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Show This Week by Arthur Brisbane California's Public Schools Money, Queer Thing Young Lady for Sale Biggest Pumpkin Vine California is honored by its supremacy su-premacy in public school education, educa-tion, from the lowest grade to the State Unversity. The British governor, who thanked God there was no public school in Virginia and hoped there would be none for one hundred years to come, would be horrified at California's school system. Formerly, in every town and city, the finest building was the residence of some dignitary, the next in grandeur was the public prison usually. In modern California, and many other States, to their honor, the public schools surpass in beauty and importance all other buildings. High schools here are surrounded surround-ed by beautiful parks; Bach public school has its athletic field. In California every child must be educated at public expense. Mr. Whitney, secretary or the Barstow School Board was discussing, discus-sing, recently, the case of an unfortunate un-fortunate child, crippled by infantile in-fantile paralysis, unable to walk up the steps of any school. Must such a child go without education or be educated at its parents' expense? ex-pense? Not in California. A teacher will be appointed to attend solely to that child's education, edu-cation, in its own home, and the cost of books and teacher will be divided between the county and the faiate. That will make some taxpayers roar "Bolshevism," but It must make the angels smile, if they ever do smile. And, more Bolshevism, Barstow, a small town on the Mojave desert, des-ert, spends fifty-one thousand dollars dol-lars a year for public education, more than for all other purposes combined, and sends school buses as far as fifty-two miles, bringing children at public expense to the high school, 104 miles every day for the round trip. That costs the taxpayers for every child more than one hundred dollars a year extra. Money is a queer thing; nobody understands it. For instance, the British are forced to abandon gold after trying to force upon India, which has been a silver country for five thousand years. The pound sterling drops lower and lower and British prosperity rises. Unemployed are fewer; cotton cot-ton mills that have been closed are running on full time. Lancashire Lanca-shire is cheerful in spite of Gandhi's Gand-hi's boycott. China, boycotting Japan, sends to Britain business held by Japan hitherto. Our dollar is so valuable valu-able and expensive that Asia can't afford to use it and therefore can't buy from us. A "beautiful little lady," 21 years old, height 5 feet 6 inches, weight 130 pounds, hair blonde (natural), eyes brown, wishes $10,000 for her parents and will marry "any respectable res-pectable white man, deaf, dumb, crippled or U.'na," if he will provide pro-vide the $10,000 and can support her. A visitor fern Mars would learn with interest that such a bargain could be earned out "quite respectably" res-pectably" and such a saie wouia be very different from transactions ordinarily c&:iec' on in "the oldest, old-est, profusion.' The "iij.vlar American boy" who has cm mined pumpkin vines in his father's, corn field before froso, musing on Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, remembers a vine, a few yards long, with jerhaps as many as ten greenish yellow pumpkins attached. J. R. Plummer, of Winchester, O., had this fall a pumpkin vine fifteen hundred feet long, that produced a big wagon load oi pumpkins. It covered the entire garden, was three and a half inches inch-es thick, climbed a cherry tree, covered part of a high fence and spread over an adjoining field. Good soil and fertilizer explain that. There is no need to worry about surplus -population for the next thousand years. Texas alone, with intensive cultivation, cul-tivation, could feed easily all the eighteen or nineteen hundred million mil-lion people on eaarth, and have room left for more oil fields. Lord Robert Cecil, intelligent and sincere worker for world peace, says, "Unless the wirld disarms, dis-arms, it will nerish." The day is coming when war, which is wholesome murder, ' will disappear from earth as cannibalism cannibal-ism and slavery have practically disappeared. But the world will not disarm yet and it will not "perish." The world stood the One Hundred Hun-dred Years' War, the Seven Years' War. and the Dark Ages that followed fol-lowed the inrush of barbarians after af-ter the downfall of Rome. It endured the "black death" that killed one-quarter of all the people in Europe, equal, in proportion, pro-portion, to five times as many aa were killed in the Great War. This world is able to stand a great deal in the way of brutality and suffering. The trouble in Asia will probably prob-ably amount to no more than "punitive expeditions" by skillful Japanese militarists, and the fin:l seizure of such territory as Japcn desires. It will not be any real war. If two of the great civilized nations na-tions of Europe start another war. they will deserve all they get, and that will be a great deal. |