strange, errant, peculiar waters—prying along
the shores of the magnificent island; sucking and sipping at the rocks
which form its walls; whispering and gurgling about the docks and piers
and flowing, flowing, flowing. Such waters seem to be kind, and yet
they are not so. They seem to be cruel, and yet they are not so; merely
indifferent these waters are—dark, strong, deep, indifferent.
And curiously the children of men who come to seek the joys of the city
realize the indifference and the impartiality of the waters. When the
vast and beautiful island has been reconnoitered, when its palaces have
been viewed, its streets disentangled, its joys and its difficulties
discovered, then the waters, which are neither for nor against, seem
inviting. Here, when the great struggle has been ended, when the years
have slipped by and the hopes of youth have not been realized; when
the dreams of fortune, the delights of tenderness, the bliss of love
and the hopes of peace have all been abandoned—the weary heart may
come and find surcease. Peace in the waters, rest in the depths and the
silence of the hurrying tide; surcease and an end in the chalice of the
waters which wash the shores of the beautiful island.
And they do come, these defeated ones, not one, nor a dozen, nor a
score every year, but hundreds and hundreds. Scarcely a day passes but
one, and sometimes many, go down from the light and the show and the
merriment of the island to the shores of the waters where peace may be
found. They stop on its banks; they reflect, perhaps, on the joys which
they somehow have missed; they give a last, despairing glance at the
wonderful scene which once seemed so joyous and full of promise, and
then yield themselves unresistingly to the arms of the powerful current
and are borne away. Out past the docks and the piers of the wonderful
city. Out past its streets, its palaces, its great institutions.
Out past its lights, its colors, the sound of its merriment and its
seeking, and then the sea has them and they are no more. They have
accomplished their journey, the island its tragedy. They have come down
to the rivers of the nameless dead. They have yielded themselves as a
sacrifice to the variety of life. They have proved the uncharitableness
of the island of beauty.
_Wouldn’t Admit It_
MARJORIE—At the meeting of the Spinsters’ Club the members told why
they had never married.
MADGE—What reason did they give?
MARJORIE—All kinds, except that they had never got the chance.
* * * * *
_Satiated_
WASHINGTONIAN—Wouldn’t you like to visit the Senate some day while
you’re here?
GUEST—No, I guess not. You see, I’m a member of the Board of
Visitors for the Old Woman’s Home up where I live.
* * * * *
_Invaluable_
CRAWFORD—Is he a good lawyer?
CRABSHAW—Sure. He knows how every law on the statute books
can be evaded.
_Another View of the Simple Life_
BY ZENOBIA COX
For the past few months we have had a deluge of optimism. From various
sources we are told that man ought to be happy. “Whatever is, is good,”
is the handwriting on the wall. Content is preached from what George
Eliot called “that Goshen of Mediocrity,” the pulpit; and politicians
publish their elastic statistics, proving prosperity and content. This
proselyting Optimism reached its height in the advent of Charles Wagner
to our hospitable shores and in the thrusting of his little book, “The
Simple Life,” under the nose of the public.
The book was published here several years ago, but has lain unnoticed
until today. Our sudden torridity of welcome makes one reflect upon
a dog who tramples on the grass beneath his feet and feeds on offal;
suddenly he begins to eat the grass and then we cry, “The dog is sick!”
Humanity has a canine instinct for its needs. Its tastes must ripen. We
can neither hasten nor retard them.
As it takes the fever of intoxication to appreciate the purity of
water; as the quiet of repose must follow the stress of effort, so man
now turns to the sweet nothingness of a dream, amid the warring clash
of realities.
That Wagner’s idyl of simplicity is but a dream, a sigh of the
imagination, only idealists can deny. Civilization and Simplicity!
Bedlam and Elysium! Nirvana on the Tower of Babel! All these alliances
are equally possible.
The very fact of his dream arousing such a storm of approval awakens
suspicion. Insistence is always a confession of doubt. Man never talks
so much of his happiness as when he is unhappy. This is demonstrated in
marriage.
Wagner’s arrival in America was singularly opportune. Certainly it
was fortunate that his little olive branch was given to the public
just when it was clamoring for something. Its palms were itching for
some of the sugar-plums the Privileged Few had wrested from it, and
it was beginning to get noisy. Yes, that hydrocephalic infant, the
Proletariat, was beginning to sob for the golden spoon in the mouth
of Special Privilege, when, lo and behold! the powers behind the
throne go to Paris and bring back the soothing syrup of Wagner and his
philosophy. The infant lets the Pharisee dope him, and he drops the
unintelligible complexities of Franchises, Trusts, Labor Problems and
Wrongs to grab the little woolly lamb of Content.
Surely the importers of Wagner are altruists, to try thus to make
the public so happy. And that Wagner has had importers as well as
indorsers, the Initiated know. Nevertheless, Wagner is a remarkable
man. He is remarkable in resembling two historical characters and also
in possessing the aptitudes for several vocations.
He resembles Rousseau. Rousseau sang the same little Psalm of
Simplicity in the most artificial and febrile period of France. The
Philistines shrieked the same applause, and even tried to eat the
prescribed grass. He resembles Mme. de Pompadour. When no longer she
could charm the palled fancy of Louis XV as Circe, coquette, dancer or
_grande dame_, she assumed the garb of a peasant girl.
That was one of the early triumphs of simplicity. Art is always a
surprise. Its sole function is to astonish. Therein Wagner is an artist.
He is also a civil engineer, for he has mastered the cosmic momentum.
The world is a seesaw. It exists by the eternal balance of contrasts.
Wagner, seeing the excess, has given us the weight to restore our
equipoise. He has led us back like refractory children to drink of milk
after we have eaten _marrons glacés_ and liked them. Of course they
have given us indigestion, and that is where Wagner fills the role of
physician; he diagnoses our disease, he places his finger upon the very
“Malady of the Century,” and he prescribes—sugar pills. This shows his
great wisdom, for sugar pills and the dissecting-knife should form the
sole equipment of every physician.
