Life — May 28, 1903 — 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. XLL MAY 28, 1963 19 West Tainty-First 5: Published every Ta vauce Un raday. $3.00 a year In ad- Postage to foreign countries in the Postal SLM a year extra ent Cop paths from Weonts. Back numbers, att date of publication. 25 eeats. No contribution will be returned unless accompanied by stamped and addressed envelope. The illustrations in Lie ere copyrighted, and are not to be reproduced. Prompt notification should be sent by sub- scribers of any change of address. ‘PHESE are lively days in the State of Pennsylva- nia, Governor Pennypacker has signed a new libel law, designed to re- strain the newspa- pers from unfavor- able criticism, by printed word or picture, of the pow- ers that govern the State. The Gov- ernor himself has been caricatured . in cartoons, and S&S Quay and the members of his have been machine opposition papers. They have not liked it. The Governor is a sensitive man and thinks well of himself, and to be derisively portrayed by the irreverent cartoonists bas galled him sorely. Hence the new law, which commands newspapers to publish in every issue the names of their respon- sible owners and makers, and provides for the recovery of punitive damages for feelings injured by newspaper at- tention: It is such a law as the ruling poli- ticians in Pennsylvania might have been expected to want. They are a particularly vulnerable gang of misde- meanants, who have brought singularly low the reputation of a great State. A cloak of prescribed silence would be most serviceable to them, and such a cloak the new gag law was designed to supply. But all the Pennsylvania ‘LIFE* papers flout and deride it, either ignor- ing its provisions, or ridiculing them, and looking to the State constitution, the courts and the ballot-box for their protection. There is no State where plain speech and speaking pictures are more needed than in Pennsylvania. The new law is undoubtedly a blunder, which will react forcibly upon its makers, thereby making in the end for the promotion of good government. Meanwhile, a merry war is on, which is a joy to spectators. ies “ SS ICHARD HENRY STODDARD is dead: a sturdy man and a real poet. It takes a good deal of sound timber to make a real poet, and there was plenty of it in Mr. Stoddard. He was not only areal poet, but for nearly seventy years he was a citizen of New York, and nearly all of that time he had to earn his living. One does not readily live on poetry in New York, even if the poetry is good. For twenty years or so Mr. Stoddard was an office- holder in a modest way, and for thirty years more an industrious critic and newspaper-writer. He lived to suffer much from the infirmities of age, and from sundry sad bereavements, but he was always honored as a poet, a writer and a man, and never lacked friends or consideration. He belonged to the group of writers here, of which Bayard Taylor, Leland and O'Brien were shin- ing lights, and he had a hand in Vanity Fair. Peace to his venerable ashes. Poet though he was, workaday New York proved a good home to him, and honored him in life and mourns him dead. A. et vi: HORRIBLE massacre of Jews in Kisheneff, Bessarabia, South- western Russia, has horrified the world, and especially the city of New York, where there is a large Jewish popula- tion, About a thousand Jews were set upon, many were killed, houses were plundered and burned, women were outraged, children slaughtered, and all, apparently, without interposi- tion or objection from the police or authorities After all, one would ratker be a non-union horseshoer in New York, or a non-union miner in Pennsylvania, than a Jew in Bes- sarabia, <A strange, vast, uncertain quantity is Russia in the sum total of the forces of civilization. She works marvels of progress with one hand and desolating crimes with the other. She is destroying the liberties of the Finns, persecuting Jews, restraining the Sul- tan, threatening China, standing off her critics, and carrying out a wonder- ful plan of material development in Northern Asia. Her diplomacy is devious and sly; her religion is over- loaded with superstition ; her govern- mentis acombination of despotisms. A great country, a great people, a great power of the present and of the future, but: a power at present the hardest to weigh and whose development is the hardest to forecast. fPHIS is gala week in New York, Two hundred and fifty years ago Governor Stuyvesant granted the privi- leges of city government to this town. That is why the flags are to fly all the week, and the newspapers and minis- ters have recalled our early days, and the school children have been reminded how big and old our town has come to be. If our commemoration had been accurately adjusted to the proper date, it would have come off on the 23d of last February, but May is a cheerfuller month than February, so the Mayor put itoff. On the whole, New York is a good and popular town, and a hardy one. It has survived much and has doubtless hard problems in survival before it. Itis not yet more than twelve stories high on the average, but it is still growing. What it will be when it gets its growth no prophet ventures to forecast, but at present it is the biggest, and, on the whole, the likeliest, town of its age on the earth, and gives a large meas- ure of satisfaction to its residents. comicbooks.com