Life — December 25, 1902 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

“White there is Life there's Hope.” vou. XL. DEV, 2%. 1902. No. 1082. 19 Wasr Tuiery-Finst St., Naw Yous. Published every Tanrsday. $40 a year tn ad. ance. Postage Co foreign countries in the Postal will be returned uniless stamped and addressed No contribution accompanied by envelope. The illustrations in Live. are copyrighted, and are not to be reproductd. Prompt notification should be sent by sub- seribers of any change of address. V ENEZUELA = and ‘ her citizens owe more or less ‘money to subjects of Ger- many and England, and the vigilant Gov- ernments of those — coun- } tries are try- Ning to collect it. It is in- @ convenient for Vene- y zuela to pay, She lacks ambition about the payment of debts, and is very short of money at the present time, and has also been suffering from severe inter- nal disorders which are as yet imper- fectly cured. But she is no match for Germany and England together, and it looks as though she would have to make serious concessions to their preju- dices, These clashes between South America and Europe are embarrassing. There is no telling at this writing how this one will work out. When a rail- road is mismanaged and goes broke, and the bondholders become clamorons, it 1 be reorganized, but a South American republic, owning a share in the Monroe Doctrine, is a much more difficult property to putin order. Mr. Morgan has never reorganized a re- public as yet. Venezuela's assets in his hands would probably prove ample to pay his charges and some of her debts and start her ona new course. It would be a considerable relief and a valuable precedent if she would agree ALAR « to meet her creditors at his office (Wall Street, corner Broad) and have her affairs readjusted. If this simple procedare cannot be followed, it is of urgent importance that some other remedy should be devised. Vene- zuela’s ability to pay is of small conse- qnence compared with her ability to make a dangerous public nuisance of herself, and get responsible nations into hot water. SS Con promises to be an exciting news topic all winter long. The efforts of the mining companies to pro- duce a year’s supply of anthracite in six months are only about as success- fal as one conid reasonably expect. There is no considerable supply of hard coal in storage anywhere in the country, and when a cold snap comes and consump' doubles there is a chorus of howls from the whole anthra- cite-burning territory. The problem of distribution is almost as trouble- some as that of supply. Nine-tenths of the coal bins that are usually filled in summer are empty, and a snow- storm or slippery streets greatly com- plicate the city coal deliveries. It will be at least four months yet before we shall have a chance to begin to for- get the coal strike, and meanwhile coal will beat the weather as a constant and anxious topic of discourse. OCTOR WILSON of Princeton, latest, and one of the youngest, of the college presidents, has grand plans for his university, and only lacks twelve and a half million dollars of being able to carry them out. Please give Princeton that money, somebody, and let us see what Dr. Wilson will buy with it. Give it while he is still young and ardent, and has not yet realized the vanity of human wishes. One thing that he proposes is a lot of tutors who shall offer hand-picked knowledge to the Princeton lads, and insist that they shall consume and as- similate it. A little more than two million dollars will provide income enough to hire all the tutors Princeton needs at present to be “companions, guides and coaches” to her students in their work. There is novelty in this plan. We would like to see it tried. Ata dinner given in his honor in New York the other night, Dr. Wilson said in the course of his remarks: * We have heard a great deal of cant about cultivation of character. I say, Get out and do something, and your char- acter will be cultivated. Character is a by-product.” ‘That was pretty good. It isthe football attitude towards character. Character is, to a large ex- tent, a by-product. You cultivate it by working at something else. But the kind of character yon make depends a good deal on your raw material, and a good deal on what you work at. = TI x ad 2 Se ee ']\HOSE were sad stories that came out a fortnight ago in the coal strike inquiry, about the eviction of some of John Markle’s miner-tenants with ensuing deaths, and about the ex- cessive zeal of the Markle agents in collecting back rent from widows and young children. We beg to offer Mr. Markle our condolences on the disclos- ure of these disconcerting details. Life seems not to be all beer and skit- tles to workers in the Markle mines any more than to the owners. [HOMAS NAST, late consul-gen- eral to Ecuador, is dead of yellow fever. He made so great a reputation thirty yearsago by his Tweed-ring pic- tures in //arper’s Weekly that there are few grown-up Americans who did not feel that they knew him, He had lit- tle chance in early life to learn his business as a draughtsman, and in technical skill he was always defective, but he had imagination, courage and remarkablo aptitude for drawing polit- ical caricatures, and ho used his tal- ents with wonderful effect, doing serv- ice of great value to the public, and winning more fame for himself than any American caricaturist has ac- quired before or since. He was a patriot and an honest man. Peaco be to his ashes and honor to his memory. comicbooks.com