Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The Loup City northwestern. (Loup City, Neb.) 189?-1917 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 14, 1909)
H ANS 7/ANGER NAMES HIS OWN SALARY I WAGNER AND COBB j Along about March 21 each year Hans Wagner, the great Pittsburg shortstop, who leads the National league in batting, gets a letter that reads something like this: "Dear Hans: Inclosed is a contract for the coming baseball season. It is all blank, as you will see. Fill it out to suit yourself, Hans; but in fixing your salary please remember that tunes are very bad. Still, we must have you and will pay whatever you say.” Hans gets this letter while he is at the office of the independent steel plant that he and his brother own. He studies the statistics and finds that 366,427 persons paid to see the games at Pittsburg last year. Then back goes this letter to Barney Drey fus: "Mien Lieber Barney: Yours chust received. Times was pretty hard here," too. I hardly ever saw der rail markets so bad. But maybe I get away this summer for a little while if you pay me $12,000. I hate to say this, but what can I do?” This is a fact—Hans fixes his sal ary, and expert opinion is that it is $2,000 a month for six months. And here's the point: There are a lot of Hans Wagners, big and little, in thebaseball business, and any under taking that can pay such salaries may be regarded as having reached that dignity which entitles it to be called an industry. Most of the baseball fans may not know that there is such a thing as the baseball industry of the United States, but there is. Nor can it be de scribed without the use of big figures. It is great in income, great In expend iture, great in the number of men em ployed and still greater in the number of patrons. CLARKE FOUR TIME WINNER Pittsburg Leader Holds the Record Among Managers for Baseball Pen nant Victories. Pittsburg, which clinched the hon ors as champion of the National league for 1909. also won the pen nant in 1901. 1902 and 1903, giving Manager Clarke the distinction of be ing the only manager in the National league with a record of four pennants. Only three other managers of major league ciubs ever surpassed this rec ord. They .were Anson, Selee and Hanlon, whose teams won the pen nants five times. Five players hold the record of be ing members of' a club that won the pennant four times. They are Man ager Clarke, Shortstop Wagner, Cen ter Fielder Leach and Pitchers Lee ver and Phillippe. Pittsburg is the best hitting team in either major league, having 1,282 bin gles to their credit, including 204 doubles, 88 triples and 24 home runs, and is second in fielding. Chicago be ing first. The Pittsburg team is strong in having the second division of its line up the hardest-hitting aggregation of any second division in any major league club. These men are Miller, Abstein, Wilson and Gibson. Another interesting feature is that O'Connor was catching for the team when the pennant was clinched and the only other game he caught this year was on May 5, when his three hits helped Pittsburg defeal Chicago, thus placing Pittsburg in the lead in the race. Catcher George Gibson has caught 130 consecutive games. Loses Flag on Home Run. Des Moines won the pennant in the Western league by a remarkable se ries of games, the winner being unset tled until the very last ball was thrown. Des Moines won over Sioux City by just two points. Sioux City stood at the head of the column, with Des Moines second. Sioux City was scheduled to play two games against Omaha and Des Moines one with Lin coln. In order for Des Moines to win the pennant it was necessary for Omaha to win both games and Des Moines to win its game with Lincoln. Des Moines won and Omaha took the first game from Sioux City. With Sioux City two scores to the good in the seventh inning of the second game and Omaha with two runners on bases Kane of Omaha hit for a home run and won the last game. SUGGESTION FOR PITTSBURG’S PENNANT FLAG SHARE LIMELIGHT PITTSBURG AND DETROIT STARS ATTAIN BASEBALL GLORY IN DIFFERENT WAY. GREAT PLAYERS COMPARED Not Alike in Temperament But Each “Get There” with Equal Force and Certainty—Both Hitters and Speedy Baserunners. A few years ago many columns of space were wasted on the relative abilities of Hans Wagner and Napoleon Lajoie, the hitting kings of the Na tional and American leagues, respec tively. You don't hear much about Lajoie any more, but his successor as the star player of the American league—Tvrus Raymond Cobb—is now being compared to the Flying Dutch man. and not to his disadvantage either. Wagner and Lajoie are temperamen tally alike. Both are modest, quiet men on and off the ball field. Neither has ever