Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 205, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1916 — Page 3

Study of Constitution in the Schools Waite of Time Needed for Other Things

1 consider the study of the Constitution a sheer waste of time for the pupils of the schools, especially of the high schools. Who understands the Constitution? It has been the custom to have in the high schools, textbooks on the Constitution and to teach from them as though through them the instructors were actually imparting the science of government. In the first place, the Constitution is a legal document beyond the comprehension of the pupils of our elementary and high schools. It is true that there are parts of the Constitution which are simple enough. The student may learn from it how old a man must be before he can be a member of congress or of the senate and such details, but the principles enunciated in the instrument are beyond his depth. As a matter of fact, a decision of the Supreme court is required on any one clause when an application is made to concrete cases. This is so true that the working Constitution is made up of decisions of the Supreme court rather than of the text of the Constitution itself. I would not give the impression that I do not regard the Constitution of the United States as worthy of study; but I do mean that it is a study not for immature boys and girls, but sor _college students and citizens of mature judgment. Thousands of citizens know nothing about it at all and seem none the worse for it. The constitution of Great Britain is not even a written one, and yet the empire survives. The essential facts relating to our government which are referred to in the Constitution can be taught orally or from some small textbook. The discussion of the principles included in the document, on which bo much time is now spent in the high schools, might well be left until the student has the right to vote. There is no reason why their study should be inflicted upon children of sixteen, especially when there are so many more important subjects which should have attention.

Balance of Power Held by Women Who Have Vote in Twelve Suffrage States

There are, excluding aliens, minors and everyone to whom the antis could find an objection, 4,034,594 women qualified to vote in the coming elections. The 12 suffrage states control one-fifth of the electoral college and one-third of the votes necessary to elect a president. In the last 20 years it would have required a change of only one-ninth of the total vote cast to throw the election in any of the suffrage states to the other party. In the last five presidential elections no one of the suffrage states has gone steadily for any one party. As for congressional elections, much the same situation exists. Women vote for members of both houses in 11 states; in Illinois the women vote only at a municipal election. Since 1896 not one of the districts in these states has been carried steadily by the Democratic party, and only five have been held in the Republican column. In two-thirds of the elections of this period less than 10 per cent of the total vote cast would have served to change the elections. Women cannot always agree, cannot always stand as a united political force. The important thing is that they should keep their direct, clear vision of what politics is; should be able always to forget the local and the personal as they are now forgetting them, to see the nation as a whole, to keep what one of their leaders calls ‘‘the great throb of faith that has been renewed in their blood by this movement among free women to help the unfree.”

Phthisis Most Common of Diseases But Many Conquer Germ Without Knowing It

It is commonly believed that tuberculosis is a disease of adults. r f'hia is a mistake. Tuberculosis is almost entirely a childhood disease. That is to say, the primary invasion takes place in childhood and the germs lie in a quiescent stage until under certain conditions of exposure, overfatigue or self-indulgence they break forth and become active. Eightyfive per cent of all persons have had the disease in their bodies by the time they are fifteen years of age. It is the commonest of all diseases, and in spite of the fact that it kills more people annually than all the other diseases combined, if pneumonia is excepted, death is not the common termination of the disease. Many people conquer the germ without ever knowing of its presence. Ninety-nine per cent of {He babies who are infected with tuberculosis in the first month of their life die. Ninety per cent of those who contract the disease in the first year die. With the increasing resistance of the body this percentage is lowered, and only 35 per cent of the babies who contract the disease in their second year die.

Government Pensions for Its Employes Unnecessary if Fair Salaries Are Paid

One can hardly reflect on the proposition to pension schoolteachers and government employees without feeling that there is something with a situation that would even suggest it. The salary they receive is either fair or it is not fair. If it is fair, then let them save and look out for themselves. If it is not fair, it is incumbent on the nation and the states to set about equalizing things by paring down the pay of higlf-salaried officials and adding it to that of those who are underpaid. In doing the fair thing, let the national government begin with the village post office. Dfetach it from side lines, put it on a salary basis and pay the postmaster a salary sufficiently decent to enable him to live comfortably and lay up a modest competency,for old age. Let the states do likewise with the schoolmaster and the school* ma’am. Then let all talk of pensioning them cease. Let them save, as we all must save, if they want a prop to lean on when their working days are over. +■.

By DR. THOMAS M. BALLIET

Dean of School of Pedagogy. New York University

By FLORENCE M. BREWER of Pittsburgh

By DR. THOMAS WILLETT

By ERNEST DEBERTHAUSER

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, INP.