Wagner is also a philanthropist. His aim is to make us happy, and
his method is to make us believe that a gridiron is a lyre and that
cobblestones may be Apples of the Hesperides. He tells us that as
things now are, each child is “born into a joyless world; that the
complexities of our lives have led us into the Slough of Despond; that
Civilization has been futile, for it has left us miserable.” And for
all our ills he gives us the panacea of content, simplicity and repose.
He summons us to be “merely human, to have the courage to be men and
leave the rest to Him who numbered the stars. Each life should wish to
be what it is good for it to be, without troubling about anything else.”
This is the gospel of non-resistance, of quietism. The absurdity of
it is attested by every step we take, for do they not say we could
not walk were it not for the resistance of the ground? Eating, alone,
is a triumph over opposition. He wishes to steep us in the _dolce far
niente_ of Content, and tells us in order to do so all that is needed
is our confidence and trust.
“An imperturbable faith in the stability of the universe and its
intelligent ordering sleeps in everything that exists. The flowers, the
trees, the beasts of the field live in calm strength, in entire
security.”
We must remember that Wagner lives in Paris, and, therefore, make
allowances for this last statement. He probably has never seen any
beasts of the field except in the cages of the Zoo, else he could not
have such exuberant faith in their confidence and security. He could
never have studied the stealthy horrors of the forests—the furtive
panther—the relentless viper—their trembling victims—and possess
such a genial conviction of the mercy and goodness of this scheme of
creation. No, he must look away from nature for his examples of harmony
and peace.
His perpetual refrain is, “Be human and be simple.” Civilization’s
answer is that the two are incompatible. Evolution tends to complexity
as inevitably as growth leads to death. The beginnings of all things
are simple—people, theories of government and vegetable seeds. But the
laws of life will not leave them thus. Like American policemen, their
continual order is “move on.”
We would have had no history had it not been for man’s love of novelty.
It is the one enduring thing. The anthropology of the world is but
the record of man’s taste for the strange. Yet Wagner says, “Novelty
is ephemeral. Nothing endures but the commonplace, and if one departs
from that, it is to run the most perilous risk. Happy he who is able to
reclaim himself, who finds the way back to simplicity.”
After reading pages of hazy verbiage descriptive of this simplicity,
one cannot but see that his ideal is a vapory creation, a fusing of
the honest animality of the savage and the calloused quietism of the
lotus-eater.
Simplicity! What prototypes have we for it in all humanity? Two
possible types suggest themselves, the savage and the hermit. But
Darwin shows us that we cannot find simplicity in the savage. Like
civilized man, his instincts are toward exaggeration. He, too, in his
limited way, tries to escape from the realities of life. His protest
against truth is tattooing. His idea of beauty is distortion.
As the great anatomist, Bichat, long ago said, “If everyone were cast
in the same mold, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our
women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de Medici, we should
soon wish for a variety. We should wish to see certain characters a
little exaggerated beyond the existing common standard.”
All the philosophizing of the optimist won’t thwart this tendency
of human nature, and it is as futile to bewail “the Vice of the
Superlative,” the complexities and hyperboles of life, as it would
be to bewail the inevitability of death. Thus we see we cannot find
simplicity in man’s primitive form, the savage.
We must, then, look for it in one of his acquired forms—in the
idealist who can make of himself a mental Robinson Crusoe, or in the
hermit of the monastery or the desert. It must be in some isolated
being that we seek simplicity, for certainly it can never be found amid
“the madding crowd” and its “ignoble strife.” In solitude alone can
one cultivate that contemplative apathy of the mind which Wagner calls
peace, which Mahatmas call divinity, and wives call selfishness.
But solitude is not good for man. With it we punish our worst criminals
and our old maids. Victor Hugo says, “It makes a god or a devil of
man.” Neither of these superlative beings could exist in Wagner’s
temperate zone. Wagner yearns for quiet and rest, and where can we find
them? Scientists tell us nothing in the world is at rest. There are but
two spots on the earth which don’t move with it—the poles. And God has
made them uninhabitable—as a lesson.
If Wagner could reach them, he might build his Utopia there, warm it
with a rainbow and fertilize it with the waters of Lethe.
Yet humanity must have these Arcadian dreams. The epochs are strewn
with them. Periodically man grows tired of the spiced flavors of his
repasts and would fain go out in the woods and gather manna from
heaven. The effort has always been disastrous. We had the experiment
of the Perfectionists, the Icarians, the Owenites, the Harmonists and
Brook Farm. They were all founded on simplicity and were all dissolved
because of the difference between theory and practice. This is
unfortunate.
An ideal is like a schoolboy’s ruler—it is very good to measure by,
but is very frail to build a habitation with. Optimism is a good thing,
and so is Pessimism. But Optimism alone is popular; man does not like
to be told the faults of the universe any more than to be told of his
own faults. This accounts for his hospitality to all the myopic dogmas
of Optimism, and his antipathy to the equally true tenets of Pessimism.
It is as if one faction believed only in the actuality of the day,
and the other admitted only the existence of night. Their polemics
suggest the law of gravitation run mad. What if there were only a law
of attraction and none of repulsion? Certainly we would all be merged
into one. But this union would be chaos and extinction. Our repulsions
and suspicions save us. They make an individual where the Optimist with
his one law of attraction would have an inert mass. The Lord’s Prayer
should be changed to “Deliver us from evil—and good.”
Too great a bias toward a recognition of either is dangerous. The one
inculcates content—the other discontent. But of the two, discontent is
by far the safer. If content had been universal, our present degree of
enlightenment and justice would have been impossible.