appeared to be a brilliant thinker or executor of plays; both seem to have enough natural ability to mechanically execute plays that would appear sensational if performed by another player. The comparison between Cobb and Wagner is an interesting one. Both achieve great results, but not in the same manner. Wagner is a ponder ously perfect athlete, while Cobb, a slender, delicate-appearing chap, pos sesses ability which is constantly brought to the surface by his-brilliant plays and the wonderful spirit that has made him envied and hated by others. Both men are wonderful hitters, wonderful base runners, and wonder ful fielders. For more than twelve years Wagner has kept up a dizzy pace. He has played every position, and not only that, has been a sensa tion in every position. He has the speed of Cobb, the terrific hitting powers of Jajoie, the energy of Jen j nings, and the disposition of Willie Keeler. Cobb, on the other hand, has been setting the kingly pace for but three years. But how different they are! You point to Cobb with pride as the ideal ball player, and then you watch Hans Wagner and smile at the comparison For all that Cobb is, except in ability to "get there," Wagner isn't. In action Ty Cobb comes closer tc the athletic ideal than any other man in baseball. Built like a greyhound his wonderful lithe body is always a study. His slight waist, his magnifi cently-formed shoulders, his wiry limbs with slight ankles and wrists, and his well-poised head make one thing of the idealized Grecian youth who lives now only in the marble of the museums and art schools. Wagner is without precedent in the athletic world. As Cobb wins admira- j tion by his grace, Wagner awes one i by his bulk. Wagner just bulges all i over. He has to have shoes made to order, he is cramped in an ordinary bed. his hands are as big as good sized hams. When Wagner wabbles to the plate, swinging his great bat, it looks as though Gibraltar were toppling over. Hut when he is set to swing there is action—wonderful action. Before that it seems as though the legs, arms and body belonged to three different be ings; but once the great sluggei swings there is a concentration of en-. ergy that makes the most stout-hearted of pitchers wince. Wagner hits .300 every year by force of habit. He is worth well ovet | $100,000, is a bachelor and is re- ; sponsible to no one. Cobb is different in every respect.! To begin with the Georgian plays ball j because he loves the game. His whole ! heart and soul is wrapped up in it Cobb could make four bits and play a wondeful game, and yet. if the team lost, he would be the bluest man on the club. He likes his base hits, as all ball players do, but he plays only to win. One consolation the Chicago Nation als. who failed to win four consecutive pennants, can have is the fact that Pittsburg did not beat' the record they made in 1908. when t.I v won 116 games and lost 36, giving them a per centage of .763. Pittsburg in playing for the world's baseball title has live men who took part in the 1903 series which Boston Americans, led by Jimmy Collins, won. These men are Clarke, Leever, Phil lippi, Leach and Wagner. A qualifying statement to the effect that if a business venture he is inter ested in proves worth while he will quit the game next year was made by "Christy" Mathewson of the Giants." However, lie says this is not his "an nual veil," and that whim he gets ready to quit he will simply quit. The South Bend Central league fran chise is not on the market notwith standing reports circulated about the circuit. Bert Annis, owner of the club, announces that he had no inten tlon of disposing of his holding. Catcher Guy Sample has been signed by the owner* of the East Liv-’ erpool team to manage the club next season. Sample was with. Zanesville last season. As His Mistress Had Done &_i—. Chinese Cook, Like All His Race, Capable Only of Imitating the Acts of Others. “Chinese need to be taught to be more self-reliant^’ said the -woman who employs a Chinese cook. “The other day I ordeted my cook to make a pudding for dinner, stopping a min lute to see if he followed my instruc tions, for I h^d taught • him to make this particular pudding. He had seen me smell the eggs before putting them into a bowl and he began by putting the first egg to his nose. He seemed' on the right road, so I left the kitchen for a minute. Returning I discovered that he had used five eggs instead of three as I had taught him. Taking him to task for not following my in structions he answered ‘Yes, three here (pointing to the bowl) two here (indicating where he had thrown the others). Same as you.’ "It dawned on me that wh^ I had taught him to make the pudding I had found the second and third eggs that I had broken to be bad and had thrown both away. He had simply done what he had seen me do—after smelling, the second and third egg he had thrown them away.” Is Always Near Him. It costs the devil little trouble to catch a lazy man.—German. Whats The , Mattel ^ Wnwmmw UMAMD* SOMETHING seems to be go ing wrong in the usual even tenor of wedded life in the various parts * of the United t States. A sort of a frenzy seems to be sweeping many staid and respected bus bands in the va rious professions l and positions in / the business world I into the troubled ' waters where cruise the daring love pirates of femininity. The government has gone to the trou ble of sending out a special commis sion to tabulate the causes of di vorce and the number granted and the reasons for their being granted. The commission has not finished its 5 work as yet, but lilt? earner re turns indicate that the husband is go ing to nave to shoulder the greater part of the blame. Hundreds of dusty records contain ing the details of half-forgotten cases are being dug out of the vaults of the courthouses in the big cities and the backwoods county seats. Press dis patches from here and there over the country indicate that an epidemic of wife desertions, abandonments and general infidelities is raging. St. Louis, Los Angeles, Waukegan, Wil liamsburg, Pittsbnrg, New York and Long Island answer to the roll when the list of recent delinquencies Is called. The modern man seems to be drifting rapidly away from the old ideals of a wife, children, a home and a competency, says a writer in the St. Louis Republic. Modern literature is full of erotic and neurotic tales of clandestine love affairs: and the churches, courts and conventionalities seem powerless to hold the husband to the time-honored way or' living, loving and dying. He won't listen to the preacher, he is not afraid of the court and he scorns conventionalities. The old ideals are losing their grip. The deeps of the social order seem to be breaking up and casting their wreckage high and dry at a hundred places in this and other countries. It looks as if the day of chivalry was dead, the true chivalry that was rooted in something deeper than a mere desire to appear at one's best in the complex wheels within wheels of the society of to-day. For something seems to be the matter with the modern husband. Not that the modern wife is always guiltless of sins against herself and others, but the husband seems to be the one that leads in abandonments, abuses, infidelities and other sins against the marriage state. Old Bonds No Longer Bind. It may be that the bow of Cupid is losing its strength; that the arrows of the little god are becoming blunted or that his right arm is losing its cun ning. At any rate, it seems that his arrows and darts are going astray and causing more heart aches and domes tic troubles than the efforts of a ra tional little god ever should. Preach ers, lawyers, doctors, business men and millionaires of the multiple class are furnishing from their ranks the latest examples of the loosening and breaking away from the old bonds. "Affinities’' came first; then all the rage was for “soul-mates,” and now the black flag of the “love-pirate” has been run to the masthead by certain of the more unscrupulous buccaneers of both sexes. And as a result hun dreds of homes in this and other coun tries are flying the distress signal. This thing has swept across the country like a virulent epidemic, leav ing here and there a plague spot of es pecial malignancy. A few- years ago an artist with the artistic tempera ment developed to the point that ex ceeded even the eccentricities of a prima donna, decided that his mar riage was a mistake, and straightaway proceeded to correct it by taking to himself an "affinity of the soul.” The matter was carried through with the most brazen disregard of public opin ion that it is possible to imagine. The artist and the artist's “affinity” went down to the docks and said good-by to the wife when she sailed for Europe with her children. However, the gen tleman paid the usual penalty of the pioneer. His house was wrecked by an angry mob of his neighbors and he was rather roughly handled him self. But the popular indignation soon died out and the artist and his "affini ty” settled down to an existence de clared to be as idyllic as a poet's dream or an artist's vision. Idyll Roughly Shattered. Alas for the frailties of human na ture and the erratic whims of the ar tistic temperaments. But a few months passed until the artist was a defendant in a magistrate’s court, charged with having laid violent hands on his “affinity.” The matter was hushed up and things were quiet again for a short