POWER OF THE HUMORIST

Tircentenary of Cervantes Recalls t# Reader* of Hietory Memory of Other Satirist*. The British are not the only people who this yeur may celebrate the tercentenary of a great writer. Madrid is erecting a monument to the author of “Don Quixote.” Cervantes was more than a man of letters; he wus more than a great humorist; he was an epoch. Master of ridicule, he laughed the defunct age of chivalry out of existence. People often forget the social function of the humorist, a New York. Tribune writer states. He restores sanity. He clears the atmosphere of extravagance and humbug. Bergson says that luughter has “survival value” as a corrective of social abuses. Certainly some of the world’s most effective reformers have been its masters of ridicule and satire. There are humorists, like Mark Twain, in whose laughter there is no sting, and there have been bitter satirists, like Jonathan Swift and La Rochefoucauld, who have simply mocked the “all too humanness” of mankind at Its noblest. But in almost every age there has been some bold nonconformist spirit whose laughter in the face of some •Wadltlonal scarecrow has ended the tyranny of a truth which had outlived its usefulness and become a lie. Knighthood in the days of Chaucer had still its noble aspects, but knighthood after Cervantes wrote “Don Quixote" could never quite escape a touch of the burlesque. Therefore, men turned to less antiquated and morn real avenues of human service. Similarly, the laughter of Aristophanes wrought confusion among the ancient Greek sophists. Lucian’s mockery corrected much of the sentimentalism of the effete Greco-Roman society. The sound laughter of Erasmus, the humanist, spread the influence of the Renaissance in northern Europe. Butler’s “Hudibras” helped correct the extravagances of early English Puritanism. Voltaire laughed the last remnants of medievalism out of the eighteenth-century France and cleared the. ground for modern democracy. Carlyle’s “Sartor Resartus” made nineteenth century romanticism ridiculous. The sly humor of Thackeray brought common sense into early Victorianism, and the sardonic spirit of Bernard Shaw in these times has left little in modern commercial society unchallenged. May the Cervantes monument stand as a reminder to moderns that there have been reformers with a sense of humor!

Their Fear Not Realized.

The great fear of those whose act here in Philadelphia 140 years ago made this a nation was that the state would not remain a nation, a writer in the Philadelphia Public Ledger says. History has proved in their case the falsity of the epigram: “The thing you fear will get you.” What they feared never happened. We are a young country, but a very old government, as governments go. Call the roll of the nations and you will see that a majority of them are babies beside the United States. Japan’s present imperial regimen is not half a century old. The house of Hohenzollern is fairly ancient, but the German empire is not yet fifty and the French republic Is no older. Austria and Hungary were yoked together long after Franklin told the signers of the Declaration of Independence they must all hang together or be hanged separately. kingdom is not half so old as the United States. Portugal’s republic is a thing too young to vote, and the Chinese republic has not yet been weaned. All the score of Central and South American republics are much younger than is this greatest of world republics. * Nearly half the human race has now copied that lesson which was announced by the Liberty bell.

Bluffed the New Conductor.

He stood at the corner waiting for a car. Several cars had stopped to let him get on but he made no move to get aboard. Finally one stopped and a man got Off. “Did you pay your fare to the end of the line?” inquired the waiting man. “Yes,” said the man who got off. "Can I have your seat?” he asked. "Sure, It’s the last one on the righthand side, cross seat.” The man clambered aboard and hurried to the seat just left vacant. “Fare please,” said the conductor shortly afterwards. "Fare nothing,” responded the man. "I just took the other fellow’s place who got off and he said he paid to the end of the line and said that I could have his seat.” The response evidently was a stunner for the new conductor and he was so surprised he passed up the fare.

New Life Preserver.

A novel life preserver has been devised to supplement the ordinary cork jacket in rough water. By its use the person in distress is able to breathe, even when the waves sweep over his head. The appliance adds to the cork jacket a light metal chamber which floats high, a spout leading from it rising two or three feet above the water level. A tube leads from this chamber to a face mask, through which the wearer of the jacket breathes. Even if the water sweeps over his head the 6pout of the air chamber is still clear anti the air supply unimpaired. : ‘

WITH RIFLES AND FIELD GUNS

Members of the Missouri National Guard drilling for meeting an attack, in their mobilization camp.

