EDITORIALS
More Distorted News WE HAVE had occasion more than once to comment upon the distortion and perversion of the news. Scarcely a day passes without glaring instances of this abuse of the press....
...The legislature was deadlocked for weeks...
...For as courts come to look more and more into the conditions that call forth a remedial law and not so intently at prehistoric "precedents," substantial progress may be made toward social justice, "What we know as men we cannot profess to be ignorant of as judges...
...This is one of the severest blows that has thus far been struck at a man who is daily growing in the confidence of the American people and no time should be lost by the Associated Press in telling the public, in an equally prominent dispatch, the exact facts...
...Byrnes, in his private capacity or In any capacity except as a corporation employee, the truculent braggart that he seems in the press reports of railroad hearings...
...It was held to be an unwarranted interference with the constitutional freedom of contract...
...A pleasant and honorable solution of a bad situation...
...Fifteen years ago, a judicial bar placed across the path of legislative protection of women in industry...
...We have been listening to Mr...
...And then the stench arose...
...Witness the following letter: Buffalo, N. Y., April 18, 1910...
...If not corrected, such a dispatch may have a tendency to discredit the Senator with a large number of people who very properly look upon personalities as unwise...
...Having read so many of the Senator's speeches, I ha'd come to look upon him as a man of exceptional poise...
...But Senator Percy is possessed of a sense of the fitness of things...
...It is not that overwork has a harsher effect upon women, and through women upon Society, now than it had in 1895...
...And then the court goes on to declare that since women cannot be subjected to overwork without impairment of health, and since "weak and sickly women cannot be the mothers of vigorous children," it is therefore "of the greatest importance to the public that the state take such measures as may be necessary to protect its women from the consequences induced by long continuous manual labor in those occupations which tend to break them down physically...
...The club is the central exchange where personal experiences are winnowed, sorted, ripened, and made common property...
...The state was full of doubt and shame, as is always the case when such situations arise...
...Then I saw it all...
...Percy appealed to the higher democracy of a state-wide primary...
...Editor "La Follette's Weekly: On April 12th Senator La Follette made a speech in the United States Senate on the railroad bill...
...All the bitterness disappeared from the Mississippi legislature when the right thing had been done by ordering a primary, and the members parted friends, after singing songs and jollifying...
...Both of these men and others of their kind are but hired megaphones through which a beefy, red faced, thick necked, financial bully, drunk with wealth and power, bawls his orders to stock markets, directors, courts, governments and nations...
...Finally the toga was voted to Percy, and he took the seat vacated by former Senator McLaurin...
...I could hardly believe, therefore, that the report was true, and yet there it was—in practically all of the Buffalo papers, and in the New York Evening Post as well...
...State Senator Thomas Bilbo made charges in the closing days of the session that the election of Percy had been brought about by bribery and corruption...
...It is not enough to know how to grow bigger and better crops...
...According to the Associated Press report of that speech, he said: "The mask is off...
...Morgan's personal looks or about the character of the other gentlemen mentioned, regarding those allusions as merely incidental to the reading of the editorial...
...Great bitterness was engendered—as great as that which characterized the last senatorial election in Wisconsin...
...In this movement for the betterment of farm life, the farmers' club is playing an important part...
...When men are engaged in doing the right and honorable thing, they become more friendly...
...Nor is Mr...
...It has proved a fertile subject for public discussion...
...The election was ordered, and Percy and Vardaman will fight the matter out at the polls...
...A striking contrast...
...The editorial mentioned had been written by Governor Curtiss Guild, the Bulletin being Mr...
...Guild's own paper...
...Two bushels of corn now appear where formerly there was but one...
...Only it was the language of Governor Guild and not that of Senator La Follette as unfortunately intimated by the Associated Fress...
...Thus, a great injustice has been done Senator La Follette and I think it is up to the Associated Press to make immediate correction...
...it is quite as important to know "how tor market them to the farmer's own advantage...
...Morgan...
...Mellen...
...to widen the knowledge and the outlook of the members, and to increase individual efficiency and prosperity...
...Social intercourse and agreeable surroundings, too, are growing in importance with the changing of the old order...
...A friendly discussion often saves fruitless experiments or points the way to more profitable methods of work, to co-operation and to economical effort...
...If Every pedigreed animal in the state is carefully registered at an expense of from fifty cents to three dollars, yet the registration of the birth of a babe, a future citizen of the republic, was by the last legislature considered too expensive at twenty-five cents.—Bulletin Kansas State Board of Health...
