Judge — November 3, 1923 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

Editors Douglas H. Cooke Eliot Keen J. A. Waldron is Houghton Sdgar Fisher Remember, next Tuesday is the day on which we sow our wild votes. Boom,—erang— Ss GETTING back at the President for having smeared him I with an anthracite smudge, Governor Pinchot might have picked a more fortunate means. We are speaking now from the point of view of his own political fortunes. No one has talked more loudly about his plans for prohibition enforce ment than the present Governor of Pennsylvania, But if there has been any let up in the river of booze that pours down the csophagi of his faithful subjects we have yet to hear of it. On what grounds, then, docs he behold the mote that is in his brother Cal's eye, but. perceiveth not. the beam in his own eye? We are not suggesting that Gifford dry up his State. as not tried his best to For all we know he may have raised the price of coal simply to keep the money from the bootleggers. But if a governor, with all the machinery of law enforcement at his command—nmilitia, police, sheriffs, constabulary n make no headway against the perverse desire of human beings to go to hell how much less can we expect from Federal effort? There seems to be an irresistible attraction where it won't tbout a place Can't you under- ‘ost. so much to keep warm. stand that, Governor? O treet, in the office, in the subway, among persons to whom a few years ago all things collegian were of the rah! rah! world apart and accursed, offering to bet on this football team and that, volunteering estimates of teams or individual players, engaging in the endless game of matching scores and records. To be a football fan to-day is considered quite as normal among those who have no college affiliations as to follow the fortunes of professional baseball. The extraordinary growth since the war in the popularity of a college education may have had something to do with it. The automobile may be another factor, rendering the gridirons more accessible. The new The Game of Games HEARS snatches of conversation these days, on the E 1e, with its spectacular pli probably bears some share of the responsibility. But whatever absorption in football during this most sons is a net gain for the Republic. College w with alarm the pressure toward profes- sionalism in the popularity of the game. They may deplore it as a vamp luring the youth from his studies. They may curse it for exposing their sacred cloisters to the noise and hurly-burly of the multitude. But for all the profanation it brings to the shrines of learning it makes up ten-fold in its influence on the ideals and standards of the people. For as a schooling in the fundamental virtues of self-control, courage and good sportsmanship there is no agency that can the causes, the nation Vitalizing of se faculties may v y»wn and a hood al Maybe temperance is a and the real remedy will 1 wives generally get drunk together. ion is hastening the experiment. touch football. Tt is hard to believe, for instance, that any play, could bring himself to putting on ¢ and mobbing some defenseless pariah. HEN he gets drunk, he forgets he is divoreed and comes home night,” complains a woman. in of her recently divorced husband. Obviously, if the wife in this episode had got drunk, too, mere aggravation of the divorce evi come when husbands 2 football man, who had proved his mettle during @ season of A Possible Solution “W Bangor, Me., swearing out a warrant for the arrest we might have had a reunited home. At all events, prohib The Bonus without an Onus NLEss all the prognosticators are wrong, the approaching session of Congress will see the enactment of a bonus measure. So we should like to urge in what we consider the best method of raising the requisite money, namely, to legalize the sale of light wines and beer and tax them. In this way we should simply be paying to our war veterans a part of what we are handing over now to bootleggers; and we should have back once again and personal freedom beque: a semblance of the politic hed us by our forefathers. But if such a solution is out of the question in the present pathological condition of the public mind the next best proposal is one that we are told is at present agitating Washington. It is that the tariff on sugar be replaced with a sales tax of equal amount. This would not raise the price of sugar to the consumer, since it is already raised by the full margin of the tariff. On the other hand, all the money that the sugar tariff now diverts into the pockets of Senator $ friends would go to the veterans. Senator Smoot, ‘by the way, is an ardent advocate of the bonus. But we venture to say it never occurred to him or to his friends that they might h: to bear the cost of it. i matter thought, we have been impressed from time to time with the arguments of those who agitate for uniform State laws. The case against the crazy-quilt of statutes gov- cerning any such subjects as divorce or the use of highways, for example, can be made unusually strong. But we can better afford to put up with our legal absurdities and their incidental inconveniences than say good-by to the few shreds of individuality and local autonomy that remain to us. We see the same movies, drive the same makes of car, use the same slang and chew the same gum, from one ocean to the other; we look alike, we dress alike. constitute our last line of defense age duction of standard Americans. “Tt is curious,” writes Bill White, “how State lines mark differences in Americans. . . . The distinguishing points be- tween a Kansan and a Missourian, between a New Yorker and acitizen of Vermont, between a Georgian and a Virginian or a Louisianian, or between an Oregonian and a Southern Cali- fornian arise from the changes in men made by social and political institutions.” Fortunately, our worthy State legislators can be entrusted to perpetuate the idiosyncrasies of their legislation. We would as soon expect the efforts of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, which met a while ago in Minneapolis, to bear an ample harvest as to hear that the Eugenists had captured Congress. I sanity nool’s powerful “Variety is the Spice of Life” N comMon with most other citizens who have given the Our State laws inst the quantity pro- 13 comicbooks.com