Life — April 25, 1901 — 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 Hope.” VOL. XXXVI. APRIL 25, 1901, No. 964, 19 Wast Taikry-Finst St., New Yorke. Published every ‘Thursday. 85.00 8 year in ad. ¥ nstage to forelgn countries in the Postal Mw year extra, Single current copier, 1 x numbers. after three munths from date of publication: Scents No contribution will “ve returned unless accompanied by stamped and addressed envelope The illustrations in Lure are copyrighted, and are not to be reproduced without special arrangement with the publishers Prompt notification should be sent by sub- soribers of any change of addres: HE ‘BUFFALO FAIR will be opened next week, May in Buffalo is a month of precarious suavi- ——_, ty,and carly visitors to S the Pan-American ™ <=> ought to have their overcoats within oe reach, but it will 2 3 boas mild and in- viting as Buffalo can make it. The life- £ lines will be removed : from the front of tho : Buffalo Savings Bank and stored for the season; tho grass will be painted green, and bait will be put ont tocatch the summer. Buffalo herself will go to the Fair in May to view her offspring and rejoice, and her near neighbors will go to see what it is going to be like and make their criti- cisms and plans for further visits. From them the world will learn through the newspapers what Buffalo has got together, whether beds are safe, napkins clean, and food palatable, and how necessary it will be to see the show, and how expensive. They say that the Pan-American is, for onothing, very beautiful. There is plenty of it, though it has not attempted tomako a record for size, and Buffalo is proud of its grounds and buildings. They represent the work of the best architects that could be found, and we may safely count on being edified and instructed by them. What may be in- side of them doesn’t matter so vitally, but it takes no great exercise of faith to believe that the buildings will have contents in sufficiently bewildering variety. Persons who can’t think what 2 Zi *LEPE we make in America that it is worth going to Buffalo to see are precisely the folks for whom this Fair has been de- vised. When they have been to Buffalo they will know, and they will be ap- preciably wiser for the knowledge. Niagara Falls has not been moved to the Fair Grounds, but will be run all summer long at tho old stand, which is sufficiently near Extra conveyances. have been put on, and there will be no trouble about getting from the Fair to the Falls, or from the Falls to the Fair. Buffalo reflects with complacency that neither the Chicago Fair, nor last summer’s show in Paris, had so good a side-show as Niagara Falls. ety jet fpus most interesting part of the Pan American will be the visitors, and the value of them as a feature would be very greatly increased if they wore labels telling where they came from. Here now is a valuable idea which it is a pleasuro to present to the Pan-American managers. Have one of tho button factories at the Fair make buttons marked with the names of the several states and countries rep- resented, and distribute, or sell them, to the fair-goers. If that is done, we shall bo able to locate and identify one another easily, and to our profit. There are many Kansans, for example, who look very much like other persons, and we might not know them for Kansans unless we got a hint of it. But Kan- sans, from Carrie Nation down to Mary Lease, and from Funston up to William A. White, are very interesting evi- dences of the processes of civilization, and we all want to see and examine as many of them as may be shown. So we should like to identify the Kentuckians and the Texans and the folks from Chicago and San Francisco, and from Venezuela and Porto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines, Mexico, Samoa, Boston, and tho other outlying districts. To get to know one another is one thing we go to fairs for, and acquaintance and inspection would be greatly helped by some simple means of identification. We would especially like to seo Mrs. Nation, and if the Pan-American is half the fair we take it to be, she will be there in a cage. Another exhibit that would be very edifying, even though it gave us low spirits, would be two groups of Porto Ricans, re- spectively representing the condition of the islanders before and after an- nexation, AVE more buttons marked * W.O T. U.,” ** Prohibition, * Mor- mon," ‘Christian Science,” and by other like titles whereby visitors can be identified according to peculiari- ties of conviction. Persons whose views are somewhat out of the common run usually show some external sign of it, but unless they aro marked it is hard to tell what particular discrepancy they happen to represent. ‘The rise of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union as a great and ominous power in American politics and legislation, has made many of us desirous of making aspecial study of its members. Itcan be done to advantage in Buffalo if tho W.C.T. U. people are properly tagged. It is to be hoped they will come to the Fair in great numbers and get bencfit from it. One exhibit ought to be or- ganized and maintained especially for them and for persons inclined to their way of thinking. To establish it the War Department should b» asked to lend the Fair two companies of sol- diers—one to illustrate the working of the post exchange and defunct army canteen ; the other to show what hap- pens at army posts since the canteen has been closed. We know that the canteen made for order, moderation and contentment, and that its suppres- sion has been followed by sprees, de- sertions, punishments and discontent. We know that a moderate amount of beer drunk at home openly in a decent place is better for soldiers than bad whisky drunk in dives. What tho difference means appears now from day to day in the War Department records, But the W.C. T. U. people and their accomplices don’t know about these things, and if their under- standing of them could be enlarged by suitable object lessons at the Buffalo Fair, it would really be a great service to the country.