Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 148, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 June 1920 — Page 2

GEORGE KELLY IS TALLEST FIRST SACKER

George Kellv, Giants’ first baseman, ran thank nature for his unusual height Kelly is 6 feet 4 inches and the tallest first sacker in either of the Mg leagues He can grab a ball 9 feet in the air without taking his feet off the ground. His long reach also comes in handy for spearing grounders and wild throws.

GREEDY PLAYERS ARE WEAKENING BASEBALL

Avarice, Strikes and Gambling Scandals Hurt Game. Big League Club Owners May Decide to AboHsh World’s Series or Divide Net Receipts Among Themselves In Future. So much trouble in baseball has been caused by the playing of the world s series that the big league club owners may decide either to abolish the games altogether or to divide the net receipts among themselves, says a well known basebail veteran, in Evening Sun. The players are responsible for the hostile attitude of some of the magnates, who say that the squabbles over world’s series shares are commercializing baseball to such a degree that sportsmanship soon may be of no importance. Greed for gold is creating much ill feeling in the camp of the Yankees. Although the players received handsome salaries last year, with about |SOO each extra for winning,third position, under the new world’s series rules, they grumbled »because the groundkeeper, the trainer and two assistant secretaries were included in the melon cutting. In spite of heavy financial burdens, which the owners of the Yankees have shouldered the players threatened to call a strike unless their demands were granted. They were prepared to deprive their employers of gate receipts from,, exhibition games, which hardly pay the expenses of the southern training trip. Avarice on the part of ball players is slowly but surely discouraging and disgusting the public. When the Cuba, and Red Sox. during the 1918 world's series in Boston, struck for more money than they were entitled to, under the rules adopted by the national commission, they dealt the game a body blow. Ist year certain players openly expressed a desire to be traded to teams that appeared to have chances to participate in the world’s series. Several stars have repudiated contracts for the purpose of getting more money elsewhere. With charges of collusion between a few players and professional gamblers, shaking the confidence of the fans, it cannot be denied that baseball needs a tremendous shakeup.

CHANCE OPEN FOR BREEDERS

Sufficient Promise In Interesting Branch of Raising Stock to Attract New Men. When a breeder of trotting horses can realize $1,033 around for his entire crop of foals sold by auction within 12 months after they were born, as the owners of Walnut Hall farm did recently, there should be sufficient promise in this'interesting branch of stock breeding to bring a lot of new men into it, but just now they are fewer than at any other time in fifty years.

BUILDING HALF-MILE TRACKS

Savannah, Ga„ and Jacksonville, Fla., Getting Ready for Fall Trotting Meets. Two new half-mile tracks are being bunt at Savannah, Ga., and JacksonvUle, Fla., for trotting meetings to. be held next November. James- Fleming, formerly Identified with the Ohio state fair at Columbus, is to be man-

TEN “SPITBALLERS” Only ten American league pitchers are eligible to use the “spit ball” during the 1920 season. Cleveland has nominated Coveieskie and Caldwell; Chicago, Cicotte and Faber; Detroit, Leonard and Ayers; St. Louis, Shocker and Gallia; New York. Quinn; and Boston, Rus-

ALTROCK SAYS OLD AGE IS FLIRTING WITH HIM

Uncle Nick Altrock, the bird who is making the fans laugh around the American league circuit, says old age is pitching Kim some hard curves, but he’ll never quit the game. Nick’s left wing went bad. Next his “dogs” began to bother, and now his lamps are flickering. Nick vows he may appear on the coaching line one of these days behind a pair of cheaters. “Except in daylight I can't read any more without having the lines run together. Guess 1 must be getting >ld after all. Old age is flirtlng with me, but I’ll never quit the diamond.”

QUIGLEY IS BUSY OFFICIAL

National League Umpire Gives De- ( cisions in Some Kind of Sport 265 Days Each Year. Life is just one game after another for Ernest C. Quigley, National league umpire. From April to October he is a baseball arbiter. During October and November he is a college football official. The winter months find him busy running basket ball games. There are games in the usual National league season. Quigley frequently works in and post-

Ernest C. Quigley.

season affairs, such as the world series contests in 1919. His usual total of baseball contests each year is close to 170. During the short term of foot? ball Mr. Quigley crowds in 20 or more gridiron games, frequently working threp or four times a week. He does mogt of this officiating in Kansas. Nebraska, Oklahoma, lowa and Texas.

