Judge — November 22, 1924 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

Editor, Nerwan Autbuny. The Lame Duck Don't let the thought of it spoil your Thanksgiving, lout th And as usual during the short session it will be full of lame ducks. A lame duck. you know, is a member who has been defeated for re-election, but who, for his sins and ours, must still go through with the agonizing farce of pretending to represent a constituency that has repudiated him, of legislating for months among men who cither despise or pity him as a has-been. We like to commiserate with the country over that provision in the Constitution which compels it to put up with a stale Congress every other year. But give a thought to the poor lame ducks themselves condemned thus to drain the cup of their blasted hopes to the dregs. fact is that Congress reconvenes next week. Mrs. Magnus Johnson, when she said she wished her old man didn’t have to go back to Washington this winter, was thinking no doubt of the torture to him of a reappear- ance in that cynical and supercilious town, shorn of the power and prestige that before had made his life there endurable. Magnus is in for an unpleasant session, but he’s only one of many. ‘The whole arrangement is ridieu lous arid archaic and ought to be remedied, if only to put an end to this cruelty to dumb legislators. A Thanksgiving Thought No doubt a big stomach has its disadvantages. All the gods of efficiency condemn it. It is a burden on the vital organs; it robs a man of his classy cut college figure; it gets in his way mornings when he dashes for the 7.55, and its upkeep adds seriously to his overhead. For when a man’s stomach fills his lap he is tempted not only to pamper it with selected vittles but to dress it faultlessly. He is apt to think that it ought to be hung with an extra heavy watch chain and Masonic or other emblem. Furthermore, he /nows, if he has any sense of fitness at all, that no one with a bay window should ever drive a Ford; it is unfair to both. But notwithstanding these drawbacks, we can't help but regret the passing of the big stomach. No man with a big stomach will walk a mile for aC-——1. This is not only a virtue in itself; it is symptomatic. A big stomach usually denotes lack of hurry, lack of worry, a certain pomposity, to be sure, but also an unwillingness to be stampeded.’ In other words, well fortified bebind it somewhere you usually find an individual who likes what he likes, who resists evangelization and regimentation, and one, who, not being unduly exercised over his own salvation, doesn’t insist upon yours. Years ago a big stomach used to be considered an asset in business. But that was when the individual dominated business and not business the individual. Un-American To the Ku Klux Klan, the Anti-Saloon L Lord’s Day Alliance, and kindred organizations distin guished for the charity of their opinions, New York Cit) is un-American. The Standard, an organ of the Klan, has been cataloguing the “un-American.” and therefore in moral, institutions in which the metropolis abounds. — Its grand opera, for instance, the Sfandard considers “dis- tinctly a foreign, alien expression, with a far-reaching influence for evil,” ete., ete. Some time ago we pointed out that the infant death rate in New York was lower than in any other la and very nearly the lowest in America. ‘ge city, Its murder rate, too, despite the impression the newspapers give, is among t in the country. And now it appears that the ate of Manhattan, which every child west of the Alleghenies knows to be the worst of the five wicked boroughs, is lower than that of any whole State in the Union, with the single exception of New York State. In Manhattan there are only forty-two divorces to 100,000 of population, while in Vermont, whence our President derives all his rock-ribbed virtues, the rate is 105 per 100,000. The rate mounts as you go West, until in Oregon almost every other marriage results in divorce, and Oregon, don’t forget, is now owned by the Klan. These statistics do not refute the charge that New York is un-American. They merely indicate that in call- ing her so our friends of the night shirt and the tar kettle are not necessarily complimenting the rest of the country. Irony That provision in the tax law compelling publicity of tax returns was passed to badger the rich man and please the poor man. But now it appears that most of the pro- tests against it, with which the Government is being swamped, come from small taxpayers. Their neighbors have been finding out how much less they make than they pretended to. One would suppose that the veriest tyro in politics might have foreseen such a reaction. But the humorless humbugs that we elect to Congress seem as ignorant of human nature as they are of ethics, and so we have a law on the books that not only violates every principle of decency and good faith but isn’t even popular. We M. HW.