YAQUIS WORSHIP AMERICAN MUTE

Nine Times They Try to Kill Harness Maker of Cananea, but Bullets Miss Him. THOUGHT MAN WAS ACCURSED Unwittingly He Acquires Peculiar Influence Over Indians by Virtue of Unconcern When They Attempt to Kill Him. El Paso, Tex. —Refugees arriving from Sonora report that D. O. Watson is dead. He died, they say, in the Customary manner for human beings to die —in bed with his boots off. Such a death was not "what the fates had seemed to decree. Watson was a harness maker living in Cananea, and was known throughout the Sonora district for his peculiar influence over the Yaqui Indians. Lnwittlngly he had acquired this power by virtue of his attitude of total unconcern on an occasion when the Indians sought to kill him. Since then, and until his death, they regarded him as a deity. The harness maker was deaf and dumb. His wife and two of his three children were similarly afflicted. The third child, however, was born normal. . It was this peculiarity that aroused the enmity of the Yaquis several years ago. They saw Watson conversing on his fingers with his wife. They had never heard him utter a word. Such symptoms, according to the Indians creed, were unfailing proof that the evil spirit lived within the man. They believed the harness maker accursed and considered it their duty, as their key to the happy hunting grounds, to exterminate him.

Ambushed Nine Times. On nine occasions Watson was ambuscaded by- the would-be assassins, but escaped the bullets that were sent to take his life. These attempts, however, were but preliminaries. It was during the closing hours of the first battle of Cananea, fought March 23, 24 and 25, 1913, that the grand and final attempt was made, and the Indians failing In this, became the religlous slaves of the harness maker. The night before the battle, 60 Vil? Ilstas, under command of Capt. Alvaro Dieguez, visited Cananea and, breaking into the little Watson home, demanded gold. Watson, being deaf and dumb, could not understand the soldiers. Angered at what they deemed his refusal to comply with their demand. Captain Dieguez stood the unhappy man and his wife against the wall of their bedroom. A firing squad had already formed opposite them, when the cry of the third child attracted the officer’s attention. Seized with a sudden inspiration, Dieguez went over to the crib and lifted the Infant out. Then he snatched up the diminutive mattress. Gold rained onto the floor. The crib was Watson’s hiding place for his horde. The baby’s cries had saved its parents’ lives, for the Mexicans, having got what they sought, left the couple unharmed.

Hardly had the Vllllstas galloped out of the town before the advance detachment of the federal troops galloped In from the south. An hour later a hatless peon raced through the streets crying out that a large force of constitucionalistas —the Carranaa troops —were approaching. It was on the third day of the fighting when victory was assured for the constitucionalistas, that the Yaquis remembered the “evil spirit” and set about a united effort to crush it, in the person of the harness maker. A small band of Indians, a score, perhaps, happened to approach the Watson home and deployed cautiously to the rear. There they saw the harness maker seated calmly on a fence whittling a stick with a jack-knife. He had heard nothing of the battle going on around him, and was totally unconscious that anything was wrong. Hate Turns Jto Worship. It appeared to be “easy picking” for the Indians. They leveled their guns and took pot shots. The combined reports of their weapons roared like cannon, arxj a score of bullets whizzed past Watson’s head, miraculously he escaped being hit, and

being deaf, he heard nothing. Calmly he continued whittling his stick. The Indluns were nonplused. They held a pow-wow for discussion of the miracle. Tremendously affected, the Indians suddenly dashed forward and began the execution of a religious war dance around the mute. No longer did they believe him accursed with an “evil spirit,” but rather blessed with the spirit for good, which defied even bullets. Even until his death, refugees who knew the man declare he wielded a vast influence with the Indians, acting as their mentor often In matters of grave Importance to them. Nor did they ever attribute the “spirit for good” within hUn to the fact that he was a mute.

YOUNG GIRL A HOMESTEADER

Miss Rogers Will Raise Fruit Upon Land She Preempted In Arkansas. Mountain Home, Ark.—Miss Nettie Rogers, eighteen years old, has filed a homestead claim on 150 acres of land on Flint ridge and will engage in fruit raising and truck farming. Miss Rogers is a recent graduate from the Monticello agricultural school. She is also the youngest homesteader in this part of the state and one of the very few women who have manifested the grit to attempt to cultivate a rough mountain tract of land in this vicinity. Her homest*ad is adaptable to fruit and truck growing, and Miss Rogers believes that what she learned at the Monticello school, sustained by the personal effort that she is prepared to apply to cultivation of the soil, will bring an adequate reward.

CALLS DOG BY TELEPHONE

Canine Recognizes His Master** Voice and Immediately Beats It for Home. Rochester, N. Y.—Will McKay had to telephone his dog Nipper to come home. Nipper went in a hurry w r hen his master phoned. Nobody else, had been able to make him budge. Will and Nipper went to Lake Keuka from Penn Yan to fish Sunday. Nipper wandered and McKay returned the seven miles home without him. McKay’s host telephoned that Nipper had shown up, but wouldn’t go home. “Put him on the phone,” said McKay. It was done. “Nipper, come home right away,” said McKay, sternly. Nipper barked “Yes, sir; nil right.” or something like that, into the mouthpiece and dashed madly for Penn Yan.

