Thursday, August 26, 1920
Our friend, Simon Schuchat, writes us from the Hebrew Hospital, Baltimore, where he is on the flat of his back, being hand-fed and nursed back to health by good looking nurses. They have taken his tobacco away from him. He says the hospital is no contented place for him, and that he would prefer digging potatoes on the West Virginia hills to lying in bed. It is our judgment, from the tone of his letter, that he is recovering rapidly.
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Tennessee gave Normalcy a considerable shock when she suffered the women to vote and forbade them not, for of such is the kingdom of Heaven – the fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she.
The campaign for woman suffrage in America began in 1848, and since then it has been much ado about nothing. About all the difference that it will make is that whereas heretofore they sent the old man and the boys to the polls to cast the family vote, hereafter mother and the girls will have to go as well. It will not greatly change politics, but so far as it does change it, it will better it.
The society of women is the foundation of good manners. The women voters ensure the primary system of nomination indefinitely, for women cannot trail off to distant state conventions to make their nominations. The institution is further made secure by the fact that at every election those who win are the only ones in a position to inaugurate changes in government and they will be so pleased with an electorate which placed them in power that they will continue it unchanged…
They have had very tense time of it lately with this vote which affected the whole nation. And there was much pulling and hauling in the legislature, but it will be all the same one hundred years from now…
All we have got to say about it is that if we Democrats are to be driven out of power this year, it is a good thing that Woman Suffrage is to be added to the other great accomplishments of the Wilson eight years that saw beneficent labor and bank laws, prohibition, and a merchant marine brought into existence, and a great war fought and won.
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Would the following be corrupt practice: In a case where the husband is a Democrat and his wife a Republican, could he send her to the city the day before the election to do a little shopping?
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Does the word “obey” in the marriage contract apply to voting, or is it void as being contrary to public policy?
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The United States is going Russia one better on the question of a Soviet government. The United States is about to govern by families.
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It must appeal to every patriot that it is a vain thing for the wife’s vote to offset the husband’s vote and vice versa. A house divided against itself cannot stand. So vote by families.
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We wonder if women will turn out to be as great liars as mere men in telling how they voted or will they smile and remain inscrutable.
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Talk about a secret ballot. We are about to know for the fist time what a secret ballot really is.
STOLE GINSENG
On last Thursday night, a thief entered the store house of R. T. Greer & Son and stole about 40 pounds of ginseng, valued at more than $500. Entrance was made through a window and a door was prized open. The window had been nailed down, but sometime previous the thief had prepared the way by driving in the nail. The seng was in the office, and the light was burning. Families living on the second floor heard the thief, the time being about 11:30 o’clock.
THE VALUE OF VISION
By Frank Dorrace Hopley
Vision is not the mere ability to see things which are before us. It is the ability to see more things than some one else sees when placed in a similar position. In some of the colleges recently, a vison test has been introduced into the entrance examinations. The prospective student is taken into a room and shown a table on which there are various articles. He is allowed to look at them for thirty seconds, and then told to write a list of what he sees.
It would be natural to expect that two or more persons, looking at the same things, would see alike, but the wide variation in the statements of what the various students saw on the table is startling.
One will say that he saw a book, an inkwell, a pen, a clock, a paper cutter, a thermometer and a basket.
Another will state that he saw a red book with gilt edges, evidently a copy of Shakespeare; a carved inkwell from the ivory tusk of an elephant; a pen with a chased gold handle; a basket filled with calling cards, several with black edges showing among the others; a few small pins, and so on, ending with the comment that the table was covered with dust in which some one had made a question mark with his finger.
The first man saw the minimum of what was before him. He made a mental note of the objects, and that is all. The second man saw the maximum and both had the same length of time in which to see what was on the table.
Which one of them had vision?
Which would you hire if both presented themselves as applicants for a position?
The man who has the gift of vision in this world is the one who sees beyond his nose, who not only sees the effect but at the same time glimpses the cause, and oftentimes the result.
A stream of water trickling down the hillside and over a man’s pasture. He sees it and says, “The grass is wet,” and goes about his business.
The man of vision sees the same trickling stream. He says, “The grass is wet.” The reservoir at the top of the hill must be overflowing. If the wall is not strengthened, it may give way and cause death and destruction.” Then he goes about having the wall shored up.
This keenness of vision can be cultivated by anyone who chooses to use his eyes and his brains. It may be a little difficult at first, for many of us have our eyes glued to the earth, but if we persist, in time will come the ability to see clearly, and to sense the full meaning of what we do see.
Men of vision were never more needed in every department of life than today – in politics, in business, in labor circles, in the pulpit and in the pew.
It is the man of vision who will win against the push and mob-rule of modern life. He will solve the many problems that are almost overwhelming us today – the man who, while observing, does not look merely at the surface of things, but he sees behind them a cause, which must be removed if the effect is to be remedied; the man who sees in the happenings of the present a fore-gleam of the future and by this vision, helps to avert disaster.
THE TRACTOR
By Oscar H. Adkinson – 1920
I am consecrated to service
I have changed painful labor to joyous work.
I have enthroned farming as the highest calling of man.
I looked with pity on the horse and shall some day release him from unrequited toil.
I want neither hay nor grain, neither do I ask for a day off.
I have no heart to break nor back to whip, and I gladly toil through day and night.
I turn the furrows which are the fortresses of the race.
I drain off foul bogs and transform vast wastes to smiling fields of productivity.
I plant and cultivate and lay at the feet of man the harvest’s golden sheaves.
In mishap and when fuel fails, I turn with tireless arms the factory wheels.
I grade the highways, which stretch from busy mart to distant glen and knit peoples in the spirit of mutual understanding.
I cancel the mortgage and save the old homestead for the aged.
I instill in youth the love for rural life, and teach that quiet lane and stately tree are better than lighted street or guilded spire.
I knew the plow line could not hold back the breadline, and it is my mission to repulse the “drive” of General Hunger.
I heal the wounds of desolation in mad war’s wake.
On France’s blighted plains I saved man’s highest ideals.
I leveled the cannon’s rut and tilled the crimson soil to feed the famishing and hearten the defenders of human rights.
I won some stars in battle, but of these I do not boast, because I am an implement of peace.
I am the harbinger of the New Time.
I come to benefit and bless mankind.
I AM THE TRACTOR.
