Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 74, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1912 — CONGRESSMEN VIE IN "LIMB” DEBATE [ARTICLE]

CONGRESSMEN VIE IN "LIMB” DEBATE

Bowlegs Versus Knock-Knees an Open Question. REFEREE * FAILS TO DECIDE • • Representative Sulzer Blames All Diseases on Convex Legs and Maintains No Hero Ever Had Them. Washington, Dec. 13. —Whethei bowlegs are greater menaces to navigation than knock-knees is still an •pen question, in spite of arguments made before the National Press club bf Representative | Sulzer, governorelect of New York, and Representative Stanley of Kentucky in condemnation •f bowlegs, and Senators Penrose and Sore in equally vigorous denunciation of knock-knees. Referee John Hays Hammond, who was President Taft’s special ambassador to the coronation of King George, decided that neither offered serious obstruction, and read a cablegram from the international board of navigation in Berlin to bear him out. Before the debate began Mr. Ham mond forced the contestants to rise and shake hands “to show there was no hard feeling.” Quotes Sublime Poetry. Representative Sulzer attributed to bowlegs virtually all the diseases known to medical science “from corns to consumption.” He declared that history could show no bow-legged hero, while Moses, Socrates, Hannibal and scores of others "interfered” in their knees- He closed by quoting: "A man knock-kneed Is a friend indeed.” Senator Penrose insisted that there was no place in creation for the knockkneed man. A man so afflicted, he declared. on going home from tys club In the early hours would be in a state of collapse in the road, while the bowlegged man would be bowling merrily homeward. Talks of Monkeys. “The bow-legged condition,” he said, “Is due to a remnant of our physical trait when we lived in trees and •limbed up them. The consequence is that the bowleg is full of the vigor of the gorilla or of the primitive,man.” Representative Stanley followed with a sweeping denunciation of bowlegs. He said he could prove by the frescoes and paintings of Raphael and other old masters that the angels they lectured w'ere universally knockkneed. Senator Gore assailed the framers of the Constitution because they had not grappled with the knock-knee question “face to face and feet to feet.” He admitted that the problem was a knotty one. but added that the American people had settled it politically “by sending both the knock-kneed Republican elephant and the bow-legged Bull Moose up Salt creek as obstructions to navigation.”