For the People Of the People A magazine nationally recognized as the voice of Chicago, whelming along week after week — each issue a new high tide. <Tk CWCAGOAN contributed by the smartest artists and writers of the most gleeful city on this planet. The verdicts of leading observers and interpreters of the Chicago scene. A magazine claiming the pleased attention of astute readers alive to people and things worthy of comment. That's TI4E CHICAGOAN The Chicagoan 407 So. Dearborn St. Chicago, 111. Send "The Chicagoan" one year $3.00 — two years $5.00, Name Address City .State. The dotted line, ladies and gentlemen of this great town, chafes just over to the left. The Chicagoan — Martin J. Quigley, Publisher and Editor; published fortnightly by Th-e Chicagoan Publishing Co., 407 South Dearborn St., Chicago 111 New York Office: S65 Fifth Ave. Los Angeles Office: 5617 Hollywood Blvd. Subscription $3.00 annually, single copies 15c. Vol. Ill, tvj0 i3_I_Se'ptember 10, 1927. Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at Chicago, 111., under the act of March 3, 1879. \ ,\ A 5%2K5*» Steinwa* Tttft WOl^tfes LARGEST jHUSIcXSTORf theVold and the new~f*pm the World's Treasury of Rare fold Violins to the laW popular sheet music -wEverything\Known in Music" isNhere assembled in one vers will find the following displays of interest: Healy, Weber, Bramhach andWier famous pianos Lyon & Healy Harps \ \ )uo-Art Reproducing Pianos i & Healy Band Instruments shburn Stringed Instruments k Estey Organs orloVs Treasury of Rare Old Violins Orthophonic Victrolas wknswick Panatropes Radio h&£ Music Stock in the World Healy n Boulevard, Chicago last 63rd Street 1569 Milwaukee Avenue in SMusic ivery. 2 TWECUI-CAGOAN © o CURRENT ENTERTAINMENT OCCASIONS DECORATION DAY— Sept. 16— follow ing official repeal of ordinance compelling wearing of straw hats. DANCE — the Dempsey-Tunney Charleston contest, Sept. 22, at Soldiers' Field or over any radio. TOURNAMENT— clashes by minor gladi ators on far flung gridirons, Sept. 24. (See page 13.) HOLIDAY— Sept. 23— arrival of Septem ber 24 CHICAGOAN on news stands. NEW TEAR— Rosh hoshona, 2-day Jew ish New Year, Sept. 26-27. STROLLS Clark from Chicago Avenue north to Center (l'/2 miles). Clark and Center through Lincoln Park to Lake Michigan. South to the Drake Hotel on Lakeshore drive. Take bus home. An unsurpassed exhibit of city squalor and splendor. STAGE Song and Dance LE MAIRE'S AFFAIRS— Woods, 54 W. Randolph. State 8567. Busy and bois terous occurrences with Winnie Lightner, Jimmy Hussy, Harry Fox and, they do say, 100 beautiful girls. THE DESERT SONG— Great Northern, 21 W. Quincy, Central 8240. Goings-on among the Riffs with likeable music by Sigmund Romberg. YOURS TRULY— four Cohans, 119 W. Clark, Central 4937. Leon Errol dis penses nifticks on uncertain knees as herein pictured by Carreno. GEORGE WHITE'S SCANDALS— Er- langer, 127 N. Clark, State 2162. Ex hibiting the entire registry of The Actors' Equity. Generous jocosities and 75 girls with, here and there, a brassiere. Dra(y)ma THE BARKER— Blackstone, 60 E. Seventh st. Harrison 6609. Having weathered spring and summer this piece pulls into a new and fatter season. Well worth seeing. Monday performances resumed. Mat. Wed and Sat. CRIME— Adelphi, 11 N. Clark, Randolph 4466. Depicting thieves with shiny hair and pressed pants. A perfectly grand larceny occurs right out before the cus tomers. Good enough. Curtain at 8:30. Mat. Wed. and Sat. THE SPIDER— Olympic, 74 W. Randolph, Central 8240. Another mystery play in volving about half our population. A Chinese box affair showing an audience within an audience or a play within a play, depending on how you look at it. Mat. Wed. TOMMT— Cort, 132 N. Dearborn, Central 1009. Good clean fun. To be scrup ulously reviewed. THE AMERICAN TRAGEDY— Garrick, 64 W. Randolph, Central 8240. Both of Mr. Dreiser's tomes in words and pantomime. To be reviewed. THE BRIGAND— Illinois, 65 E. Jackson Blvd., Harrison 6510. Mr. Leo Carrillo again. Will be punderously considered by our Mr. Markey. CINEMA Aroundtown CHICAGO — Theatreowners and operators continuing to engage unpleasantries at press time, advance billings are unobtain able for the good reason that no one seems to know what they will be. In this extremity, this always diverting col' umn is dedicated currently to a chart' ing of places where you may see things as interesting as the currently invisible celludrama. Little Cinema THE PLAYHOUSE theatre— Fine Arts Building — will present "Potemkin," a drama of the Russian revolt of 1905, to the accompaniment of coffee and cigarettes on the management, when wage salvery disputes with proletarian unionists have been settled. Little Theatre STUDIO PLAYERS— 826 N. Clark st, Saturday and Sunday entertainment. Modern pieces presented long before more commercial playhouses get around to them. JACK AND JILL PLAYERS— 943 Rush, Delaware 7334 — Saturdays and Sundays in September. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for the children and "Caste," an English com edy starring Redmond Flood, for the eld' ers and deacons. Telephone for reserva tions. MR. BIGGS FOREGOES THE INEVITABLE LINKS FOR A QUIET MORNING WITH THE FAMILY TWECI4ICAG0AN 3 o Wm^mmmJim; ¦twrtMMWUrt — — M>ftN<fc<lwHm»»* IN AND ABOUT THE CITY THEATRE CLUB— 1358 N. Clark— Anton Tchekovs "Uncle Vanya" Saturday and Sunday evenings during September. Dancing and refreshments after the play. RELIC HOUSE MARIONETTES— Clark Center. Diversey 0898. Five week-run of "The Crock of Gold" beginning some time in September. Likewise, Saturday and Sunday. Telephone for definite in formation. Free Speech* THE DILL PICKLE— 10 Tooker alley— a hobohemia show place. Learned wrangles an various topics, sometimes by learned people. Play on Saturday night. Free- for-all discussion Sunday evening. And a talk on each Wednesday for September. THE OASIS— 5721 Cottage Gove Ave.— Discussions of a Saturday night. LIBERAL ARTS CLUB— 1247 N. Clark St., in the alley — Sunday evening talking. Saturday evening dance and social. More bohemia. Dr. Ben Reitman is chairman. BLACK KAT KLUB— 221|/2 E. Ontario St., in the alley — Sabbath evening lecture and hectic comment thereon by the audi tors. A regular feature. BUG CLUB — Washington Park — An in formal discussion group now in its 26th year and going strong. Regular Sunday night argumentation. BUG HOUSE PARK— Washington Square — N. Clark st. — Impassioned speechmak- ing any hour of the day or night by eiminent Chicago soapboxers. Dr. John Laughmann of the Hobo College as prima donna. Any glib citizen may collect a respectable "pitch" for acceptable oratory. Most diverting out-door entertainment in the city. *A modest charge is collected 'from pa trons of all but the last two attractions listed, which two rely on voluntary dona tions. SPORTS BOXING — Sept. 22 — World's Heavy weight Boxing Championship, 10 rounds to a decision, Gene Tunney vs. Jack Dempsey, Soldiers' Field. FOOTBALL— Sept. 15— Opening of prac tice in western conference. TENNIS— Sept. 12-17— National Men's Singles Championships, Forest Hills, N. Y. Sept. 22-25 — United States Interac tional Team Championships, Chicago Town and Tennis club. YACHTING — Sept. 9, 10, 11— Lutz Trophy race, Q Class, Jackson Park Yacht club. Sept. 10 and 17 — Chicago Yacht Club Race, all classes, Belmont Harbor. Sept. 24 — Chicago Yacht Club Au tumn Regatta for Sheldon Clark trophy; Open race for all classes, starting off Municipal Pier. GOLF— Sept. 10 and 14— Medal play for Onwentsia Goblet. Sept. 20 — Onwentsia Pow-Pow. POLO — Games every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, Onwentsia Country club. TABLES Downtown BLACKSTONE HOTEL— 656 S. Michigan — for years the Chicago standard; cur rently one of the very best. A deservedly famous institution. LA SALLE ROOF— La Salle at Madison- Jack Chapman's orchestra for dining and dancing patrons. Couvert $1 after 9 o'clock. One of the best loop places. Nice people. PALMER HOUSE— State at Monroe— Vic toria Room orchestra for dining and danc ing. The Palmer Little Symphony in the Empire Room. Dignified, smart, and gracious. Another of the very best. STEVENS— 730 S. Michigan— Roy Bargy's orchestra in the main dining room. Dinner $3. Luncheon $1.25. New, large, efficient, prosperous, advertised and popular. Incidentally, one of the good places. CONGRESS— Michigan at Congress— Pom- peian Room 6:30 to 8:30 p. m. and 10:30 to 2. Balloon Room, couvert $1.50 week days, $2.50 for Saturday night. Spectacular. COLLEGE INN— Sherman Hotel, Clark at Randolph — Maurie Sherman's band until 1 a. m. the morning adjacent. RAHDOLPH ROOM— Bismarck Hotel, 171 W. Randolph — Al Ponta's serenad es, and good at it. The Bismarck is long sanctioned by happy custom and good taste. HEHRICrS—11 W. Randolph-^adequate food, and food only. No music; no couvert. ATLANTIC HOTEL— 316 S. Clark— Ger man cookery that would melt the heart £".>(• > (QsA <f^-fl lyT / \ "^^ v~' v^^3** ~V 7*^ \ III i 'Z*Xj- ^§pjfoJ^H gjj&su — w\ ^^ jA ^ — " / i UJ-UO^*iJJteCUL.^Aks»vJ&iv WHICH HE ACHIEVES BY THE SAME WELL KNOWN TACTICS THAT MARK HIM AS A GOLFER 4 TWECUICAGOAN of M. Clemenceau. No orchestra; no couvert. ST. HUBERT'S OLD EKGLISH GRILL— 615 Federal — English victuals that would do the same for Herr Ludendorf. Mut ton chops and sirloin steaks are here pur veyed at their ultimate best. Closed Sun days and holidays. Out a Ways MARINE DINING ROOM— Edgewater Beach Hotel — entertainment and dance music; as pleasant a place as you will find. Neither blase nor boisterous. SALLY'S— 4650 Sherdian Road— waffles. Good place to breakfast at any hour. Sturdier foods, however, can be found in the larder. VANITY FAIR— Grace at Broadway— Migdet heir to the old Bismarck and Marigold Gardens. Entertainment drawn to scale. COLOSIMO'S— 2126 S. Wabash— Once a gory and glamorous place. Now Italian and prosaic. Phone after 9:00. SUNSET— 35th at Calumet— Nordic and negro guests engaged in being mutually amiable. Lively and loud with a colored revue. Party starts about 10 p. m. and cheers along indefinitely. MIDNIGHT FROLICS— 22nd off Wabash — Another uninhibited spot in the dark- town play area. Cotton Mather would have violently disapproved of the whole business including dancing, floor show, and impromptu entertainment by custom ers. An all night welkin ringer. VICTOR HOUSE— 1 E. Grand Ave.— Ex cellent Italian food in large consignments. No couvert, music or entertainment. An eating parlor! Everything for $1.50. LE PETIT GOURMET— 615 N. Michi gan Ave. — Smart, popular, and well thought of. Dining out of doors in the court near a trickling fountain. Table d'Hote $1.50 and $2.00. JIM IRELAND'S FISH HOUSE— 612 N. Clark — Sea food exclusively, and done with trancedent perfection. Eight of THE CHICAGOAN PRESENTS The Scrap, by Boris Riedel Cover Occasions Page 2 Places to Go 3 Other Places 4 Surveys 5 Mr. Hack Wilson 6 Authentic Anecdotes 7 Gene Markey on Chicago 8 Travel, by Graham Aldis 9 The Bookleg Situation 10 Home Suite Home 11 Bandits' Wives and Widows 12 Stagg, by Charles Collins 13 Marionettes 14 The Scrap Again 15 Rural Incident 16 Major Frederic McLaughlin 17 Overtones 18 Chicago Theatre History 19 A New Racket 20 Sport Review 21 Mr. Leon Errol 22 First Nighters 23 Chicago Guide VI 24 The Strike 2 5 Breakfast Reading 26 "Louise" 27 Civic Service 28 Books 29 Art 31 Letters from Readers 32 one morning to 5 :00 of the next. A suggestion for after theatre lobster. PEARSON HOTEL— 190 E. Pearson- Quiet, well-bred residential hotel with few transients. Music, good music, and no couvert. A Sunday evening antidote for the hectic week-end party. Pastoral High Jinks THE DELLS — Dempster near Waukegan — Old fashion roadhouse with new fangled merrymaking. A gay place on the back veldt. GARDEN OF ALLAH— Still further in the same direction — another barn dance with modern trimmings. Good revue, plenty of entertainment and exuberent guests. LINCOLN TAVERN— Yet father— gayer still. People who trek out here have come for a good time and will have it or bust. HILLSIDE INN— on Roosevelt Road— Rather modestly placed but adequate in the manner of road-houses. ART ART INSTITUTE— H. Leon Roecker, J. Jeffery Grant, and E. T. Grigware in one-man shows. Contemporary Swedish decorative arts. Sculpture by Edwin Pearson. ACKERMANN'S— Rare and colorful prints concerned with courts of justice and their hangers-on. NEW ARLIMUSC— 1501 N. LaSalle, around the alley. Between seasons exhi bition of paintings, sculpture, and draw ings of Chicago moderns. Open eve nings. MARSHALL FIELD AND CO.— Wood blocks by Maja Fjaestad. American and European etchings. PALETTE AND CHISEL CLUB— Paint ings by Arthur Rider. O'BRIEN'S — Showing the recent portraits by Louis Betts. Drawings of the Mary land hunt by Paul Brown. YOUNG'S— Exhibition of paintings by American artists. GOLDBLATT GALLERIES— Paintings by H. M. Kitchell. Chinese antiques. September is.-R.