Hardy English Sparrows.

Augusta, Me.—A pair of English sparrows have built their nest in the mortar which hangs over the entry to a pharmacy here. The mortar is made of brass and illuminated at night by an electric light inside it. but the glare does not seem to disturb the birds.

RED CROSS DOG VALUABLE

Red Cross dog returning after a “scouting expedition” over the battlefield at Verdun, with the helmet of a wounded, deserted soldier whom' he has discovered. The dog assists In .the finding of the wounded strewn over the hattlefield so that they may be brought into the hospital. This photo illustrates only one of the mjiny tasks that the Red Cross dog has cut out for him.

GET ANGRY ‘SPIES’ IN NIGHT CHASE

Weird Gleams of Light on th* Mesa a Puzzle to the Guardsmen. SCOUTS SOLVE THE MYSTERY' Expedition Net* Two Indignant Gentlemen, Who Explain Their Buaineas and Express Their Opinion of “Military Feller*." El Paso, Tex. —Lights on the mesa I Mysterious gleam* that shot through the smothering dark high over th® camps of the state Guardsmen, Fort Bliss and the Bleeping city of El Paao. Two bobbing, flashing shafts of light’ that showed now here, now there —bus always where field glasses on the Mexican side could observe their peculiar movements. Small wonder that the militiamen, newly dumped into a zone of martial atmosphere, were thrilled. Strange, indeed, if the weird lights did not; bring to mind at once the thought of spies lurking in the hills over El Paso and signaling military positions and troop movements to the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. For two nights the officers at brigade headquarters camp watched the lights through their glasses. Puzzle* Army Veteran. “If it’s signal work, it’s the strangest I ever saw," said a regular army veteran. “I can't make it out,° There don’t seem to be any sense to It.” “That’s because it’s Mexican,” commented another. “Besides, it may be code.” On the third night a little band of’ was selected, and as “taps” was sounded they started Into the hills to take the trail of the mystery. Scarcely had the scouts left camp when the mysterious lights appeared again over the mesa. Little stabs of light gleamed through the night and were gone, to flash after a bit somewhere else., “If the boys hurry they'll get ’em.” said the officer with the field glasses, observing the play of lights. There followed a tense period of waiting. Then came— Bang! Bang!

Carrying far through the clear air came the staccato of two quick shots. One of the lights wavered a moment and then streaked downward like a falling star. “They’ve got ’em!” exclaimed one of the watchers. "The one that dropped went right down the face of the mesa!” t Half an hour later the sound of shuffling feet told of the return of the scouting expedition. There were other noises. Two other noises, to be exact. Two voices raised In high complaint. “Won’t do you no good!” the sergeant’s voice responded. “Tell all that to the commanding officer.” They cfime Into the circle of light made by the lantern at headquarter* tent. The Mystery Is Solved. “We found ’em right on the mesa, sir,” reported the sergeant “They had lanterns and electric flashlights. When we came we scared ’em. One of ’em started to run. I fired my rifle in the air and he fell over the mesa. But he didn’t fall far." The commanding officer faced the prisoners. Both of them began talking at once. , One of them used Spanish curses with great vehemence and might have been an Indian, a Mexican or a lifelong resident of the desert The other did not need two languages to curse but otherwise answered the same description. “You military fellers think you’re all-fired smart,” he said “Goin r around and arrestin’ peaceable like me and Jake here. We’ve lived in these parts man and boy for nigh to forty years, and we ain’t safe from a lot of fresh young guys who think they own the world because they wear silver dewdads on their collars. I’m Cactus Charlie Peterson and my pardner Is Poisonous Schultz.” “But what were you doing on the mesa?” asked the commanding officer. “We’re prospectors, dag-nab It!” cried Cactus Charles. “And we’ve been prospecting up In them hills at night so we could stay outen the hot sun.” It was very disappointing. But the mystery was solved. “If you find a mine up there come back,” said the commanding officer, “and I’ll buy some stock in the thing.”

BEANS-BAKER GIVES RECIPE

Navy Cook Who Has Prepared 124,960 Gallons Tells How He Does IL ■ « Cleveland. O. —Baked beans may bo Boston’s forte, but Pjit Finnegan, cook on the naval training ship Dorothea, stationed here, knows a thing or two about that delicacy. He’s been baking them for 20 years—for 17 yeprs ho was cook on a United States battleship —and he has prepared 124,960 gallons of baked beans. Here’s his recipe for beans: “Begin with the best navy beans ;'soak ’em one bour in cold water; then boll two hours slowly; put salt pork In while boiling; bake three hours In a slow oven, with plenty of molasses and s pinch of mustard. A whole onion adds a tasty flavor." _ ■