Judge — October 7, 1905 — page 2: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PUBLISHED WEEKLY Az THE PaRxeR BUILDING, FOURTH, AVENUE axp Nivereextu Staxer, New YoRe. Wastaxx Apvantisinc Orrice—1313 Hartford Building, Chicago, lit Goa Spr: om Zoaches TERMS TO SUBSCRIMERS: STATES AND CANADA bers = ‘One copy, for thirteen weeks FOREIGN Including the Chrsrstas Juoce. SUBSCRIPTIONS—To all foreign countries in the postal union, $4.50: Fvwornay satss-acenrs—/ulernatioual Nowe Company, Bream's building, Chancery Lane, EC Landon ; Brentans's, dovent de !"Opera, Paris; Saarhack's News Exchange, Mains, Germany, The contents of FUDGE are protected by copyright in both the United States and Great Britain. Infringement of this conyright wXll be promptly and vigorously prosecuted. CONTRIBUTORS mast inclose a stamsed and self-adtressed erfoelope with all manascrtcts, otherwise retarn of the Latter when found unavailatle cannot be guaranteed. DRAVINGS and all contributions sent to the Art Department should have the sender's full name and address written plainty on each and every separate shetch. The accompanying Jobe or descrictive letterpress should in ébery instance be written upon tts indtotdual pictare, and NOT upon a separate slip of paver. accented. tnsure safe and prompt return of material not GEORGE WASHINGTON PLUNKITT, “HONEST GRAFTER.” JUDGE takes pleasure in introducing to the nation at large George Washington Plunkitt, Tammany leader, littérateur, man of affairs, and, by his own confession, “honest grafter.”” Graft is a word which is slipping away irresistibly from its pure, bucolic origin into the rogue’s gal- lery of speech. It ought to be pleasant news that in its big aspects, as exemplified by its biggest votaries, it is honest and square and right. Mr. Plunkitt is out with a book in which all this is made plain. He says he has grown rich by graft, and is growing richer, but never dishonestly. ‘I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.”” That’s his mott That’s the formula of “honest graft.” For i stance, Mr. Plunkitt is tipped off by Tammany that a certain park is to be laid out. He buys all the ad- jacent lots he can get. The park arrives and Mr. Plunkitt’s lots soar. Or a bridge is to be built. Mr, Plunkitt enjoys the rare privilege of getting next to this information long in advance, buys the approaches and rights of way and everything he can get hold of, and profits immensely when the city gets ready to buy up his bargains. Mr. Plunkitt slips away into the moun- tains and buys a water-shed, or at least a few shingles of it, and lo! it turns out later that a reservoir will be placed there, and the city has to get the property from Mr. Plunkitt at his own price. This is not blackmailing saloons, explains Mr. Plunkitt, nor plucking gamblers and levying on vice —that’s graft. His performance is “honest” graft. Coming from a man of such experience and antecedents, this is a cheering word to an age weary of meanness. Who could better bring us this solace? George Washing- ton! How solid, satisfying! Plunkitt! There is firmness and strength. Put algebraically, we have G. Washington + Plunks = It. Here, then, is an honest, straightforward grafter. There is no deceit, no shillyshally. ‘A bureau of advance information and a fat metropolis with a nice, friendly party in control is all he asks. The world for him ’s a cheese in hunks, the number being two. The big he reaches forth and takes, the other ’s left for you. He sits beside his trellised vine and scorns the wish to roam The while, as music in his ears, the golden plunks plunk home. GOTHAM POLICE AND MURDER MYSTERIES. EW YORK CITY is gaining an unenviable notoriety as the head- centre and natural home of the murder mystery. The unsolved rid- dies of crime, the violences unavenged and murderers escaped, are increas- ing at an alarming rate. The helplessness of the police and detective system in the face of these orgies of crime is appalling. Men and women are done to death in hotels and on the streets, in the heart of the city, and in the highways and lanes of the suburbs, and the astuteness of the “ po- lice theories” and clews are only equaled by their utter barrenness of results. And this is strange, for upon occasion the New York police exhibit an almost ideal celerity and