Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 112, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1910 — DOWN WITH THE BOTTOMS OF STRAWBERRY BOXES. [ARTICLE]

DOWN WITH THE BOTTOMS OF STRAWBERRY BOXES.

“Man on the Corner” in Delphi Jour* nal Kicks on Giving. So Much Air ( * Room Under the Box. We are glad to see “the man on the corner” back on the job in the first column of the first page of the Delphi Journal. He goes after the short measurement strawberry box in the following terms this week: I bought a box of strawberries recently. Did I say a box? Yes, I said a box. Well, I meant a box, minus what was not part of a box. The bottom of the box was where the shoqlders of the box should have been. And there were no strawberries below the bottom. I bought the box for a quart. Half of what I bought was cold air—on the other side of the bottom. I distinctly remember when boxes commenced wearing their bottoms up from their sides. At first it was a trifle, thtf next season it was a little more distinct, and a little more the next, and so on until today a fellow cannot tell whether the bottom is the top or the top is the bottom. One thing is certain, if the bottom of the box continues to go up, I shall insist on my box of strawberries being filled from the other side. I am willing to divide my box even with cold air, but I certainly shall kick when the unoccupied apartment contains more square inches of atmosphere than occupied does of strawberries. The officials down in Washington went after the distillers with a short stick when it was discovered that the whiskey bottles that pretended to be quarts were not quarts. These bottles were all discarded and the full quart bottle resumed the throne. Many of my friends will recall how their whiskey bottles retroverted as it were—turned in at the bottom to such an extent that there was almost as much of the outside of the bottle on the inside as there was on the outside. In other words my 1 friends were defrauded of a certain per cent of their quart of whiskey. And the government came to their rescue. And the fellow who sells whiskey and is short on his quart bottle is soaked with a fine. But not so with strawberries. There are some people who prefer strawberries to whiskey and for such I speak. I demand that the bottom of the box be lowered. • At the present time the strawberry box is a cheat and a swindle and a fraud and the ultimate consumer is getting it in the neck. I do not know who is to blame, whether it is Cannon, or Aldrich, or Governor Marshall, or Senator McCarty, or Mayor Robinson, or Sheriff Blue, or (Commissioner Engle, but on behalf of the ultimate consumer, I send up my “holler.” “Down with the bottom of the strawberry box.” In Hoc Signo Vinces.