The Students Journal.
PUBLISHED WEEKLY
Students Journal Publishing Company
BY THE
Y
Wm. J. KREHBEIL Editor-in-Chief
W W. RENO Local Editor
ROSE MORGAN Literary Editor
BUSINESS MANAGERS.
J. H. MUSTARD | D. H. SPENCER.
Charles S. Griffin ... Literary
John M. Steel ... Theatrical
Arto Kally ... Music
R. Lester ... Law
D. Foster ... Athletic
R. Duster ... Engineering
Herbert Lavy ... Personals
R. B. Herman ... Mailings
Garrett ... Exchanges
ASSOCIATES.
The stock of the STUDENTS JOURNAL company consists of non-transferable one dollar shares. Any student, instructor or employee of the University, my hold one and only one share.
KEEP your voices for tomorrow night. You will need them.
"THE are glimpses of heaven granted to us by every act or thought or word which raises us above ourselves."
By spring McCook field will be in splendid condition for athletic tournaments, and it is to be hoped that the other members of the Triangular League may be induced to test its merits during the proposed union field day exercises.
No student ought to think of staying away from the Topeka contest. Fall in line and show your enthusiasm for your alma mater and her orator.
THE professors of the University of Tokio, Japan are either foreigners or native citizens educated abroad. Usually the professors employ their own respective languages; but in the engineering, science, and literary departments the English language is employed almost exclusively.
AFTER considerable delay the Courier appeared on last Saturday, changed in form to a neatly printed sixteen-page paper and issued by the "University Publishing company." It is a great im-provement over the old Courier, and under the new management ought to be well conducted. ___
THE action of the World's Columbian Exposition authorities in instructing the Rolling Chair company to employ college students as attendants in charge of the chairs at the exposition is, to say the least, commendable. About one and one half thousand worthy young men will thus be given pleasant employment during the next summer months and the the chair company will by this means secure efficient and gentlemanly attendants for their patrons.
In April at Hutchinson there will be a festival contest, in order to select Kansas musicians to take part in the musical exercises of the Columbian exposition. The club producing the most acceptable music will have its expenses to and from Chicago donated to it, as a gift of encouragement. The club receiving second place will receive free entertainment for the three days which those taking part in the festival will spend in Hutchinson. Besides the general musical exhibitions in which women will take part at the World's Fair, special arrangements are being made for female musicians in the woman's building. As this is a matter in which Lawrence and the University ought certainly to be represented, the musical talent here should show its interest by making an effort to appear at the Hutchinson contest prepared to win first place.
REPRESENTATIVE.
The STUDENTS JOURNAL was born of the earnest desire to have a truly representative paper at our alma mater. To secure this end has been, and always shall be, the constant aim and purpose of the company.
The paper bad to make its beginning under the control of a faction, it is true, but happily it was a faction which constituted four-fifths of the student body. That the paper was, in a sense, the organ of a faction, though that faction was a large majority of the University, was undesirable. But, as in all organizations, the law of development must be heeded. All organized bodies rise as protests against existing conditions, but if their growth be healthy they develop into new conditions, beneficial to the general good. This is the history of the JOURNAL. In accordance with this development, which has been constant since the organization of the company, and at the suggestion of prominent members of the faculty, the STUDENTS JOURNAL company made an amendment to its constitution. The amendment so enlarged the company as to give all members of the school an opportunity to take part in the councils of the JOURNAL, and by thus working unitedly, to be of the greatest service to the University.
The amendment which makes this change is as follows:
Art. III, Sec. 3, Shares may be held by any student, any member of the faculty, or any employee of the University. Sec. 4. No individual shall hold more than one share.
Thus for the first time in its history the University has a paper which is truly representative. In making this amendment, no politics, no faction, nothing but the welfare of our atma mater has been recognized. As all education, to be of permanent value, must be gained in a truly democratic spirit, so all matters connected with a great educational institution should be conducted on the same broad, democratic, equalizing basis. The welfare of the paper and school must be considered in choosing men to shape its course, and not whether this or that faction has secured its share of offices. When we look for men to care for the general good, only their qualifications for the work required should be considered. To do this a higher spirit than selfishness must rule.
In this new arrangement of the STUDENTS JOURNAL all shareholders have an equal influence, as but one share can be held by any one person. Heretofore, student organizations have been run largely by the influence of money; as an individual by buying fifty shares could have fifty votes. This we do not want. We want the influence of men, not money. The admission of the professors to our councils does not signify that they are more responsible for actions of the paper than other shareholders. They enter merely as individuals, not as members of the faculty.