time, and then the final explosion came. The “affinity” went home to her mother, considerably sad der. and it is to be hoped, somewhat wiser than when she left the parental roof tree. The artist lost but little time in securing another “soul-mate.” and in order to be quit of the sneers and revilings of their acquaintances in America they set sail for Europe. The disillusioned “affinity," with her notions of platonic love considerably shaken, has recently returned from Europe under an assumed name. To her intimate friends she has confided that the artist is a monument of con ceit and repulsiveness. But the experience of the first of the affinity seekers has had no notice able effect on others inclined to throw aside their marital vows for a pretty face or a stalwart form. The germ of material unrest began creeping westward, stopping to cause wife de sertion in Pittsburg and a runaway elopement of a staid old organist and school teacher with the prettiest girl in the choir in a western village. Illicit Love Above Life’s work. He left a wife and three children hind him when they made their mad dash away from respectability and so cial correctness. Shortly after the escapade of the artist had faded from the public mind a new sensation was sprung by the disappearance of the pastor of one of the richest and most exclusive churches of Long Island. With him had disappeared a communi cant of his church, a young woman of unusual beauty and a member of a wealthy family. This minister had thrown aside his priestly robes and given up a reputation that he had been years in building, and the two had dis appeared. leaving to the mercy of the public the deserted wife. They vanished into the 80,000,000 other inhabitants of the union and were not heard of for months. Finally they were discovered in San Francis co, where the unfrocked minister was trying to earn a living for himself and his “soul partner" by working as a painter and paper hanger. Even the staid and orthodox followers of the ancient Hebrew faith are not ex empt. The recent arrest of a former St. Louisan by his w'ife wrhen he made her a little visit after an absence of a couple of years shows that the rabbis of the faith of Isaac and Abraham are not able to stem the current that is making inroads on the morals of their faith. This Jewish Don Juan had a wife in each of the three principal colonies of his people in this country —New York, Chicago and St. Louis— all having been the scenes of his mat rimonial adventures. He has placed three marriages to his credit or dis credit. But he was so unsatisfactory as a husband that his St. Louis wife, after arresting and charging him with bigamy, had him released and gave him $50 with which to get out of town. some Reasons «uvanocu. The columns of newspapers, maga zines and other publications are full of articles on this evil from almost every imaginable source. Hundreds of reasons are being assigned in editori als and special articles for the tenden cy to ignore or shatter the bonds of Hymen. One commonly given by some of the women writers and a majority of the men is the loss of the feeling among the men that women need pro tection. The woman's right movement has been coming to the front very rapidly In later years and mankind having seen women calmly appropriating cer \ WHZ7Y TAT CNOXUS' J S/AL f/fffS- ATS Jv'Y/Z Jr X IS rffCAT TO TAT COZ/JYT/ff^r j ^-*“§*-* ‘,3 tain jobs of the men who were sup porting families, have come to the con clusion that they are ambitious to at tain economic independence. Another thing frequently insisted on by women writers and women think ers alike is that modern man is fickle beyond all understanding. They claim that the deathless love, sung by the poets and dilated upon by the ro mancer, simply does not exist. That most marriages, after all, are founded upon convenience and habit. Women are generally lauded as being far the more faithful and long suffering of the two sexes. The correspondents’ col umns of the metropolitan dailies are full of letters from wives who write tearfully that their husbands are wearying of them, although they have been married only a year or two. The burden of the pleas that come up from among these worried wives seems to be the old poetical phrase slightly changed, “Love is of man's life but a part, 'tis woman s whole ex istence.” But if these women talk *o their husbands as freely as they write to the editors there is small wonder that the man in the case falls easy prey to the "other woman.” Woman But an Incident. One of the “blue-grass school” of authors in his last piece of fiction shows still another reason for the gradual growing away of the husband from the earlier devotional attitude that is