Smyrna times., 1904-12-21
SHORT, SHARP AND SNAPPY
ITEMS OF MUCH INTEREST
BRIGHT, NEWSY PARAGRAPHS CLEANED
BY OUR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT.

Interesting Comments on Men and Measures
and the Important Happenings Through
out the Busy World.
The President has abandoned the
idea of summoning Congress in extra
session in March, as the tariff revision
movement is still immature. We think
this decision is in accordance with the
popular will.
Hill seems to be in charge of the
ChefOo correspondence bureau again.
We are continually informed that Port
Arthur is virtually" captured, that
Kuropatkin is all ready to give up, and
that the Baltic fleet has been ordered
to turn tail and come home. And vet
More than a hundred druggists in
Chicago have been arrested for filling
prescriptions with impure or injurious
drugs. 1t is strange that they should
do such thing when they might have
filled life preservers with iron bars
and got off scott free.
No lynchlng was reported through
out the month of November the first
month since 1885 to pass without
lynching. 1t is not likely that the
President claims this as a result of his
election, but David B. Hill is quoted
as alleging that mobs and lynching
were largely responsible for the result.
The Inauguration of President Diaz
OF Mexico, for his seventh four-year
term took place on the 1st. 1t does not
seem exactly republican to have pres
ident hold Office for thirty years, but it
is not to be disputed that the Diaz re-
gime has been highly beneficial In
training our neigbors in the art of self
government. He is one of the ablest
of the worlds rulers.
Secretary Taft must be given great
credit for his candid confession that
he blundered in ordering that the
Dingely tariff be applied to the Pan
anna Canal zone. Instead of assuming
to be lnfallible and omniscient he saws
he was mistaken and now advises re-
storing to Panama and Colon their
commercial Importance instead of
building Ancon and Christobal at the
expense of the old canal terminals.
Justice is a curious Jade. In Con-
necticut Judge L. S. Burr, convicted
of embezzlement to the amount of
s., ,572, is given one year in Jail Horace
Isaacs, for horse theft gets three years
in States prison. Mrs. Chadwick gets
what does Mrs. Chadwick get, any
now? And banker Beckwith-no-
body knows the punishment he gets
but himself.
Perhaps the President went out of
his way to air some of his pet theories
In his message, but the recommenda-
tion of the whipping post for wife
beaters seem to meet with warm public
approval. The objection that it ''tends
to brutalIze" no more holds in the case
of an inhuman husband than in the
case of an unruly boy. 1t is obvious
that wife beater is brutalized already
and will be benefited rather than in
jured or degraded by carrying a few
exemplary welts upon his bare back.
1t is time that the Blue Hens Chicken
received reinforcement. If there is
any sympathy to be distributed it
should not be wasted on the beastlv
ruffian for whom any kind ofimprison-
ment is far too good. but bruised and
tortured woman who groans IN an
guish not only on account of her phy-
sical decorations, but because she is
chained to such husband. 1t IS bv
no means just that such a creature as
he should be nursed and coddled and
fatted in transient Imprisonment.