Life — April 6, 1922 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

aN Wid j lin i wat alls il 0 Ex-Traffic Cop Takes Up Farming Lo, the Poor Congressman Is It Right that We Should Feed or Otherwise Annoy Him with Mail? N' IT that our own morning mail is anything but an unqualified nui- Not that we wouldn't gladly de- sance. flect doors. our correspondence from our Begging letters of amazing scope and ingenuity from the four quarters of the habitable globe. Im- pressive letters informing us that we have been elected (without the formal- ity of application) members of more or less learned societies, and that the an- nual dues are $25. Importunate letters asking our “earnest co-operation” with “boar: and “bureaus,” and “cam- paigns,” and committees for regulating the minor morals of the poor. Senti- mental letters inquiring our choice of a state flower, or a national vegetable, or a dog-lover’s emblem, or a maiden aunt day. Heaven knows, we have troubles of our own without wasting our hearts in pity for our Congress- men, And yet, and yet—what are our sor- tows to theirs? No obligation to our tormentors rests on our shoulders, no benefits accrue to us, and our best friend, the waste-paper basket, gapes expectantly by our side. But the Con- gressman who lives, and breathes, and toils, and prays, and sins for re-elec- tion, he is at the mercy of his mail. The “storm of protests” which greets his futile efforts to devise a pleasant and profitable tax disconcerts and dis- heartens him. Making bricks without straw was pastime compared to raising money which nobody will miss. It is all very well for a Senator to speak of the “organized cowardice” of Congress when the soldiers try to raid the Treasury, and the taxpayers bar the gates, and every mail brings a cargo of letters from the opposing camps. The Congressman is not prejudiced. All he seeks to know is on what side his bread is buttered; and, in a recur- rent whirlwind of irreconcilable de- mands, this is just what he cannot find out. If he scuttles to and fro, more like an alarmed mouse than a man and a legislator, it is because he has re- ceived, and is always receiving, what the New York Times, in a spirit of refined cynicism, calls “Light from Home.” And the remedy? It doesn’t seem possible to make writing to a Congress- man a felony. It doesn’t seem easy to eliminate successive terms. We might, of course, elect men who—but that would be hardest of all. Agnes Repplier. The Growing Horrors of Home Life T is announced by the telephone companies that they expect soon to have wireless machines installed in households. Not content with furnish- ing us with a system whereby the neighbors can break in upon our self- enforced solitude by day or night, and the salesmen for incipient automobile concerns can insist upon meeting us and demonstrating the hill-climbing qualities of the “only car in the mar- ket”—the telephone companies now propose to add to these horrors by linking us up with musical opera “suc- cesses” and clergymen grown savage with oratory. No wonder the home is going! comicbooks.com