Life — June 13, 1912 — 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" . TAFT didn’t look-in not a get a Jersey —>2) delegate, anopheles or 8 the other kind. These he strange times. If the presidency of Yale College were conferred on the instalment plan, like the Presidency of the United States, and this was the year to shift, and it was primary day in New Haven, we would back Owen Johnson against A. T. Hadley three to one. Owen has the popular ear, his song-and-dance is acceptable, he is making a glorious fight for the rights of man and is right up abreast of the issues of the day and going strong. If the Yale electorate felt about Yale things as the Republican pri Yy vot- ers scem to feel about political things, Owen would get at least two-thirds of the votes, and the pieces of Dr. Hadley would be taken home in a basket. Well; wouldn’t they? Doesn't Dr. Hadley represent the machine; the ma- chine that is responsible for tap-day, Bones, the present Yale depression in aquatics, all that Yale ought not be, should not have done, but did? him!” “Hit him!” “Do “Johnson and liberty! and Owen would get all the delegates except the deaf and the insensible. And very likely would make a popular President, and a perfectly safe one. so far as tap-day and the mausoleums and other sacred institutions of Yale are concerned. UEER times; very queer. But rather smiling times in) many details. It is to laugh, for example, when one contemplates some of the crowds that are out to save the coun- try, and notes them individually, and recalls their record: this that “ploughed with So-and-So, that that reaped with Such-a-One, that other, who is a captain of janissaries for Uncle John D., and so on and so on. All these patriots talk good sense, but one smiles to hear them, and wants to say “Go put it back!” A great deal of character has been cashed in in this country in the last thirty years. It brought a good price and the money is still amongst us, but we miss the character, There seems to be such a dearth of strength. Roosevelt’ may be the reincarnation of Apollyon or Beelzebub, but, anyway, the incarnation was a pretty job. What is attractive about him, what catches the people, is manhood. He i not drink sodden, money sodden, or respectability sodden ; his activities are enormous, his private life is admirable, his interests are mental interests. He has charm, he has manners, he has ex perience of men and of life. He is altogether a wonderful person, and makes all the other politicians in the country look like gingerbread sol- diers. For our part, we value him very highly, and believe that he was given us for our good. The great benefit we may hope to get from him is the development of virility in men op- posed to him. If we cannot wallop him, let him wallop us. It may do us good. But if we are to wallop him, we must develop considerable earnestness, and some character, and some unselfish patriotism, and there must be a getting together of like-minded men, who be- lieve in their beliefs and care for truth and civilization. And if it should turn out that he is cast for the part of Napoleon, we must make shift to dig out a Weiling- ton somewhere, for certainly we owe him some kind of a real fight. We could get a Wellington—we have all kinds of men in our country’s stock; but how could we give him the necessary advertisement? That is the VOL. LIX. JUNE 13,192 No. 1585 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY J.AM A. Minune U7 West Thirty-first Strcet, New York cunt, Pres’t See'y and Treas rub, the dreadful rub, of it. A man to catch the current crowd must be, it seems, a mixture of Marcelline and Julius Cxsar, and capable of inces- sant appearances in each part. The great advertisement comes by war, but that comes high, and if we got it Roosevelt would hog the whole show- end of it as he did in Cuba. HAT bug is it that has bitten the world? It is worth while re- membering how very general its ail- ment is. We have no more than our share of it. We could almost think it was the automobile that had bewitched mankind, and made the cost of living high and bred discontent in all the trolley-hauled and foot-going people. The automobile is too good. It takes too much resolution to yo without it. And look what it did in these pri- maries! Is it possible that the auto- mobile needs regulation more than the trusts do? Behold the money that is spent on things that neither feed nor clothe, nor shelter people! Con- sider what is spent for advertisement; for our enormous supply of news- papers; in going to Europe to play all summer; in moving the whole retail business of New York about a mile uptown for no reason in particular, except to make one area of land worth more and another less. This last has leen a prodigious expense. And, on top of everything, the supply of gold is increasing so fast that that is likels to be a matter of discussion and leg- islation again soon, An enormous part of the labor of mankind seems to have been diverted in the last twenty years from the production of necessaries to the production of luxuries, and now necessaries are high, and all manner of people feel the pinch of prices and strike out blindly to ease it. What comicbooks.com