Content means egotism, inaction and stagnation. Discontent means
reformation, revolution and progress. All our great men were
discontented. All our imbecile kings were contented—and tried to make
their serfs so. Whose mind was the most beneficial to the world—the
fermenting, aggressive brain of Luther, or the tranquil cerebellum
of the gorged Vitellius? Civilization has arisen from discontent.
Discontent means upheaval, and upheaval is to a nation what plowing is
to the corn. Sir Robert Peel defined agitation to be “the marshaling of
the conscience of a nation to mold its laws.”
What we want at present is not peace, but agitation. There are too many
wrongs to be righted—too many national dragons to be slain to respond
yet awhile to Wagner’s call to disarmament! What we need are spears,
not olive branches; the flag of battle, not the flag of truce.
Wagner wishes to give us happiness. But man’s effort for selfish,
personal happiness has caused all the miseries of the world.
It is by persistently closing their eyes to the sorrows of man that our
commercial pirates can so tranquilly exist. I believe that when man
sees that he cannot make life enjoyable he will then turn his attention
to making it endurable. At present our safest philosophy is the belief
in progress by antagonism, and our duty is to unsheathe the sword of
rebellion from the scabbard of ignorance, and do battle against all
despots and oppressors!
_Defined_
“WHAT is domestic economy, Professor?”
“Buying your cigars with the money you save on your wife’s clothing.”
* * * * *
_The Modern Table_
FREDDIE—What is interest, dad?
DAD—Six per cent is legal rate, 25 is pawnbroking, 100 is
usury, while 600 is high finance.
* * * * *
_The Faddist_
COBWIGGER—When did your home cease to be a happy one?
DORCAS—When my wife joined a lot of clubs that made a business of
making other people’s homes happy.
* * * * *
_A Family Secret_
CRAWFORD—I hear he does nothing but talk about his money.
CRABSHAW—Yes. He tells everything about it except how he made
it.
* * * * *
_Too Tempting_
ENGLISH TOURIST—Your members of Congress pass bills, don’t they?
LOBBYIST—Not the kind I offer them.
* * * * *
PROFITS of small comforts—the great ones are so hard to get.
_The Corner in Change_
BY WILLIAM A. JOHNSTON
“Must be something doing,” said the night-clerk to the room-clerk,
nodding in the direction of a middle-aged man who was being piloted
toward the elevator by a bell-boy. “That’s Martin, the banker, going
up to see the Senator. There’s three others ahead of him. The Senator
was expecting them, too, for he told me when they came in to have them
shown up to his sitting-room at once.”
“Who are the others?” asked the room-clerk, raising his eyes from his
ledger to look after the departing form of the man who—next to Russell
Sage—was reputed to have command of the largest amount of ready money
of any man in the United States.
“Well,” replied the night-clerk, taking advantage of the dulness of a
rainy night in the spring to engage in more extended conversation than
the exigencies of his calling usually permitted, “the first one to
arrive was Congressman Woods. He’s stopping over at the Waldorf. This
is only his second term in the House, but they say he is practically
leader of his party. Not ten minutes after him was Higgins, who used to
be comptroller, or something of the sort. He’s made a pile of money in
the Street in the last few years. They say that last corner in wheat
netted him about two million. I wouldn’t care if I stood close enough
to him to get a tip once in awhile on the way things were going. There
would be more in it than following the horses, although that ain’t
saying much, judging by the run of bad luck I have had lately. Just
before Martin came in Tom Connors went upstairs.”
“Tom’s rather out of his latitude, ain’t he?” said the room-clerk. “It
ain’t often he gets in with such big fellows, is it?”
“Don’t you fool yourself,” replied the night-clerk. “Maybe Tom Connors
doesn’t get his name in the society news as often as the rest of them,
but all the same he stands about as near next the Senator as anyone in
town. Tom Connors has a big pull in Washington, and almost as big a
one with the bankers here. With the chances he has the only reason Tom
Connors ain’t a millionaire is because he’s such a spender. Tom is a
working partner in a good many Senate deals or steals, whichever you
want to call them, unless I’m much mistaken.”
The arrival of several guests put an end to the conversation. The
room-clerk turned once more to his ledger and the night-clerk began
reaching for keys and yelling, “Front!” An hour or two later the men
behind the desk were at leisure again when “Ed” Wallace strolled up.
To him the night-clerk imparted the information that the Senator was
having some sort of a séance in his rooms, incidentally mentioning who
were there.
Wallace hastened over to the corner where several members of that
unorganized organization, “the political combination,” the brightest
reporters of the big newspapers, were exchanging reminiscences. “The
most news with the least work” is the motto of the “combination.” It
means that whatever news one of them gets, all get—with considerably
less labor than if each worked independently, and with the chance of a
rival newspaper scoring a “beat” reduced to the minimum.
Various theories as to the meaning of the conference upstairs were
suggested and rejected. The five men in the Senator’s rooms were not
political allies—that the reporters well knew. That they were all,
with the exception perhaps of the Western representative, warm personal
friends, they knew equally well. But despite its knowledge of the men
and its familiarity with the political situation, the “combination” was
unable to deduce anything that could be printed.
“I’ll give it up,” said Stanley Titus. “The only thing I see is for
Wallace to go upstairs and see what is going on. The Senator will talk
to him if he’ll talk to anyone, and perhaps we can get a line on what’s
doing.”
When Wallace, two minutes later, knocked on the door of the Senator’s
sitting-room, it was the Senator himself who opened it—just about two
inches—and peered impatiently into the hall.
“Oh, it’s you, is it, Wallace?” he said. “Well, my boy, what can I do
for you?”
“The combination would like to know if you have anything to say for
publication about the conference that is going on in there,” replied
Wallace.
The Senator put his head a little farther out the door. “I will tell
you something, but you will understand that it is not for publication,”
he said, dropping his voice to a whisper as Wallace leaned forward
expectantly. “I’ve got all the blues.” And the door was shut in
Wallace’s face.