-Koar P 1 UBLIC philanthrophy, raised to a clamorous pitch over the namelessness of the Art Institute Lions through facts recently disclosed by this hearth and home journal, has resulted in a mag nificent outpouring of the "I will" spirit. Alert contributors of R. H. L.'s col umn have lead in proposing names after the warm-hearted proprietor of the "Line" discovered that one feline was a lady. This last discovery is alleged apocryphal by other interested observers who maintain that the "lady" in question is not a lady at all, but merely a refined young fellow some what ill at ease in the presence of a feral companion, who lowers in bronze a scant 15 paces across the institute steps. But names proposed are not names accepted. There is, it would seem, many a slip 'twixt the quip and the christening. And a Chicagoan secret agent who read a list of proffered mon ickers to both beasts in the dark of a Friday moon, reports that neither ani mal nodded approval. In fact, he es caped a chiding claw of cold bronze by the attenuated thinness of a summer weight garment. The venturesome questioner returned to his office in the plight of the advertising young man featured in "If it came to this—" copy. Our agent explains that he did not come to his embarrassing position; he came away from it. A resume of names proposed reads: Rip and Roar— Fitter and *$$p Patter— Sniff and Snarl—Up ^' *' and Attem — Win\iri and Blin\iri — Harum and Scarum — Damon and Pythias—Paris and Hector— Daniel and An- drocles — Barnum and Bailey —Mi\e and %— Romulus and Remus — Fran\ie and Johnnie— Matthew and Mar\ — Lu\e and John — Hans and Fritz. S U RVE YS Those Lions Traffic-Flower Scholastic News Mr. Hack Wilson How Old Is a Lady? Bridge Open A Rumor Authentic Anecdotes There were also This and That — Sam and Henry — Jac\ and Gene — Leo and Cleo — Felix and Leo — Gr^r and Br'r-r — Castor and Pollux — Achilles and Willies. Suggestions ranged from a hint that the animals longed for companionship to a fell dig that the more brassy beast was a lady. The nearly incredible as- sertation that two such intransigent artists are lawfully wed is presented without comment. So the civic scandal survives lustily its nine-day tenure, and traffic smashes multiply as distracted motorists carom off one another and the lamp post. More people have visited the Institute in the past ten days than in any similar period since they took away the one time guardian of the currently intrigu ing beasties, a desecration in memory of the elder citizenry. Details of the situation have spread to points far and the mails are heavy with suggestion and persiflage. The boys, for such we must insist they are, are in a bad way. In view of all this, we reiterate our offer to stand godfather at the chris tening and betray impatience only in urging dispatch in the selection of cog nomens. We've got to get this thing settled before somebody mentions the sea horses in Buckingham fountain. Traffic-Flower i TOP-LIGHTS and fire plugs along the boulevard have lately been cleaned and painted. As a result we list an aesthetic discovery, to wit: the stop light seen from a certain angle is sur prisingly a satisfactory piece of art. Rooted in concrete, the slim stalk of the light carries its three-colored blos som higher than a man's head. The green, angular calyx is admirably pro portioned. Each lens is shaded by metal hood fashioned with nice econ omy of line — one recalls the helmeted Medici of Angelo. The lights them selves are alternating jewels, cool green, tiger's-eye amber, and smouldering red. On rainy nights these colors refracted in the oily film on the boulevard waver over a black asphalt river — a kind of sinful allegory of Lethe. But on clear nights the stop-light is a mechanical blooming flower by a whirling stream of steel and glass, the hum of water insects replaced by the whine of rubber tires and sedge mists supplanted by gasoline vapors. So much Tor the stop-light which undoubt edly has its moments. The fire plug, unfortu nately, paint or no paint, re mains a red, unaesthetic fire plug. 6 TUECI4ICAGOAN School KjN September 6, 470,000 young people were awakened early and cast into the toils of an industry which yearly commands the labor of near half a million children between the ages of 6 and 13. In other words, the public schools of Chicago are open for business. Roughly, 6,000 youngsters are to at tend school for the first time — with ap proximately 6,000 red apples given by perhaps 5,000 tearful mothers, each one a little regretful that her baby makes an initial venture into the world. More over, while various school officials clown it in the daily papers, it is some how comforting to reflect that 12,300 teachers carry on in the task of teach ing. Not an exciting bit of informa tion, but a refreshing one. And there are 343 schools within the city walls — another pleasant note. Later on colleges and universities will revive and blossom through a nim bus of rattletrap gas vehicles. High schools take their cues from the 'var sities, and high school learners will swagger about, brave in painted slickers under the fond misconception that col legers wear such gewgaws. Thus, prep students are in a measure soothed for the indignity of opening on September 6 with the lowly grades. One casts about sadly, however, for alleviating circumstances applicable to the pre-teen scholar. Eight years of apprenticeship before high school may fit the aspiring youth for a gay time once the grades are passed. But it is a meagre consolation for the poor lad called back from his vacation to un dergo ten months of public instruction. There are few toothless grins on the first day of school. Distinction 1 \ EADERS are petitioned to con done omission of mention pertaining to flights and fliers in all the pages of this issue. We abandon the subject to the plane press. Eminence HEN Mr. Lewis Robert Wil son, 28, bustles to the home plate in the Cub's half of any ball inning, it is a tradition that every spectator on the lot shall rise with an anticipatory whoop. For Mr. Wilson's batting aver age thus far is .312 and — more impor tant — he has counted 21 home runs this season, all in his capacity as clean-up man for the league leading (at press time) Chicago Nationals. More noteworthy still, in breath-tak ing crises known as "pinches," Wilson's record is better than his batting aver age indicates. Of eighteen games claimed by the Cubs on a single run margin "Hack" has poled in ten of the deciding tallies — nor is this last record up to date. A formidable lad at the plate. Seen beside Ruth and Gehrig, gentle men measuring six feet two, and six feet one, respectively, and weighing 210 and 200 pounds, Wilson is a pudgy youngster, shorter even than the aver age baseball player; he measures five feet six and weighs 185. Naturally enough, the Cub slugger presents a de cidedly convex profile at the plate — one wonders how a pitcher can groove the ball between "Hack's" knees and ankles without impinging on the Wilson abdomen. The Cub clean-up man officiates with an orthodox stance. He literally hacks at the ball, a short, powerful cut. Due in part to his roly-poly facade, "Hack's" hits are seldom scratches; he is not streak on the bases, and the main idea, in his strategy, is to propel the ball far enough so that a leisurely walk around the quadrangle suffices. In center field Wilson is a steady, though not a brilliant performer; girth and heft slow him down as a fly shag' ger. Still, he manages to get under his share of high ones. Lewis Robert Wilson was born in Eldwood City, Pa., April 26, 1900. He has been a major leaguer three years — going on four. Three years of batting in the big circuit have netted him a stick average of .299. "Hack" is evidently coming right along; his fourth year average so far is well over .300. The eminent is married, the father of a 3 -year-old boy. His home, when not migrating with the Cubs, is at Martinsburg, W. Va. He drives his own car, and drives it expertly. He has no particular hobby so far as his teammates know. Indeed, beyond his home office's knowledge of "Hack" as a reliable ball hand, very little is said of him. On the field or off it, "Hack" is no baseball prima donna engaged in projecting his personality; his fame rests squarely on the cudgel he lugs up to the home plate. Age Limit ILLIAM WRIGLEY, impre sario of the Cub ball yard, has raised a question which may cause more of a flurry than "How old is Ann?" To interest women in the antics of professional baseball players, the Cubs and Sox have called Fridays "Ladies' Day" and admitted women without charge. With the Cubs in the pen nant race, "Ladies' Day" at the Cub ball park has become so popular that the cash customers have a hard time finding a seat. The women not only came them- selves, but brought the children — the daughters at least, as sons of ten der years were charged for. As no game was scheduled for Friday, Au gust 12, the Cubs announced Thurs day, August 11, would be "Ladies' Day." The rush for admission started TI4EO4ICAG0AN 7 two hours before the game was sched uled to begin. Mothers of little girls were unpleasantly surprised when told they were not ladies and were charged $1 admission for each of them. It was impossible to check up com pletely, but we ascertained a child of 9 is not a lady and a girl of 14 is. A statement defining the line of demarca tion is invited. T: Regulation HE writing on the signboard has been fulfilled. There is a bridge across the Illinois Central tracks at Jackson Street. A short time ago there were odds and ends of cement and steel, mounds of dirt, and apparent confu sion. Today there is the passage to Grant Park. Motorists who become pedestrians to the extent of walking to and from their parked cars are finding the bridge a welcome short cut. True pedestrians are walking across the bridge in curiosity and admiration. Soon the approaches will be paved and it is reasonable to suppose that many motors will be roaring up the new driveway. And yet — the police are still with us. Nobody has any reason to believe that when he wants to turn off Michigan Avenue he will not be waved past Randolph Street, past Mon roe and — why not? — past Jackson, just as he is now denied the right to turn at Seventh and Eleventh. A thought ful citizen often wonders what the purpose of these bridges can be. I R umor T'S an old bit of gossip, of course, and always delivered knowingly. The story is that a certain blind fiddler, a capricly bearded old fellow who tweedles away at Congress and the boulevard is really wealthy. The rumor goes on that an impressive car stops for him every evening at five on the dot. The beggar gets in. His chauffeur drives him away. What we want to know is: has anybody seen the story acted out? r'flPngT°ijT.'.'..".." '"' Authentic Anecdotes For Club and Table Use THE one about Tex Austin's irreverent cowpunchers and the candelabra: Lay the scene in your choice of the hotels (the story has been suppressed and everybody knows which one its was anyway) and sur round the festive board with local notables selected to suit present company. Add your favorite cartoonist and have a hospitable in dividual hand him a six-shooter with the suggestion, "Try the trigger." Describe in your own words the detonation following the trial, the hurried entrance of the hotel management and the even more hurried de parture of the assembly. Apply color to suit and if your guesses are good and your eloquence adequate you've regaled your lis teners with an "inside'" story. THE one about William T. Keyler and Tracy Drake, if it was Tracy, can be told in more complete detail and is better when properly delivered: Mr. Keyler was host, as he is on all such occasions, to the numerous field staff of the American Chain company at Mr. Drake's hotel. A pleasant time was had, if that is possible when it's a convention, and in due season Mr. Keyler received a bill for $40 which Mr. Drake said he believed was about right for patch ing a rug damaged by a carelessly dropped cigarette. Mr. Keyler replied that the patch must have been expansive and Mr. Drake informed him that a Drake hotel carpet could not be patched in the usual sense of the word, that a complete strip had been replaced. Whereupon Mr. Keyler paid for the strip and asked that the no doubt sizeable remnant of it be delivered to his home, where it would serve very well for a hall runner. The gentlemen have been corresponding for two years now and you can develop the idea at will. THE one about the motion picture mag nate (name him yourself) called into conference on the operators' strike, may be a bit oldfashioned by the time this issue is out, but it runs like this: The congress of giants had been in session through one fetid night in a gaudily decorated room high up in a certain loop building. Labor had delivered its ultimatum. Capital had lis tened. Status quo was beyond prospect of immediate redemption and the magnate went out for breakfast. Curious associations of ideas were inevitable. A Woolworth store opened its doors as he retraced his steps to the scene of battle. The embattled legions were silent as he laid a formidable package upon the table before the contending gen eral, and turned to leave with, "Here, take these; I'm going home." The blocks, ornate, alphabetical ones, found their way into the wastebasket and the theatres remained closed. L Privilege rORDLINESS is a matter of prerog atives whether of wealth, or power, or leisure, or a letter patent from a rep utable monarch. Most of these honors woman can enjoy equally with man — with one exception, the right to unjusti fiable repose, a privilege hitherto de voutly exercised by the Grant Park hobo. Up to August 28, 1927, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, a free man might (supposing this woeful planet had grown unbearably vexatious), cast his cares away, assume a dirty shirt, and move out into Grant Park, where the only striving in order is the paucity of effort required to keep in the shade of General Logan. Such a retreat offered hermitage; it was free; it was popular. And it was, prior to the day and hour above men tioned, a right enjoyed solely by the male. No woman dared transgress the privilege of Grant Park any more than a dog merchant might presume to ques tion the divine right of kings. Yet on the specified Sunday in August the immemorial custom of pub lic languor exclusively for the male was invaded and overthrown. On the exact stroke of two, a woman ambled off the concrete and toward the monument. Very leisurely she chose a plot of grass. Deliberately she reclined