Life — January 9, 1913 — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

JANUARY 9, 1913 “While there is Life ihere's Hope” VOL. 61 No, 1576 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMP. 17 West Thirty-first Street, Ne 3 sh Offices, Cannon House, Breams' Bidgs., London, J. A, Mircmmet, Pres't. THERE are a good many Democrats who consider that their party is in a critical — situa- tion, with great opportunities open to it, and proportionate chances of disaster. They feel that the new administration and legisla- tive majority will be weighed very promptly in the balance, and that if the pointer doesn’t stay on the right side, a big independent vote will flop over into the other pan and perhaps be lost to the Democrats forever. So they don’t want any mistakes made. They don’t want the wrong men to get into the cabinet, nor the President- elect to say anything he shouldn't, nor anybody to do or say anything in the name of the Democracy that is not safe, sound, sterilized and expedient. When something is said or happens that claims to be Democratic and can- not be classified under the above ad- jectives, these friends draw long breaths and long faces. So they looked mighty solemn the other day when the newspaper headlines sug- gested that Governor Wilson had said he would hang anybody that tried to start a panic. Of course, he did not say that. No President, except General Jackson, has been able to hang to order, as Dr. Wil- son well knows, and he explicitly de- tached himself from any such prac- tical intention. But he did associate in language, the gallows, the rope, and anybody who would start a panic as a means of discrediting and defeating proper Democratic measures. NY A. Miter, Secty and Treas, c. w V That made our anxious Democratic friends look and feel pretty solemn. They don’t believe in the possibility of artificial panics started for business and political reasons, and they di like to have the President-elect speak as though he believed in it. Panics are a kind of spook that it is not manners to allude to in polite polit- ical society. Even Governor Wilson's restricted allusion to them was bad for the nerves of our anxious friends, and they grumbled about it. For a fact, we do not ourselves see that the Gov- ernor’s suggestion was useful, and per- haps if he had had a less hard day at Trenton and had come in a more jocund humor to the Southerners’ feast, he wouldn’t have let it out. Nevertheless, it behooves our appre- hensive friends to base their Demo- cratic hopes on a firmer foundation. If mistakes and rash words are going to rattle them, they will have little peace. The new administration is sure to make its share of blunders. Its nec- essary course is very imperfectly charted, and it must feel its way over it, watching the water and the cur- rents, casting the lead, backing off when it hits something, and possibly jettisoning some of its cargo if it gets hard aground. It is impossible that the coming ad- ministration will not have sore trou- bles and make bad mistakes. Its back- ers must harden their hearts and sit tight, relying not so much on the in- fallibility of its prudence, as on the general competence of its head pilot, on’ its rectitude of purpose and on its possession of available intelligence and sufficient vitality to digest the indigest- ible and overcome the unforeseen, HIS is the Automobile Number. The adjustment of the automo- bile to human life is going on pretty well. We are finding out where it be- longs and where not; what its work is, what its rights and duties are, and how much of life there is left outside of it. The distribution of it is going on finely, yet there is more money left to put into other things than anyone five years ago could have believed. Here in New York there has been, for example, a lot of very expensive build- ing and a lot of subway construction; the Panama Canal has gone ahead spending money like water, the na- tional government spends about a bil- lion a year, people go clothed still and probably pay for the clothes, the schools and colleges are open again this year, and it has not even been nec- essary to close the hospitals; some- body bought this year’s crops and we shall pay for them and eat them up as usual, and yet, of course, we shall hear that there were more automobiles sold in 1912 than ever before. A banker from up the State stood in front of the public library the other day and looked up and down Fifth avenue and watched the streams of automobiles passing in both directions before him, and counted all the sky- scrapers in sight, and remarked on the people's clothes, and wagged his head and declared despondently that the country could not possibly stand all that expense. But we guess it can. At any rate, it can stand the automobiles. Some peo- ple have reacted on them. It is in the paper on this day of writing that Gov- ernor Osborn of Michigan has given away his seven-passenger touring car and is done with autos. But that is not significant, because he has also given away all his horses and declares that in future he intends to walk and enjoy the beauties of Nature. Now Governor Osborn is a Progres- sive. He was one of the seven little comicbooks.com