ANNUAL REGATTA POSTPONED

Races of Canadian Amateur Association Deferred to Avoid Conflict With National. So as not to conflict with the national rowing races at Worcester, July 24 and 25, the Canadian Association of Amateur Oarsmen has put back its Manual regatta until July 30 and 31. All intermediate races will be eliminated straightway. The regatta is usually held over’ the St. Catharines course.

ROOKIE LOSES BIG DIAMOND

Brooklyn Club Farms Player Who Struck Out Babe Ruth in Spring Exhibition Game, Joe Conlan, rookie recruit with the’ Dodgers, fanned Babe Ruth this spring. They farmed him to Reading. He learned to play at the Chicago stockyards. If he had stuck with Brooklyn until they played In Chicago, his friends had planned to present him with a big diamond.

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

BASEBALL STORIES

Puny batting has been the Giants’ biggest handicap. • • • Joe Kelley Bays that. Willie Keeler was the best hunter in baseball. • • • It Is not very difficult for an umpire to find an excuse for doing what he wishes. • • • Jack Quinn of the Yanks says he'll be as effective without as with it. , Connie Mack lias sent one of his catching prospects, Styles, back to the Atlanta club. . * *' * Bert Kinney of the Athletics Is developing into one of the best pitchers in the business. ♦ * • Manager John J. McGraw of the Giants has het n active in baseball thirty-one years. • * * Reuther; lucky last year, seems to have become heir of the jinx that tormented Jimmy Ring. Johnny Dobbs declares he is serious in his announcement that this will be his last year in baseball. ♦ * * The Brantford Mint league club has sold .Catcher Phil Carroll to Sioux City of the Western league. • •• « Jack Wisner, a lengthy youth, has a world of speed. He’s just wild enough to make the hitters stand back. * • • Players come and players go, but Johnny Austin keeps on holding down third for the St. Louis Browns. • * • Dowd, formerly on Connie Mack's payroll, seems to have cinched the middle sack on the Bison infield. * • * Some of the star hurlers were unkindly treated in the opening games, but their revenge will come Fater. * * * Arthur Devlin, coaching Fordham college, is said to have a wonderful young pitcher In a lad named Culloton.

* * • Al Schacht starred as a shutout twirler last season at Jersey City and he is showing the same form •in the majors. ' Casey Stengel is showing as much vim in a Philadelphia uniform as hie displayed when with the Robins or Pirates. _ • ■ • • Ross Young has invented a new bunt which consists of popping the ball about three inches over the third baseman’s brow. •■• • • The Athletics wore white elephants last year. This year they are green; but ’elephants are all right unless they are pink. • * ♦ Even the college nines are kissing the “spitter” goodnight. The West Virginia university team has ruled it out as objectionable. •♦ ♦ ■ Morris Rath is hitting terrifically. Looks as if he might realize his great ambition—to hit over .300 for a whole seas<A in the big league. * ♦ • Babe Adams deserves credit for quitting the old Missouri farm, even though wheat is away up. A guy who cnn pitch the w ft y Babe does has no place among the hicks. * * • Much of the sympathy-that was extended'to Kid Gleason just before the start of the seasmi by those who predicted dire things for his club already has been recalled. The White Sox are stepping along like real champions.

KANSAS CITY SECURES AMES

Old-Time National League Twirler Likes Baseball Too WeH to QuitSigns With Blues. Leon Ames likes to play ball too well to quit, even at his age, and after getting his release from the St. Louis Cardinals he signed with the Kansas

Leon Ames.

City club. He will find some old associates in the A. A. who won’t be bluffed by his reputation tor good service in the National.

My Lady Nicotine

By JOHN DICKINSON SHERMAN.

m A Y LADY NICOTINE is a most interesting personBJI age. As is frequently the case with ladies with a past, she is more / ZW interesting than those who have only a future. IZ/lv Her present certainly Is a going concern. And her future has added fascination of sufficient mystery to induce considerable speculation. My Lady Nicotine’s influence is not always soothing. Like all great personages she has made enemies. Men began to fight over her a long, long while ago, and only the other day the newspapers told of the first of a possible recurrence of the night raiders’ outrages in Kentucky. Urban VHI and Innocent XI fulminated against her. Sultan Amuret IV decreed death by torture to her devotees. James I of England Issued his “Counterblaste to Tobacco,” in which he denounced her as a creature of the “pit that is bottomless.” Lucy Page Gaston of Anti-Ciga-rette League of America fame is suspected of a desire to shy her bonnet into the presidential ring. Low on the horizon, no bigger than a woman’s hand, is a cloud which rumbles “tobacco next!”

