A JAUNT THROUGH SINGAPORE

...They came snooping around just as willing to do it, only to find that Johnnie Bull was on the spot...

...Behind the chopping block, his Sultanic majesty stands arrayed in butcher's gown and with a meat cleaver he is chopping up the butchers who, on earth, charged too much for meat, and passing out to the people juicy cutlets carved from the bodies of those wicked men...

...At six o'clock last evening this guide was bilin' drunk...

...The history of an idea is that it becomes first a theory, then a principle, next a creed, blooms into a platform and ultimately ripens into a cause...

...and I am told that this is the climatic condition the year around...

...A Bargain in Temples WHILE Singapore is so near the equator it has a delightful climate...

...Kill off La Follette, Cummins, Beveridge, Bristow, Murdock and Poindexter and the principles they have stood for will not languish...

...On panels of the wall to a long veranda approach to the entrance of the temple are some specimens of Chinese art expressed in paintings...

...The Chinese prospered under the liberal English government, the settlements prospered...

...Every dollar which has been put into one man's pocket by legislation has been taken out of some other man's pocket...

...and all the tariffs, financial legislation, railroad legislation, and most of the other legislation of the last quarter of a century has simply dealt out privileges in price-raising...

...They just didn't seem to have the savvey...

...every dollar by which legislation has enriched one man has made some other man poorer...

...For the people have seen that these new leaders have cared nothing for a personal triumph...

...Thus the strength of insurgency is not the strength of its leaders, but its hold as a principle upon the hearts of the people...

...John Bull is a hard-headed old cuss...

...It's four days' sail from Hong Kong to Singapore...

...How he managed to get so drunk in two and one half hours I don't know, nor was I so interested in finding out as I was to know if he could possibly sober up from such a tremendous "jag" in twelve short hours sufficiently to conduct an American business man, thirsting for information, on his quest for knowledge...

...Every privilege in price-raising given to one, adds to the cost of living of all others...

...I am altogether in favor of the initiative and referendun as the only means of allowing the people really to take part ir making their laws and governing themselves.—William Dean Howells...

...To have a childish fancy come true, the water would be just about boiling at the equator...

...that the guide was a rare character, that he got just so drunk every afternoon but that he never failed to be on hand to meet an engagement in the morning...

...Mine host assured me that I need have no fears...

...There is one of the finest Chinese temples in the world at Singapore...

...If in the end John gets licked, one can't help admiring Dad's colossal audacity up to date...

...I never wanted to buy one...

...Hats off to Great Britain...

...Efforts of express companies to clear the way for a parcels post should be recognized.—Wall Street Journal...

...BY WAY OF CONTRAST News Item: "Carnegie gives ten million dollars as a fund to secure peace...

...Thanks," Great Britain said, "We don't mind...

...The principles have become a Cause...

...Time and again La Follette, Cummins, or Stubbs has gone down to defeat for a principle, when they might have avoided the stigma of defeat by scaling down their demands or understating their issues...

...I engaged him at four o'clock last evening to take me this morning—we arranged to make an early start, 6:30, to visit the botanical gardens, a government rubber plantation, and this Chinese temple...

...This guide was a Cingalese, a colored gentleman...

...But it's a mighty fine specimen of a Chinese temple...

...one would expect to find the water getting warmer and warmer...

...and here they are today commanding the world's highway with their challenge, "Who goes there...

...Come up, come good people, here's meat and plenty now without money and without price...

...And she straightway planted her guns here...

...Of course, everybody knows that the Chinese can't paint for sour apples if you go ringing in technique, atmosphere, perspective, anatomy, and a few other such minor details as connoisseurs prate about in discussing art...

...The cause is self-evident...

...The guide showed up all right, but, between you and me, I think he figured out the cost of that temple between 4 and 6:30 last evening and got it too high...

...The other nations of the earth, no one of which my restless spirit chose, have been no whit more virtuous in this matter of itching for strongholds...

...After that it shrivels into history and scholars begin to write books questioning the motives of those who died for it...

...These narrow straits, ten to twenty miles wide, with the peninsula on the east and the island of Sumatra on the west, are the world's highway of commerce...

...The last painting, as you pass into the temple, shows what's coming to the butchers who charge the people too much for meat...

...Every dollar that has been added to the profits of any business has reduced the profits of some other business...

...In those pictures the punishment for every brand of wickedness is portrayed...

...They seem to believe in the educational value of political martyrdom...

...I expressed my doubts on this point to the proprietor of Raffles Hotel where I am stopping...

...A market place is portrayed with an immense chopping block...

...In my three days' stay the thermometer has not gone above 86...

...News Item: "Forty-six thousand men laid off from employment at the steel mills of Pittsburg, Pa...

...Raffles presented this island with its 300 Malays to his country, they didn't send out a lot of school teachers to make clerks, policemen and judges of the natives nor did they set up signs warning the Chinese to "Keep off the grass...

...so the cause has become stronger in the hearts of the people than it would have been if it had been dramatized around some leader's political fortunes...

...The Port of Singapore ranks second to Hong Kong and is the eighth in importance in the world...