...The Mistissippi Way UP FROM Mississippi comes a whiff of political pure air which began as a stench...
...Morgan's personal appearance, for we did not like to think of the leader of the Progressives in this country as one who would indulge in personal remarks of that character...
...That the farmers' club is practicable and that it may become an influence for great good in a rural community is borne out by Mr...
...Through the spread of scientific knowledge and the educational work of colleges and experiment stations, wonderful progress has been made in recent years in making farm work productive...
...The legislature took him at his word...
...Democracy had failed, it was charged, in the legislature, and Mr...
...It should stimulate the spread of these clubs...
...And it has resulted, for one thing, in awakening fresh interest in the problem of making farm life attractive—a problem which usually finds expression in the question, "How shall we keep the boys and girls on the farm...
...Says the court, in its decision: "It is known to all men, and what we know as men we cannot profess to be ignorant of as judges, that woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions places her at a great disadvantage in the battle of life...
...I decided to look at the Congressional Record and see if some mistake had not been made...
...On page 4707 of the Record it appears that the Senator, in the course of his remarks on the railroad bill, dwelt at some length upon railroad conditions in New England, and, as bearing upon these conditions, had occasion to read to the Senate, for what it might be worth, an editorial which had been printed in the Commercial Bulletin of Boston, of February 19, of this year...
...So he went to Mississippi and asked that the people of the state be given the chance to pass upon the matter...
...They do things differently in Mississippi...
...A contest for the United States senatorship was waged between the present Senator, Lerqy Percy, and former Governor James K. Vardaman...
...Evidently the Senator's purpose in reading the editorial, of which this personal reference was but a small portion, was to throw light upon the New England railroad situation and he did not deem it proper or necessary to alter or omit the verbiage about Mr...
...Toole's article on another page of this magazine...
...Farmers' Clubs BY APPOINTING the Country Life Commission, President Roosevelt directed the thought of the nation toward the conditions under which farmers live...
...Yours truly, Charles Edwin Knowles...
...It is because that fact has been demonstrated beyond controversy, and because the court has given recognition to it in its interpretation of the law, that this decision becomes really notable...
...The spirit of such organizations is well stated in a bulletin of the Wisconsin University Extension Division, which is offering practical aid and suggestions to farmers' clubs...
...to stimulate civic pride and improvement...
...In this respect also the Mississippi affair resembled that in Wisconsin...
...Progress IN 1895 the Supreme Court of Illinois declared unconstitutional a law limiting the working hours of women to eight in one day...
...Today, the bar removed and the way thrown open to laws that will prevent the industrial exploitation of human beings...
...Much was involved in this case: the right of the people to interfere, under the constitution, when the experience of the world proved that the public well-being was menaced by unlimited hours of labor for women...
...We have all of us done injustice to Mr...
...La Follette's own words and it is regrettable that the newspapers, probably all over the country, have told their readers that they were...
...He asked that an election be called and promised that if the people failed to give him a vote of confidence, he would resign...
...In 1910—on April 21—the same court upheld the constitutionality of a law, recently enacted, which forbids the employment of women in "any mechanical establishment or factory or laundry" in the state for more than ten hours in one day...
...Not infrequently, however, appears a case so flagrant that it overreaches the bounds of perversion and enters the domain of falsehood...
...to foster professional feeling...
...Inasmuch as Buffalo and New York papers printed, without qualification, these reflections upon Mr...
...gross injustice...
...It began, "The mask is off," and ended with the words, "We have been listening to Mr...
...Morgan...
...In that declaration there is hope...
...It was, in fact, word for word, the language I have quoted at the head of this communication...
...To quote: "The purposes of these clubs are both social and educational...
...Usually, it is done subtly...
...to furnish wholesome amusement and recreation...
...He had his seat, but it was valueless to him while its title was clouded...
...Misrepresentation of so coarse a nature tends to defeat its own ends...
...Morgan's personal appearance as Senator La Follette's own words, I presume the same misleading dispatch was published generally throughout the country...
...They aim to promote a kindly and neighborly spirit...
...Yet, we are only just beginning to take up the other sides of agriculture—the business side and the social side...
...It was held to be a constitutional use of the "police power" by the legislature in the interest of the "health, morals and general welfare of the public...
...While we believe the last named individual possesses and uses this great power, several of my friends and myself experienced a shock when we read, as coming from Senator La Follette, this uncomplimentary description of Mr...
...Near the middle of the editorial I came upon a paragraph which had a familiar sound...
...They were not Mr...
Vol. 2 • April 1910 • No. 17