upon it. Once at ease, she unfolded a newspaper and deftly tented it over her up turned face. Thereafter, presumably, she slept. A battalion of recumbent eremites looked on. — THE EDITORS. iOOl "Bwifi 8 TUECmCAGOAN I F I MAY /AY SO His Honors Slogan Is Good THERE is no urgent necessity for uttering a tenor solo in praise of Chicago. Mr. Thompson, the Lord Mayor, and his horn have taken care of that very nicely, thank you. Chicago is admittedly the greatest city in the world. That has all been decided. In deed, such visionary artists as Mr. Lorado Taft and Mr. Sidney Smith go so far as to hail it as the City Beautiful. Witness Mr. Taft's statues and Mr. Smith's Gumps. If a steaming civic rivalry between Chicago and New York does exist (and we are led to believe that such, unfor tunately, is the case), then New York must suffer in comparison. At least it must suffer here. For example, any Chicagoan will point with pride to the fact that Chicago possesses more rail roads than New York. And judging from the soot, this must be true. Far be it from me to sound a trum pet — or even an oboe — for Chicago; but certain statistics must be brought to light. (Myself, I go in for statis tics. I can almost always tell you, without looking it up, what day of the month it is. That is the statistical mind.) In my peregrinations about our great city (adv.) I have collected a large assortment of facts that prove conclusively something or other about Chicago's supremacy. Let us not be reticent. There is the new Buckingham Foun tain in Grant Park. There, if I may say so, is a fountain! New York has nothing like it. New York hasn't even a Grant Park. It has a Grant's Tomb, to be sure, but that isn't nearly so large as our Grant Park. Now, a visiting Frenchman (there are, of course, visiting Frenchmen, just as there are visiting Elks) might consider this sort of talk rather in the nature of braggadocio. Wrong. I am mere ly calling attention to what are known as points of interest that Chicago has, and New York hasn't. And, for that matter, a visiting Frenchman (the same fellow) upon viewing the Buck ingham Fountain at night, with the colored lights upon its tossing plumes, might gather the impression that we are advertising the dreary wastes of Grant Park as "Bigger and Better Than Versailles." Wrong again. But we do take a pardonable pride in our new fountain (lighting effects by Mr. Insull). It certainly spouts a pretty spray. Then there is Ravinia. That is, there was Ravinia — up until Labor Day. And the Ravinia Opera com pany is one of the grand institutions of the civilised world: a fact which Chicagoans are coming to appreciate more and more each season. On gala nights, even on less gala nights, the business of securing admittance-cou pons is well nigh impossible. In Eu rope Chicago is known not as a great railroad-center, or a ham-curing capi tal, but as the home of the Ravinia Opera. Its piccolos have been heard across far wider expanses than all the horns of the Chamber of Commerce. And the past season has topped every thing that went before. (Sotto voce: if la Bori is not the most gorgeous creature who ever lifted a white arm or a high note upon the operatic stage, then I will cheerfully refund Mr. Eckstein's annual deficit!) And speak ing of Mr. Eckstein, there is a fellow entitled to several rounds of applause. He is no mere road-company Otto Kahn — he is a large-size public bene factor. For he has given Chicago the finest ozone opera in the world. One thing usually leads to another. (Not always on this page, I confess, but the old axiom that one thing usual ly leads to another is correct.) And it occurs to me that the roads leading to Ravinia, and north and west from there, are nothing short of magnificent roads for motoring. In the past five years the road-builders must have been working nights. (They appear to work very little as you observe them in the bright light of day.) For the entire state is now criss-crossed with an in tricate pattern of smooth ribbon roads. No! New York, if I may say so, far fewer miles of such superb roads. I do a good bit of motoring each year around New York, and through Con' necticut — and those roads are in such condition that there is an osteopath at every filling station. To the casual motorist speeding off for an evening among the vast vegetable patches which we call our countryside, every variety of dining place presents itself. Evanston is the gateway to the Great Open Spaces. (Though I dwelt in Evanston, man and boy, for fifteen years without discovering that it was the gateway to anything. However, I am done with all tawdry appellations for Evanston, such as the City of the Living Dead, the Gossips' Paradise, etc. ; from now on I shall insist that it is the Gateway to the Great Open Spaces.) Reading from left to right as you drive out Dempster Street, you discover all sorts of roadside cafes, ranging from pop-corn cribs to jazz palazzos, where you can order any sort of dinner — a hot-dog or a langouste Parisienne. On Dempster Street there is Dell's, and a little farther on, the Lincoln Tavern. In these resorts the check is in direct ratio to the size of the band. Then there are the Bridge and the Lighthouse; and, a few miles north on the Waukegan Road, a place called the Four Seasons, featuring open-air danc ing. Should you, however, continue out Dempster to the Milwaukee road, you will find, near the polezei ren' dezvous, a restaurant called the Mai' lard Inn, where steaks of amazing magnitude and flavor may be had. But if your Buick (adv.) wends its way smoothly on Vogue Cord tires (adv.) several miles beyond, upon the Mil' waukee road, you will arrive at the Villa Venice, which, if I may say so, is the ultimate, the last word, the nir' vana of Cook County estaminets. Its grounds, superbly landscaped into gar' dens such as no road-house ever boasted before, lead down to the banks of the Desplaines, where an imported gondola waits; within the villa, service and cuisine are admirable, the band is ex' cellent, and at nine and midnight M. Albert Bouche's European revue comes on. New York has never known a country inn and amusement place like the Villa Venice. In fact there are a number of things that New York has never known — but it doesn't know that it has never known them. — GENE MARKEY. TMECI4ICAG0AN N2 one is so subject advice and in struction as the prospec tive transatlantic traveler. It starts in the office with, "Well, you know what to bring back for me, old boy," and con tinues through" the haberdasher, the banker, the tourist agency, not to speak of Sunday night supper with Aunt Caroline and the cousins who went to Havana last spring on one of those all- inclusive cruises on a fruit boat. But this advice generally covers such prob lems as how many pairs of sox for Mr. to take along, or the nature of the "one dress suitable for every occasion" recom mended for the Mrs. by writers of the "Through Europe with a Pocket Hand kerchief; A Travel-Manual for Morons" school of litera ture. These treatises, however, appear to ignore certain im portant factors of the prob lem of how best to cross the Atlantic. First, for instance, they neglect to advise whether to take an American or a European ship. The latter are well provisioned but if the adventurer has lived for the past ten years or so in a small town distant from the seaboard, he would perhaps do well to "travel the Amer ican way to Europe" as the liquor which he will get from the stewards will be not too different from that he has been used to at home. Moreover, the bar on the British boats is apt to be closed just at the wrong hour; on the American, a steward can be found to deal with the situation at almost any hour of the day or night. The United States Shipping Board may be rather expensive to the taxpayers but at any rate its employes are thoroughly imbued with the national ideal of serv ice. Then there is the question of which class to travel. The steamship com panies, being the principal sufferers from the policy of fewer and finer im migrants, have repainted their emptied steerages, put up a few signs in English, renamed them "student cabin" and sold accommodations there at rates which have set the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce to worrying about the sum mer tourist business. But, a painful discovery resulted, so little esteem was actually felt for the magnificent mon- Note on Foreign Travel Via the S. S. Berengaria strosities of interior decoration perpe trated by the leading marine architects that almost everyone wanted to travel in the rejuvenated steerage. In fact, the principal prestige remaining to the first class is its privacy. It is Asbury Park endowed with the atmosphere of the Chicago Club. Mr. Vantyne and Mr. Cabitzer may meet daily but not speak until inex- - - Gesture! tricably involved by the mutual curi osity of their wives' poodles. And damsels of the upper crust, grieved at the deficiency of young collegians of their own class in their own class have been known to steal .down to the stern, sidestepping their mothers' lady's maids in the second class en route. Yet, despite its charm, the student cabin hides pitfalls for the inexperi enced. It is wise, for instance, to re frain from deck sports until after the first morning out. There is a "born- organizer" in every passenger list. In addition, there are always the Friendly Girls, never less than a trio, travelling together and ordinarily from the South. Unkind fate, in the person of the Chief Steward, invariably places them at table with either the antiques or the juveniles. But, no dam can long impound the rising waters of their charm, and soon virtuosity has its own reward. The sex-solidarity so apparent among them at the lonesome outset of their journey is dissolved. Heloise definitely isolates "Purdue '28"; Babs, that one with the ukulele, accumulates and concentrates the stray vocalists, while Floppie, but over Floppie and her doings let us draw a kindly veil. Less endowed than her comrades, she remained apparently un appreciated until late last night, when she was seen in affection ate conversation with a stoker up for air. Then there is the bond salesman who looks like a college professor, and the professor who looks like a bond salesman, and the young gentlemen for our Eastern centers of learning who feel that they know, and should show the small towners, how "a gentleman drinks" when he is given a fair chance. A bartender or wine steward with a strong professional sense may often unwittingly become a verit able spiritual father to these under-privileged orphan chil dren of prohibition. It is understood that the dean of bartenders of the White Star Line will shortly retire to accept an endowed chair in the ancient history depart ment at Harvard University, some of the leading alumni have become so upset at the unconnected solecisms of their sons. The French type of bride from Rapid City, S. D., is strong for participation in the deck sports. Her heels are too long and her step-ins too short and the result is disastrous, but only her husband seems to be upset about it. Your dyed-in-the-wool seclusionist sometimes makes the mistake of taking passage in the student cabin. But, with the top deck devoted to winds, sports and amours, the lounge to mothers and their young, with two to five cabin- mates and a good active committee scouring the promenade for "a good strong anchor-man for the tug-of-war, the Sharks against the Whales," the seclusionist has a hard time of it. He may stick out a week of it, but if its an eight or nine-day boat he's likely to disembark a total wreck. Certain other species recur on every trip. While these are in the main innocuous and not necessary to identify early for purposes of self protection, as is the born organizer, it may, never theless, please the student of human nature in the student cabin to see how completely and promptly he can recog nize these fauna of the deep. It's been done. — GRAHAM ALDIS. 