Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1890-09-12
WHY BOYS ARE BAD.
Some Light Shed On This Interesting
Subject.
The BuckSaw More Than The Statute
Saw Makes The Boy.
The Coal Stove Affords Too Much
Leisure.

long faces and folded hands. shaking their
heads IN The deepest solemnity whenever a
man Is hung or sent to Congress, are be-
ginning 10 claim that with plenty of chalk
and big blackboard. they San produce
the figures TO show that the world is
about SIX times as bad, in a moral sense. as
1t was thirty or forty years ago. and that
the momentum in the direction of badness
is constantly on the accelerate.
Various causes have been assigned to
account for this mournful state of things.
but to a mind accustomed to go down
through the deep waters of why and where
fore, till it strikes the bed rock of truth.
no satisfying solution of the problem has
been given. Some have argued this. and
others have tried to prove that. hut none of
them have as yet hit the bulls eve of GER
talnty and made the bell ring. Fo~ some
time we have given considerable thought
to this matter, and feel confident we have
the only theory that lights the gas on the
subject.
IN our opinion the baseburner has had
much to do with the increase in devilment.
and burning coal has been the main cause
of the widespread of badness. Get up on
the fence and look at yourself from any di-
rectlon. and no other conclusion is posi-
bic. When the baSeburner came to the
carpet the buckSaw went hence. and the
viciOusness or youth Immediately gathered
Roadway that had previously been kept
under by that wholesome and energetic
reStrainer.
There was time when every wel-regu-
lated family kept its own bucksaw. and
the extra head of vitality and devil
ment which every small boy carries around
18Th ,,o,,ll L, -.
Stovewood enough to fry the bacon and
make home comfortable But in these
days it would be about three tunes as hard
to find 4 sawbuck in passable degree of
preservation. as it was for Diogenes to get
focus on an honest man.
Sometimes it seems doubtful whether
progress is really Roadway. after all.
We may now and then appear to corner
new truth, or make a discovery that
looks like putting money out at interest :
but to fill a bucket with water Won must
take exactly that much from somewhere
clse-unless you deal with a milkman-
and how do we know that we are not pay
ing fancy prices for every scrap of wisdom
placed on the counter?
= Suppose we do sometime discover a
new world so far away that a cashier
would die with old age long before he
could get there, how much does that do to-
ward keeping boy out of mischief. if the
remorseless and eternal law of equilibrium
at the same time nncouples the saw
buck?
Are we gamers by having the country
worked up into scroll-saw patterns, in the
shape of railroad maps. if the result is to
dump down coal in every hamlet in the
land, and leaving nothing for the buck
saw to do?
Can we take any pride in the fact that
we have produced the feetest racer that
ever moved hoof. if we know that our
sons are likely to become as fast again
through lack of knowing how to manage a
| sawhOrse?
What satisfaction can it be to glide
over tho country at forty miles an hour, if
our children are to lave muscles of cotton
and morals of sand?
The modern baseburner is thing of
beauty, but it will not be a Joy for
ever.
It is nickel-pIated demoralizer of the
basest kind.
| In the good old times when a boy was
| at the wood pile you could be sure he WASH t
anywhere else and as long as You could
| hear the wheezy old saw keeping time to
his putting. You felt an absolute certainty
! that your child was not wearing out shoe
leather on the road to perdition.
The saw was seldom sharpened for fear
of wearing out the teeth and making it
easier for the boy, and there was a sooth-
| ing consolidation in knowing that the
amount of exercise to be drawn out of a
| cord of wood under these conditions would
be fully up to the maximum.
The longer it took to discover the sticks
the longer the boy would be out of mischief
and the families able to keep up more than
one fire had a moderately sure thing in
rearing their boys to manhood in more
safety and muscular soundness.
No effeminate duties in those times.
While the boy was wrestling with the
wood-pile. imprecating his fate, and resolv-
ing in his gloomy soul to be pirate, you
could feel sure that he wasn't robbing
somebody's orchard, and learning to be a
politician.
If we would bask in the sunshine of alb
| solute truergoodness, brethren, the good old
cord-wood days must be restored Simon
Flint