Since the amendment to the constitution the sale of shares, especially to those before excluded from the company has been very gratifying to all those favoring majority rule. And no less gratifying to those favoring majority rule has been the resignation of all the present officers of the company to take effect March 1st, in order that the new share holders may assist in the new election.
With this new opportunity offered him no member of the school can have any reason for remaining inactive. It is the duty of every member to see that his aid and influence are given for the good of the University.
A large percent of the professors have bought shares and from the present indications the whole school will take an increased interest in the paper. These signs of increased interest on the part of professors and students alike, indicate that we have a truly representative paper to work in the interest of the University of Kansas and of higher education.
Tomorrow night the tin horn will rest and civilization will thereby be advanced.
LITERARY DEPARTMENT.
more;
For Hopes and Dreams that left my open door;
Shail I who hold the Past in fee, repine?
Nay they are those who never quaffed Life's
Shall I complain because the feast is o'er
And all the banquet lights have ceased to shine?
For joy that was and is no longer mine;
For Love that came and went and comes no
SHALL I COMPLAIN?
That were the unbested fate one might deplore.
To sit alone and dream street of sun.
When all the world is vague with coming night—
To hear old voices whisper sweet and low,
And see dear faces steal back one by one,
And thrill anew to each long-past delight—
Shall I complain, who still this bliss may
know.
- Louis Chandler Moulton in the February
Scribner's.
It is proposed to build the Staten Island Academy at New Brighton, as a tribute to the memory of George William Curtis. A conspicuous feature will be the Curtis Memorial Hall.
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Prof. H. H. Beyesen, of Columbia College, is preparing a volume of essays on Scandinavian literature, to be made up in part of articles contributed by him to various periodicals. It will be published by Charles Scribner's sons.
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The different parts of the world are beginning to get acquainted, or at least we are getting acquainted with all parts of the world. Not only do all Americans travel, but all who travel write, and tell what they have seen, and there are those who travel with just this end in view. So our magazines are full of articles describing the ways of our neighbors in Japan, in the South American cities, in the less known portions of eastern Europe, everywhere in fact, where a determined tourist can succeed in penetrating.
In addition to these journeyman printers, we have resident correspondents, such as Charles Egbert Craddock and Mary Wilkins, who make us familiar with the life in their section of the country. Thus we are drawn nearer together at home, while our sympathy for other nations is widened by our knowledge of them, and we come to have a fellow-feeling for "Turks, sharks, and all manner of turriers."
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The German Department has just received a consignment of books and pictures from the Leipzig publisher, Brockhaus. The pictures, which are reproductions of paintings and etchings by German artists, will be framed and hung for the benefit of the classes Among them are The Cathedral at Ulm—a very fine specimen of Gothic architecture, and one of the few Protestant cathedrals in Europe. The Wartburg, where Luther, during his imprisonment, translated the Bible into German; Gabriel Max's Crucifixion, and one of his Madonnas, which latter however, is disappointing, especially when compared with Defregger's.
Some of the bound volumes are the Schillerbuch, which gives everything imaginable in regard to the man himself, and a very complete bibliography of his works, three volumes of the Minnesotaers, and The German Stage, which with its numerous illustrations, will be a great help to next year's class in the History of the Drama. The number of unbound books, literary, philosophical and scientific, in the store room, books of great value, and of which there is immediate need, shows very plainly the advantages which come from a larger library appropriation.
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PROHIBITION AS A FINANCIAL ISSUE
Races, like individuals, have vices peculiar to themselves. That of the Turks is polygamy, that of the Chinese is the opium habit. Little do these people realize the amount they suffer from these habits. They rather attribute their miseries to Fate, to anything but their own conduct.
As we see the vices of other people, so they observe ours. Foremost among those attributed to us is our drunkenness. To the Turk the amount we suffer from this cause is astonishing. The Chinese
are ever ready to remind us of it with a reproach. As for ourselves, there is reason to believe that we are as blind to the results of our national vice as other people.
In our politics the enemies of the saloon have made but little progress, outside of a few states, not only because people do not wish to recognize the evil consequences of drunkenness, but also because we are a nation of money seekers. We are less moved by a description of destroyed homes, broken hearts, full asylums and growing crime, than by a lively discussion of a financial issue.
It may be painful to state, but it seems that the only way the advocates of temperance can secure a favorable hearing is by placing the prohibition issue on a financial basis. It takes a vast amount of public morals to be worth a dollar to the average American. Fortunately the enemies of our national vice need not hesitate to place their issue on its financial means. Every wasteful consumption injures society. If twenty million dollars worth of grain were being destroyed yearly, our people could not escape benign impoverished thereby. The prevention of such a waste would occasion a political issue which would be more notable than prohibition has ever been.
