Life — December 29, 1910 — page 8: 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. LVI, DECEMBER 29, 1910. No. 1470 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY JA MITCHELL, Droste, A. MILLRM, Sec'y and Treas 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York T this writing the most _ interest- ing proceedings in domestic, politics concern the ap- @pointment of judges and the election of Senators. We have not noticed any complaints about President Taft’s Supreme Court appointments. It is considered that if Mr. Tatt-does not know how to pick judges, nobody does. His promotion of Justice White to be Chief Justice is as much applauded as if everybody had expected it. It is assumed that Mr. Lamar and Mr. Van Devanter are excellent appointees, because he appointed them. If President Taft’s judgment about everything was as much respected as his taste in judges and judicial appointments, his career as President would be one grand, sweet song. Choosing Senators is not so easy. There is no selecting authority whose judgment is respected. The selection still has to be made through the agency of legislatures, and it is often mighty hard to decide whom the legislatures ought to choose, and to get them to do it. In four States hereabouts, Ohio, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, the choice is particularly difficult and very important. In Massachusetts the sentiment is strong that Mr. Lodge does not reflect the true sentiment of the present voters in the Bay State about the quality and proportion of wool that ought to go into a fifty-cent undershirt, and it remains to be seen whether his experience and abilities in other particulars will offset his defect in that one. In New Jersey the Hon. James Smith intends to be the Democratic *LTPE= Senator if he can, and Governor-Elect Wilson has felt constrained to advance reasons for a preference for Mr. Mar- tine. Mr. Smith is the leading Demo- cratic boss in the State, and it was cruel that Governor Wilson should have had to oppose him. The trouble with Mr. Smith seems to be that he is too practical a statesman and too much concerned for the malefactors of great wealth and for the main chance, and not enough for the liberties of the people and the consumer. In Ohio and New York Democrats are to be selected, and since the Legis- latures of these States are without re- cent experience in choosing Demo- cratic Senators, a good deal of anxiety is felt about their decisions. These States and New Jersey have a chance to give inspiring leaders to the new Democratic party. If they miss it and send machine bosses, or respectable nonentities, or political stand-patters, it may be, as Dr. Wilson is quoted as suggesting, that “there won’t be any Democratic party in 1912.” E have been invited to help op- pose the Tou Velle stamped envelope bill now before Congress. It is a pleasure. Most of Lirr’s readers know, no doubt, that the Post Office sells stamped envelopes with a request printed in the upper left-hand cor- ner asking for the return of the let- ter to the sender if it has not been delivered in a reasonable time. If you order not less than five hundred of these envelopes the Government will print your address in the corner with the return request without any charge. The cost, including your name and address in the request, is 0 small as to be negligible. Sundry envelope manufacturers ob- serve that in this matter the Govern- ment is doing for nothing a service for which there is a chance for them to extort money. With the help of some thrifty printers they have under- taken to get a law passed forbidding the Government to do for us this little service which it can afford to do for nothing, and for which they intend that we shall pay to them about one dollar for every thousand return envelopes that we use. An Ohio Con- gressman named Tou Velle has intro- duced a bill to this effect, and the Dayton Chamber of Commerce warns us that the bill may soon become a law if we don’t protest. We do protest, heartily. The Tou Velle bill is a scheme to squeeze a little money out of the consumer for the benefit of producers who can in- fluence legislation. It is as impudent a bill as the most wanton protection- ist could desire, though Tou Velle is a Democrat. His bill forbids the do- ing of a piece of work in the most economical way and provides that it shall be done in a much more expen- sive way, so that sundry keen men of business may find a ptofit in doing it. Go to, Tou Velle! We are consum- ers and you are trying to add to our cost of living. You ought to be ashamed. We like the way the stamped envelopes are printed now. It is a particularly good way for small consumers who buy no more than five hundred envelopes at a time and want neither the bother nor the expense of having the address printed on them by @ separate process. Out on you and your pick-pocket bill, Tou Velle! Vote it down, Messrs. Senators! Kill it, Mr. President, if it reaches you! he very early days of Lire, Henry Guy Carleton, who died this month at the Hot Springs, of Arkansas, was for a time its literary editor. Old readers of Lire, if there are any, are likely to remember his stories of the Thompson Street Poker Club, with Kemble’s illustrations. In natural en- dowment Carleton was one of the most remarkable men of his time. He was a poet, a playwright, a chemist, an electrician and of surprising talent in all these callings. A letter writer in the Sun speaks of him as “a born phy- sician,” “a man of inconceivable re- sources” and as the most thoroughly intellectual man he ever met.