Life — January 5, 1911 — page 55: what you’re looking at

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

Awana: New Year Prospects HESE States start the new year with a population of about ninety-four millions. That is enough people for most uses. There is no reason why we should exert ourselves to increase the number. It has increased seventeen millions in ten years and will doubtless keep on at the rate of a million or two a year until further notice. It is pleasanter and more neighborly to have the country fairly settled up so as to make rural delivery feasible and conservation easier. Texas can accom- modate a few more selected citizens; various other States a few nice families, but there is such a thing as getting set- tled up too tight, and that we should avoid as long as possible. The incon- venience of it will be appreciated by any- ‘one who tries to ride uptown in the city of New York between five and six o'clock in the afternoon. We are running considerably to cities. Of the ten largest cities in the world the second, the fourth and the ninth are now located in this country and expect to stay here. We have about fifty cities whose populations exceed one hundred thousand and many more coming fast. As a rule people prefer to live in cities, where they get hot and cold water, news- Papers, street cars, bargain counters, sa- loons and much less of their own so- ciety than in the country. Cities are stimulating, and most people like stimu- “Move On!” SAYS FATHER TIME. lation and many are better for it. Only superior people with unusual mental re- sources thrive on large quantities of their own society. Votes for women will not come this year—not hereabouts—but no doubt the effort to get them will continue vigor- ously and with a good many beneficial by-products. While the political ladies have their hand in and their machinery running, can’t they take up Miss Tar- bell's suggestion and do something to se- cure the establishment of textile stand- ards and the enactment of federal laws that will do for clothes what the pure- food laws are doing for foods? The great buyers of clothes are women. It is to the interest of all the people that these buyers should know what they are buying; and that textiles should be in- spected and labeled as foods are, so that cotton may not masquerade as wool or silk, or clay as cotton. Our acquaintance with acroplanes will improve without extending to familiarity. The announcement that dirigible balloons carrying passengers will ply between Washington and New York, beginning early next summer, will not be accepted with entire confidence. Dirigibles have a lot to learn yet before they can fly to the satisfaction of passengers who wish to arrive, and they are not as apt scholars as the acroplanes. The United Kingdom will doubtless survive the year, but with what constitu- tional variation and relaxation of unity nobody can yet forecast. London is not likely to shut up shop nor Americans to cease to crowd into it in the spring, but we should know better in the course of another year what is to happen to the House of Lords and the English landed estates and whether Ulster in Ireland will come to blows with Dublin, Cork and Kilkenny. As for the Holy Father, he will con- tinue, barring accidents, to be Pope an- other year, and will persevere in his forts to maintain an area of twilight i a very much illuminated world. yy fy, “WAS THAT Piker?” “NOT EXACTLY. HE GAVE ME A TEN SPOT, WHICH LEFT ME ONLY TWO AND A HALF MORE THAN THE COMPANY Gor.” LAST GUY YOU HAD A comicbooks.com