And yet the twenty million dollars worth of grain is but a small portion of the total loss occasioned by the liquor traffic. Every day's labor spent in distilling and brewing, in barrelling and ship ping, all the strength expended in building and equipping breweries, distilleries and saloons, is practically so much wealth taken out of existence.
Can we form an estimate of the amount of wealth thus destroyed? We can do so roughly. The price an article brings, selling under free competition, may always be taken as representing the value of the labor and material required to prepare it for the market. Now the amount paid for liquor by the American people is estimated at from seven to nine hundred millions a year. Shall we take this as the loss of wealth? No, there is a deduction to be made. Nearly a hundred million is paid to the United States government as revenue. Perhaps an equal amount is paid to the state and municipal authorities as license to retail. The remainder, after deducting these sums, is the value of the labor and material used in preparing the liquor for the drunkard. Subtracting these two two hundred millions from the lowest estimate of the amount sold, and we still have left the enormous sum of half a billion of dollars which is lost annually. Half a billion dollars a year! By what other means does America lose an equal amount? How much better it would be if that half billion dollars worth of labor and material, instead of being destroyed, had been spent in useful industries! There is no such thing as wasteful consumption which does not impoverish society as a whole. The tendency of this enormous loss is to paralyze every industry.
So far only the amount invested in the liquor itself has been considered. Great as it is, it is not the entire loss. The cost of maintaining our courts is increased. The burdens of our poor houses and asylums are made heavier; and more important still, the man who drinks today is unable to work tomorrow.
But how does prohibition compare in importance with other financial issues? Eight years ago the main political issue was the surplus in the United States treasury. Men saw the evil of allowing the surplus to lie there unemployed, drawing no interest, as it were. How long do you suppose it takes America to consume in liquor the amount of the interest on that surplus? Estimating the interest at six per cent, it would be consumed in less than four days end a half.
The entire surplus *would not* have fur-
nished the liquor for that campaign!
In later years, the tariff has been the absorbing issue. Yet the total amount received by the government from tariff revenues is less than half that sunk by the people in drink. If our nation had the money spent for liquor, it could pay our industries as a bounty what they now receive as protection, and have money left.
When the financial importance of prohibition is once recognized, then it will become a real issue to the American people. When the people of Kansas learn that it is for the welfare of their pocketbooks to have the saloon removed from Missouri, then they will become interested in the subject.
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As the comments on Mr. Fiske's lecture come in, the writer is reminded of an announcement made by a lecture bureau in one of our Kansas towns that it had secured attractions, humorous, pathetic and miscellaneous. This list of adjectives, in this order, gives a very fair idea of the relative popularity of discourses which may be classified under these three heads, and the classification calls attention to the growing tendency on the part of the general public to insist that a lecture be oratorical.
Give us the humorous, they say, make us laugh, or if this becomes monotonous, be pathetic and make us weep, or touch upon the weird and make us shudder at Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, but stop then. Don't be miscellaneous, and, among other things, try to make us think. We didn't come for that. When a lecture is condemned, particularly when it is condemned as dry, these demands of the public should be kept in mind. It is a little hard to have to acknowledge that the University town makes no advance on the other towns in its requirements of lectures, though perhaps the very fact that it has a good deal of instruction during the day may help to account for its demanding something else in the evening, but the reception of Mr. Fiske's lecture shows that even Lawrence does not take kindly to the miscellaneous.
The literary editor wishes to acknowledge the receipt of a copy of the new Courier. The management is to be congratulated on the improvement in its appearance, and literary form.
😊 😊
Constitutional Amendment
At a meeting of the STUDENTS JOURNAL Stock Co , last Friday, the following amendment to the constitution was adopted:
ART III, Sec.1. The stock of this company shall consist of an unlimited number of one dollar shares
B Sec. 2. The life of a share shall be two years, at the end of which time the share must be renewed and one dollar shall be paid for the renewal.
Sec. 3. Shares may be held by any student, any member of the faculty, or any employee of the University.
Sec. 4. No individual shall hold more than one share.
Sec. 5. The shares shall not be negotiable.
Sec. 6. Whenever any stockholder severs his connection with the University his share shall revert to the company, and he shall receive nothing therefor.
Sec. 7. No section of this amendment shall be amended, except by a two-thirds vote of all of the paid in shares, instead of a majority vote as provided in Art, V, section 2.
This amendment makes the STUDENTS JOURNAL a truly representative University paper.
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A fine lot of patitions arrived at music hall from Kansas City this morning.
Fountain pens at Smith's news stand
CARPENTER'S Shorthand--Institute. Lawrence, Kansas.