Possibly some of My Lady Nicotine’s famous devotees have loved her for the enemies she has made. Anyway, Spenser wrote of her as “divine.” Byron said “sublime.” Lamb declared his affection thus: For thy sake, tobacco, I Would do anything but die. Bulwer-Lytton wrote this: “The man who smokes thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan.” Kipling profoundly reflects that “a woman Is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.” Mark Twain suspects that the ipan who doesn’t smoke loses "an appalling aggregate of happiness.’’ This sort of worshiper clings to the heresy that this is a pretty good old world after all.. He Isn’t worrying about spirit manifestations and Is not concerned over the doctrine of the subliminal soul. He suspects Lucy Page Gaston'of being a spiritual descendant of the Puritans who condemned bearbaiting not so much because It gave pain to the bear as because it gave pleasure to the spectators. “When doctors disagree who shall decide?” The doctors are as divided in their opinion of My Lady Nicotine as are the literary lights. Some see tn her a veritable plague to humanity. Others maintain that she Is rather a benefactor. Of course most physicians hold that smoking is bad for young and growing specimens of the human species. And probably most of them are not prepared to advise that women should smoke. And there are certainly some men who cannot smoke without ill effects —just as there are men who cannot eat strawberries or drink coffee without harm. A cold bath 4n the morning is meat and drink to some men; it would put others under the sod in short prder. Probably the majority of up-to-date medical men are of the opinion that it has yet to be proved that smoking in moderation hurts any normal man. At one extreme of human judgment is that of the man who wrote that a nation which smokes tobacco perishes. At the other is that of the man who predicted in 1918 that America would win the war because it was the heaviest smoker of all the nations. My Lady Nicotine needs no press agent and has no trouble about breaking into print. Some enthusiastic collectors of “Nicotania” have whole libraries about her. There is one— George Arents, Jr., of New York — who is the proud possessor of more than 2,500 books, booklets and pam•phlets devoted wholly or in part to her. These libraries tell pretty much everything about the lady. _ No European ever heard of tobacco until the first week of November, 1492. The commonly accepted version of the story is that two sailors sent by Columbus to explore the Island which he named San Salvador returned with a tale of natives who carried firebrands

PROFIT IN A FINE

The existing peculiar conditions in the international money market can produce very strange and paradoxical phenomena- Here is a case in which the exchange actually transformed a punishment into a reward. In 1916 a man from across the Baden frontier was arrested in Switzerland for smuggling. He was released on bail of 6,000 francs, which then cost him TJSOQ marks- For some reason the case

whose smoke they inhaled and puffed out of their mouths and noses. Later they discovered that the leaves of a plant were rolled in the leaf of maize. The first clear account of smoking was given in 1526 by Gonzalo Hernandez de Oviedo in his “Historia General de las Indias." He said the practice was pernicious and “used to produce insensibility.” He reported that in Cuba and most of the Islands the natives smoked rolls of herbs, “which they called tobaccos,” while on the mainland they Inhaled through the forks of a Y-shaped hollow cane which they inserted in both nostrils. This instrument the natives called “tobago.” The Spaniards thought the name was that of the fuel instead of the pipe, hence our word tobacco. Oviedo pointed out the mistake, but “tobacco” had worked itself into the white man’s language, and there It stayed. The herb itself was variously known among the natives. It was “cohiba” to the Caribs, “petun” to the Brazilians, “plecelt” to the Mexicans and “uppowoc” to the Indians of Virginia. Nicotine, the active chemical principle of tobacco, is an Intensely poisonous alkaloid, named from Nicot, who introduced tobacco into France as a medicinal plant. Hence, finally, “My Nicotine.” Not essentially new are any of the modern forms of tobacco using. The leaves wrapped about with corn husk roughly correspond to our civilized cigarette; the leaves rolled without wrapping of another material to our cigar. Tobacco was powdered into snuff and taken Into the nostrils, as now. Tobacco was also chewed by various Indian peoples. The pipe was in almost universal use; among the ’American Indians the stone pipe, “calumet,” was a necessary implement in many ceremonial functions. Tobacco arrived in Europe apparently by several different routes and under several different disguises. Probably Sir Walter Raleigh deserves the credit —or blame —of Introducing the smoking of it. Up to his time tobacco had camouflaged as a medicine, the few smokers professing to be smoking for their health. The Englishman—his pipe is shown herewith —blew the smoke from his nose defiantly and said he smoked because he liked it. The antis of the seventeenth century had a high old time, Pagan, Mohammedan and Christian monarchs alike attempted to crush the habit of “tobacco drinking,” as it was then called in England. But despite all opposition tobacco eventually was established as a favorite luxury all over .Europe. The cigarette attained commercial importance ofter the Crimean war. English officers got the habit from association with the Turks, French and Italians, who, like the Indians, “rolled their own.” Other Englishmen imitated this new smart diversion of the army officers. America, which somewhere