10 TWE CHICAGOAN The Bookleg Situation With Current Quotations THE bookseller leans on a stack of dusty tomes and smiles, archly, knowingly, wickedly. The glass door of the $10-and-up case is open and a faint aroma of expensive leather and yellowed leaves mingles with the brand new smell of current novels. The prospect frowns and bites his lip. The price is high — but the book is scarce, is naughty. A mighty resolve gleams in his eyes as he reaches for his purse and counts out $19. He leaves the store with the sensed knowledge that a little hag gling would have bought "A Night in a Moorish Harem" for $17. He hopes that he will not meet a policeman. The bookleg- ger — for such he is — pockets the money and carefully replaces the other con traband volumes behind a row of Bibles and gift editions of Eddie Guest. He closes and locks the case, imprisoning the ghosts of satyrs and nymphs; of noble guests at Neronian banquets; of grand ladies and fine gentlemen whis pering indelicacies in florid French courts; and of naive modern maids who confess "all" in letters to the girl friend. Keeper of the Gates of Lettered Sin is the modern bookseller. Erotica is the current fad among booksellers, col lectors, and readers. A lively market, growing lustily, exists for all naughty literature from the frankly smutty "Only a Boy," favorite of a generation ago, to the smart and clean obscenities of Mr. Cabell, modern to the margins. The prosperity of at least one large Chicago book store is based on a rapid turnover in erotica. The proprietor is clever, possessor of a suave cajoling manner, and omniscient in his specialty. His shop has long been a rendezvous for collectors. The items range from shoddy pamphlets, rich in a regrettable vulgarity, to the handsomely bound and illustrated volumes for the collector of means. Somewhere in Chicago there is an interesting old fellow with an ancient pipe growing from his lips whose only source of livelihood is a large clientele among hotel dwellers who are erotic collectors, or, rather, collectors of erotica. A peep into his little black book of "wants" will suffice to convince the skeptic that interest in naughty literature is not on the wane in this city. "It was sup pressed in Bos ton!" has ceased to be an adver tisement to at tract the buyer of unmoral books. The Bean City prudes have in their zeal slaughtered so many innocents from the ranks of current litera ture that their condemnation is no longer a guarantee of delightful reading. Now one says, in a whisper, of course, "It's booklegged in Chicago!" A veteran booklegger, who is in touch with many leading dealers and buyers, quoted current prices for erotica least difficult to obtain in Chicago. A large increase both in sales and prices during the past year or two is easily discern- able, he declared. Here they are, f. o. b., Chicago: Harris — My Life and Loves, vol. 1, $12-$25; vol. 2, $25-$40. Joyce — Ulysses, $15-$50 (depending upon one's success at haggling) . Petronius— Satyricon, $35-$50, Fire- baugh translation. Hecht — Fantazius Mallare, $20-$40. Boccacio — Decameron, $35-$50, lim ited edition, privately printed. A Tvjight in a Moorish Harem, $10-$20. Memoirs of Fanny Hill, $40-$100 (varying with illustrations). Only a Boy, and its naughty little sis ter volume, Only a Girl, $3-$7. Yes, it's a brisk trade the booklegger is doing these days. Soon they will be working with interior decorators, plan ning bookshelves to include at least one enticing title every four feet of front age. MILTON FAIRMAN. Backgrounds By One Who Knew Them When— James Simpson was office boy for Marshall Field. ? Charles W. Murphy was a night police reporter on a Cincinnati news' paper. ? Lincoln J. Pfaff was champion roller skater of Indiana. ? Marcus Heinan was box office man at the Garrick Theatre. ? John J. Mitchell was a messenger in a Chicago bank. ? James Keeley was a newsboy in Kansas City before coming to Chicago. ? Harry M. Lubliner ran a modest florist shop in the loop before he be came a movie theatre magnate. ? Henry E. Ackerburg rode an ele- phant in a Chicago political parade as Theodore Roosevelt's double. ? Samuel Insull was stenographer for Thomas A. Edison. ? William Lorimer drove a street car on the Halsted street line. He started in politics by being elected a constable. ? Sam P. Gerson was criminal court reporter for the Chicago Evening American. ? Aaron J. Jones ran a little five cent moving picture show at White City Amusement Park. ? John J. Garrity was in the box of' fice at the old Grand Opera House. ? Barney Balaban worked in a West 12 th street fish store. ? Frank S. Rivers was a ticket seller with the Beveridge wild west show. ? John J. Gleason was a member of a dramatic stock company playing at the Bush Temple on the North side. ? B. J. Mullamy was political editor of the Chicago Record-Herald. C. w. TWCCI4ICAG0AN n PATERFAMILIAS I, followed by his wife and thirteen children, climbed the stone ladder and filed into their new apartment in a three-hundred-family dwelling. Paterfamilias II, preceded by his wife and borzoi, ascended to apart ment 1601 on which they had made their first payment. Paterfamilias I was Little Dog with Many Feathers; II was Mr. Poindexter X. Grosvenor. Both lived in co-operative apart ments. Mr. Grosvenor still resides on Lake Shore Drive; but a letter ad dressed to Mr. Dog would not reach him at his cliff dwelling in Frijoles Canyon, New Mexico, because he lived thousands of years before the R. F. D. Centuries ago humans hud dled together for protection from their common enemy, marauding wanderers. To day's tendency is the same. The modern marauders are the butcher, the baker and the rent profit taker; and they, too, can be fought from the vantage point of a co operative dwelling. During and following the World Warthe landlord wolf howled in front of many a door. Rents performed an un precedented feat of geomet rical progression, and tenants found it cheaper to combine and buy the buildings in which they lived than to submit longer to the owner'scaprice. That was probably the beginning — or the revival — of the co-operative own ership movement. Cautious friends looked askance at the scheme; but the tenant-owners surprised everybody — in cluding themselves — by their success, and suddenly discovered that they were Pioneers. Entrepreneurs were not slow to adopt and elaborate the plan. Co-operatives increased and multiplied. It was no Rip Van Winkle, but you and I and the man next door, who awoke to find that novelty, a co-operative apartment, now a staple in the real estate agent's stock of goods. Thus the man who yearns for a little gray home on the tenth floor is able to choose anything from a combination living room-bedroom to a unit, includ ing a two-story living room, library, kitchen, diningroom and an assortment of bedrooms and dressing rooms. Whether he acquires a cottage or a palace rests with his pocketbook and Home Suite Home A Mans Co'ofa His Castle his scheme of interior decoration; but small or large, his home will be equally modern, sound-proof, and fire-proof. Construction and promotion of co operative apartments has become a spe cialized branch of the realtor's art. Naturally said realtor is not in it for his health. If he is short-sighted enough to try to find the pot of gold at the end of one job, prospective buyers should beware. However, legitimate profits are sufficient to interest many reliable operators. The first consideration is a site in a neighborhood of established desirability, as far as that can be determined, with access to good transportation, schools, churches, and shops. In Chicago most co-operative buildings cluster around Lincoln and Jackson Parks and special ize, in fine views of the lake. The building must be planned so that apart ments will suit modern conditions and the greatest variety of tastes, with the minimum of waste space and the pos sibility of a pleasing exterior. Mr. Renter, attracted by a puffing steam shovel, stops to gaze and stays to ponder the sign, "Own your home in this Co operative Building." The first three words are old stuff, a stirring slogan which arouses mental images of blocks upon blocks of bungalows, each occu pying twenty-five feet front in some far-off subdivision, each readily dis tinguished from its neighbor by a dif ferent colored roof and the presence or absence of window shutters. But this sign invites a man to own his own home in a desirable building on Sheridan Road for no more than the cost of a cottage in Commuters' Row. How can it be done? The answer is: by dividing the equity among a large number of owners and by the readily demonstrable economy of large-scale building and group operation. Granted that a co-operative project is properly and honestly financed, owning an apart ment may be assumed to have defi nite economic advantages over rent ing. Owning a one- family dwelling in the same location is impossible for anyone without millions or Alladin's Lamp. Each month Mr. Renter pays his landlord a share of the following: the interest on the owner's invest ment, cost of maintenance and de preciation, taxes, operating costs, ex pense of getting tenants, the owner's acknowledged profit. If Mr. Renter becomes a co-operative tenant-owner he saves the profits and, as a rule, rental expenses. For reasons to be discussed later, his maintenance, de preciation and operating costs are min- mized. His savings have been variously estimated at from 12 to 20 per cent. Furthermore, in Chicago, with its ever growing population, a well han dled property may reasonably be ex pected to increase in value. For the tenant that often means increased rental on a depreciating apartment. For the tenant- owner it means a pos sible profit which is a dainty dish to set before him, especially when he knows that he can eat it in peace with out danger^of being put out unless he agrees to pay more rent. In addition to the economic advan tages, the co-operator has the satisfac tion of owning his own home, to have and to hold, to alter and to decorate for his own profit and satisfaction, a refuge and a stronghold against prey ing landlords. Desirable neighbors are guaranteed under the terms of the co- operative contract [Turn to Page 25], 12 TI4&CI4ICAGOAN Brides and Widows Beerland's Blue Book BANDITS and beer barons, aside from their exhilarating traffic, have each a hearth and a beautiful wife. And this beauty is no news paper adjective, but a self-evident fact. A gunman's private life, however, is a thing apart from his public feuds and dangers. It is his boast that his wife is never soiled by the gumbo that em braces his shoes. Yet there she is, a bride and then a widow. Her reign as wife is merely a kaleidoscopic moment snatched from life. Unknown, and un classified even among her neighbors, it is not until she becomes a widow that she takes a place in the public eye. The observer finds it difficult to as sign motives for the surrender of so much negotiable beauty to the tin- eared gents who make our city hum. He does not know whether to turn to Freud or Bradstreet. The latest pretty widow to come into a bandit's fortune is Cecelia Drucci. A handsome blonde is Cecelia, and she knows how to dress. The "Schemer," it is said, was extremely proud of his beautifully gowned wife. At any rate, he gave her a fortune in jewelry, be sides which she inherited $300,000. When Vincent Drucci was shot by a policeman a few months ago, his wife was just twenty-six years of age. Will she marry again? They usually do, and whatever the lure may have been for her marriage to the "Schemer," money need never influence her again. When Hymie Weiss died by a ma chine-gun bullet before Holy Name Cathedral (futile sanctuary!) he dis solved a marriage of three weeks. Jo sephine Weiss had come from the FoV lies to marry Hymie, and it is certain that this unreasonable divorce was a blow to her. It is not likely that the lovely Josephine took her vows with an eye to profits. She returned to New York very little the richer (we are speaking of money) for her hectic three weeks of matrimony. Dion O'Banion, shot through the heart in Schofield's florist shop on North State street a few years ago, left his nineteen-year-old wife more than $1,000,000. Viola's jewels alone were worth $500,000 and her expensive cars, her fur coats and her Pekingese dogs were the envy of even the wealthy women of the gold coast, where she lived with her gun-man husband — a woman of mystery until the inevitable denoument. Viola married again about six months ago, but it proved to be only one of those passing affairs of three weeks' duration. She's divorced now and it is improbable that her goodly bank account was very consid erably depleted by the episode. Dale Winter has married again, too. Dale, you remember, was Jim Colo- sino's dainty entertainer and wife. She held forth at his famous restaurant to the lasting astonishment of patrons. She seemed out of the picture somehow — a lily among thistles. When Jim was killed she fell heir to his profits, but it was rumored at the time that she was most generous to his first wife, an aging Italian woman, whom Jim had divorced in order to marry his beautiful cabaret singer. Dale is now the wife of Henry Duffy, one time husband of Lucky Anne Nichols, who wrote "Abie's Irish Rose," and so became in dependent of husbands moneyed or otherwise. Big Tim Murphy's handsome wife has been more fortunate in her matri monial career. At least we can assume that she considers a live husband more desirable than a dead one, for she was most loyal to "Big Tim" during his enforced seclusion at Leavenworth. At any rate, it is said that she makes a most satisfactory hostess at Tim's mag nificent Sheridan Road gambling palace. — ANN CLIFFORD. Sturmtruppen Metropolitan Division ** A FINE body of men" said the *V President. It was the general carriage and de- meanor of the marching groups that appealed to him. It indicated more plainly than words that they were men to be depended upon in a crisis. And indeed they were. On innumerable occasions they had proven that no dis- orderly mob could sweep them off their feet. Victors in many hard'fought battles with riotous crowds bent on sweeping them aside. "They'shall'not' pass" had come to be regarded by them as more than a slogan. It was a fetich, a religion, something to hold dear even above life itself. Heads erect and stepping crisply the uniformed hordes marched by. From their jaunty Tarn O'Shanters to their beautifully polished boots, they looked like real soldiers. Their natty gray jackets, with purple collars and orchid Sam Browne belts; their mauve trousers with pink and orange stripes showed that, conscious as they were of their innate superiority, they were not un' mindful of the fact that a well-dressed feeling is essential to an excellent morale. "A fine body of men," the President of the Catamount Motion Picture Theatre repeated. "I tell you, Louie, a swell bunch o' ushers surely adds class to a joint." — JOSEPH FULLING FISHMAN. Poetic Acceptances Lew Sarett Accents an Invita tion to a Chififtewa Hog, Hen and Love Calling Tournament Ya-aaaaaaaaa! I'll come to your tour' ney, Your Hog, Hen and Love Calling Con test! Moo-moo! Why can't we call cattle? Gaa-gaa! Why can't we call herring? Ho-ooey! But we shall call hoggies! I feel the first hog-calling yearnings. Wha-aaaaaaaa! I love to make noises! Wa-whoo-wa! Ki-yi! Umpididy! Would I were cheer leader at Dart mouth! Would I were a taxicab driver! Would I were a boys' camp com