Judge — January 14, 1922 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

a everything in the universe, and fights the lone and awful and hopeless fight for the spark of life that animates him—what a man he reveals! What a soul we have scrapped by teaching him the stupendous folly that makes him a murderer! What pitiful waste our homes and schools and churches and States and civilized institutions have made of what might have been a brave and intrepid life! THIS VAST ECONOMIC BOOBYHATCH OBERT HARRIS lives near Casper, Wyoming. He has been in the sheep business sixteen years, and is a competent rancher. This fall he brought twenty- six carloads of sheep to Kansas City, with 135 sheep in each car. After paying the freight and selling the sheep on the market he had eleven cents left for each sheep. The sheep market was not “off” the day of his sale. Freight rates had not been suddenly increased. Robert Harris suffered no unusual loss. Cattle men for eighteen months have been losing money like that on their flocks. There are only three classes of cattle and sheep men in the West; those who are bankrupt, those who will be bankrupt when they sell their herds, and those who have handled so few cattle that they can take their loss. The meat growers of America perform an essential service to mankind. They are men of exceptional intelli- gence and unusual industry, and the nature of the business develops in them splendid commercial courage—the great business talents that have made America the world’s leader in many lines of worthy endeavor. Yet we have so grossly neglected the business of meat growing that we have ruined its captains, and broken their courage, and shattered its morale. All this we have done by the great American principle of Hands Off—every man for himself and the devil take the hindermost, which struts about our world as the law of supply and demand. We must pay for our carelessness in the next ten years. And yet, ten months ago hundreds of Americans knew, Congress knew, the President knew, the great bankers of Lower Broadway knew, the packers knew what was coming. We laugh at the farmer for leaving his expensive harvester and his costly plow out in the weather. Yet we as a nation have left this great meat-growing industry ruthlessly, shamefully out in the weather, because at the moment we are so tremendously keen about the devil taking the hindermost that we forget that when the devil takes him, he taxes us for his catch. Government ownership, paternalism, socialism and all that sort of thing are mad and wasteful folly. But this vast economic boobyhatch which we call American com- merce still leaves something to be desired. THE JIMREEDS ENATOR JIM REED of Missouri will oppose the work of the disarmament conference. Naturally! Jimreed isn’t a senator, it is a disease. It afflicts peo- ple who have no faith in men, who have a grouch on God and are corroding their own digestive fixtures with hatred. There is only one cure for the Jimreeds; that is to let hell fry it out of men. They are not to be punished for their sins; they are not bad men, as men go; for we are all miserable sinners. And one life is about as good or as bad as another, in the record of the Lamb’s Book of Life. But the things our ordinary sins have done to the poor devils, who have the Jimreeds, the malevolence it has bred, the suspicion it has secreted, the unhappiness it has sown in their hearts—that is the source of their infection. The peculiar mental quirk known as the Tom- watsons is only the Jimreeds trying to break out in a rash ind leave the system! TROOPS FOR WOMEN HE other day in Kansas the wives of the miners tried to stop union strikers from working; the union strike breakers having been summoned to break an outlaw strike. The girls were great little cut-ups, and tried to manhandle' the lads in the mine rather scandalously. Then along came the Governor with the troops. And why not? If votes for women, why not troops for women? The ladies should have all the rights of free born American citizens. And if being shot down by the militia for picket- ing is one of man’s inalienable rights—why deny the women anything they want? Give ‘em both barrels! THE BURGLAR 13 comicbooks.com