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THE SPIRIT OF THE MONTH

PREPARING FOR VACATION

Congress, like the nation, prefers baseball to lawmaking

Schools, colleges and universities close -when they don't have summer sessions

In the guise of vacation, the American people, fatigued with a year of sensations, prepares to get tired in new spots

Courts, investigating committees, reformers, and, it is to be hoped, Congress, adjourn to recuperate

We forget the rest

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The World Co-Day

VOLUME XI

JULY, 1906

NUMBER 1

W

At the End of the Year

E take account of stock of our material goods in January; we take account of stock of ourselves in July. And we always find ourselves in need of vacation.

This year vacation comes none too soon. Never was there a twelvemonth like the one now closing. Its excitements, exposures, reforms, scandals, crimes, cataclysms have left us possessed of national brain-fag. If the moon were to fall and blot out Boston we should not be surprised. Nothing short of the judgment trumpet can startle us.

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We are tired of exposure-heartsick and suspicious of everybody, even of ourselves. We have watched public opinion topple over reputations of men we have honored. Statesmen, philanthropists, captains of industry, financial geniuses, all have gone to add new filth to the social muck heap.

Grafting of grafters, says the magazine reformer, all is grafting.

At first we were shocked, then saddened, then outraged. Lately we have grown callous. Our only revenge has been to investigate the investigators, to scarify the muckrakers.

We are grateful for their diagnosis, but we are sick of their photographs of ulcers.

After all, is not everybody about as bad as anybody?

We even begin to protest against the exposure of those highly respect

(Copyright, 1906, by THE WORLD TO-DAY COMPANY.)

able gentlemen who are doing their best to poison us. If we are going to be poisoned, why make so much fuss about it?

We are tired of being reformed.

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Reformers seem keener to call each other liars than to work together. A good Senate bill-for a year of national hysteria has even seen such a bill-gets mutilated in the House, and a good House bill gets mutilated in the Senate.

We wanted a revision of the Philippine tariff and have been promised a big battleship which in fifteen years will waste enough money to endow a technical school.

We wanted railroad regulation and have been given a bill that is a combination of radicalism, good sense and a promise of nullification at the hands of the courts.

We wanted a good many other things and have been given the astonishing spectacle of the President and Senators throwing bad names at each other.

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Reforming of reformers, says the public, all is a hemorrhage of talk. But what matter? We are tired of it all. We want a vacation.

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We deceive ourselves.

in earnest.

We are not tired of it all. We were never more We have had a moment of nausea at the nastiness we have unexpectedly discovered, but we are going to clean things up. It is easy to mistake momentary lassitude born of overexcitement for indifference. We advise respectable citizens who think "reaction" has overtaken. reform not to be cocksure of their opinion.

The American people is not sick of reform, because after a year of strenuous living it is for a moment tired of reforming. It is planning the biggest clean-up of its history.

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You are not planning bankruptcy when you think of fishing tackle. All unconsciously you are getting ready for a big Fall trade.

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Here's hoping vacation may send us back to the day's work keener for the new year's battle, and more relentless to such of this year's rascals as September shall find within our reach!

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Mr. Beardsley is primarily a lawyer who believes in honest business administration of a city. He had had considerable experience before being elected to his present position. Kansas City is in many ways one of the most progressive American municipalities, and Mr. Beardsley has the support of strong public sentiment in his fight against certain forms of corporate greed

See page 696

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