cleverness. A little while ago a pro- fessor’s son returned late in the evening from the country and went to his father’s closed home to get a change of clothing. He ascended to an upper room, got ‘three shirts and a volume of Bacon,” and left the house by the front door, as he had entered, not hurriedly, not furtively, but in the ordinary gait of a young fellow feeling @ very much at home. But, such is the alertness of the police, that young man was met as he came out by a captain, two detectives, and eight patrolment Five minutes more and there would probably have been a platoon of regulars and all the reserves and “fly boys” in the city! To see an earnest, muscular cop yanking a“ newsle”” to the station-house and his just deserts is to get an idea of the terrific in- tensity of the ‘‘ foorce” when aimed at the wrong-doer. Anctosare of stamps to the fall amount of postage (s also reguireds 10 REc!PRocITY. Great time to do something about it, Mr. President. KING EDWARD has just picked up a little purse of $880,000 by the operation of escheat. Congratulations, Eddie. So nice, too, just when a fellow ’s worried about the winter’s coal. AMERICA is getting pretty big, but consuls should not on that account get too uppish toward the little governments to which they are ac- credited. There’s Albers, for instance, and Nicaragua. BRINGS the past near to read that Otto Goldschmidt, husband of Jenny Lind, has just celebrated his seventy-sixth birthday, and that Signor Garcia, who taught Jenny how to sing, is still alive, though past the cen- tury mark. KEEPING AN EYE ON THE PRESIDENT. WHEN the zealous Sisterhood of Temperance fixed its piercing eye on President Roosevelt and asked in that cool, determinate way women have with them on grand climacteric occasions, ‘“‘ What DID YOU DO WITH THAT BEER?” it is not to be wondered at that the whole nation sat up and took notice. We shall not stop here to discuss what might, could, would or should have happened if the president had replied, with cool, succinct bravado, ‘I drank it.”” Neither have we time or space to adequately treat the possibilities of an attempt at evasion on the part of Mr. Roose- velt. Just suppose he had looked the other way and tried to whistle a sprightly tune, as other men have done when a woman’s questions became too pointed or personal. Or he might have assumed an innocent, surprised look, as men so often do in their blundering, ostrich fashion, and replied, ‘‘ What beer?” It is with the happy feeling of a painful suspense suddenly dissolved and transformed into relief and joy and exultation that we turn to the reply the president actually did make, as reported in the papers, viz., “I sent it back.” The nation breathed again. The crisis was past. “It never touched him,” the contented, universal sigh. The incident is not without significance as showing how jealously the public’s eye is kept upon the occupant of the White House. There is just the hint of a suspicion in the corners of that eye, just a little disposition to believe that a president at any moment may do something scandalous—in short, to be plain about it, isn’t there too much of a disposition to intermeddle in the private affairs of the first citizen of the republic, to eavesdrop and spy ‘on the president of the United States? JOHN WEAVER, the well-known Sunday-school teacher of Philadel- phia, is continuing to be quite popular in the old burg. GLAD to see the campaign against the “lazy worm” is making head- way in Porto Rico, even if it is costing $15,000 per year. BABYLESS New York apartment-house of fashion suddenly takes new tack and welcomes a fine little twelve-pounder. Father is the janitor. ITTSBURG makes record as a race-suicide town. Pittsburg’s failure to see its duty in a better light is perhaps explainable if not excusable. HAT WAS a very neat way of getting back on the ministers, that story Mr. Rockefeller told about a“ rum-wreck” who took his first glass from the hand of a clergyman. JUST comes to light that poor Charles Sterling, hanged in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1877, was innocent. A man defrauded of a life! Chalk down another murder against us all—the people, society, the state. Our apa- thetic plea that “‘ mistakes will happen ” is poor expiation of such a crime. comicbooks.com