mander! Yee-eeeeeeee! I'll come to your tour-. ney! I'm sure I'd enjoy such a calling! — DONALD PLANT. TM§ CHICAGOAN 13 A sharp dramatic value of the approaching football season will be found in the fortunes of Amos Alonso Stagg and his Maroons. The championship and the newspaper ballyhoo may be won by Michigan, Northwestern, Ohio, Illinois or Minnesota, but to the imagination which . sees in sports something more than statistics of victories and defeats, Mr. Stagg will be the central character of this year's Big Ten saga. For the Old Man of the Midway stands at Arma geddon. He came to the University of Chicago, then a Gothic mushroom on a bleak prairie, thirty-five years ago. There, ever since, he has been stand ing like a stone wall. He biased the trail of football in the middle west. He nursed its growing pains, reformed its abuses, developed its strat egy. He has done more than any man alive (for Walter Camp has passed into Val halla) to give the game its vivid and stirring place in American life. He is a figure of national prestige not merely because he is a great athletic director, but because he has synthe sized the teaching of games with the discipline of charac ter. His creed of sportsman ship has been the strengthen ing of moral as well as physical stamina. He has visioned the playing field as a prepara tion for the more arduous struggle of life beyond the campus. His ambition has been the training of a spartan citi zenry to carry on the good fight when there were no crowds cheering or ban ners waving. All of which is common knowledge. Nevertheless, human nature and col lege partisanship being what they are, Mr. Stagg enters the last phase of his career under criticism. His team lost six of its eight games last season. To the wisecrackers of this flippant age, a losing football team is an intolerable offense. The report has gone out that the old Hon is down, and the relentless tribe of Racers has closed round him with their spears. The Chicago team of 1926 was game and gallant. It threw forward passes for touchdowns, much to the amaze ment of the 1925 critics who had been annoyed because the Maroons bucked Stagg the Indomitable Sneers and Chicago s Schedule the line too often. Its warming-up games were won handily; and it is worth noting that one of these "prac tice" opponents, Maryland, defeated Yale four weeks later, 15 to 0. It lost to Pennsylvania and Northwestern in debacles; to Purdue and Illinois, by one touchdown; to Ohio, by three touch downs, and to Wisconsin, by 7 to 14 — a score which would have been 14 to Games To Forecast Saturday, September 24 Dartmouth vs. Norwich College, at Hanover, N. H. Brown vs. Rhode Island, at Providence, R. I. U. S. Military Academy vs. Boston University, at West Point, N. Y. Illinois Wesleyan vs. Lincoln College, at Bloomington, Illinois. Saturday, October 1. (Big Ten Dates) Oklahoma at Chicago. South Dakota at Northwestern. Bradley Polytech at Illinois. Ohio Wesleyan at Michigan. North Dakota at Minnesota. Wittenberg at Ohio State. Indiana at Kentucky. Others of Possible Interest, October I Princeton vs. Amherst, at Princeton. Dartmouth vs. Hobart, at Hanover, N. H. Notre Dame vs. Coe College, at South Bend, Ind. Army vs. Detroit, at West Point. Navy vs. Davis-Elkins, at Annapolis. Yale vs. Bowdoin, at New Haven, Conn. 14 if a too eager Maroon comrade had not accidentally knocked a pass out of Anderson's hands in the end zone. It was a team composed mainly of green men a little lacking in speed and power, but it played an aggressive and inter esting game. Its formations and maneu vers were clever and deceptive. But because these well-coached Ma roons of 1926 did not win a single battle in the Conference, the mob-mind began to arrange the coach's retirement into private life. A jeering mutter ran about the town: "Stagg is through!" A sports page comedian endeavored to give the Old Man his coup de grace by printing a story that the Maroons had been taught only six plays by theirmentor. Vae victis! Thirty-five years of service to the game. An impressive array of cham pionships on the record. A team that was always worthy of its university and its city, always respected and feared by its adversaries. But there was no chival rous Admiral Schley of the press to arise and say: "Don't sneer, boys" Some of last fall's flight of sneers must have got under Mr. Stagg's tanned and toughened hide. He has always been a stoic, masking his puritan sen timentalities under an Iroquois reserve. He has never given much heed to "pub lic relations," which is the new slang for press agent work and propaganda. The bitterness of defeat and the sweet ness of victory were a part of a life time; he was accustomed to their taste. But he was too much of an idealist to under stand the Age of Raw. At last he was flicked on the raw. He said nothing — newspa per men have always found him about as garrulous as a snapping turtle. He made no promises for the new season. He did not point out the fact that with the growth of the state universities since the war and the restrictions of undergraduate admission to the University of Chicago, he was compelled to work with about one-half the ma terial his rivals enjoyed. But when the football schedules for 1927 were an nounced, everyone gasped. Mr. Stagg had assigned him self the most difficult pro gram in his career. He had revived the old feud with mighty Mich igan; he had contracted for two tough intersectional games (Oklahoma and Pennsylvania) ; he had undertaken to entertain five of his standard Big Ten rivals. His head was bloody, but un bowed. To answer the gossip that he had shot his bolt, he and his Maroons would stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord. This schedule is a beau geste, char acteristic of the man's uncompromising spirit. It might be indicative of an in tention to retire from active football coaching (he has many other duties) after one final fling, one last great orgy of drinking delight of battle with his peers. But on that point one man's guess is as good as another, while Mr. Stagg is keeping his secret. The dean of football coaches is too austere to be popular among the news paper sports writers by whom he is presented to the [Turn to Page 23] 14 TWE CHICAGOAN Statistics An Academic Accounting WE have learned recently that James Weber Linn smokes lots of cigarettes. In fact, we have it from his own pen that writes his morn ing column that he smokes about forty cigarettes a day and has done that for 30 years. His fraternity brothers say this statement is modest; we are in clined to agree with them. Neverthe less, this fact, when carried on, explains why college professors have to write columns. Professor Linn, if he smokes forty cigarettes a day, uses 14,400 cigarettes a year (no, that's not right, 14,600 a year), or 730 packs, which represents an expenditure of $109.50. He smokes (adv.) you see. • If he has utilized cigarettes at that rate for 30 years, he has smoked 438,- 000 cigarettes, or 21,900 packages and has spent $3,285, which would have bought him a nice automobile if he'd refrained from smoking. And now— if all the cigarettes "Teddy" Linn has smoked during those thirty years were put end to end, the line would be nineteen miles long and would reach from Madison street to Hazelcrest, Illinois. If Professor Linn has received a pad of wax matches with each package of cigarettes he has purchased for the last three years (matches weren't given away much before that, we believe) he would have pocketed 2,190 pads. When the backs of these pads are extended they measure six square inches. Just think! If Mr. Linn had saved his match covers for the last three years he would now have enough to paper the walls of a pretty decent sized room, his den, perhaps. But who knows? Maybe he has. — CALVIN MORALESI. Genuine As Labeled MICHIGAN BOULEVARD SHOPS have long been apostles of the idea that truth pays 6 per cent dividends. Only now and then in preaching this gospel they may grow a little overzealous, a phenomenon known sometimes as "speaking in tongues." Statements so delivered are indubtiably pious, but commonly a bit hard to understand. We refer to the snake-skin purse vended a lady of our acquaintance, which revealed on its inside label : "Im ported snake grain leather — Made in the U. S. A." — ROSALIND GREEN. Marionettes Impending Adventure THE Relic House, located at the converging points of six streets, of which the chief are Clark and Cen ter, has housed since February, 1926, the only marionette repertory theatre in the United States. A theatre under the direction of Mr. Meyer Levin. While a history of puppets — comical and ironic parodies of mankind — goes nearly as far into antiquity as a history of the stage itself, the Relic House Marionettes are modern. They rep resent an experi ment in theatrical method. In theory, plays of humans treated as automa tons can be most effectively present ed by genuine au tomatons, to wit : R. 17. R., Peer Gynt,, The Hairy Ape, Pinwheel, Processional and so on. Satire and irony, together with the incredible masque of unreality in a too real world, lend themselves readily to development at the hands of the marion ette theatre. So, too, do fantasies which transcend the ordinary barriers of time and space; more ordinary theatrical pieces as acted out by the puppeteer's figures appear as ludicrous and acute footnotes to the stage's com ments on life. In six months the Relic House Marionettes have produced George Kaiser's From Morn to Midnight, the original 1 5th century Faust, Patelin, their own version of James Stephens' Croc\ of Gold, two of Schni tiler's Affairs of Anatol, Kreymbourg's Lima Beans, and a half dozen plays for children, includ ing Alice in Wonderland, Jac\ and the Beanstal\ and Cinderella. But the primary interest of Chicago's Marionette theatre does not lie in chil dren's plays. Only those now in "stock" will be kept up. The Relic House pro ducers are interested in experimental drama. And currently they are inter ested in the Chicago scene. The mimic theatre opens its "season" about September 1 5 with The Croc\ of Gold. In preparation is an ambitious satrical revue, Chicago — a puppet hilar ity presenting Mayor Thompson, Carl Sandberg Al Capone and other promi nent citizens of this fantastic town. — JOHN ACKLIN. Note for Reporters On News Writing WHEN the body of an unidenti fied man is found by the po lice, examine the body, and if the de ceased was wearing any socks at all, say, "Body of unidentified man, thought to be wealthy club man was found, etc., etc." If the deceased was wearing silk socks, say, "Body of un identified man, thought to be missing millionaire, etc., etc." When a person is murdered, without being shot, or stabbed with a knife, say, "Wounded by some blunt instrument." No self- respecting woundee, can ever be wounded by anything but an "instru ment" — never by a blow with a mallet, a sock on the jaw by a rock, or a blow from a baseball bat — always remember, "some blunt instrument." When police arrest as many as two persons, and charge them with posses sing dope — heroin, cocaine, morphine, etc., always remember to write, "What is said to be headquarters of an interna tional dope ring was broken up today when police arrested , etc., etc." If a man about whom you are writ ing has ever been seen on Randolph street after dark, refer to him as "the well known man - about - town," or "widely known loop character." Any man who is in any way con nected, even as office boy, with institu tions where lovely ladies sell their affections must always be referred to as a "notorious vice lord." Any altercations, in which negroes and white men are engaged, even though it is a friendly argument over a crap game, provided it occurs south of Roosevelt Road and north of Fifty- fifth street, must always be headlined as "Black Belt Race Riot Looms." — EUGENE WHITMORE. THE CHICAGOAN 15 Wrigley Field Painlessly Projected A great field enclosed by huge grandstands, bleachers and score boards. . . . Customers filing in through turnstile gates and laboriously up concrete runways. . . . Box seat holders who do not have so far to go. . . . The players practicing. . . . 