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Show THE CITIZEN 12 HHiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiniiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimmtiitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii OBSERVATION PLANE 2 SiiiimiiiiiniiiniiiiiiHWMwiiiMiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiminniiiiiiiimiHiiHniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiiiimiiiMiiiimiimiiHimiHMiiiiiHHmiMiiiiiiiiiimmJ annoyed at their orisons by the cheers AsWord In Praise Of, Sunday Baseball: .. floating from the ball grounds will be Xmong the laws suggested to make us. blue is one to stop Sunday base- band, -fr Personally we are unable to enthuse over any kind of baseball. We prefer a loaf of bread, a jug of grapejuice and a flock of "thous caroling to a vaude- . ville moon. May Omar rest easy in his grave! . But while we cannot find it in our he&rt'to throw things at the umpire in a ivild access of interest and indignation while we cannot yell ourselves and, in fact, are hoatse at a home-ru- n prone to go to sleep in the grandstand whenever some unwary friend has lured' ns to a game, we believe that Sunday baseball is better than some sermons to keep men out of mischief. Baseball is a fine, clean sport. . It intrigues the interest of thousands and makes them rejoice every day that they were born into a world of leather spheres, wire masks, canvass chest protectors and spiked shoes. Often hqve we wondered at and admired the ten thousand who sat through the soothing calm of a game of baseball on a Sunday afternoon. We have held them to be among the most virtuous and patient of menj. Socrates and Plato, and eke Zeno, the Stoic, were good men, but, to all appearances, not better men than they who can sit for two hours in a sizzling sun and watch perspiring triots pommel a puny pellet with a pa- var- nished bat. Could anything be less harmful? Less sinful? Less scandalous? In fact, could anything be safer for the good order and peace of a community than ten thousand amusement An seekers content with baseball? edict of justice in the umpires every decision! A sermon in every pitched ball! A lesson in every home run! An appeal to honest rivalry in every inning! A goodly jest in every cry of 'Kill the umpire! A fine for every angry word the player utters. Punishment for cursing! Banishment for the man who is unreasonable or unfair! able to endure the momentary distraction in view of all the good they do by allowing a game as pious as ping pong and thereby keeping their profane neighbors from scandalous misconduct. Blue Laws Empower Minority to Rule For a long time we have felt that the majority sentiment of the country is not back of blue laws. Fow a minority could control in a land of the free and secret ballot was not clear to us when we first harbored the suspicion. Perhaps it is not quit? clear to us yet, but now and have seen signs and heard again gossip tending to confirm our suspicion that an active minority is in control of the legislatures which have been passing the blue laws. It is the view of Mr. Taft that the country always is controlled by the minority and he cites the fact that the winning vote in every national election is several millions short of an actual majority of those who have a right to vote. We believe his view to be erroneous. If the several million who do not vote should go to the polls the result "would be the same. Those who vote are fairly representative of those who do not vote. When we speak of a minority as in control by means of blue law's wre do not mean what Mr. Taft means. We mean something quite aside from total ballots. A man does not always vote as he wishes even when he knows that his ballot is secret. And a legislator often votes against his convictions because he knows that some poiver he respects or fears watches him with wre menacing eye. It is because the active minority is united and tremendously vocal in its earnestness of aggression that the And what would the ten thousand be doing if denied their Sunday baseball?. Some of them, mayhap, skurry-in- g about for bootleg whiskey. Some of them smoking the surreptitious and legislator trembles and capitulates. He fears the minority because it is prepared to put him to political death. The majority lacks cohesive power. It is not for something. It is against something that the minority is booming. It has no publicity bureaus, no cigarette societies to combat anticigarette societies, no church organizations circulating petitions to overawe the legislatures, no leaders directing their energies toward a particular ungodly cigarette. goal. Surely the church people who are The majority is disorganized be- - cause it is not working for something single and definite. Some of it is vociferous in opposition, but most of him where the presidents exhibited. it is silent because of interests other ident, said the guide. Having honored the good than those political. The minority is banded together, let us say, to obtain an law. Its leaders spend their days and many of their nights gaining recruits, scaring this interest or that or coercing legislators. The majority grumbles and lets it go at that. It grumbles and counts dollars; grumbles and deals cards; grumbles and plays golf, grumbles and buys gasoline, grumbles and reads foreign news or sports. The minority does not grumble. It is out to gain a definite object. It obtains all the willing votes and then goes around to the grumblers and intimidates them with this threat or that. Suddenly the grumbling grows faint. The grumblers are of their original opinion, but something has happened. They find themselves at the mercy of a little group of energetic men who are ready to coerce when they cannot anti-tobacc- o convince. By these means v , the minority passes its sumptuary and blue laws. And it is that kind of a minority, we fancy, that is controlling legislatures all over the land. Once this minority had a worthy opponent wrorthy, we mean, from the standpoint of energy and power. The wray of the prohibitionist was hard because he was compelled to fight the saloon pow'er at every step. He did not win until the war weakened his opponent and drove him to cover. Perhaps the minority did really become a majority, but we doubt whether it was a converted majority, a majority which, if left to itself, would have been for prohibition in season and out, in war and in peace. We are not taking prohibition as a test case. We are certain that most of the people were, and are, irrevocably opposed to the saloon. We have cited prohibition because, for years, it gave an occupation to that minority which now has turned its artillery upon tobacco and is getting ready to enforce its kind of a Sabbath. Puzzle Find Presidents Picture at Capitol visitor to our beautiful capitol was examining the mementos in the museum the other day when he was attracted by a fine portrait of Queen A Victoria. As he strolled through the capitol he looked about for a picture of the Pres- ident of the United States. Falling to find one, he asked the guide to show;. There pictur i isnt any picture of 5 the J Quee Qf toria we really ought to honor States! president of the United f though it may not be a case ica first. It was very thoughtful of the cratic administration to hang Victorias picture in a 1 4. i on I M of ar D Ini o- rW conspia fti place and thus call attention to! ca somewhat smug glories of the pj of Windsor, descended from the; 10 W fectly good German family whit BC still telling the people of magnat bj ta how to govern themselves. course, no one will object to the Q(. or done the lady who, so to speak,; it sided over one of the most briE B ; periods in English history, but7 would not be fitting to pay homag the president of the United sT even though he might be as "t light unto sunlight and. as wateu' wine beside a real queen. Queens, it is true, are getting sc and presidents more numerous, r we should keep specimens of qi. exhibited so that our children mr able to look at them and rejoice:- a : . . v- ti a . .? y . Q p 6 i - u o .1 the world finally waxed Intel" 1i: enough to do without them. i i ' i : Typographical Error Gives Wrong View e ; In our last issue we printed a', ter W'hich Ralph L. Morse sent Beckham, a prisoner in the Butte? In that letter Morse, who is a Lake attorney, refers to some ( checks given by the wife of the; oner. Morse, in his letter uses letter L to designate Mrs. Beck! A typographical error changed the into I and made the letter real if Morse were the passer of : -- ( ' checks. A PROBABILITY. In a police court case of assault of the witnesses was a young dot' As his evidence was important, opposing counsel tried to confuse! I suppose, sir, he began, 'that: are entirely familiar with all the sT toms of concussion of the Irainr I am, replied the witness coot Then let me ask you a hy:otW question, went on counsel. Sup? my learned friend, Mr. Jonjs, at should bang our heads togtf: should we get concussion of brain? Mr. Jones might, ness. replied the' 1 |