Judge — February 24, 1912 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

u E D I Joke! THE OTHER day that old, old, side-splitting joke was perpetrated again in New 3 York. A human being—pre- sumably a human being—ad- vertised in the daily papers, using the name of a real-estate dealer, that two hundred laborers were wanted and to apply in person at the office. When the building was opened at six- thirty, already two hundred men were lined up in expectancy and in an hour the crowd had doubled. Soon two thousand men were clamoring for work, many of the men having dinner buckets on their arms, ready to go at it. One man was so hungry that he fainted in line. When the real-estate man came down he was horrified, for he knew nothing about the adver- tisement. Investigations showed that the human being who had thought of this up- roarious joke had tel- ephoned the adver- tisement in, taking careful care to hide behind a switchboard. No doubt the human being laughed him- self almost sick. Every such case as this should be handled by the police. The perpetrator should be run to earth, just as we do a sneak thief who puts his hand into our pock- ets, and the human beings who think of such side-splitters should be sent to a cold, gray building, with stripes the predominating color scheme, where they can have a couple of years to laugh it off. Pulled. Marcellus T. Hayes, former col- lege athletic trainer, is giving out interviews in which he claims that men can, by taking thought, add cubits to their stature, Holy Writ to the con- trary notwithstanding. He says that constant exercise, which tends to stretch the joints, will have thig effect. He does not claim that bones grow longer, but aN ° T O R I that stretching the arms and legs de- velops the muscles between the joints and pushes the bones apart. It would be interesting to note the increase of height of our Presidents during their terms of office. Certainly the lengthen- ing of Mr. Taft’s legs must have been considerable, even in the short time of his service as President, if it is true that a tensive strain applied to the femur has the effect Mr. Hayes claims. Conjecture the effect of such a treat- ment in the case of W. Wilson! HELP! A Queer Lay. M. Joubert, professor in the Agricul- tural College at Fontainebleau, France, has discovered that by feeding hens with wine you make them lay more industriously. Wine has been known to make human beings lie and it may make hens lay, but somehow it sounds immoral. é fessor is experimenting with French hens. We are curious to learn whether they lay plain eggs as a result of their unhenlike potations, or eggnogs. There may be some- /, thing in the fact that the pe ( g é Judge Wilmot suggests requisitions on e A L Ss. . Go West! The glory of Kansas as a foundry of freak ideas is pass- ing away. Renown in that respect now clings to Oregon, a State in which Republican voters instruct their Legisla- ture to elect a Democrat to the United States Senate, a State which is the native lair of the initiative, referendum, and recall. Now our great friend, Governor West, of Oregon, has evolved the notion of dispensing with prisons. Briefly, his idea is that convicts be set at large on giving their word of honor that they will come Back when called on. He has experi- ] mented by sending several gangs out to work on roads without guards, shifting them from place to place, and he is elated over the results. It is his intention to continue essays in that direction, on more liberal lines even, until he can see his way clear to the entire abolition of State prisons. A shorter cut to this would be the repeal of the laws imposing penalties for crime, which would, in fact, be virtually effected by the realization of the dream of Governor West. Under present conditions, a general migration to Oregon of such mem- bers of the criminal classes as have freedom of movement and domi- cile may be expected, provided Oregon contin- ues to go West. Good Suggestion. One of the incidents of the fire in the Equitable in New York City was the te- dious sawing through of the steel bars of a vault door to rescue a man who had been locked in by the sudden closing of a door while he was trying to save the valuables in the vault. This incident accounts for the sugges- tion that fire departments of large cities be equipped with appliances for the cutting of steelwork. While prisons for a corps of trained burglars for the work, the first suggestion is approved. comicbooks.com