Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1909 — Portionless Boys and Dowried Girls. [ARTICLE]

Portionless Boys and Dowried Girls.

There is something of a RomaD parent’s austerity in President Taft’s desire to start his boys poor. If wealthy fathers were to follow the example the “threegenerations between shlrtslee'Ves and shirt sleeves’’ would be reduced to one. sons no longer beginning where the father left off. The plan wight be expected to be generally beneficial to society. A boy can have no greater handicap to Incentive and to real usefulness than an inherited fortune. There would be the additional advantage that wealth diverted from inheritance would revert to society in the shape of public benefactions. But the possibility of such conditions by Mr. Taft’s statement that, though the boys must take care of themselves, he intends to “scrape together” all be can to give his daughter, so that she need marry only when she chooses to marry and not because of circumstances. This is in effect an advocacy of dowries for daughters. In that event the advantage may suggest Itself to disinherited young men oJ acquiring a fortune by marriage rather than by toil. With the British average yield of wheat by the acre established as the normal harvest in the United States, the wheat supply would rise at once to 1,500.000.000 bushels. By the utilizing of laud now practically waste space the wheat yield can be Increased to 2,000.000.000 bushels a year, with other food staples expanding In proportion. There is no doubt that football is valuable in the military and naval schools. It is a game that gives exercise to every mental faculty as well as strenuous physical exercise. If the murdered Prince Ito could* make himself alive again he would be pleased to know what a fine man Russia and China and all those countries thought he was all along. Mrs. Andie Besant says there will not be a poor man in the country 2,000 years' from now, so it’s all right to pray for reincarnation in the ranks of the unemployed in 8800. Those who deplore certain tendencies in daily papers of a class should note that it’s In magazines of a class that lurid writing is now often to be found. Whatever excuses Dr. Cook has for his delay in producing proofs, it pats him at a serious disadvantage.