The Press., 1922-12-07
TRADE THE 'kIDs''
How New Yorker Would Eradi-
 cate Sin From Youngsters.
Brilliant Idea Came to Him as Result of Interview With Mothers of
 Future Citizens.

The New York apartment house IS an excellent laboratory in Which to study life and evolve profound theo- ries, observes a New York Sun WrlLer. For instance, there was the resident who came down to his office one day last week and announced he had dis covered a sure and simple scheme TOT extracting sinfulness from young children. He said that he had stum- bled upon his epochaf idea one eve ming while going through the apart ment with a petition to have the dumD waiter repaired.
 Five out of seven families in his apartment contain children. 1t was eight o'clock as he made his rouno' that time of the day when mothers their morale weakening, contemplate the bedlamite carrying on of their young ones and allow their minds to dwell morbidly on such subjects as hysteria, alteration and fever Of the brain.
 Mrs. Jones came to the door in the first-foor apartment and signed the petition; but it was probable she dld not know what she was signing, TOT three small boys were playing steam calliope in the hall behind her and conversation was virtually impossible. When she tried to read the paper TOT herself she could not concentrate. After staggering through line or two she gave up, putting her hand to her brain and crying, Don't blame this hullabaloo on my children! Blame it on that awful Smith boy !-the red headed one !--he always puts 'em up to something like this. If he was mine I'd educate him with bed slat." : The man went up a floor. Mrs. Smith signed his paper, too. But she had a hard time doing 1t, because two little girls in the room were yank1ng each others hair out and she was try ing to call an armiStice with her left hand while she wrote with her right. Done writing, she turned and prled the two enemies apart, took one or them to the elevator, rang the bell and told her to go right home and stay home.
 "That little Jones girl" she orated, coming back, "Is going to grow up female anarchist and get deported to Russia. = If she was my child I'd get a barrel stave and-and try to stave It off"
 On the third floor Mrs. Ferguson said: Of course, I'll sign it. Have you-" Then a riot burst out behind her. She whirled around. Three young ladies were playing dolls. But they were not using dolls, they were using a catI And the cat had got to the end of her rope. She had endured having a sunb0nnet on her head and shoes laced on her feet and corset bound round her abdomen, but when her three parents had decided that she was sick and put her to bed and begun to pour castor oil through a funnel into her throat she had quit i; she had risen up and used her claws and teeth in self-defense.
 Mrs. Ferguson shouted dramatically at one of these young ladies. "Jas- mine Foster, if I were your mother. Id-Pd-leave this apartment before I lose control of myselfl"
 The man went up one more floor and came to the Foster place. But before he could ring the bell, the door burst open and a little boy catapulted out into the hall as if he had been shot out with a cannon.
 ''Do you know what that-that Fer guson demon was doing?" raved Mrs. Foster, with her first words. "He was playing shoot the chutes down the lid of my grand piano!'
 " Then the agonized woman walled ooh, if could only get the chance to mother that-that blackguard for just one day just one solitary, little 'twenty-four-heur dayw
 And then the man went downstairs evolving his great fdea--congress should pass a law compelling every mother to trade children with another mother one day in every week.