dragged on and was decided only quite recently. The accused was sentenced to a fine of 3,000 francs cost. He received as the balance of his ball. 1,700 francs, which he changed for 24,000 marks. Consequently, his little adventure brought him .In a net profit of 16,500 marks. As one of the humors of the exchange this deserves to be coupled with tiie case of a Swiss brewery. which is said to have found it

along the path of the centuries had almost lost the cigarette, found it again in England, and so it came back to us. For a time most cigarettes were made from the Turkish leaf. Then It was discovered that the "bright” American tobacco, now grown in Virginia, the Carolinas and eastern Tennessee, made an agreeable cigarette. Eventually cigarette making machinery was invented, and today American cigarettes, both “straight” and “blended,” are smoked all over the world. In 1868 not enough cigarettes were consumed In the United States to be subjected to the Internal revenue tax. In recent years the Increase has been by billions. From 1899 to 1914 it was 500 per cent. In the past two years the demand has advanced prodigiously, probably largely because of the war. In 1910, for the first time, the manufacture of cigarettes exceeded that of cigars, their relative numbers being 8,500,000.000 and 8,000.000,000. Since then, while cigarettes have multiplied, cigars have just about' stood still. In the year ended June 30, 1919, the number of cigarettes was 46,500,000,000, and of cigars approximately 8,000,000,000, as in 1910. For the first time more leaf tobacco went into cigarettes than Into cigars, the two numbers being 177,000,000 pounds and 162,000,000 pounds. The government derived from the internal revenue tax on tobacco $206,003,091, an Increase of $49,814,431 over the preceding year. More than $95,500,000 of the tobacco money came from cigarettes. Recently the tobacco tax has been heavily increased. Altogether we used 497.079,92(1 pounds of tobacco last year. We got away with 174,697,408 pounds of plug, pounds of twist, 9,809,225 pounds of finecut, 257,893,440 pounds of smoking tobacco and 37,180,382 pounds of snuff. The value of the tobacco crop to the farmer was estimated last year at $542,547,000. The average price he got for it was 39 cents a pound. He gets more now. More than $1,500,000,000 a year Is the value of tobacco products manufactured in the United States. More than a million and a half acres of land are devoted to the growing of the “weed.” On the manufacturing side the government estimate of the capital invested in 1914 was $303,830,009. which was a low figure even then and is greatly exceeded now. The number of wage earners In manufacture in that year was 178,872, and their annual earnings $77,856,000. ? 'lt Is variously figured that 70 per cent of our adult male population and a third of our total population use tobacco In one form or another. The percapita consumption, counting each man, woman and child. Is seven pounds a year. The average consumption among the tobacco users is twenty pounds. There are, according to one of the compilers of data. 25,000,000 smokers and chewers whose average capacity Is 22 pounds per person, 8,000.000 cigarette smokers each lighting 4,500 cigarettes a year and 5,500.000 cigar smokers each destroying 1,500 cigars.

economical to label its beer bottles with Austrian kroner notes.—London Morning Post.

Evil Always in Hatred.

A man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies, because If you indulge in this passion on some occasions, it will rise of itself In others; if you hate your enemies you-will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are Indifferent to you.—Plutarch,