Life — September 28, 1922 — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

Twice Around the World with the Dollar Bill Layers TATISTICS are most stimulating to the im- aginative mind. For instance, if one reads that the number of the automobiles in the State of California, worked out to five decimals, gives a little more than two-thirds of an automobile for every man, woman and child in the Golden State, one conceives the streets of Los Angeles shortly before nine o'clock to be thronged with children going to school each in his two-thirds of an automobile. <A typical vehicle under these statistics would show that the two front wheels are there and a fragment of the off hind wheel. Six-cylinder en- gines would, of course, hit on only four cylinders, and four-cylinder en- gines would be working only as to 2.6666+ cylinders. When one begins to figure the amount of income tax to be paid by every man, woman and child in the State of New York, either the coin- age must be changed or there will have to be a slaughter of the inno- cents so as to make the children come out even with the taxes. One cannot expect children of school age to be absent from their classes trying to get change for a cent so as to pay to the collectors of internal revenue $0.642134584+. And even if the child should sue- ceed in bringing to the collector the exact change worked out to seven places of decimals, the Collector is apt to say to it: “Run along, Sis or - LIFE Statistical Journeys Montague Glass Bub, as the case may be, and tell Daddy he’s forgotten to give you the plus sign.” Then there are the end-to-end sta- tistics, involving sums of money ex- pended for smoking expressed in . terms of one-dollar bills which, if laid end to end, would reach twice around the world via Liverpool, L. & N. W. Railway to London, Folkstone-Boulogne to Paris, P. L. & M. to Marseilles, etc. This imme- diately gives rise to a skilled occu- pation, i.e., dollar-bill-laying, akin to that of encaustic-tilers if there are such workmen,—and_ sharp-tongued fellers they would prove to be too in a labor dispute. Let us conceive then that the Amalgamated Dollar- Bill-Layers of North America, Local No. 1, were put in charge of laying all the dollar bills expended for smoking at the same wage scale and hours of labor as bricklayers, and the cost, if expressed in terms of silver dollars stacked one on_top of. the other, would make a column 29,652 feet high, or equivalent to a moun- tain four times as high as Mount Washington, N. H., with Mount Lowe, California, imposed upon the summit. There is also a small ex- crescence barely visible to the lay- man’s eye growing out of the top of Mount Lowe, in order to make the height of the dollars and the height of the mountains coterminous,— which, however, the statistician will immediately recognize as Mount Mor- ris of Mount Morris Park, Madison Avenue and 12st Street, New York. By Far the Most Interesting Exhibit at the Carrot County Fair This Year Here again the statistician is con, fronted with the problem of hiring silver-dollar-stackers, a highly or. ganized group of skilled laborers with a wage scale based upon the regulation of the Allied Silver-Dol- lar-Stackers’ Trade Council of North America, that the stacking of 68.31416 silver dollars shall consti- tute the maximum working hour for a union silver-dollar-stacker. Doubtless this is one way of soly- ing the present Unemployment Prob- lem, but in the event that Sinoking, like Drinking, becomes the suhject of a Twentieth Amendment to the Con- stitution of the United States—or possibly a Twenty-first Amendment, the Twentieth Amendment having been preempted by the Sabbath Day League,—why then Smoking expen- ditures will no longer be expressed in terms of dollar bills laid end to end, thus throwing out of work any number of dollar-bill-layers—eg, New York HWorld, May 28th. 1927: PoucukeepsiE, N. Y., May 25.—Cedrie Hockenberger, a dollar bill layer, threw himself under a New York Central freight train today in front of a crowd of commuters. George J. George, local representative of Price, Waterhouse & Co., testified that deceased had been, employed by that firm laying dollar bills end to end from New York to Albany in connection with the Anti-Two-for-a- Quarter Cigar League’s New York to San Francisco line of dollar bills George testified that the deceased was discharged in Peekskill on March Ist, at which place the line of dollar bills was abandoned because of the passage of the Tobacco Prohibition Law. De- ceased appeared to be much depressed because of his discharge and for more than a fortnight had been seen in various resorts at Poughkeepsie and Peekskill under the influence of Glacial Acetic Acid and purified Phenylamine com- bined with Salicylic Acid, Sodium Car- bonate and Bi-Carbonate. A verdict of suicide was returned by the coroner’s jury. Quite So HERE was a man in our town And he was wondrous dry; He fell into a fitful sleep And dreamed a quart of Rye And when he saw what he had dreamed (Oh, Virtue shall prevail!) He dreamed a horde of Volstead spies Who dragged him off to jail comicbooks.com