34,827 straw hats and one derby. . . . The flapper, showing a sudden interest in baseball and attending the games in great numbers. . . . Judge Landis, high commissioner of baseball, looking like a one-night stand tragedian, in a front box leaning on a heavy cane with his chin on the rail. . . . Boss Wrigley, in another box with a party of friends, keeping a sharp eye on the proceedings. ... A dozen rough- looking men carrying rakes and scra pers, massaging the infield. ... A little man carrying a strange, oblong frame which sets down parallel with the home base. ... He has nothing up his sleeve. ... He mutters a few words in a low tone, picks up the frame, and behold, the batter's box is outlined on the dirt in whitewash. . . . Everybody would like to know how the trick is done, but is ashamed to ask. . . . Three umpires wearing blue suits and fairly exuding author ity. . . . Every time I see an umpire I think of a remark made by the late Jack Sheridan, who worked at the job 15 years or more. ... He said: "Umpiring may have its annoying moments, but you can't beat the hours — 3 o'clock to 5!" — VET. Phototypes Young Lady About Town There's a swell window To glim myself: And I'm not so poisonous to once over If I do say it as shouldn't. Pep? That's your baby! Speed? Ever thine! Class? Who else? Step on it? My slogan — Or maybe my motto! Scan the sketch coming With her skirt below her knees! Bet she wears underclothes. As Moses said, It takes all kinds of people To make a world unfit for habitation. Hey, taxi! JOHN MATTER. Punches and Tickets With Seating Diagram PLANS for the fistic debate between Jack Dempsey, the Manassa mauler, idol of the lowbrows and "Gentleman Gene" Tunney, the title holder, who reads books, uses long words and boasts of preferring associa tion with university graduates, are com plete. It is described as "the battle of the century" and the "greatest fistic pageant in history" by enthusiastic newsp ape r writers. The advertising ballyhoo is in full swing. It will gradually increase in vol ume until the climax is reached just before the ten- round .exhibi tion. Both fighters are training for the contest by doing a certain amount of roadwork daily, boxing, weight pulling, bag punching, rope skipping and shadow boxing to the evident delight of a horde of gullible spectators willing to pay $1.10 per head to see the boys go through their stunts. Each has his own private chef and a retinue of man agers, press agents, trainers, secretaries and rubbers to aid in preparing him for the fight. They will live like kings until they leave their training quarters for Soldiers' Field to don the cruel boxing mitts on the evening of Sep tember 22. They are attended by a horde of sport writers and the excited public will be advised daily of what the fighters eat, how they sleep and the ex act condition of their physical health. The significance of every phase of the big scene will be minutely analyzed and explained by so-called experts and spe cial commissioners in long articles in the newspapers. The big stadium, with its 162,000 seats, is ready for the crowds. The estimated gross of the gate has been in creased from $2,00,000 to $3,000,000. It now appears that Tunney's share of the receipts may aggregate more than $1,000,000, while Dempsey 's bit may reach $500,000. Although the price of admission ranges from $5.00 to $40.00, everybody wants the highest price tickets. Tex Rickard, it seems, has held out eight Smartyl sections of the best ringside seats for the accommodation of important per sonages and his friends before the tick ets were offered for sale to the public. Mayor Thompson has announced that he has unselfishly given up his four choice ringside seats to J. P. Morgan and a group of friends from New York. The Mayor says he will sit way back in the $30.00 seats. The public complains be cause no dia gram of the seating ar rangements has been made public, and in a statement is sued to the public in re sponse to vig orous protests, Rickard naively says that no diagrams are ever issued for his big fights. The Chicago public has not taken kindly to the plan of buying seats, sight unseen, but Tex Rickard assumes the attitude of a big father to the fight fans and says he knows best. One interesting feature of the plans adopted by the management is seating of the vast assemblage in order of their official and social importance. Rickard is bringing 800 millionaires from New York and several hundred motion pic ture celebrities from Hollywood and provision has been made to give them preferred locations. This has been no easy matter and has caused Rickard and his assistants many sleepless nights. With a view of assisting Tex Rickard and his citizens' committee in allotting locations to their distinguished guests, we respect fully suggest that they be seated in this order : Governors, Federal dignitaries, state officials, city officials, county officials, members of South Park Board. Rickard's 800 New York million aires, Chicago millionaires and society leaders. Bankers, prominent manufacturers, railroad presidents and other captains of industry. Big Butter and Egg men from out of town. Stockbrokers and owners of chain stores. (Continued on page 25) 16 TWQCI4ICAC0AN TUEO4ICAG0AN 17 CWICAGOANJ iERSONS who know him well do not call him "Freddie." But so- Major McLaughlin ciety reporters insist on it. The "Fred die" tradition is a hangover from the days when he was a bouncing boy just out of Harvard. New York then had its "Reggie" Vanderbilt, and Chicago its "Freddie" McLaugh lin. The "ie" was a touch of social swish, aped from Eng land, where every Albert automatically becomes "Bertie." Fortunately, young Mr. McLaughlin outgrew his "ie." Chicago has claimed two fashionable ambassadors to The Great Outside World. One was Hobart Chatfield, Chatfield-Taylor; the other, many years later, was Frederic McLaughlin. Mr. Chatfield-Taylor sallied forth to social and more-or-less literary conquests of European capitals; Mr. McLaughlin made a career of polo. And he is the only big-time polo player Chicago has ever boasted of. Till he was nearly forty he did nothing else but play polo, following the seasons — Meadow- brook, Aiken, Coronado. This long, lean Chicagoan swung a mean mallet. In shining testimony thereof, his house at Lake Forest and his apartment in town are as crowded with polo trophies as an early Belasco stage-set was crowded with bric-a-brac. Some of the silver cups are so large that they are used as umbrella jars On all these trophies the names of the winning teams are engraved, and most of the names are celebrated "International" players. Many of these teams are topped by the inscription, "F. McLaughlin, Capt." As a matter of official record, F. Mc Laughlin was well on his way toward mak ing the International team, when, the war ex ploded in 1914, and British polo men found themselves with something else to do. The nearest thing to a team of International cal ibre that America produced during those war years was the Panama Exposition cham pionship team in 1915, and F. McLaughlin played on it. This famous four was picked from such illustrious material as Messrs. Milburn, Strawbridge, Webb, Stoddard, Stevenson, et al. . The following year the United States, weary of letting England, France and Germany have the front page, tried to get up a little private war of its own. Much railroad fare was expended in giving the National Guard an excursion to the Mexican border. The boys still insist it was a fine war (Mex.) . Anyway, F. McLaughlin got mixed up in it, and romped down to Texas as stable sergeant for an Illinois artil lery outfit, which was considered a big, democratic gesture, since all his friends were officers. During this basket-picnic on the border he put in his time psycho-analyzing recalci trant artillery horses, and a good time was had by all. By the next spring the U. S. had become fairly warlike, even bloodthirsty. It threw away its horn and bought a hammer; then stepped into a large-size, copper-riveted, war' .jJSujt^JLu&uil ranted-not-to-shrink war. And though it interfered with his polo, F. Mc Laughlin decided in favor of the Gov ernment. He promptly took himself to the first Officers' Training Camp at Fort Sheridan (where his appetite and his boots were the envy of all) and emerged a Major of Cavalry. From now on through this intimate history we shall refer to him as "the Major." However, it must be admitted that the title began to embarass him frightfully as soon as the war was over. In France he commanded a machine-gun battalion wherein Mr. Ed. ("Strangler") Lewis was likewise enrolled. And to this day, whenever the Major occu pies a ringside chair at a wrestling (or, pussy-wants-a-corner) contest, the first thing the "Strangler" does, after getting up off his back, is rush to the ropes and lean down to shake hands with his old C. O. That's the big, democratic spirit of the war. After the Armistice the Major returned to his native shores and took up polo where he had left it. In 1919 he captained a Meadowbrook quartet that would undoubt edly have met the British team had one been sent over that year. And then, ab ruptly he stopped playing polo, and sold all his ponies. The Major is like that. When he says he is through with anything he does not mean maybe, or even perhaps. He is about as flexible as a bronze statue of General Grant. Aside from the fact that he played always on teams with International men, one other monument to his polo record still stands. He and Thomas Hitchcock, Sr. (father of the renowned "Tommy"), were first to introduce thoroughbred horses into American polo. Moreover, the Major in variably trained his own. And to the won derment of horsemen everywhere he never used whip or spurs. In the same abrupt manner with which he closed his polo career, he opened his career as a big business baron. Returning to Chicago, and the pleasant aroma of his ancestral coffee industry, the Major set about making a place for himself in the marts of trade. And it has worked beautifully. Today he is rated as one of the few 10-goal men in the mocha-and-java traffic. In place of polo he adopted golf, but only as a pastime. However, the patriarchs of Old Elm complain that he is just as agile at whacking a ball around a field on foot as he was on a horse. And he continues to bring home oversized silver cups. It has become a habit with him. Every town has its Most Eligible Batchelor. And until his marriage, three years ago, Chicago pinned this ribbon on the Major. In those brave days at his Continental flat, hard by the Boulevard Bridge (and it was hard to be by the Boulevard Bridge, with all those tug whistles!), he feted 18 TI4tCI4ICAGQAN mostly the distinguished visitors who passed through the city en route to California. Stars of society, stage and cinema; playwrights, polo players and potentates. They all knew Chicago as Fred McLaughlin's home. Not long ago I encountered W. K. Vanderbilt in New York, and he did not say to me: "How is Mayor Thompson?" or "How is Vice-President Dawes?" He said: "How is Fred McLaughlin?" But the Major loudly poohpoohs his social celebrity. It is more important to him to be selected as an official for the annual Police Field Day. No large athletic movement has been started in Chicago since the war without him. Boxing, wrestling, racing — he's on all the committees. And at odd moments he runs the Black Hawks, Chicago's favorite hockey team. It is no secret that he stands six feet- two, weighs close to 200, wears a 17 collar and has Dempseyan biceps. I have heard him described as handsome; I have even heard that he is a graceful dancer. His taste in literature is ex cellent, and he drives a motor car in a manner that is nothing if not positive. A little ride beside him at the wheel would bring a gleam of terror to the eye of Barney Oldfield. He possesses what might be called a healthy appetite, but he is not a gour mand. (In his batchelor days he had a cook that used to serve beefsteak six evenings a week, an epicurean outrage of which the Major remained non chalantly unaware.) And he has never had a drink in his life. If there is one thing he detests (and there's more than one) it is publicity. Which made things somewhat difficult for the reporters at the time of his ro mantic marriage to Irene Castle. It is alleged that the Major has demolished more cameras than Mr. Eastman will make in the next fiscal year. He has been a regular reader of The Chicagoan, but I am not sure that he will continue to read it after this week. FRANCIS X. DE PUYSTER. Ovektone/ A THIEF who entered an Evanston home left an old suit in place of the new one he purloined. This has all the earmarks of a permanent ar rangement. ? Three children who demolished a dozen chocolate eclairs for breakfast had to be taken to a hospital for treat ment. Breakfast is a tough meal for us, too. ? Rubber tires for milkwagons and rubber shoes for the horses is proposed in an ordinance sponsored by Alder man Toman. We hope it don't go through. It's one of life's little com pensations to know that somebody has to get up before we do. ? The first meeting of Chicago's Bene fit and Mutual Association of Junkmen at which the master junkmen attempted to teach apprentices how to holler for rags, bottles and old iron, resulted in the neighbors sending a riot call for the police. In the future they'll prob ably "say it with bottles." Bring Your Radio Overtones: According to the press, fight fans must buy seats to the Demp- sey-Tunney fight sight unseen. This is undoubtedly Rickard's humane ef fort to save the patrons' eyes for the ocular test of seeing the fight itself. — OBSERVER. ? "I do not care to discuss politics as I have never been a politician," "Choose" General, not "care." ? These hay fever cure advertisements have such a ring of sincerity about them we are tempted to expose our selves to the pesky disease in order to try 'em out. ? President Michael J. Faherty of the board of local improvements announces that on January 1 we will have a model subway, fifty feet long, six feet wide and collapsible. We like the collapsi ble feature of it — if we don't like it we can fold it up and store it away with our voting machines. Rolling from his bed out of a third story window, a Baltimore man dis played rare presence of mind in taking his pillow with him, reducing his in' juries to a minimum. We recommend, however, for other third story rollers, the mattress. From Glen Cove, New York, comes the news of thirty-five varieties of apples growing on one tree. Much too late. Had Eve been confronted with this assortment, the Garden of Eden might have been saved to pos terity. ? Residents of the northwest side liv ing in second and third floor apart' ments will not have to face dry faucets next summer since the city council has authorised construction of a new pumping station. This is considered a signal victory for the anti-profanity league. ? Ambrose Wyrick, noted tenor, sug gests matrimonial fitness can be deter' mined by giving a ten dollar bill to the prospective bride or bridegroom for a shopping tour of the music .stores. We think the candidate should be made to work his or her way through a Piggly Wiggly. ? Our idea of real estate despondency is a local man's want ad: "I will take almost anything as a down payment on my