“LAUGHABLE” TO BUILD A GREEK TEMPLE AS A MEMORIAL TO LINCOLN, says Senate aide — why not an Egyptian pyramid?

Lincoln Memorial?

Fred L. Fishback, an aide to Senator Winthrop Crane of Massachusetts who has given considerable attention to how best to memorialize President Lincoln, calls the concept of building a Greek temple in his memory “laughable.”

UNCLE JOE CANNON: “I knew Abe Lincoln. Abe Lincoln was a friend of mine.”

That was basically yesterday’s message from the former Speaker of the House, Joseph Gurney Cannon who, despite recently being ousted in a palace revolt, has set a record — unlikely to be broken anytime soon — as the longest serving, most powerful Speaker ever.

In his speech, summarized in the Chicago Daily  Tribune, Uncle Joe “paid a touching tribute to the memory of Lincoln”:

NEGROES ARE A MENACE TO CIVILIZATION, says South Carolina House of Representatives

PEACE IN OUR TIME: It’s in sight, say billionaire Carnegie and former Harvard president Eliot

Andrew Carnegie

Charles W. Eliot

Two of our nation’s finest minds have confidently predicted that peace in our time is drawing near.

PROGRESS: Vermont to electrocute the condemned, and incarcerate imbeciles and feeble-minded

Reports the Boston Globe.

“BEN-HUR” DENOUNCED: Hero cheated to win chariot race

Lew Wallace, union general and
  author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880)

In a paper on “Vicious Literature” recently presented at the Twentieth Century Club of Detroit, Mrs. Oscar Janes declared: “Despite the recommendations of the press and pulpit, I cannot endure Ben Hur . . . .” 

TOO MANY “SHYSTERS” IN LEGISLATURES, Ohio Congressman declares

 

In a speech last night to alumni of Western Reserve Union, covered by the Washington Post, Congressman Paul Howland (R — Ohio) reflected on the sad state of affairs in the legal profession,

DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY, experts say

“Worry is the chief cause of insanity in the United States,” says Everett S. Elmwood, secretary of New York’s mental hygiene committee, yet another of the many progressives not reluctant to advise others on how to live.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: “Do hysterics profit a woman in her effort to control man?”

FIRE SALE: All Chinese lands outside Great Wall may be up for auction

Yuan Shihkai
President, Republic of China

The latest news from China is in a Los Angeles Times article entitled:  “May Put China on the Market: Perhaps Yuan Shi Kai is a Real Estate Man.”  It summarizes a letter from a retired U.S. Navy officer living in China indicating “that China is trying to sell part of her dominions.”

SOCIALITE CONFESSES TO FRAUDULENTLY ATTENDING WHITE HOUSE RECEPTIONS

Reports the Chicago Daily Tribune. When Charles D. Hilles, the president’s private secretary, opened the mail yesterday,

he gasped with astonishment on reading a confession from a Washington woman that she had “broken into” the White House receptions for years under false colors.

WOMEN ARE BETTER: Senator votes for women’s suffrage on view wise women will more often than not reach a better conclusion

Reports the New-York Tribune on the reasons Senator Palmer expressed during debate in the New York Senate for favoring women’s suffrage:

I favor this resolution, and I favor woman suffrage, because I believe women’s voting will help in general to improve morals and politics. When a woman is good, she is better than a good man

JOHN L. SULLIVAN: “The fight game is not what it was.”

John L. Sullivan, age 54, who long reigned as heavyweight champion of the world during the bare-knuckle era, and whose last title fight was his 1892 loss to “Gentleman Jim” Corbett under the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, was asked in Boston yesterday whether he’d “like to be back in the game.”

FINAL DESTINATION: Is death stalking third courier of woman’s ashes?

The Los Angeles Times has the macabre story of the continuing journey of the ashes of Mrs. Charles H. Underwood to their final destination in Saco, Maine — a journey which so far has involved the death of the first two couriers (her husband and her brother-in-law).

