Life — December 11, 1913 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

"SE EGE What Do You Think? We are Constantly in Receipt of Important Letters Which are Too Long for Our Limited Space. Brevity is Desirable Murder ? Epitor Lire, Sir: I have been a consistent reader of Lire for the past several years, and no feature of your magazine has appealed to me so much as your campaign against vaccination, compulsory or otherwise. I herewith hand you clipping from to-day's issue of our local evening paper. It is my understanding that the death chron- icled in this clipping occurred by reason of the child's being required to be vac- cinated in order to attend the public schools—if such is the case, are not our local school authorities directly charge- able-with murder? At least, it would seem so. Very truly yours, Samuet Brern, Huntincpon, W. Va., November 6, 1913. Teachers’ Salaries My Dear Lire: Can it be possible that you are getting old and deaf, that you “have never even heard of a city that paid its school teachers enough”? You live in New York. Surely you must be among those wicked citizens who never trouble to inquire what their own abused govern- ment is doing. In New York City women school principals are paid $3,500 a year from and after their sixth year of serv- ice. Women class teachers in high schools reach, all of them who are not markedly inefficient nor flagrantly neg- lectful of duty, $2,600 a year. In the elementary schools those class teachers who are too lazy or too dull to qualify as principals reach, as a matter of course, $1,820 a year; and the best of them attain $2,260 a year. In old age they are pensioned on half pay. All of these teachers give only about two hundred days each year of actual service. Now, my dear Lirg, will you tell me of any Place or occupation on this great round globe which offers to tens of thousands of women such sumptuous salaries as these, even for three hundred days’ service a year? It is high time that the venerable complaint that all teachers are underpaid be dropped. It encourages city teachers, whose salaries are generous, to utilize the public sentiment which the wretched pay of rural teachers would justify and to make raids upon the treasury—not to raise the wages of their country brethren, Lut to get more for themselves. I speak all through of women teachers, because men teachers are a vanishing race in New York. The women have duped a pusillanimous legislature into lowering men’s salaries to get money for raising women’s salaries, with the effect, desired by the Amazons in the sex war, that men are no longer entering the schools. Yours truly, Joun Martin. Grayses Hitt, Starteton, S. 1, November 19, 1913. Barred Out To tue Eprtor or Lire: Eighty per cent. of operations per- formed by surgeons are unnecessary and unwarranted! So said Dr. L. A. Merrian, of Omaha, the other day, in a paper read before the members of the Missouri Valley Medical Society. And then up rose the society en masse and unanimously passed a resolution ex- cluding Dr. Merrian’s paper from the published reports of the society. So thus, in the year of our Lord 1913, is Galileo told by the eminent scientists that the world is flat. It cannot be round, or the people would fall off! The Missouri Valley Medical Society held its meetirg in Omaha. Dr. Merrian's Paper was on the subject, “The New Knowledge of Disease, Prevention and Cure". The doctor criticized surgeons freely, accused them of endangering the lives of patients without cause, and boldly stated that fully eighty per cent. of their operations were absolutely un- necessary. Then up rose Dr. Charles Wood Gas- sett, of St. Joseph, Mo., sceretary of the association, following the unanimous vote, expunging Dr. Merrian's paper from the record, and wrapping the mantle of divine certainty of materia medica about him, made grotesque explanation of the attitude of the society in the fol- lowing words, as quoted from an Omaha newspaper : “The statements made by Dr. Merrian were unwarranted and made without any cause, The intention of this society in barring this paper from the report of the organization was to distinctly show that they did not approve of the Paper nor the statements in regard to operations made which were not neces- sary. If the paper were to be published with the indorsement of the society it would be generally used by quacks and impostors and other unscrupulous per- statements for the purpose of defrauding the public.” In other words, the bumptious secre- tary fears that quacks and impostors will save us from these eighty per cent. of unnecessary operations! Geo. C. Tucker. Wester City, Iowa, November 8, 1913. “WE OUGHT 10 HIDE IT, WILLIE. MAYBE THE POOR THING HASN'T LIVED ALL OF ITS LIVES YET.” comicbooks.com