Life — January 16, 1908 — page 7: what you’re looking at

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

WHY, NOT FOR Ineffectual Struggles ENTUCKY Night Riders are estimated to have de- stroyed a million dollars’ worth of property within about a year. They are try- ing to keep the tobacco growers from selling their crops until the price is higher. The reason they think the price ought to be higher is that there is no competition among buyers, and the price, which all growers may take or leave, is made by the American ‘Tobacco Company, better known as the Tobacco Trust. Buyers used to bid against one another for the Kentucky tobacco. Now there is but one bidder and he makes the price to suit himself. It is the story of Iowa beef and Kansas THE BOYS, TOO? oil told over again. When the buyers have got together so that there is no effective competition between them, the sellers must either take whatever is offered or combine and stick out for more, The present remedy in Kentucky for the successful methods of the Tobacco Trust is to bum the tobacco-bams and warehouses of any grower that sells to it without permission from the growers’ pool. That remedy cannot possibly win. If tobacco can’t be raised profitably on the Trust’s terms, the thing for the growers to do would seem to be to raise something else. To control the price is practicable. Mr, Ryan’s Trust can do it. But to restrain by force and fire growers who want to sell is impracticable. Mr. 7\ Ryan would never attempt anything so dangerous, ill-advised, unlawful and hopeless as that. Smart man, Mr. Ryan. From the moralist’s point of view presumably too smart, but extremely clever in business. Wonderfully able and successful in his associations with the Metropolitan Street Railroad System in New York. The system has gone bust, but not on Mr. Ryan. No; he is said to be out of it—a placid and disinterested spectator, whose interests are now active in the Congo region. There is something pathetic in the idea of the poor, stupid Kentucky Night Riders trying to exact by force from the Tobacco Trust a price which the Trust is unwilling to pay. Possibly the price the Trust offers is but whether it is or not, the Night Riders are riding to a fall. Coming to Him All Right T. PETER: You were a Wall Street lamb, I believe ? MEEK Spirit: Yes, sir. “Well, here’s the best pair of wings in the establishment. You certainly are entitled to a good strong, upward move- ment.” [COMES may be roughly divided into three classes: respectable incomes, disreputable incomes and impossible in- comes. Impossible incomes are, as yet, relatively few. You may, perhaps, count them on the fingers of your two hands. Disreputable incomes, on the other hand, are rather many. There are at least enough of them to constitute a real so- ciety in about all the larger cities. Re- spectable incomes are, of course, too numerous, as well as too insignificant, to mention, GIVE every man his just Hughes. She: THIS IS OUR ANNIVERSARY, FIDO. HOW DO YOU LIKE BEING MARRIED, ANY- Way? “OH, IT’S A REGULAR DOG’s LIFE!” books.com