DEMOCRAT JUSTICE: Percy Newkirk arrested, charged, indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death — all in less than seven hours

The Democrats who run the South are becoming extremely efficient in dispensing justice to Negro offenders, judging from this report in the Atlanta Constitution on how quickly Percy Newkirk was sentenced to death for a murder in Gulfport, Mississippi.

SENSELESS TO ARREST PROSTITUTES, Cleveland police chief explains in speech

Saying it is of “no use to make ‘crusades’ of any kind,” Cleveland’s highly effective and much-admired chief of police, Frederick Kohler (a Republican), spoke last night at the 22nd meeting of the Economic Club of New York, as part of a panel addressing problems of police administration. 

EVERYBODY IS SOMEWHAT INSANE, Says Princeton Professor

Rep. “Big Tim” Sullivan (D — NY), officially insane

Princeton’s Stewart Paton ’86, a psychiatrist, spoke last night at the Illinois Society of Mental Hygiene convention, the Chicago Tribune reports. Says Dr. Paton: “Everybody is afflicted with incipient insanity, and anyone can become insane.

CALL IT A “BAR”?: New Kind of Club for Working Girls

The New York Times reports that an heiress, Miss Gardenia Winchester Winthrop, one of the many progressives who know best how others should live, will be devoting a sizable chunk of the legacy left by her grandmother to create a club in New York City that will enable “working girls” to “meet the right kind of young men.”

DARWIN AWARD: Another “playful” worker

An apparently about-to-be-nominated candidate for a “Darwin Award” (he’s not quite dead) is William J. Coogan of Cincinnati.

REPRESS PRODUCTION OF UNDESIRABLES: Cornell professor on “repressive eugenics”

Cornell economics professor Walter F. Willcox is a leading authority on the science of eugenics.  

SPREAD MONEY LIKE BUTTER, New York mayor urges bankers

William Jay Gaynor, the outspoken Mayor of New York who recently advised a colored man that the slaves were happy under slavery, offered advice last night to bankers attending an annual dinner.  

PROGRESS: Squirrel-Powered Electric Light

Only days after word from France of a new portable device which transmits pictures over telephone or telegraph wires in only four minutes, there is more exciting news from France which could “revolutionize electric lighting,”

BEAUTIFUL FORGER: “It is their own fault; the silly men.”

The Washington Post reports on “the most beautiful woman ever brought to police headquarters” in Boston, arrested for forgery.

TUITION INCREASE: Cornell trustees discover brilliant solution to budget deficit

Ezra Cornell

Reads the headline in the Cornell Sun.  The article reports on how the members of the Board of Trustees made this remarkable discovery in a meeting held at the ultra-posh Waldorf-Astoria Hotel:

MYSTERIOUS PINK-PAJAMA GIRLS ROCK HARVARD: Junior Harvard Man Receives Odd Visitors, and a Suspension

Only a week ago news broke of a mysterious girl who rocked the Northwestern University campus with her impromptu visits to various fraternities to chat with young men, smoke cigarettes, and play ragtime piano. Now, reportedly, Harvard has been rocked by the appearance of not one, not two, but three young women, all scantily clad in pink pajamas.

LABOR VIOLENCE: Wrong Woman Beaten By Strikers in Riot

The union men mistook Mrs. Augusta Kubeka for a “scab,” and threw her to the ground, beat her, and kicked her “almost unconscious,” the New-York Tribune reports.

SELF-EXECUTING RIGHT: Utah Condemned May Kill Selves

Socarates Drinking the Hemlock

BE VERY AFRAID: Swiss scientists failed to take Edison’s advice regarding X-rays

The New York Times reports that two scientists working at the Radiographic Institute of Geneva have suffered hand injuries as a result of their work with X-rays:  one lost two fingers, and another had to have his entire left hand amputated.

AWKWARD CONVERSATIONS: “I will come if you don’t mind me being leper”

GEORGE LUCAS TAKES ACID

Reports the Washington Post concerning George W. Lucas, who lapsed into unconsciousness and died after being driven by despondency to take the acid. One certainly hopes there is never another George W. Lucas driven to take acid.

