The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1909-07-24

upon which the child may perch AS a
result of the screw points. nail heads
and broken castings the chGdren'S cloth
ing is in a perpetual state of snags,
tears and gouges. Why they look like
scarecroWs. My two little girls and my
boys clothing was so badly mutilated
and torn the past winter that my
mother, myself and my oldest daugh-
ter could not, by working all night,
keep their clothes mended fast enough
to make them presentable day by day
il, school
THE house is so loose and open that
the annual fumigation is nothing but a
farce. 1t is so open that the stove is
unable to give cut anything like pro
per or evenly distributed heat. The
cracks around the window sashes let
piercing drafts of winter wind ccne di-
rectly On the heads of the children.
The desks are loose and totter SO
badly that the children have no chance
at all 20 write on them.
Nov the people of the district want
a new school house and yet the board
refuse to build ore. We have asked
for repairs on the structure IN order
to make it comfortable, sanitary, de-
cent and respectable, and they have
turned us down, saying that it was
not worth it,
Now are we not entitled to some re
lief of some kind? Do we have to send
our children to such place? Is not
the district board elected to do the
Will of Ihe patrons of the school
Or are they elected to do only as they
please?
I shudder 10 think of sending chill
dren to that house to spend several
hours a day. 1t is liable to collapse
I.Cst any time. L would be an unfit
place TO store grain or properly house
animals, but still we are required to
send our children there. It has a rank,
musty, rotten odor which cannot be
healthy.
%I,c n Sol TNfa fafn
n:ents. Our school grounds are ideal
and location fine. The district can at
ford a new house. Our old rattletrap
of a house is becoming an object of
ridicule. Are We not entitled to a new
house. or at least to repairs? Let us
hear from you. If you have any in
fluence please do your best to have the
situation relieved if not remedied."
oh, COwley, thy glory hath departed
unless thy people rise up n their wrath
and compel this school board to build
a new school house at once. No mother
IL Israel ever made a more earnest or
moving appeal for the safety of the
temple in Jerusa lem from Valerian and
his Roman soldiers than has this lady
for a new school house. A woman who
can write such a letter IS entitled to
the best school house money can build
to which to send her children.
lawyer from western Kansas.
whose client was confined in an in
sane asylum. had applied to the su-
preme court for a writ of habeaS
corpus and he was arguing his case
before the honorable body. He was
most anxious to get his client outside
the walls of the asylum, and carried
away by his own eIoquence and the
justice of his cause. he shouted: why,
gentlemen, my client is not half as
crazy as those paranOiacs who go out
every afternoon to the baseball game
and yell like fiends and wave their
arms like windmills at the players who
toss a ball around the lot
Now at least four of the justices of
the Kansas supreme court are baseball
cranks and never miss game when
lawyer after calling the justices mani
acs to their faces, is still wondering
why in the world he failed to get his
client out of the mad house. AS for
the honorable, the supreme court, that
body is doubtless wondering why this
lawyer was not sent along in the first
place to keep his client company.
Speaking of the recent raise in
cream rates made by the Kansas rail
road board, there came to town today
q man from Wichita by the name of
J. \. Dorsey, eX-dOorkeeper in the last
house of representatives, and appear
ing before the board made complaint
that this jump in rates would put his
mineral water business into the ditch.
1t seems that he shipped this water
over the state in ten gallon bottles,
just as the farmers ship their cream in
ten gallon cans. and the increased rate
caught him flush on the point of the
jaw. He was groggy and he called to
the board for help. The board prom
Used him that the increase in rates
should not apply to him Yet if the
boards higher rates meant death to
this mans mineral water business, will
they not also kill the big creameries
of the state? Is the mineral water
business to be saved and the cream
cries left to perish? If the rates
worked such an injustice on this man
that a special dispensatiOn had to be
made to protect him, why does the
board not recede from its untenable
position and play fair with the cream
cries?
Charlie Barnes. superintendent of
insurance, is the man behind the gun
in Kansas these days. He is standing
in the spotlight and the people are
waiting for him to restrict the Ma
tional Bankers Insurance company
and save a special session of the legis-
lature, and to work out the new in
surance law by reducing the rates on
fire insurance. These are the two
most important matters now before
the cople of the state and their solu-
ton lies in Mr.. Barnes hands. He
can play the parts of both Cromwell
and Richelieu- He can dissolve the
bankers company as Cromwell did the
r0va list narlia emf and he can hiring