But there were no chips or cards on the table to which the Senator
returned after shutting the door. The five men, their wrinkled brows
betokening hard thinking, were intently studying neatly tabulated
statements—long rows of figures—that might mean much or little,
depending entirely on the observer’s information as to their purpose.
“As I was saying,” the Senator began, taking up the conversation
where he had dropped it to answer the knock, “I am fully convinced
that $10,000,000 will see it through. Out of that the expenses of
engineering the deal will amount to, say, a million. The actual
expenses of collection should not exceed more than ten per cent., and I
believe with Mr. Connors that a good part of it can be done with five
per cent. That million is all we stand to lose, for the rest will be
invested in goods worth their face value, whether the plan succeeds
or fails. I believe that it will succeed and I am ready to guarantee
one-fourth of the sum needed. If each of the others present, with the
exception of Mr. Connors, will do the same, we will have the money. As
Mr. Connors is the originator of the plan and will have to superintend
the carrying out of the details, I think that without being expected to
invest any money he should receive one-tenth of the net profits, and
the residue can be divided equally among the rest of us.”
There were no dissenters to the Senator’s proposition, least of all
Tom Connors. After some little discussion as to details, the date for
carrying out the plan was fixed as the first Friday in October, or
rather the first Friday and Saturday, as it was calculated that two
days would be required to consummate the work.
When the conference adjourned an hour later Mr. Higgins, the former
comptroller, Representative Woods and the Senator each had agreed to
have by the first day of September $2,500,000 in available cash, which
Mr. Martin, the banker, joining with $2,500,000 of his own, could
utilize in carrying out the scheme proposed by Tom Connors, who in lieu
of capital had pledged himself to an immense amount of hard work, in
consideration of which he was to receive one-tenth of the profits.
There was no good reason for calling it the Fractional Currency Bill,
for in reality it was an anti-fractional currency bill. It provided
that after the fifteenth day of September the Government of the United
States should not issue or cause to be issued, or coin or cause to be
coined, any half-dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, two-cent pieces
or pennies, and also that none of the fractional currency already in
existence in the possession of the United States should be put into
circulation for a period of five years after the date on which the law
became operative.
The bill made its appearance in the House and Senate a few days after
the opening of the special session called by the President to meet
on the twelfth day of July. Strange to say, neither the Senator nor
Representative Woods seemed to be much interested in it. Both voted
for it after having made brief speeches in its support, but they were
only two of many that did the same. The father of the bill in the House
was Hicks, of California, and in his State the measure was known as
the Hicks bill. The patron of the measure in the Senate was Gordon, of
Maine. Neither of these men heretofore had been recognized as having
much influence with their associates, but in this instance their pet
bill at once found favor in the eyes of their colleagues.
It is a peculiar thing about the American law-maker—the real author
of legislation—that he seldom, if ever, appears at the front. He
is content that some of the small fry shall have the distinction of
fathering the laws and be recorded in history as the men who did
this or that for their country’s good. The real leaders of American
political life and actions seem to think that post-mortem fame is more
than outweighed by more substantial ante-mortem things.
Simple as the measure seemed to read, so equally simple were the
strongest arguments used in its support. The actual metal in a
penny was worth perhaps the tenth of a penny. There was a startling
difference between the face value and the bullion value of the nickel.
Even the silver coins if offered as metal in the open market would
fetch less than half the amount that they called for. Eventually, if
more and more of these “tokens of value” were issued, the people would
refuse to accept them except far below par. The time to stop such
depreciation was before it had begun, the supporters of the measure in
both houses declared, and there was none to gainsay them. Those who had
always opposed the greenback theory could not consistently oppose this
line of reasoning. So the bill in its transition into law met little
opposition.
Strange to say, the newspapers, not even the tragedy-shrieking,
sensation-making, scandal-hunting ones, saw aught in the Fractional
Currency Bill to make it worth more than a casual mention. What was
said about it was good. One or two of the Far West publications who had
viewed with dismay the gradually increasing number of pennies in their
vicinity, welcomed it openly and gladly, for they felt that it would
avert the possibility of reducing their prices to the one, two or three
cent standard of the East. The Eastern newspapers that had been cutting
each other’s throats by selling twelve and sixteen pages of printed
matter at less than the cost of the white paper itself, saw in the
measure, if as predicted it resulted in the gradual withdrawal of the
penny from circulation, a chance to demand and receive a higher price
for their issues without being hurt by the lower prices of rivals.
Naturally, the newspapers did not oppose the measure.
As for the people—what do the American people, individually, know or
care what is done in Washington? For the most part the knowledge of
the community at large is confined to what it reads of the doings of
Congress in the Washington letters and to the criticisms it sees in
its pet editorial columns. If nothing is said about a particular bill,
the public knows nothing. Merchants, bankers, shipping interests,
railroads, labor unions, are aroused to action only when they see in
a bill an attempt to work injury to themselves. In the case of the
Fractional Currency Bill those who knew of it saw nothing in it likely
to injure them, and so there was no opposition.
Thus it was that the bill prohibiting the issue of the fractional
currency of the United States for a period of five years from the
fifteenth day of September received the signature of the President and
was duly recorded among the laws of the nation.
Seven o’clock in the morning of the first Friday in October found Tom
Connors at his desk in his offices on the second floor of the Safe
Deposit Building. He had rented a suite of rooms there several months
before and had put on the door the simple sign, “Thomas E. Connors,
Broker.” There was nothing unusual about the appearance of the office.
In the anteroom there were a few chairs, a table and an office-boy.
In another room a leased wire was run in and a telegraph operator was
seated. In the office of the “broker” himself there were only such
paraphernalia as might be found in any broker’s office.
Even in an inner room there was hardly anything to arouse suspicion.
