Life — August 2, 1928 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

BPS IE ct when every region of the world has gone in for mass production, turning out daily more than it can consume? Well, in this country we have already found the answer for overproduction in the doctrine of ob- solescence. Instead of using things till they wear out, we throw them away or turn them in for a this year’s model. It would be treasonous to doubt that that process can be kept up forever; and while the arth’s natural resources will be exhausted some day, and must be exhausted a good deal more rapidly, under this system, than if we produced only what we need, let us all trust that when that time comes the Lord will provide. Man, at least, shows no present inclina- tion to do any providing. A woman in New York was robbed, and threatened with graver indignities, by a taxi driver whom she eventually fright- ened away by brandishing the family automatic pistol. A detective whom she summoned wasted no time in the pos- sibly futile and certainly onerous en- deavor to catch the robber, but arrested the woman for possessing a pistol without a permit. She had a permit, it seems, in Virginia, where the pistol was bought; so in that state she could defend herself against. a thug without committing a crime. But if various well-organized and assiduous reform groups get their way we shall presently have an anti-pistol law, and then a woman who defends her jewels, or her honor, against an assailant anywhere in the country will do so at the risk of a term in jail. Of course, if the criminal classes obey the law, turn over all their firearms to the police, and refuse to purchase new ones from gun bootleggers, a woman who is strong and skilled in boxing will still have some chance. New York has enjoyed an anti-pistol law for years, and one has yet to hear of a New York gun- man who had to turn to honest labor because he could no longer obtain the tools of his trade; but New York, as Senator Borah and William Allen White can tell you, is wickeder than the rest of the country. Still, there seems only one absolutely safe and certain remedy. Let the national anti-pistol law be written into the Con- stitution as the Twentieth Amendment. Then everybody will obey it and the problem will be solved forever. Elmer Davis. Putting Our Public Institutions on a Paying Basis The Museum of Natural History Sublets as a Training Field for Chiropractors — Life Lines — Tue poriticat season has been opened officially, with William Allen White throwing out the first mud. JL We learn with relief that diparaxy- lylguanidine is a substance used in vul- canizing rubber. On first meeting the word, we feared it was something inserted into the gin recently acquired by a friend. aL Ir is a year since a woman in Spain gave birth to a child with five arms. Yet the scarcity of first-class shortstops seems about the same. a Horets have been springing up so rapidly of late that there are 1,000,000 rooms unequipped with Gideon Bibles. It is understood that the occupants of three of these were also unable to obtain corkscrews from the room service depart- ment. aL “Miss Amelia Earhart, Boston social worker and intrepid flier, who is the first woman to have blown across the Atlantic."* —Wisconsin News. Tuere’s nothing like a good tail wind. aL A pustic cisrary in Tarrytown, N. Y., costing $200,000 and having room for 30,000 volumes, is without books. It is suggested, however, the deficiency can be overcome by installing Mr. Dreiser's “An American Tragedy,” complete. LL Ovtttne of History: “When do we eat?” comicbooks.com