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About The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip. (Portland, Or.) 1923-1927 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 1, 1927)
THE UNITED AMERICAN February 1927 the sheet for sale, including a close-up picture posed for, with the sleuths who affected the capture, proudly displaying their captive, manacled to one or more of his captors, to create the wanted news impression of the ferocity of the culprit who played the. main part in that particular drama.----------- The daily press claims that it is “giving the public what it wants.” Perhaps it is, but it is a lame excuse to present in view of the consequences America is collecting in human delinquency. It is the mission of the press to uplift instead of dragging down. If the skill of the news-writers that are engaged in “coloring” crime news, were diverted into the channels of coloring stories of the little achievements for human goodness that’ can be found everywhere, the public TASTE for “news” would rapidly take a turn for the better. GIVING TT MAY be true that “Men give in proportion as 1 they receive,” as Knoeppel puts it, but there is greater truth in this saying, if we reverse it, for “Men RECEIVE as they GIVE.” It is futile to expect to get something and not give something—it is against God’s law. You must put yourself into your work your business or your profession before you can expect to get much out of it. Has the thought accurred to you with respect to YOUR Country? Have you received from America all the fine things it has for you ? If not, have you GIVEN to America any part of yourself ? Only by taking an in terest in the things that are of, by and for America will you perceive how wonderful it is to give without a thought for what you ought to get in return for what you do. By striving to do something for your adopted country and for your fellow-citizens can you find real happiness in citizenship and reap the full harvest of true fellowship and good will. There must be, in the finale, a net result of our activities, something of value to the heart, mind and soul, if we, as individuals, are to share in the dividends that good citizenship earns. WHAT IS A FORD? IMTHETHER a Ford car comes within the provision of the Oklahoma statute providing that “auto mobiles and other motor vehicles shall not be exempt from attachment, execution and other forced sales,” was recently an issue before the courts in that state, in case now listed as “First State Bank v. Pulliam, 112 Okla. 22, 239, Pacific 595.” The barrister, represent ing the defense, contended that a Ford car was exempt under the statute, and, to make matters plain, the court was required to construe the meaning of the law. That fact would be of little interest hadn’t the language of the court, as recorded, been of material interest to all those who drive around in what is commonly termed a Ford car. Here is what the court said: It is not contended that a Ford car is a “tool,” and we have never heard it called a “tool,” although we confess to having heard it called everything else within the range of the English language and several foreign languages. If exemp tions could ever have been claimed for it under paragraph The case may be persued further by looking up annotations in 2 A. L. R. 827; 36 A. L. R. 670. Now the question is: what does the owner of what is termed a Ford car actually possess—an auto mobile, a vehicle, a steam piano, a circus calliope or an outfit of tools, utensils and instruments called an “apparatus?” Judged by the volume of its sound, it comes nearer being an apparatus or an organ than anything else we know of, but the learned jurist who construed the Oklahoma statute, despite his learned discourse on the subject, has left us much in the dark, and we are unable, from the court’s language, to conjure a picture of positive classification. And the question is as moot as ever: What is a Ford? The wife of a Sedro Wooley, Washington, plumber who fared forth after dark in the little family car to take her illicit lover for a ride along a lonely country road, took just one ride too many along the path of frivolousness, alas her lover is dead—his life shot and beaten out of him by her in furiated husband who had tucked himself away in the tonneau of the little car before his wife started out for her clandestine tryst. Now that thé husband is in jail and the young man she drove to his death has been laid away as a sacrifice to her passions, the “cheat” must have a wonderful time of it contemplating her harvest of murder and shame. The “cheats” usually spear themselves in the end. Some of these days another “friend husband” who works hard while his friend wife is out with a lover, is going to take a lay-off and trail his frolicking, good-time hunting spouse to her trysting place. And another cheat will pay in blood and shame. “Love thy neighbor as theyself” is a very old doctrine which most people believe in but fail to exemplify. It is simple and direct and antedates almost every other code of human conduct. The writers of the Levitical law may or may hot have coined the term, but in laying it down as a basic doctrine, they fashioned a divinely inspired mandate, which no one since has ever been able to make any improve ments upon. The modern age has tried its hand at modifying this doctrine, keeping only the first and the last word, but the experiment has been anything but a success. “Love thyself” is a doctrine simple enough, but it has hardened the arteries of life because it left out the human touch and ceased to radiate that warmth of neighborly love that makes all the world akin. A cannibal preserve among the primitive New Guineans under England’s protection is the latest recommenda tion on record coming from Englands great naturalist, Walter Goodfellow, who, himself, has had many a narrow escape from the stewpots of the hungry and very primitive natives, Mr. Goodfellow’s brief for cannibalism is evidentally actuated by his desire to leave unchanged some of the things which our civilization has tampered with. He wants the country closed to missionaries and traders, as it is “the last remnant of un touched nature” where men still live in the Stone Age. “Let cannibalism alone, it has its own natural check,” is the way he puts it, in arguing that civilization is doing little good for the tribe in question. New Guinea may be an excellent Place Your Orders With The United American Advertisers—and Tell Them Why Colore by Munsell Color Services Lao Page Thirteen 6595, Compiled Statutes 1921, and prior to the act of 1913, it would have to fall within the term “apparatus” and all lexicographers define “apparatus” as an “outfit of tools, utensils or instruments adapted to the accomplishment of any kind of work, or for the performance of an experiment or operation; a set of such appliances, a group or set of organs concerned in the performance of a single function.” While a Ford car may emit as great a volume of sound as a steam piano or circus calliope, we are not prepared to say it is a set of organs and therefore not within the protection of the statute exempting “apparatus” from attachment and execution.