Some persons might have wondered a little if they had noticed that what
was to all appearances a door of a coat-closet in reality opened on a
secret staircase that led directly to the floor below and into one of
the strong rooms of the Safe Deposit Company of which Mr. Martin, the
banker, was president.
It was not very many minutes after the arrival of his employer that the
office-boy realized to his regret that Friday was to be almost as busy
a day for him as the day before had been. Ordinarily, he had had plenty
of time to read his favorite literature, interrupted perhaps by a dozen
callers and half a dozen errands to do, but on Thursday he had observed
sorrowfully that Mr. Connors’s clients seemed to be increasing. If he
had kept count he might have known that no less and no more than one
hundred persons had called on Mr. Connors. Mr. Connors saw all of them.
Some of them he saw alone. Others were admitted to his room by twos and
threes. In one instance ten men entered the inner office and emerged
from it twenty minutes later in a body. But what all those men were
doing there was not of half so much interest to the office-boy as was
the fate of Daredevil Mike, whom the end of the chapter had left facing
the muzzles of seven rifles in the hands of seven desperate moonshiners.
Perhaps the office-boy’s respect for Mr. Connors’s callers would have
been increased had he known that each of the men when he left the
office had a package of one-dollar bills. There was not one of them
that had not at least $100; others had as much as $500. There was not
one of them that Mr. Connors did not know was to be trusted thoroughly.
The men were carefully selected. Some of them on previous occasions
during political campaigns had been supplied with money by Mr. Connors
to be distributed in the places where it would do the most good. A few
of them were not unknown in the records of crime, but as Mr. Connors
had remarked to Martin, the banker, to whom he had shown the list,
“There ain’t one of them that would throw down a friend.”
One of these men had arrived in the office shortly after Mr. Connors,
and as soon as he was admitted to the private office and the door had
been shut, he exclaimed:
“Say, Connors, that was a regular cinch. It did not take me more than
an hour to clean up that market. No explanations had to be made,
either.”
“Where’s the stuff?” asked Mr. Connors bruskly, and Mullins, his
caller, began emptying on the desk from every pocket in his clothing a
varied assortment of small change.
“You’ll find there’s ninety-five dollars there all right, as per
agreement,” said Mullins. “I didn’t have to spend much over a dollar,
either. It was a package of tobacco here and some potatoes for the old
woman there, where some old codger wouldn’t give me change unless I
bought something. But in most cases I would go to a stall and tell them
a neighbor wanted five dollars in small change till the bank opened,
and nearly every time I would get it. I don’t believe there’s a hundred
pennies left in that market.”
While he had been talking a clerk from the Safe Deposit Company had
entered Mr. Connors’s office by the private staircase. He carried to
the room below the money Mullins had turned in, returning shortly with
two receipt slips, one of which went to Mr. Connors and the other to
his caller.
“Now, Mullins,” said Mr. Connors, “I want you to go up to the big
cable-car barn where the conductors turn in their money. Here’s $500
more, and stay there until you are relieved. If you run out of money
telephone me. Get in some inconspicuous corner and pass the word around
among the conductors that ninety-five pennies or nineteen nickels are
worth a dollar to you. If they want to know what is up tell them that
it is a theatrical advertising dodge; tell them that you are writing a
story for a Sunday newspaper—tell them anything.”
Hardly had Mullins been dismissed when another of the syndicate’s
agents came in to report and was hurried off to some other part of the
city. In some cases the men received an allowance of five per cent. on
all the money they handled. In other cases it was a little more. So the
work went on all that day and the next. Ten men were kept at work in
ten sections of the city seeing that paper money replaced the silver,
nickels and coppers in the tills of the small shops. Few, if any, of
the shopkeepers realized that anything was amiss. The agents were all
instructed to do their work without arousing any suspicion. They had
orders every time they rode on a surface-car or patronized the Elevated
roads to offer a dollar bill in payment of their fare. Wherever they
saw an opportunity to get a bill changed they took it.
A clerk of the Safe Deposit Company reported at noon to Mr. Connors
that 12,071,624 pennies, 437,589 nickels, 366,427 dimes, 444,886
quarters and 139,553 half-dollars had been turned in by the assiduous
collectors. Telegrams received from Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and
various other cities showed that the efforts there had met with equal
success. With the $3,000,000 in small change that Mr. Connors had
succeeded in amassing in the preceding weeks through banks and money
brokers, he was well satisfied.
At three o’clock on Friday afternoon there was not a bank in the city
that had not had its store of small change much depleted by the raids
of the dry-goods and department stores. Half an hour later an organized
descent was made on all the big department stores by the agents of the
syndicate. Ninety of the collectors—the others being still engaged
elsewhere, according to orders previously issued, their movements being
known only to Mr. Tom Connors—visited in succession the biggest stores
in the shopping district, making in various departments a series of
purchases of articles advertised at four cents or six cents, or some
other small sum that meant at least ninety cents in change from a
dollar bill. When Friday evening came the syndicate had succeeded in
stripping the shopping district of all its small change.
The work of collecting on Saturday was necessarily much slower, but
when Saturday evening came the syndicate had nearly $9,000,000 in
fractional currency in its possession and everyone was wondering what
made change so scarce. The grand _coup_ was effected at midnight
Saturday night. Agents of the syndicate were waiting with paper money
at the headquarters of all the penny-in-the-slot machines. More than a
million dollars, mostly of pennies, was hurried in guarded trucks to
the Safe Deposit offices.
On Sunday afternoon there was another conference in the Senator’s
rooms. Connors submitted his report. He told how the markets,
the car-barns, the “L” stations, the department stores, the
five-and-ten-cent shops had been skilfully but legally looted of all
their small change. Not only in one city but in all cities of over
ten thousand inhabitants had this been done successfully. There was
triumph in his tones as he read the final figures: “Cost of collection,
$482,621. Total small change in vaults, $9,464,867.63.”