lot." ? A woman has no claim on an en gagement ring unless she intends to wed the donor, a New York judge has ruled. Prospective brides will now de mand to know the date of purchase when the diamond circle is proferred. ? Indiana farmers, it is said, tap grow ing pumpkins, drop in some sugar, put back the plug and with nature's aid brew pumpkin wine. Some use may be found for summer squash. ? The Kinkajou is to be the new dance for 1927-28 by decree of the dancing masters recently assembled in New York. We'll either dance it or pronounce it but we won't do both. ? Only eighty-two days left in which to do your Christmas shopping — . — GC. TUECWCAGOAN 19 THE theatres of Chicago of that period from Millard Fillmore to William McKinley had a pernicious habit of burning out. It was a poor year that two or three didn't call for a 4 -11 alarm, and in 1871 nine of them followed the example of the rest of the town and went at once. But a new one sprang up in thirteen days. After 1850 Chicago had to have its drama. These early playhouses lacked re frigerating systems, their ventilation was that of a brand new, weather tight box car, tallow candles or gas jets furnished the footlights, frequently the curtain ropes broke. But style and comfort meant little to an audience that demanded superlative drama. And melodrama. Our theatregoers of an age more credulous than ours in every thing but politics, loved pure hokum. They got it, along with Shakespeare and opera, and went away content. James A. Hearn in "The Heart of Oak" at the Academy of Music; "Led Astray" at Hooley's Parlor House of Comedy; Mary Pickford shaking her juvenile curls in "The Little Mother" in 1902; Colonel Woods' two-headed rooster, and John B. Rice playing Hamlet in his own theatre— all equally drew. Rice later became mayor; today we would have elected Colonel Woods. It was not the fashion, fifty years ago, to conceal an honest emotion. The seasoned first nighter was a greater nat ural disturbance than a rural visitor to "The Bat" half a century later. Our first theatres and our first hotels had a close connection. The old prints say that in 1834 a Mr. Bowers, "pres tidigitator and ventriloquist," arrived at the Mansion House and on the stormy winter evening of February 24 entertained the citizens who were able to pay fifty cents for a ticket. The parlor of the hotel was utilized for the performance and Mine Host Mark Beaubien provided candles for foot lights and some of his twenty-three children for ushers. And Mr. Bowers' voice darted here and there in the gloom in a most eerie manner. The village talked about this show until the next summer when a circus — The Boston Arena Co. — arrived. An other year passed and two enterprising men named Isherwood and McKenzie, discovering the Sauganash House to be vacant, fitted it up for a theater. To pacify Mark Beaubien they hired him and his fiddle for an orchestra. Our historian, who ignored Chris- Theatrics 1834-1927 tian names, says that Mrs. Ingersoll played the lead and Mr. Leicester sup ported her in that first evening's enter tainment. The curtain rolled back at 7 P. M. on "The Stranger" and three hundred paying guests were there. "The Capture of Rouen" was then put on and as the hour grew later the players went into a farce, "The Idiot Witness." At midnight all departed, to come again the next night. The company played on for six weeks and then toured the wilderness — Peoria, Vincennes, and at last St. Louis. The happy promoters now decided to build a theatre. So in 1838 they asked the city council for a permit to "strut and fret their hour upon the stage." They proposed to build at Dearborn and Water streets The Rialto, to be thirty feet wide and eighty feet deep, of substantial timber. The seating capacity was to be 400. Impromptu plays in the hotels had been all right, but the righteous ele ment now arose and Vox Pop was filled to overflowing. Councilman Grant Goodrich said the theatre was "a nursery of crime." But the coun cil, headed by a young realtor named H. O. Stone, granted the permit. What a first night that was, when the Rialto opened! Here were Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Jefferson, Sr., playing "Lord Lovel and Lady Nancy." And in the wings stood a big-eyed boy of nine, whose gaze took in that tiny stage and his noble father and beautiful mother, and who dreamed of treading the boards himself to a continent's ap plause. It was Joseph Jefferson, who was later to sleep twenty years between the acts before crowned heads. For many years "ladies" did not at tend the theatre. Dan Marble, an ac tor of the forties, complained, "The ladies of Springfield are much more ad vanced. They attend the plays, while the Chicago ladies consider the stage vulgar." But after the Civil War women here began to attend and by 1890, we find George Armstrong, a critic for the Evening Post, lamenting: "The numerous ladies who attend the theatre have made it almost too re fined. The audience used to stand up on the chairs and cheer. Today the ladies' applause, like their toilettes, is neat and becoming!" It was 1847 before Chicago gained another theatre of consequence. The city's population had grown to 17,000 and John B. Rice and his wife saw the need of an amusement house. And so soon Chicago's rialto — Randolph street - — had its first playhouse, a substantial structure at the Dearborn street corner. Mrs. Hurst, who was to become Mrs. John Drew Sr., appeared in Rice's first night program. During the next few years there appeared a most distin guished company. Among them were Julia Dean, Ed win Forrest, Junius Brutus Booth, and in 1848 young James H. McVicker who was to stay in Chicago and make history. Chicago's first misfortune in opera — which was to recur throughout the years down to the catch in Ganna Walska's throat — arrived via the famil iar fire route in 1850 when Rice's theatre blazed between the first and sec ond acts of "La Somnambula." The moralists shook their heads. Nothing daunted, Rice immediately erected a new theatre, this one at Ran dolph and Washington streets, of brick and costing $11,000. He became so popular that he was elected mayor in 1865 and served four years. Presum ably faithful ward workers rated an nual passes to the show. Now James H. McVicker, grown wealthy and well known, turned pro ducer and in 1857 erected a building to house the drama at the unheard of price of $85,000. _mcK SMITH (NOTE: Mr. Smith's history of Chi cago theatres will be resumed in the Sep tember 24 issue.) 20 THE CHICAGOAN JOURNALI/TIC JOURNEYS The New Racket for Racketeers ASSUMING you managed to wheedle a smile or two from reading about the progress of the new est cul de sac, devised by our nimble polizei for the entrapment of gangsters, had you considered what chance you yourself might have in proving the sound status of your compos mentis to a quizzical psychiatrist? What posi tive assurance have you, after all, that one of the hidden quirks of the Binet- Simon game might not trip you up? Could you give, for instance, offhand and quickly, the meaning of the words: soporific, parterre, homunculus, casuis try? Personally, I admit a secret dread of official mental tests. In a social game of "Ask Me Another" and like contests designed for amusement, you can always profess to be uninterested and refuse to play, or even join in and have a lot of fun, if you happen to know the answers. But there are prob ably few among the rationals in Chi cago or elsewhere, whose equanimity would be undisturbed if they were compelled by the police to undergo a session with an alienist. No wonder the young men trying to get along in the beer and shooting business have ex pressed such extreme distaste for the proceeding. Some of them offered to get out of town and stay out rather than go through the horrors of "playing with the blocks." The "racketeer" brotherhood are contemplating what they term "a trip to the nut factory," with silent, rankling scorn. For purposes of this prospectus, a conversation I stumbled upon the other day in one of those places sometimes referred to, for some obscure reason, as a "speakeasy," seems eminently ap propriate. The name of the chief speaker, although familiar, will be omit ted for reasons best appreciated by my self. He was standing at one end of what used to be known as a bar, and his discourse was precipitated by the bartender's casual remark: "Well, I see the coppers have got a new stunt now." Then, with considerable feel ing the gangster, for such, I admit, he was, delivered an extemporaneous ora tion. Lest you form a too hasty judgment, it is only fair to mention that he was in the place strictly on business. He had just superintended the delivery of several barrels at the rear door and had not imbibed a drop— at least in our presence. "Yeah," he began, "I hear they're after me. They think I'm goofy." This seemed to strike his sense of humor, but his laugh was one of those wicked, play-villain snickers. "What's got into these nutty Chi coppers?" he continued. "If any one of them bulls had one half my brains they'd be in the racket. They want to run me outa town, eh? That's good. I was leavin' soon anyway. This burg is gettin' to be a wrong dump. Yes, sir. I've worked 'em all an' I know. "Take De-troit now. There's a dump fer ya. Wish't I hadn't left. Oh they was good enough reason why I blew, all right, but as soon as I get rid of this racket I got here that's where this baby's goin'." His next remark- was addressed con fidentially to the barkeep, but it was audible. "Are these guys right?" he asked, nodding towards our end of the bar. "O. K." replied the glass polisher. "Well, I was just goin' to show you how nutty the coppers is for thinkin' we guys is coo-koo, see. Fer instance, would you call a guy that makes one grand a day goofy? No. Well, that's what I'm gettin' two months ago in De-troit, see? And I wasn't breakin' no eighteenth amendment, neither. "No, sir. I got the sweetest little racket up on the river you ever seen. Of course, we got to watch fer the G-boys," meaning government agents, "but this racket I'm talkin' about just can't get knocked off, see? It ain't possible. "We're runnin' Chinks acrost the border from Canada, get me? We get two hundred dollars a head and we ferries ten acrost every night. An' say, maybe you didn't know it, but them Chinks is as much in slavery as any nigger before the civil war. They is bought and sold in these United States like so many hogs an' cattle. Big Chinks, chop suey guys with lots of dough, all over the country, buys 'em from importers in Canada. "They pays about a grand, including the bucks to us in the ferry racket fer each Chink. Then they makes the Chinks work fer 'em until they has paid fer the purchase price. You can imagine how long that takes, at the rate of one or two cents a day! "Well, as I was gettin' at, no mat' ter how hard the G-boys tries to knock us off when we're runnin' over a load of Chinks, they never gets to first base. It may sound raw when I'm tellin' it, but this Chink racket is business, see? We have it understood beforehand, that we ain't takin' no chances with the G-boys. "So what we do is tie these Chinks up in bags, see? But to make it look like booze instead of a Chink, we fill the bag, between the Chink and the outside of the bag with empty bottles. Then we sew up the top of the bags. Well, we shove off from the Canada side, see, with a load of ten or twelve bags. They's a big truck waitin' on the other side fer us. "In case we is sighted by a G-boat, and it happens once in awhile, ye can't be lucky all the time, we lets 'em come right on towards us. We ain't worried none, but we is busy, see, because when the G-boys comes alongside they ain't nothing in our boat but me and me pal, see? "One cool grand a day, when die racket's workin' good. And here I am in Chi peddlin' beer fer a lousy C a day." (In the vernacular "C" means $100.) "Huh, I got to laugh, these punk coppers think I'm goofy!" Perhaps, after all, it did sound a Kt' tie raw, when he told it. And there seems to be little upon which to base a belief that this eminent beer and Chink merchant is "goofy." On thinking it over, it seems to me that we are in need of protection not so much from the paranoiacs and other lame mentalities as from the brilliant minds capable of such ingenuities as Chink ferrying. The thing might be approached from a different angle more successfully. If we who grub along in the attempt at turning honest pennies are in fact the "goofy" ones, why not begin casting the suspicious eye on persons of more than average mentality? If memory serves, there was some talk a few years ago about two super- brained young men, named Loeb and Leopold. And, going into history, such jolly boys as Nero and girls like Lucretia Borgia were not exactly dumbbells. I, for one, will be glad to enroll in any movement to separate us lunatics from the cerebral heavy weights. The thing really ought to be done and soon. — JOSEPH DUGAN. TI4E CHICAGOAN 21 SPORTS REVIEW Let There Be Fight OPERATIONS of the gallopers in and near these environs all but ceased during the fortnight just past, due, of course, to the exodus of players to Meadowbrook to see the interna tional matches. As these words are tapped through the little black ribbon, all that is to be known about the out come of the eastern classic remains to be recorded. Advance reporting was ever thus. A report, however, of the last scheduled game between Oakbrook and DuPage county can be given in four words. The game was postponed. The reason, probably was the lack of players still in town plus the fact that Mr. Maxwell Corpening of DuPage county was out of the game with in juries. Golf MODESTY compels us to refrain from making too