Life — January 14, 1909 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

Tafts Ahoy, and All Aboard! ECOND-COUSIN TAFT of Califor nia, who was lost for a few days, k been heard from— so the papers say, hear it with relief, The failed, or in the launch in which he was exploring lifornian waters. This is not the time for any Taft to get lost, even over night. Every prudent Taft now chains himself to his bedstead when he sinks 10 rest for fear of som nambulic wanderings, or of being stolen in his sleep and withheld from his des. tiny. From Greenland’s icy mountains to Panama every Taft or should be on the way to Washington, or arranging his engagements and securing his trans portation. That is right. All the Tafts that can bear the journey are entitled to be present on the Fourth of March. They are a handsome family and well constituted in number, stature and pulchritude, to embellish the inaugura- tion. do we gasoline something e remote C Public Schools and Their Cost The public schools cost roughly three hun- dred millions a year.—Saturday Evening Post. HIS money is spent on those people who are engaged in giving us an educational system that shall be con- stanly creating as many new positions as possible. Every time a new study is introduced, or a set of new text books made necessary, so many more people are enabled to get something out of it toward earning their living A vast body of people are engaged in wg the young. It is their business to create as many op- portunities for themselves as possible. This explains wh nplicity does not happen to be the watchword of our educational syster : When our educational system is regu- ated and standardized by the state, by A small body of men who shall have the , and he selected with as much care as the Supreme Court, then we shall not have continually forced upon us new fads which work against the normal development of the child. the process of educat same authority Had a Splendid Time, Anyhow HERE is every. indica- tion that Castro had a bully time while he w President of Venezuela. Fs miliarity with the political history of that country is not hereabouts, but no one comes forward to assert that any former President of Venezuela enjoyed himself while in office as fully and even boisterously as Castro. According to some standards his incumbency must therefore be rated as superlatively suc- cessful. common The Idea! TATISTICIAN HOFFMAN has an article in the “Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor," in which he “declares that from 30,000 to 35,000 lives are sacrificed in this coun- Iry every year from industrial accidents, and that one-third of these are prevent- able. But what are ten thousand lives com- pared with the progress in invention id the constantly developing higher forms of civilization? In the first place, there is nothing so cheap as folks, In all probability the ten thousand who were killed and might have been saved were not worth saving, for otherwise they would not have gotten in the way and been run over or otherwise killed. They would only consume good food, anyway. To Protect the Shores of the Hudson River N= September there is to be a celebration of the three hundredth anniversary of the opening of the Hud- son River to white man’s navigation b; Henry Hudson, and of Robert Fulton's exploit in the same waters of steamboats go by steam. The Hudson-Fulton Celebration Com- mission has this festivity in charge, and is going to provide various spectacles on water and land which will make front seats on the Hudson shore desirable and valuable all the way up to Albany and Troy. It is urged, however, that no per- manent monument has yet been planned in connection with this celebration which is worthy of the fame of Hudson and Fulton and of the dignity of the State making of New York. It has been proposed, therefore, to appoint from among the members of the distinguished committee that have this celebration in charge, a permanent Henry Hudson Memorial Com- mission with authority to protect the shores of the Hudson River from deface- ment The Palisades have heen protected at very moderate cost—much less than was expected. he Highlands are now being blasted into ugliness, and that is the im- mediate cause of this proposal to put, and keep, the whole river in charge of a commission, backed by the State of New York, which shall protect its natural scenery. This seems 10 us to be a good idea. The work is worth doing. Fit men to do it can easily be found, and we are as- sured that the cost of it, 10 be defrayed by the State, will not be great consider- ing the value of the end achieved. A New School , In Philadelphia's public school gymnasium instruction is being given pupils, especially girls, on how to alight properly from street cars.—Boston Transcript. this idea spreads to New York, other subjects that naturally occur are, What to do when you are insulted by a conductor? "? “How shall you act, and what shall you say, when a man offers you a seat—supposing this pos- sible?"* “How to spring onto a car running at full speed and catch it prop- erly.” “How to conceal your feelings when the car you are on unexpectedly stops at the corner you want to get off at."’ The fact is that there are too many unnecessary people already. We need good servants, well trained enough to know their own place and cater to our wants. For while we are here, we, who are intelligent and smart enough to live on easy street, are certainly entitled to xood service. We need, also, a few good authors to keep us properly amused, a few song and dance artists to make us laugh, a few artists to give us the right appreciation of art, and a few others 10 round out our lives. But when it comes to adopting some scheme to cut down the loss of those people who meet their deaths by acci- dents nothing, in our opinion, could be so positively superfluous. comicbooks.com