The Senator smiled a satisfied smile.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “I think we can safely say that our corner is
complete. We have cornered the small change. The department stores, the
street railways, business everywhere will be at a standstill tomorrow.
Small change is essential to modern business. The business men must
have it. They must come to _us_ for it. If business stops for a single
day, there is hardly a large establishment that can survive. We have
them at our mercy! How merciful we are to be, Mr. Martin, I think we
should leave to you.”
The others nodded assent.
Mr. Martin adjusted his glasses. He took Mr. Connors’s report and
glanced at it with deliberation.
“As the Senator observed,” he began, “the retail business houses must
have small change. They must have pennies. Even on Saturday afternoon
they were trying to get them. They were offering premiums. As high as
six dollars was offered for five dollars in pennies. By Monday noon,
with disaster, with suspension, with failure before them, they will
gladly pay any price for small change.”
“But, gentlemen”—the banker smiled a philanthropic smile—“we must be
generous. We can offer the retailers liberal terms—we can offer them
all the small change they want for immediate delivery by Monday noon.
We can make the terms seven dollars for five dollars in small change.
From what I know of the conditions, I am confident that all the small
change we have amassed will be gladly taken at that price. We have on
hand in round numbers nine and one-half millions. For this we will
receive $13,300,000. Deducting our capital, and the half million that
it cost us for collection, this will still leave us $2,800,000, or
something more than a half million apiece after Mr. Connors has had his
tenth.”
Monday dawned bright and clear, and Mr. Martin was early in reaching
his office at the Safe Deposit Company. So was Mr. Connors. The last
thing on Saturday night circulars had been mailed to all the principal
retailers and to the street railway companies announcing that the Safe
Deposit Company was prepared to supply an unlimited amount of small
change on short notice.
“The street-cars caught it hard this morning,” whispered Mr. Connors as
he dropped downstairs for a moment to see how things were going. “How
are things progressing? Any answers to the circulars yet?”
Mr. Martin shook his head, but he glanced at the clock.
“It’s too early,” he said. “It’ll take them an hour or two to realize
what a bad situation they are in.”
“I suppose it will,” said Connors as he went upstairs to send out
scouts.
An hour later he was back downstairs in Mr. Martin’s office. The
Senator was there, too. Both he and Martin looked worried.
“Say,” said Connors, “something’s gone wrong somewhere. The department
stores seem to be doing business the same as ever. And there’s pennies
everywhere!”
“That’s just what the Senator was telling me,” said Mr. Martin, with a
puzzled air.
“Well, where in blazes are all the pennies coming from?” demanded
Connors angrily.
“That is just what Mr. Martin and I expected you to tell us!” said the
Senator severely. “Did you clean out all the small change from the
markets?”
“And from the department stores?” echoed the banker.
“And from the car-barns?”
“And from the five-and-ten-cent stores?”
“And from the slot machines?”
“And from the children’s banks?”
“Yes, and from a thousand places more!” said Connors.
“How about the churches?” asked the Senator slowly.
All three looked blank. They understood now why the corner had failed.
For everybody knows that, no matter what happens, there are always
plenty of pennies in the church collection plates.
_Car Straps as Disease Spreaders_
BY JOHN H. GIRDNER, M.D.
The leather straps in the street-cars of New York and all other cities,
to which people have to hang when unable to get a seat, are not only
unmentionably filthy, but they are a means of spreading disease. Each
one of these straps is a focus of infection, a continual repository and
source of supply of every kind of disease germ and about every kind of
filth known to mankind. These car straps are made of leather. They are
riveted around the pole from which they hang, when the car is built,
and there they remain until they or the car are worn out. They are
never removed to be cleaned or disinfected. And they are never renewed
until the old one is rotten from age and use. Thousands upon thousands
of all sorts and conditions of people, hailing from everywhere and with
every imaginable variety of filth and infection befouling their hands
and fingers, grasp these straps at all hours of the day and night.
Some idea of the conglomeration of materials which these thousands of
hands deposit, remove and mix up on the car straps might safely be left
to the imagination. Microscopic examination of scrapings taken from
straps in use on cars in New York City has revealed infectious material
and filth of all kinds. Cultures made from these scrapings and injected
into guinea pigs caused their death in a few hours.
Car straps may readily be the means of conveying the virus of some
of the most loathsome diseases, especially those attended with a
discharge, or where there are open ulcers or eruption on the skin. In
traveling about the city people hold on to the car straps from a few
minutes to half an hour. The perspiration of the hand moistens the
leather and whatever of filth or virus happens to be on the hand is
literally soaked into the strap and there it remains until another
hand comes along and carries some of it away or makes another deposit
of similar character or both. It is true that the skin everywhere, and
especially the thick skin on the hands, is an excellent protection
against poisonous material brought into contact with it, otherwise man
could not live at all. Here is a good example of what is meant: You
might cover your entire arm with vaccine virus and it would not “take”
if the entire skin was intact, but scratch it ever so little, making a
small raw spot, and the virus enters the system and you have all the
symptoms of a successful vaccination. So it is in handling straps which
have been handled by others with virus of any kind on their hands; if
there are no raw or sore places on your hand you are not in danger,
but a slight abrasion, a cut or hang-nail may be sufficient to cause
infection, as happened to a patient of mine only recently.
There is another danger: virus on the hand may be carried to the eyes
by the fingers and cause mischief when there is no abrasion on the hand
to admit it to the system.
Aside from the dangers pointed out, there is the esthetic side. It is
far from pleasant to hold on to one of these straps if one stops to
think what may be, and what certainly is, on the strap. You can put on
gloves; but it is not even pleasant to think of wallowing one’s gloves
in such material.
