Judge — August 27, 1921 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

Perriton MAXWELL, Editor and Art Director J. A. WALDRON, Associate Editor THE RENT PROBLEM SOLVED HE government is to build T houses in suburbs and rent them for nine years to newly- married couples. The rent will be re- duced at the birth of the first child by one-quarter; half the original rent will be reduced at the birth of the second; three-quarters off at the third birth, and when the fourth child arrives there will be no rent to pay, and ownership will pass to the fecund parents. This simple and ingenious solution of the rent problem has been received with a gesture of delight. It is a sure plan to get a home and children on the instalment system. If the homeless and the childless are incapable of welcoming this solu- tion of their troubles, all that remains is for them to rely upon their own efforts, or upon the goodness of Providence to mitigate the evils of hired houses and race suicide. We shall doubless live to see the day when we can pile up babies to bring down the rent—when a men- acing economic problem is turned into a pleasant domestic duty. The taxpayers, as yet unconsulted, may detect some inconsistencies. Yet they should be proud to subsidize fruit- fulness, and mix their money with gynecology to enforce natural laws. When this idea is incorporated in the platform of one of our utilitarian political parties, it will rouse the cheering tenantry. BERATING WITH BILLINGSGATE SOME very excellent sermonizers whose moral characters are stain- less direct our attention with severe epithets to the stains discernible in our fellow creatures. These diatribes trouble us. We are conscious of some transgressions. We have heard in- nuendoes of subterranean sinfulness, amours, hootch, or crap. But no charge has been brought against the undocked and unidentified criminals. We are beginning to perceive that we have an incurable propensity to- ward agitation. Railroad baiting, trust busting and splattering bil- lingsgate over our public men were very recently our favorite indoor sports. The exercise grew stale just when we noticed that the so-called victims were as merry as minstrels. Like other predecessors, when we thought we had smacked the flatu- lence out of all the shadows, we dis- covered that we had been deceived by the violence of our own words. This diversion of denunciation doubtless prevents some reprobates from reprobating. Yet its virulence arouses no repentance. It is this ab- sense of remorse that nourishes doubt whether we are sinful souls— granted that we all have souls. Opening and closing the flood-gates of the national conscience is the mod- ern way of conducting a crusade. Having guided the unwary around the quagmires of human nature, we lay our fulminations away in cotton batting and lapse like backsliding converts until re-aroused. And, as no people ever yet acknowledged that it had carried on a controversy with a false alarm, we solace ourselves with the thought that we were not the rascals we thought we were. LITERACY TESTS FOR VOTERS TTHE electorate of New York will be asked to approve a constitutional amendment imposing a literacy test upon all eligible to the franchise after next January. This test has been in operation in New England and in some Western and Southern States, and violates no principle of our representative system. This proposed barrier against illit- eracy in politics will not prevent an occasional deluge of foolishness. It will simply purge the electorate of its excess voters, who bring no strength to democracy, and hang on the fringes of parties like camp followers on an army or the overhead on a business. It is true that some illit- 20 erate people possess strong natural abilities. But it is equally true that masses without abilities are often manipulated servilely, and have often stung the community perniciously. Our whole people now vote; but only the majority govern. Were the majority to consist permanently of blind fiddlers, busy day-dreamers, barber shop spielers, and folks who couldn’t tell a copy of the Constitu- tion from a bundle of laundry tickets —then our noble panorama of uni- versal suffrage would be very inter- esting, but the minority would re- treat to bomb-proof cellars. We have just doubled our electo- rate by admitting the other half of the species. It is imperative that we do some pruning. THE ALLIES’ DEBTS W E are going to refund the Allied debt. It is now motionless col- lateral. We propose to make it capi- tal. The denunciation of the purple rumors of repudiation and cancella- tion is official, authoritative and Jove-like, and all the banshees of dis- solution must wail their burial rites another day. The creation of this debt was a patriotic need. Its continued robust health is a matter of national solici- tude, and when it is safely cradled in prosperous families, it will not only be a source of profitable con- gratulation, but will remove the trials of a wet-nurse from Uncle Sam. Although we are temporarily di- vorced from flush times, we cling fondly to the golden hopes of a glad reunion with felicity. The prospects are excellent that the dissemination of this debt will dissolve much ill luck, re-jingle the money marts with sweet sounds, animate the heart of normalcy with pleasing anticipa- tions, and make our humorists wink as they watch the funeral clothes fall off the pronhets blinking at the novelty of the Allies working for us. comicbooks.com