the heritage of the honeymoon. The hero is a professor in one of the little inland schools down in the blue grass country. He has been there for ! years, but now the time has come when he has received a call to go east into a wider field of usefulness that his ripened powers seem to merit. Woman like, his wife is still wrapped up in her devotion to him and their children. He, on the other hand, is becoming more absorbed in his work than in her and his home. She slowly realizes that woman is only an inci dent in the life of a man. The churches and civic societies for decades have been fulminating against the rottenness of human nature; the moral sense of the community always condemns it. but whatever its causes may be, they are always strong enough enough to sweep down the puny barriers of convention and law. The new school of ethnology and so cial life has been giving these social evils its attention. But the scientists admit the impulses of man’s character run so deep in raw human nature that a remedy is well-nigh impossible. Prof. Starr, whose vicious attacks on womankind and her nature have been so widely noted, has recently taken up the study of the civilized male as a social animal. Professor Starr's first verdict on tin ordinary man and his habits and de sires was delivered with characteristic venom. He had made his earliest studies of this character during the summer season just passed, and had found that the pretty girl in the chorus and the lure of pink-tinted fleshing; were just as strong a drawing card as the comic artist of all these years has been telling us. The shows that con tained the most coarse infidelity and the most blatant sneers at married life were the ones the husbands whose wives were away for the summer seemed most anxious to see. Every joke with the married man as the vic tim was applauded uproariously. The most popular songs were those that told of the joys of the married man while wifey was away. ”1 love, I love my wife, but O you kid,” was always one of the hits of the evening with these summer bachelors, according to Prof. Starr. Affects All Classes. And the staid bankers, brokers and dry-goods men would stand on the seats and beat one another over the shoulders with their Panamas when the cantatrice in pink tights would trip lightly to the footlights, throw a kiss to the nearest box and warble, "My Wife Is Gone to the Country." The whole bunch that came under the professor’s observation acted as if they were having the best time that had come their way since they left the altar on the day of their marriage . There is no sign that seems to show such instances as that of the preacher and the choir girl who were arrested in an Illinois town recently are on the decrease. You can hardly pick up a paper, metropolitan or rural, witho coming across a headline telling tli story of a recreant husband. There seems to be a germ in the air that makes for loose living no matter what the consequences. It is a far cry from this love-pirate, soul-mate, affinity craze back to the simple living, lo»-^ ing and dying of our pioneer grand parents. In the “Good Old Days.” They say that in the good old days, beiore marriage had come to be dis cussed in the light of a "failure." no one ever dreamed of suggesting that the husband got all the ha'pence, whilst the wife, metaphorically, had nothing save the kicks and pinpricks of matrimony. The varied trials and crosses that come into every married life were ac cepted as matters of course, and to have suggested to some sweet young great-grandmamma, in the days ere she was a great-grandmamma, that her lord and master had the "best" of life, would have filled her with equal amazement and horror. "Appetite comes in eating," say *he French. And assuredly the talking and writing indulged in on the subject of matrimonial jars increases them to an astonishing extent. The mere ack nowledgement of the tiny pinpricks magnifies them, to say nothing of the desecration of the dear old loyalty that washed (if there was any to wash) Us dirty linen at home, and turned a smiling and unruffled face ^ toward the cold criticism of the world Apart from nature having elected to handicap the fairer sex in a physical sense—an injury that even the most discontented new woman must surely recognize the futility of railing against, more especially since, with out an effort on her own part, it ob tains countless concessions from the opposite sex—apart from this one im mense superiority of man—and where in lies the "best" that husbands in general are said to enjoy? woman Often to Blame? A freer, more diversified life? t'n doubtedly; but, in nine cases out of ten, the woman who so bitterly com plains of the “monotony" of