You cannot disinfect leather without destroying it; even if these
leather straps could be removed from the poles. Here is the remedy:
Use straps made of webbing instead of leather, and attach them to the
poles with a device which would make it possible to remove the straps
readily. Remove the straps at proper intervals, once a month or so,
and thoroughly disinfect them with heat and formaldehyde. They will
come out of this thoroughly cleaned and without injury to the strap
itself. Webbing straps are stronger than leather. Tests made at Brown
University of the comparative tensile strength of the two materials
showed that, while leather straps of the regulation kind broke under
400 or 500 pounds, it took 600 and 700 pounds to break webbing straps.
The webbing strap is also more pleasant to grasp in the hand than
leather.
Every argument is in favor of substituting webbing for leather as
material for car straps except the small item of expense to the
companies of making the change. The cost of disinfecting them from time
to time would be trifling. The president of the Board of Health of New
York City has, in fact, expressed his willingness to disinfect the
straps free of charge to the companies, if they will bring the straps
to the department’s disinfecting plant at such intervals as he shall
designate.
Spitting in cars is properly prohibited because there is some danger
of spreading tuberculosis by this means. And it is also a practice
revolting to well-bred people. As a means of conveying the germs of a
number of loathsome diseases, the present car straps are more dangerous
than is spitting on the floor. And it is certainly revolting to a man
or woman of ordinary habits of cleanliness to be obliged to hang on to
a piece of leather which is so filthy that one would not touch it under
any other circumstances.
_His Profanitaciturnity_
“Deacon Timothy Tush is a man of few words,” said the landlord of the
Pruntytown tavern, “but he makes ’em count.
“Of course, it was aggravating enough to have caused ’most anybody
to indulge in any kind of language that came to hand, and plenty of
it—to have the hired man cut up such a dido. To be sure, foolishness
is bound up in the heart of a hired man; but Deacon Timothy’s hired
man went further than the law allows when he attempted to smoke out a
hornet’s nest up in the barn loft, with a skillet of live coals and
two spoonfuls of sulphur; after, of course, having driven up with an
ox-cart of hay and clumb up into the loft and found the nest. Being a
hired man, he couldn’t possibly act any other way.
“He did exactly what might have been expected when a hornet stung him
on the neck; he jumped backward, stuck his foot through a rotten board
and flung the live coals in every direction. The Deacon was coming
along with old Juckett, the horse doctor, just as the hired man tumbled
out of the loft door, considerably afire and literally infested with
hornets, and landed on the load of hay, setting fire to that, too. The
oxen ran over the Deacon and old Juckett, scattered burning hay ’most
everywhere, tore the cart to flinders, and would have burnt up the
whole place if it hadn’t been for the neighbors.
“As it was, barn, cart and load of hay were totally destroyed, the oxen
singed, the Deacon sadly battered, old Juckett’s left leg broken, and
the hired man so unanimously stung and fried that the doctor said he
really didn’t know where to begin on him. And—but, let’s see! Where
was I? Oh, yes! All the Deacon said when it happened was ‘Suzz! suzz!’
but I can’t help thinking it was the most profane suzzing I ever had
the pleasure of listening to.”
_The Say of Reform Editors_
The Reform editor is a political waif on the tempestuous sea of strife.
It would have been money in his pocket if he had never been born.
He has a devil part of the time, and a devil of a time all the time.
The smallest thing about him is his pocketbook and the largest his
delinquent list.
He says more kind things of other people and gets more “cussings” than
any other man living.
When he first takes the job of reforming the world he thinks it can be
finished in six months or a year.
Then he puts it off another year and borrows some money of his
father-in-law.
Then he enlists for three years or more during the war and borrows some
more money.
At this stage of the game he takes a new grip on the situation and
starts in to finish up the job in the next campaign.
But a cog slips and the dadgummed thing slides merrily down the broad
road to destruction.
The editor tears his hair and says some cuss words.
The devil grins and throws the shooting-stick at the office cat.
Every opposition paper trots out its rooster, and the editor waits for
the world to come to an end or the moon to turn to blood.
At this point in the proceedings it is time to borrow some more money.
He would quit business, but he can’t.
When a man undertakes to reform the world he is never out of a job.
He always sees something that needs his attention.
But the Reform editor is made of the right kind of metal.
He is always out of money, but seldom out of heart.
He used to dream of the time when he could bathe his wearied feet in
the rippling waters of success.
When every man would do unto his brother as he would have his brother
to do unto him.
When in Utopia’s green fields and by the side of its babbling brooks he
could end his days.
But he is over that now.
All he can do is to attract some attention and set the people to
thinking.
Here’s to the Reform editor.
He may have chosen a rough and tempestuous road, but the lightning
strokes of his gifted pen and thunder tones of his voice will purify
the moral and political atmosphere.—_Morgan’s Buzz Saw._
* * * * *
“A READER of _The Commoner_ asks where he can secure a copy of
a book entitled ‘Ten Men on Money Isle.’ If anyone who is able to give
the information will send it to _The Commoner_ on a postal card the
information will be published for the benefit of the readers.”
And the foregoing from Bryan’s _Commoner_!
“Ten Men on Money Isle” is one of Colonel S. F. Norton’s best books,
and one of the most popular on the money question. It is a book that
made thousands of converts to Populism, the triumph of which gave Mr.
