﻿AMONG US HUMANS 

According to last sabbath’s Topeka Daily Capital, a prize for singing of “Star Spangled Banner” was offered, but found no takers. 
Here’s the how: 
“Emporia, Kan., June 21.— (Special) — Even the D. A. R. has a skeleton in its closet. At a D. A. R. breakfast here this week, a prize was offered to anyone who could ring correctly three verses of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’. 
“A patriotic chord’s boomed loudly on the first stanza, followed by a deep silence. Then one woman started singing the third verse, thinking it was the second.” (A mathematical blunder). 
“She sang it thru, could think of no more verses and the prize wasn’t awarded.” 
Shucks! That’s nothing. The girls simply had an off day! I remember once when I was to sing in front of an audience of 50,000, I quite forgot the ballad, title and all. Did I stand there squirming, helplessly? Not by a jugfull! 
I sang them “The Lords Prayer.” 
The D. A. R. girls could have done the same thing without anybody getting hep to the substitution . 

But leaving all jokes aside: I’ll bet the D. A. R. one dollar against a cooky that any bunch of “reds” in the country can sing that song, front end first, without slurring a single note—are you game—or dontcha gamble? Me thinks the D. A. R. will put in a miserable summer with their singing lessons . . 

“Clarendon, Tex., June 23.— (A. P.)—The Donley County State Bank was robbed of $7,500 by two unmasked men at the noon hour today.” 
The dirty rascals! They didn’t have the decency to wear masks. What’s this world coming to anyway? The flaggers bare from the ground up and now those robbers committing bare-face robbery in broad daylight. Watson, the arsenic quick! 

Few years back I said, “if Babe Ruth is worth $50,000, Bob Shawkey is worth a million”—which goes to show I know something else besides Industrial Unionism. My knowledge is multi-various or mutilateral, however you please. 

Yesterday a granger brought 100 “fries” (chickens) into town and sold them for $13—an unlucky number; 13 cents a piece—another unlucky number—the man must be hoodooed. That $13 is what is known as “farm-relief.” 
O wot a relief! 
Butter fat 23 per lb. 
Corn-willy (packed in Urugay) 40 cents a short lb. 
Watson, you heard what I said! 

The federal farm board wheat stabilization corporation is on a larger scale what a community chest is on smaller—and just about is charitable. 
If community chest functions in any other capacity than a “self-devouring-stall,” then great things, circumscribed, may be expected from the “board”—limited because of the unwieldiness of its size—but, if the “chest” does not function helpfully, then we must learn to view the efforts of the “board” as constituting a sorry zero. 

Power companies (utility )are the only outfits that put out their product at 15 times its cost . . . 
Labor power is sold at cut-rate prices. The cost to produce labor power for one day is the cost of “3 squares,” plus incidentals, all told, say, $3.00. 
Fifteen times $3 equals $45.00. Forty-five dollars, then, is a days pay for a workingman if he cares to charge like the power companies do. 
Power companies are able to charge 15 times the cost of a volt or watt of power; plus extra perambulations of well-oiled meters—because they are organized—a company. 
Labor must sell its power at cut rates—sometimes below cost—because it is disorganized as individuals; is not known as labor but as labor’ers—notice the split. 

The writer is wrong as hell; but right, nevertheless.- Altogether too damned much perfume in “Joe” Addison’s writings. 

All a present day sheik needs is a Ford, pint of hootch and a package of cigarettes. Isn’t love wonderful? 

Hays, Kan.—At this writing, Tuesday, June 24, we are on the verge of being drafted into harvest work, to make the acquaintance of that famous “big winter stake.” 
But there is a hitch to the program. Some of the wages offered look as if they had been imported here from my old stamping ground, Conway Springs, Kan. Then again the farmers are casting sheep’s eyes at the harvest hand’s dollar, instead of tending to their business of selling their wheat and brussels-sprouts. Indications are the wages will be six dollars up—the boys have talked it over. 
Not a bad idea, it seems. 
It sometimes pays to pop-off.