PARTING THE WATERS: Congressman proposes diverting Labrador Current to end icebergs

BAD NEWS FOR GENTLEMEN: Blonds Can’t Live in City

Reports the Washington Post, being that blonds “are the children of the vikings of old . . . descendants of those who lived and struggled in the open air and the winds of the northern seas,” who are “psysiologically and tempermentally unfitted to live in heated rooms, crowded spaces or to do work where brain and brawn are secondary to mere automatic tasks.”

PROGRESS: Pictures can now be transmitted in only four minutes

AMHERST PRESIDENT: “I enjoy seeing . . . those boys, half-naked, out on the track.”

The Boston Daily Globe carries an account of an interesting recent speech by Alexander Meiklejohn, the youngest college president in New England.

INCONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION: Heiress Criticized for Being Thrifty

Apparently, the rich can’t win.

FASTER, PLEASE: Human Joints Made by Man

In his latest essay — presumably ghost-written for him by H. L. Mencken — Dr. Leonard K. Hirshberg of Johns Hopkins reports on early successes in the creation and transplantation of artificial hip joints — and of the possibility that similar techniques may provide a solution to pain and mobility limitations posed by defects in other body parts.  Faster, please.

EARLE OVINGTON: The Aeroplane of the Future

CENTENARY: Sir Henry Bessemer

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Sir Henry Bessemer, who invented cheap steel, which added more wealth to the world than any invention since the steam engine. The New York Times has in a fitting tribute.

Not to be overlooked, however, is the role both Sir Bessemer and his wife played in bringing into the world the perforated stamp, a matter recently discussed by an acquaintance of theirs in a letter to a New Zealand newspaper.

INEFFICIENT WARFARE: Statistics point to a need for deadlier weapons

An article in the Los Angeles Times shows statistics support the old adage that “it takes a ton of shot to kill a man.”

NECESSARY AND PROPER: Congress Won’t Permit “Contortions” at Inaugural Ball

The New-York Tribune has the latest report from the front lines of the elders’ War on Dancing:

GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY: Post Office has never “come anywhere near paying its expenses”

The Los Angeles Times reports on a statement issued by the talented Mr. Ripley, president of the Santa Fe Railroad, regarding the U.S. Post Office’s recent launch of a parcel post service, and related matters.

CIVIL WAR REPARATIONS: Some Georgia claims to be allowed

CORNELL PROF: How Christianity Has Won Universal Victory

WANTED:  Jesus Christ

The Cornell Sun reports at length on a lecture yesterday by Professor Nathaniel Smith — “one of the most important and forcible” of the year.

PARASITE: Rockefeller planning massive effort to “wipe out the hookworm”

Reports the Los Angeles Times on a top priority of the philanthropic foundation proposed by John D. Rockefeller, currently pending in Congress.

THE SIMPLE LIFE: “When the farmer raised all his own food and the farmer’s wife cooked it all.”

“GRAB ALL THE MONEY YOU POSSIBLY CAN”: Jacob H. Schiff

That’s how  the Atlanta Constitution summarizes the message of Mr. Schiff, a prominent New York banker, in testimony before the House “money trust” committee:

SLAVES WERE HAPPY, New York mayor says

The New York Times has a report on the reply sent by William Jay Gaynor, the outspoken Mayor of New York, to a colored man, James D. Howe,

WHITE MAN’S BURDEN: Progress in the Philippines

A New Zealand newspaper reports on the remarkable progress toward civilization achieved in the past fifteen years, since Uncle Sam took over following a calamitous 250-year Spanish rule.

INFANT INDUSTRY: Postmaster General on how to mail babies by parcel post

AUTOMOBILES UNLIMITED: 1,000,000 vehicles soon, with no end in sight

With the annual automobile show well under way at Madison Square Garden, the press is filled with stories about the status and future of automobiles in our society.