Thursday, February 19, 1925
Lock McNeill brought this office a freak in the way of a big egg. The measurements are 8 3/4 inches over the ends and 7 inches around the middle. The egg weighs 5 ounces. The mother of this egg is a Rhode Island Red hen. This is the champion hen egg of the Greenbrier Valley and the world. The average hen egg weighs two ounces.
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The death angel visited the home of John Griffin in the evening of February 3, 1925, and took Bessie, the youngest daughter. She was sick but a very few days and all was done that loving hands could do but her disease seemed to baffle the physicians’ skill… Her body was laid to rest in the Wilmoth Cemetery.
CHEVROLET BREAKS RECORDS
The Chevrolet Motor company broke all its previous January records for retail sales and orders during the past month. In fact, the record was made in the last 28 days of the month or since January 3 when the new Chevrolet was announced.
The Chevrolet dealers throughout the country delivered and took orders for approximately 40 percent more cars during January then during either January 1924 or January 1923…
During the recent Chicago automobile show, 1,107 Chevrolets were sold – a record which has never before been equaled by any car exhibited.
FIFTY YEARS AGO
The following is from the farewell speech of General Sherwood, of Ohio, in the House of Representatives on February 7, 1925. General Sherwood, age 90, has served as a congressman for a longer period than any other man…
“It is 52 years since I first drifted into this great body of citizens. …
There were historical characters in that Congress, called to deal with both ethical and fundamental questions growing out of the great war; questions that stirred the blood and commanded the most potent mental endeavor…
General Grant was just starting on his second term. I remember the appropriation for the salary and clerk and upkeep of the White House that year – 1873-74. It was $42,000. As evidence of our immense growth in material prosperity and official generosity we, this year, gave our President the tidy sum of $500,000 as the items foot up. …
General Grant had no bodyguard, no military staff, no White House police. I remember meeting General Grant several times walking down Pennsylvania Avenue alone. …
Members of Congress were salaried at $5,000 a year. We were allowed no secretary, and we had to rent our offices out of our salary and we had to take our pen in hand to answer kicking letters from constituents. There were no typewriting machines. The Speaker had no parliamentary experience. He decided every contention without explanation or parliamentary palaver. We had no Hind’s Precedents. We had no Rules Committee. We had no steering committee invading the White House to find out what legislation the President favored. The first article of the Federal Constitution fixes that duty solely with Congress.
We had no tariff experts to confuse the rudimentary Congressman and no Calendar Wednesday. We had no Secretary of Agriculture; hence the farmers were contented and reasonably prosperous…
The country had no automobiles, no wireless, no airplanes, no canned music. Prize fighting was not then our popular entertainment. We had no moving pictures. Tainted actresses were not then our popular stars of the stage. We had no jazz music. The glorious old war songs of heroic memory and patriotic inspiration had not been supplanted by “Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines,” or “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here” and similar jargons, and the grand plays of Shakespeare and plays of high moral import had not been supplanted by the vulgar and smutty vaudeville…
Viscount Bryce has written the greatest book on democracy in the English language. He says, in a democracy, power is lodged exclusively in the people, and whenever any group or element sets up any authority antagonistic to the expressed will of the people, democracy is supplanted by autocracy. Neither executive will nor the edicts of courts can usurp the popular will as expressed by the people’s Congress without violating both the spirit and letter of democracy. The Federal Constitution is explicit and plain on that vital subject…
Lincoln voiced this sentiment when he said, “This is a Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Yet, I heard a leading member of this Congress last winter proclaim in this historic Chamber that this is a Government by party, because the party in power is responsible for legislation.
I challenge any member on this floor to find the word “party” in the Constitution…”