...But they never save their faces...

...My guide told me it cost sixteen million dollars...

...Thus childhood's fancies go to smash—the water in the sea at the equator don't boil...

...For twenty-five years business has haunted the corridors of the capitol at Washington, and of the capitols of the various states, seeking legislation which would increase its profits...

...Legislation for Profit IT IS AMAZING and amusing that in this nation of intelligent and well-read people there should be a moment's discussion as to the cause of the high cost of living...

...The first morning out of Hong Kong the water for a bath, taken directly from the sea, was warm—oh, about as warm as it used to be in our old swimming hole in Big Creek, in Ohio, after a term of warm days in July, which same creek was dry save for that hole—good and warm...

...Sir Stamford Raffles, in 1819, came rubbering around this part of the world, and with an Englishman's eye for strategic points, reached out and picked up this island of Singapore, with its 300 naked savages, and presented island and savages to his country much as one would say, today, "Have a cigar...

...How can the cost of living help being high under these conditions...

...If we could only induce the men highest up in the beef trust in America to come to Singapore and study that painting it would do more good than puckering up our stomachs in preparation for an ineffectual beef boycott...

...Most of the strongholds on earth, worth mentioning, Great Britain has picked up in this same nonchalent way, occasionally cuffing the natives up to a peak if they had the temerity to get behind a rock or tree and make up a face at the conquering Briton...

...The Chinese came and built up the Straits settlements,— Singapore, Penang, Malacca and the Province of Wellesley—on the lower end of the Malay Peninsula, a chunk of ground about half as large as the single island of Luzon...

...Immediately after Mr...

...Why need the government interfere in business at all...

...He put that money into guns and fortifications and got out a lot of nice engraved invitations in choice pidgin English, cordially asked the Chinese to come to Singapore, assuring them that "the water was fine...

...they never take the best they can get—do these insurgents...

...The government has been turned into a machine for helping business men get rich...

...After taking a bird's eye view of the situation, all things considered, I don't know as I could have done more wisely in choosing an ancestry...

...It may be seen at first glance by a sane observer...

...What I am trying to tell you is that these Chinese artists have gotten right down to brass tacks in showing what will happen hereafter when the avenging angel passes out to the wicked what's coming to them for the deeds done in the body...

...The people have rallied to these men after defeat and their cause has been stronger for the defeat...

...He was sober when I engaged him...

...Laws do not create value, they only transfer it...

...I'm not saying what John ought to have done—that's a delicate subject I'm only telling you what he did do...

...Art to be Art Must be -" THE Chinese aren't so slow...

...Technique," "perspective,"—"atmosphere," I was going to add, but it fairly reeks with sulphurous atmosphere—may be wanting in that painting, but you can fairly hear the Devil say, "Who'll take home a tenderloin from this erstwhile wicked butcher and broil it on hot coals,—who wants to take this beef baron's heart and toast it on a fork...

...Who can find the least justification for the passing of laws to help any man or class of men to increase their profits when to do so must inevitably raise the cost of living for all the rest of us?—LIFE...

...I never bought a Chinese temple...

...The second morning out the water was cooler, the third still cooler and the fourth, just out of Singapore, 70 miles north of the equator, the water was chilly...

...What Johnnie Bull did TODAY, Singapore has a population of 280,000...

...SINGAPORE is on the island of Singapore, a flat piece of ground 14 miles wide and 27 miles long, lying at the extreme southern end of the Malay Peninsula at the southern entrance to the Malacca Straits...

...There is always a delightful breeze and the mornings and evenings are deliciously cool...

...and as it is true that commerce is an instrument to lift the world to a higher level of civilization the world profited, because the commerce of the Straits Settlements reaches annually 559 million dollars, the value of this same Straits dollar being, in gold, 57 cents...

...Why come between man and man, taking from one and giving to another...

...If I were in the market for a Chinese temple and this one was offered to me for anything over eight million dollars, I'd shop around a bit before buying...

...Most of the insurgent leaders who have arrived in National politics have arisen by a series of defeats—over-whelming defeats in which they might have compromised themselves into a plausible victory...

...One has to take off his hat to Great Britain in this matter of picking off the strategic points, the world's strongholds...

...Compared with Michael Angelo's and Raphael's, as works of art, they are not to be considered, but for awful warnings to evil doers to flee from the wrath to come, Michael Angelo or Raphael or any modern artists would have to hustle to keep in sight of these Chinese artists, just as the whole earth's bunch of painters came dusting down the world's highway of art...

...DROPPING down almost directly south from Hong Kong to Singapore, a matter of some 1,500 miles through the South China Sea, nearing the Equator...

...It's a good deal cooler than at Hong Kong 1500 miles north of the Equator...

...To state it in three words, it is legislation for profit—passing laws to make business pay larger dividends...

...Last Ditch Fighters" WRITING in the January American Magazine on Roosevelt and the Insurgent Republicans—their points of similarity and their differences—William Allen White says: "The insurgent leaders are 'last ditch fighters.' They prefer defeat to compromise, and martyrdom to victory if the victory is qualified...

...h. p...