Bryan two terms in Congress and placed him prominently before the
American people. Every Populist newspaper advertised it, quoted it and
praised it. Greenbackers, alliancers, union laborites, socialists,
single taxers, students of political economy and sociology and
everybody else with intelligence and energy enough to give attention
to public questions, were familiar with the modest little book and its
author. And yet W. J. Bryan, the child of Populism, never heard of
it—doesn’t know his political father, as it were. Oh, pshaw! You can’t
fool me! Bryan isn’t that ignorant.—_The People’s Banner._
* * * * *
If the Populist vote was thrown out in all other counties as it was
in Monroe, Tom Watson should have had about 5,000 votes in Iowa this
election. One thing sure, the Republican papers admit that 75,000 legal
voters in Iowa did not vote this year 1904; that means that over a
hundred thousand did not vote. There was no choice between Parker and
Roosevelt, and these men thought Watson could not win, so they did not
vote.—_Iowa Educator._
* * * * *
We look upon the battle of Waterloo as a tremendous catastrophe because
57,000 people were killed in that memorable conflict, but in ten years
the railroads of the United States have killed 78,152 persons, and all
for the sake of earning dividends on watered stock. How many Waterloos
are comparatively soon forgotten!—_Field and Farm._
* * * * *
On Christmas Eve a private conference of prominent Bryan Democrats
was held in Lincoln, Neb., at which Mr. Bryan presided, having for
its purpose the development of a scheme to re-Bryanize the Democratic
party and put out another bait for the Populists. The details of
the plan will, no doubt, be given out at an early day. The Pops
have been gold-bricked by Democrats enough to learn that any plan,
promise or pledge from that source has nothing good for them in it.
Keep in the middle of the road! Don’t be caught by these political
trimmers!—_Southern Mercury._
* * * * *
Roosevelt wants Congress to provide work for the Indians on the
reservations. The Indians won’t work. Nothing is said about the two
million men who are out of work. To provide them with jobs would be
to disband the great army of the unemployed, without which capitalism
could not exist.—_Iowa Educator._
* * * * *
President Roosevelt says there should be no rebates allowed on
freight rates by the railroads. It is plain to be seen that if we had
government ownership the President would not allow “rebates,” but it is
safe to say nothing will be done, for these railway corporations have a
way to interest members of Congress in these profits, so that no law to
curb them can be got through Congress. If we had government ownership
even a Republican President would give us relief, but as it is he is
powerless.—_The Forum, Denver, Col._
* * * * *
It is easy to see now that the St. Louis convention was the crowning
event of damphoolishness.
Almost anyone can be fooled part of the time, but nobody but a fool can
be fooled all the time.
The yellow-hammers that are now in control of the Democratic party
insist that they are going to hold on.
The consensus of opinion among Populists seems to be that they won’t
take any more of Dr. Bryan’s medicine.
The Democratic party may not be dead, but it is disfigured beyond
recognition, crippled beyond recovery, and disgraced beyond redemption.
As principle has been abandoned, and there are not enough offices to
go round, there is nothing to hold the pieces of the Democratic party
together.
There is a man down in Texas who is so particular as to “what’s in a
name” that he won’t kiss a “grass widow” for fear of catching the “hay
fever.”
If the South will set its face forward instead of backward it will see
the dawn of a new era, an era that will make her the mistress of the
commerce of the world.
One of the most spectacular scenes ever exhibited in this old world of
ours is presented by a lot of laboring men howling for what they want
and voting for what they don’t want.
When the politicians of the South want to steal something, or do
some other mean thing, they dig up the “nigger domination snake”
in order to distract the attention of the people from their own
meanness.—_Morgan’s Buzz Saw._
* * * * *
Reformers make a mistake in thinking all the reform element is outside
of the Republican party. The greatest obstruction today in the way of
reform is the Democratic party. If it would gently sink to rest as the
Whig party did, the forceful men in the Republican party would lead a
movement that would give us quick and substantial relief. Seventy-five
per cent. of the Republicans have advanced ideas and are anxious for
reform. To be sure, the party is in the strong clutch of greed, as
much so as the Democratic party was in 1850, but the Whig party had
the good sense to die in 1854, and the Free Soil Democrats, the strong
men of the then dominant party, came out and formed the Republican
party, a party of the people, by the people and for the people. And
this party would have given us splendid service in economic reforms
had not the great Civil War required its attention; while the nation
was torn by this internecine struggle the vampires of greed, who have
no politics, fastened themselves upon this grand new party, and long
before peace came were so intrenched in power that such men as Lincoln,
Morton, Wade, Stevens and a host of other great Republican leaders were
compelled to bow in submission. They saw and comprehended the dire
results that would follow the machination of these ghoulish hounds of
hell, but they were powerless.
Wade and Stevens were moved to tears, Lincoln’s soul was torn by grief.
“We submit,” said Stevens, “to save the life of a nation.”
Thus did grasping greed take advantage of our extremity and make the
struggle for existence a strife more fierce than war.—_The Forum,
Denver, Col._
* * * * *
Back of all politics is the System. What the System is we now know
fairly well from the exposures of Ida Tarbell, Steffens, Lawson and
others. The System is not a political but an industrial form of
control. Its rewards and punishments are economic. The greater part of
the population of the United States lives under conditions of economic
slavery of one kind or another. Political liberty does not in any way
mean or guarantee industrial liberty. Hence the impending revolution in
this country is not to be political but industrial.—_Tomorrow._
* * * * *
A hundred thinkers grow gray a-thinking; a hundred discoverers grow
old a-discovering; a financier comes along, grabs the theories and the
finds, hires folks to straighten ’em out, and rides in his automobile
while the poor fellows of ideas eat mush and water by the roadside.
The men who do brain-work get the crust-crumbs which fall from the
commercial sponge-cake. Brains are poor collaterals to raise money
on.—_The Scythe of Progress._
* * * * *
The _Saturday Evening Post_ says that there is to be a new deal in
politics. It predicts a realignment and declares that “there is a
great body of Republicans who really belong on the Democratic side,
and a smaller, but still large number of Democrats who ought to be
Republicans.” Let the exchange take place—the sooner the better.
Harmony in belief and in purpose is the only basis of co-operation in
politics.—_The Commoner._
* * * * *
There is no danger of Bryan stealing the Populist platform while Tom
Watson is standing on it.—_Morgan’s Buzz Saw._
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