﻿MUSINGS 
 
In the midst of prosperity we are in debt! Yet there are those who are too proud to shoot (snipes)! 

Advertisement.––Eight-room house to ex-side change for a grocery.––Lima, Ohio. 
That bird sure is hungry. Mebbe he’s going on a canned goods diet. 

‘Way back in Eighteen Hundred and Few ‘Steen a 2 per cent tax on incomes of $4,000 and better was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court––if memory serves me rightly. 
The Constitution, or Court, has changed on mightily since those days. 

Things will change; nothing is permanent––and we’ve got it, ain’t we, Labor? 
Got what? 
Nothing! 

Only the other day I was in court, an interested spectator at my own trial: 
“You are accused of trespassing.” 
“I was looking for work, oh judge,” I said. 
“You were on the railroad property.” 
I don’t know whose property it was. I was walking between the railroad and a residence on a piece of ground that looked like a much-travelled highway. 
“Don’t you know you have no right to the walk on railroad property?” 
I certainly do, judge––and as I have no property of my own to walk on I think I better have my legs cut off and make soup out of them. . . . 
“You get right out of town.” roars the red judge. 
“Walk out “ 
“No; ride out,” he yells––and declared the court adjourned for refreshments. 
Lost “time” is never found again. Next time I shall walk on the other side of the residence. 

Eggs and potatoes now sell for 2 cents a piece (take your pick) that is, of medium potatoes––the big ones, of course, cost a good deal more because they take up so much more parking space in a bushel. 
And a bushel, you know, is holy. 

Owing to the late lamented hard coal strike the Delaware & “Sackawana” railroad repair shops have been running skip-stop “time.” It, and the Erie railroad, resumes in full. 
Owing to the hard coal strike the New York Central has been working on full time with a full force all winter. 
Lehigh Valley will continue its four days a week schedule. 
Other railroads report “there would be no change in their car shop forces or schedules.” All in all the railroads East are doing a rushing traffic business, a sign of relief for this workless age. 
Serious unemployment in Van Werth, Lima, Findlay and Fostoria, etc. 
Our author is chief sufferer. 

Last Saturday morning witnessed a congestion of horny handed sons of toil on the main street of Lima, Ohio––out for “air.” Not a cheerful word in the whole bunch. 

So much for work. 
Now let us continue our musings about prohibition––for we are deeply concerned:  
Many people view prohibition as an unadulterated blessing –– the reverse can be proven––and, I shall offer here my final remarks along that line. Prior to prohibition the whiskey business was in the hands of a, whiskey trust, rapidly falling into fewer and fewer hands. An alarming condition. The few were getting rich too rapidly and their wealth was beginning to interfere in the affairs of other, more or less, legitimate business. Something “had to be done.” 
Other business, too, was becoming too centralized, so, the distillers were selected to do the grand flop. Prohibition came and took the liquor business away from the trust and distributed it among hundreds of thousands of moonshiners and bootleggers that seemed to spring out of the ground overnight––men who ordinarily were “never doing well” were soon riding around in Stutz-mobiles and embracing the sheriffs in a most patronizing way. 
Now I do claim that prohibition has served to decentralize the whiskey business and, although I’m not in favor of booze, I’lI frankly state that I’m not in favor of prohibition––insofar as prohibition doesn’t touch the question of drinking in the least: 
I’m opposed to all such backward steps and doubling back. In fact, to be strictly honest, I believe a drink right now (its cold) wouldn’t harm my delicate constitution.