her life is largely herself to blame. She has laid herself—a willing sacrifice—upon the altar of home and children, and then grumbles when the sacrifice is unthinkingly accepted! Paradoxical as it may sound, worn anly unselfishness is at the root of much married trouble. The wife lays upon her slender shoulders more than any one pair can carry, and, when she fails beneath the unreasonable load, blames Providence and the mar riage state, grows discontented. sharps tempered, and is actually a less desir able wife and mother than a more commonsensical, if selfish, sister, who lives up to the belief that all work and no play makes Jill an exceeding ly dull and morbid creature. Weather Predictions. When a hurricane is announced as coming in this direction conviction that there is no hurricane, or that it is belated, or that it is headed some other way, amounts to a certainty. An international weather code will soon be in use the world over. WOMAN IS ALWAYS AT HOME For Fourteen Years -Lighthouse Keep er Has -Not Spent a Night Away from It. American women have the reputa tion of being restless gadabouts, not perhaps without having given grounds for the accusation; but there’s one American woman who is a homestayer of the most chronic type. Mrs. Kate Walker has lived in the lighthouse on Robbins reef for 23 years, and the number doesn’t have arty mystic significance implying an impending departure either. For 14 of those years, ever since her hus band’s death, she herself has been keeper of the light. Robbins reef is a ledge a mile or so north of Staten Island on the port side ati you sail up the bay. You reach Mrs. Walker’s home by scrambling up an iron ladder after you have reached the spot—that is all it is, a spot—by boat. As that is the only means of reaching Mrs. Walker’s establishment it is easy to understand that it isn't a rush of visitors that keeps her at home. She not only has the light to main tain—and she liac never once failed in that—but there are also a siren run by an engine, and a fog bell, both of which must be kept going in thick weather. According to Harper’s Week ly Mrs. Walker takes a long nap in the afternoon so as to keep on the alert at night. The machinery regu lating the light, which is a revolving one, has to be wound every five hours. She says that the light is never off her mind at night and that even when she sleeps she wakes up every hour. Before her husband died she went to the Catskills once; but since she became keeper of the light she has never been further than across the bay. Her front yard—and back and side yards too—is a narrow railed platform; beyond that only water on all sides. The Very Thing. Critic—That moving landscape pic ture needs a dash of color. Friend—Then why not put in a red motor car? OPPORTUNITIES WE LET SLIP Common Failing of Humanity Exem plified by a Beautiful Indian Legend. How many, in all climes and in all ages, call sadly and regretfully to mind the thousand golden opportuni ties forever lost. The lesson is beau tifully taught in the following Indian legend: There was once a beautiful damsel upon whom one of the good genii wished to bestow a blessing. He led her to the edge of a large field of corn, where he said to her: “Daughter, in the field before us the ears of corn, in the hands of those who pluck them in faith, shall have talismanic virtues, and the virtue shall be in proportior. to the size and beauty of the ear gathered. Thou shalt pass through the field once and pluck one ear. It must be taken as thou goest forward, and thou shalt not stop in thy path, nor shalt thou re trace a single step in quest of thine object. Select an ear fuH and fair, and , according to its size and beauty shall be its value to thee as a talisman.' The maiden thanked the good genii, and then sat forward upon her quest As she advanced she saw many ears of corn, large, r^pe and beautiful, such as calm judgment might have told her would possess virtues enough, but in her eagerness to grasp the very best she left these fair ears behind, hop ing that she might find one still fairer. At length, as the day was closing she reached a part of the field where the stalks were shorter and thinner and the ears were very small and shriv eled. She now regretted the grand ears she had left behind and disdained to .y pick from the poor show around her for here she found not an ear which bore perfect grain. She went on, but alas! only to find the stalks more and more feeble and blighted, until in the end as the day was closing and the night coming on. she found herself at the end of the field without-having plucked an ear of any kind. No need that the genii 1 should rebuke her for her folly. She saw it clearly when too late.