Life — August 23, 1900 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

“* While there is Life there's Hop: VOL. XXXVI. AUGUST 23. 1900, No, 928. 19 West Tuiery-Finst St. NEw YORE. ai rn. single currect. copier, mmbers, after three months cent t ar 10cents. “Tack date of publication No contribution will be returned unless companied by stamped and addressed envelope. The illustrations in Live are copyrighted, and are not to be reproduced without specia arrangement with the publishers. Prompt notification should be sent by sub- scribers of any change of address. BIRD'S-EYE view of Europe at the present \ time would probably reveal the various monarchs with one eye on themselves and the other eye on China. Between fear that one may be shot by an Anarchist at any moment, and a desire to have a finger in the Chinese pie, the average king is exceedingly busy. The attitude of the Persian mon- arch, who, after the attempt to assassinate him had failed, merely remarked that it J\was not to be. after all, is, per- haps, the most to be envied. Fatalism, when applied to an impend- ing danger, is a great help, and Lire recommends it to some of our own rulers and politicians. But by all odds the most “ strenu- ous” utterance has, if the reports are true, been made by William Hohen- zollern, whom Mr. Godkin has lately characterized as the Teddy Roosevelt of Germany. ‘If you close with the enemy,” says this divine ruler, *‘re- member this: Spare nobody. Make no prisoners. Use your weapons so that fora thousand years hence no China- man will dare look askance at any German. Open the way for civilization once for all.” These are stirring words for all Christians to read, and they are not capable of any misinterpretation. Kill as many of the Chinese devils as you can, and club what are left into proper obedience. Thus the banner of Chris- tianity may float over every coal mine and mineral deposit in Asia. rom 2 NG reveals better the spread of so-called yellow journalism than the recent meteoric display of dispatches from Pekin. Local affairs permit only of local mendacity, but the Pekin affair shows that England is now as yellow as the United States, the Lon- don papers scrambling over each other in their anxiety as to which one could tell the biggest whopper. It is not now a question as to which paper we shall believe, but rather in which paper that we have learned not to believe in shall we find the most varied and highly-colored assortment of lies. When the truth does come out, it is not unlikely to appear in the manner illustrated by the recent fooling of Mr. Godkin, who received a letter from Fifth Avenue, written on paper dis- playing the monogram of an apparently well-known family, and detailing the anxiety of the writer, who represented himself as a college man, upon the subject of the coming election. Mr. Godkin replied, airing his views, and the yellow journal that laid the trap published the reply in full. It makes little difference as to whether the originator of this little plot was a reporter, or whether the editor put him up toit. If the reporter thought of it first, his ingenuity was no doubt highly commended, and if the editor thought of it first, he but aroused the envy of the reporter who aided and abetted him. Loo < THE New York Sun refers to Mr. E. L. Godkin’s recent utterances on our political conditions by observing that the author of them should only be an object of pity at the present time, thus insinuating that Mr. Godkin’s mind is not capable of that excess of sanity which the Sin would have us believe overflows from its own font of wisdom. This is rather hard on Mr. Godkin, more especially as the Evening Post, not so long ago, came to the rescue of the Sux in such an admirable and disinterested manner, when that paper was typographically crippled. Mr. Godkin does not seem to be, however, so mentally incapable as the Sun would have us believe. He says, among other things, that the machinery of our Government is unsuited to im- perialism, and that the term cf our Presidents should be extended to a decade, so that every four years we would not be well-nigh distracted with a death-to-business-and-peace-of-mind election. He also says that our Presidents, as time goes on, are dwindling in mental proportions, and he gives McKinley as an example. Agreat many hard-headed and prac- tical and worthy men believe as Mr. Godkin does, and if they do not come out and say so, it is because, possibly, they are possessed of slightly less courage than Mr. Godkin displays. 08 SGy $ So T= recent dividend of eight per cent. declared by the Standard Oil Company calls attention to the fact that Mr. John D. Rockefeller derives from this source alone an annual income computed at sixteen millions, to say nothing of his other investments, which brings his total income to the thirty million mark. This is throwing Mr. Carnegie, with his paltry eighteen or twenty millions a year, in the shade, and William Waldorf Astor looks smaller than ever. The Standard Oil dividends always make the G. O. P. start and put on a smile of apparent unconcern, as much as to say that this is only one of the acts of a beneficent Providence. Brother Bryan, however, takes a dif- ferent view of the “act,” and is mighty apt to use it as a campaign argument against the deadly trust. It was pointed out at the time this little and apparently merely incidental dividend was declared, that it probably would have been a couple of millions more had not. the recent burning of the refineries near Staten Island occa- sioned a loss of that amount. A few millions of property, more or less, de- stroyed by fire, is, however, a mere incident, and the smoke of it is carried away by the first zephyr. comicbooks.com