obvious a men tion of the fact that this department all but flatly predicted Bobby Jones would win the National Amateur champion ship at Minnikahda, although we feel that, in view of the expert knowledge required, such predictions should al ways be harked back upon. However, we shall say nothing about it. Instead this sportsman joins the general lament arising from the early advices to the effect that Bobby took no part in the Western Open at Olympia Fields. Without him, one feels, the tourna ment perforce lost much of its appeal to the general public. Aside from this bad news, the matches had everything to command the attention and respect of the golfing world at large. Within the next two weeks club tournaments will one by one reach the final wind-up. It must be recorded, sadly, that post mortems on another great season are soon to be in order. Boxing ALL joking aside, the impending "battle of the century" to be fought out right soon within the con fines of a roped-in platform, sixteen feet square, in the center of Soldiers' Field stadium, will bring to Chicago a certain added prestige among the sis terhood of cities. Not that we couldn't manage to worry along somehow with out world championship boxing con ventions, but there is no denying that the sport, under the astute management of Mr. Rickard, has reached propor tions not to be ignored. The one or two hundred thousand (what do fig' ures mean, anyway?) patrons who will occupy every available inch of space within the concrete walls, will repre sent merely an infinitesimal segment of the vast horde of humans from coast to coast and beyond the seas who will follow the blow-by-blow report with avid interest. Strangely, such interest can in no way be generated by watch ing either of the two fighters go through their training paces. For untutored eyes, there is little to be learned by watching Mr. Dempsey and Mr. Tun- ney assault a punching bag, or pommel a sparring partner. And as an exhibi tion, the sight of a boxer, no matter how eminent, going through the routine of training season is, in our opinion, a very poor show indeed. One impres sion can be obtained, however, from a pre-view. You will probably decide, after watching the boys work out, that you are just as competent to pick the probable winner as any of the so-called experts, and forthwith, you probably will. Football THE thing- is a disease. Mere men tion of the word is enough to quicken the pulses and raise the tem peratures of four out of five. As this issue toddles off to press, symptoms of the annual fall epidemic are to be ob served everywhere. They may be recognized in the chronic sufferers quite easily. The germ takes effect first in the vocal chords. The sufferer finds himself delivering a volume of words, phrases and sentences about "pros pects," "the schedule," "promising ma' terial," "what we're going to do this year," "watch out for so and so, that boy's a comer," "tickets," "the new rules," "why we didn't win the such and such game last year and what we are going to do to such and such this year," and so on indefinitely. As the season progresses the words increase, both in volume and vocal power. Then follow the series of climaxes during which the sufferer's voice is distorted into yells, shrieks and screams each Saturday afternoon until the larynx is exhausted. If football has a deleterious effect upon the scholarship of under graduates, what, do you suppose, might be the annual damage it does to busi ness? And what of it? This depart ment, in mere contemplation of the glorious season about to begin, admits a blood pressure which makes further words on the subject inadvisable. In' stead may we present the schedules? Their eloquence is the equivalent of volumes, anyway. So gaze thereon in rapture. October 1 Chicago v. Oklahoma Northwestern v. South Dakota October 8 Chicago v. Indiana Northwestern v. Utah October 15 Chicago v. Purdue Northwestern v. Ohio State (at Columbus) October 22 Chicago v. Pennsylvania Northwestern v. Illinois October 29 Chicago v. Ohio State (at Columbus) Northwestern v. Missouri November 5 Chicago v. Michigan Northwestern v. Purdue (at Lafayette) November 12 Chicago v. Illinois (at Urbana) Northwestern v. Indiana November 19 Chicago v. Wisconsin Northwestern v. Iowa — SPORTSMAN. 22 TUEC14ICAGOAN Leon Errol, noted total abstainer who delights his public with drunken goings on hilariously simulated, reaches a high fioint in the letter box scene of Yours Truly" now on view at the Four Cohans playhouse. 23 7#e ST A G B First Nighters TWECI4ICAG0AN Indomitable Stagg A Veteran Carries On (Begin on page 13) public. He is not a back-slapper or a glad-hander. Outside of his contacts with students, alumni and faculty in his work he is aloof and unsocial, and there are not many men in Chicago who know him well enough to call him by his informal first name, which is "Lon." He is said to be some what arbitrary in the conduct of the affairs of his department, and to be in tolerant of the little waywardnesses and weaknesses of athletes. He never swears at his men during football practise, true enough, but he can address them, nev ertheless, with a sarcasm that would rasp the scales off an alligator. He has his faults, no doubt. So had Oliver Cromwell, to whom in figure and puritan temperament he bears a slight resemblance. But on brown Oc tober afternoons, when a stocky, gray- haired, swarthy-faced man, plainly dressed, walks unassumingly along the side-lines by the Maroon bench, you will hear a murmur of respect and ad miration ripple across the crowded stands: "There's Stagg!" The grand old man of football— and not so old, either, to judge by the squareness of those thick-muscled shoulders, and that springy step. . . . One of Cromwell's Ironsides crossed with a Crusader. A man of great loy alty, who has evoked many loyalties. A grim sort of man, hard for an outsider to know. But if you really want to understand Mr. Stagg and his works, search out one of his alumni fullbacks and say something mean about the Old Man. Then you will discover the sound and healthy influence he has had upon the younger generation — if you survive the experiment. CHARLES COLLINS. Sex In the Headlines 4 |1 JRL aviator tumbles into river," VJ ran a headline in the Chicago Evening Post. Isn't that just like a woman? Male aviators crash, have good virile smash ups, but the eternal femi nine takes a little tumble. Women ride bucking broncos, swim the English channel, even pilot airplanes; but to headline writers girls will always be girls, God bless the helpless little things. — R. G. THERE is some strange excitement always hovering over "first nights" in the theatre. Even Chicago "first nights" — which are rarely first nights at all. Usually the show has run an entire season in the alleys that are trib-. utary to Broadway. But whatever this strange excitement is, it brings out a brave battalion of first-nighters, and having been one of them for half a dozen years I am beginning to know some of the others. There are two main groups: first string first-nighters, and second string first-nighters. The for mer class may be depended on abso lutely to hold* down benches at each and every opening in any or all Chi cago theatres. They never miss one. Deaths, marriages, storms at sea — noth ing will keep these enthusiasts away. The latter class turns out only for the gala openings: entertainments such as the Follies or Uncle Toms Cabin. Class A first-nighters interest me most. They take no chances. Or, rather, they take all chances. And I wonder why. I have wasted many an otherwise profit able evening wondering what it is that brings people out on a rainy night to witness a performance of a too-tried hit that has run itself shabby in New York. What is the advantage, for in stance, in being present at the first Chi cago performance of Chicago, which has already been a turkish bath hit (succes de steam) in New York? To the boy or girl sending the best answer I will present a pair of fight tickets that will entitle him (or her, as the case may be — and sometimes is) to be admitted free of charge, with only the war tax ($80.00 and costs) to be paid. Of the old familiar faces — though many of them are surprisingly youthful —to be viewed in that twittering time before the house lights go down and the curtain goes up, the initial ones to be reckoned with are those of the crit ics. They have to go, whether they want to or not. On an opening night I always look about to discover, first of all, the silver boyish bob of my favor ite critic, Miss Amy Leslie. There is a lady who, I am proud to confess, might have shared my humble fortune long ere this, had she not been wedded to her work. (Two typewriters in the same kitchenette being too many — at least for the neighbors.) Then I look for Miss Virginia Dale, of the Journal; Mr. Bulliett, of the Post; Mr. Dona- ghey, of the Tribune, and the dean of the critics, Dr. Ashton Stevens, of the Dearborn Independent. I seek likewise Mrs. Donaghey, and Mrs. Stevens, and Mrs. Jack Garrity, who, with her stalwart husband, the grand vizier of the Shubert office, never misses a first night. Also I glance about to see if Charles Collins, the litterateur, and Philip R. Davis, the lawyer, and Kid Sherman, the retired pugilist, are in their accustomed places. If not the curtain must be held. There are the Brothers Byfield (those boys!) , Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Marshall; Howard Ellis, the Tribune's barrister, and Maud Mar tin Ellis, the comely painter; Kenneth Fitzpatrick, the big polo and movie man; Harry Powers, Jr., and "Tim" Timponi, local theatre magnates; Mr. and Mrs. Dick Greiner; Fritz Kiesling, representing the State's Attorney's office; Sam Gersten, Lord High Execu tioner for Lee and Jake, and the Sam- sonian Dr. Ben Reitman. There, too, sits Mr. X, the well- known "fence," and Messrs. Y and Z, the celebrated gunmen. Across the aisle one observes the smiling visages of Messrs. P, D and Q, renowned boot leggers. (Names and telephone num bers on request.) This merry company, along with several hundred who are not so faithful in their attendance, make up Chicago's first-night audiences. The amusement industry owes them a vote of thanks. — G. M. 24 TI4ECMICAG0AN "You remind me so much of Barrymore.' "But, Barrymore is darker!" Chicago Guide VI. After Baedeker 7v[. Michigan Boulevard (still cont.) Scattered up and down Michigan Avenue are many exclusive shops fur nished in the latest Louis XV, Spanish and Italian styles. Unlike most mu seums these have no admission fee; but a covert charge is added to the price of each purchase. Numbers of these shops are given over to decorators, in terior and exterior, the former dealing largely in Early American, the latter in Poiret, Jenny, Chanel, etc. This is an extremely old part of the city, many of the buildings having been erected not long after the O'Leary in cident in 1871. Most of them, however, have been restored in the present cen tury. This accounts for the numerous facades in the Georgian — or Calvin — manner. The block n. of the Tribune Tower contains a large number of pre'Impres' sionist billboards in assorted sizes. Most elaborate of these is the Wittbold flower box containing blossoms as gargantuan as though Chicago had a Climate. A block further n. the street be comes extremely cosmopolitan. Le Petit Gourmet is house in the Ital ian Court Building (nee Victorian) . Nearby are the Czecho-Slovak Art Studio and the English Sirie, Ltd., the Ltd. being a great improvement upon the domestic Inc. A French flavor is imparted Au Paradise and by the words in letters of electric fire, Chez Pierre. The Celotex House is a fine ex ample of Hollywood Spanish. It is a memorial to American altruism in that it was erected for the exclusive pur pose of demonstrating to the public a new means of cutting down heating and cooling .expenses. The house is open daily admission free. The tall pile of red brick that tries to dominate the view is the local branch of the Allerton Club. (N. B. Strangers should be careful to observe the significance of the placing of the word club. There is all the difference between day and night between the Allerton Club and, say, a Club Aller ton. The stone building in Chicago Gothic which constitutes one of the biggest hazards in the Michigan Boule vard speedway is thought by many persons to be a joke, but it is really the Water Tower. This is a famous old landmark but nearly everybody has forgotten what it marks. The Water Tower stands at the head of a stretch of roadway formerly known as the bottleneck. It has recently been wid ened to such an extent that it now looks like a Mason jar. At Chestnut Street stands the Fourth Presbyterian Church which lends itself particularly well to wedding decorations. Fashionable nuptials are attended by nearly as many uninvited as invited guests. The former stand on the sidewalk in front of the church before and during the ceremony and have no fault to find ex' cept that there are so many doors that brides sometimes contrive to slip in side without being seen by the picket- ers. At this point, too, many well known newspaper photographers may be seen shooting social lions on Easter Sunday. The large building which extends from Walton Place to Lake Shore Drive is a hotel which has played ducks and drakes with more than one bankroll. It is, however, a first class hostelry where the guest has a right to expect a high degree of comfort and need have no hesitation in requir ing such small conveniences as a Gideon Bible and a desk full of reminders to send home a wire to Mother. Chamber maids, waiters, etc., expect gratuities but are often disappointed. • — RUTH G. BERGMAN. Traffic Device For Shortening Distances Perhaps it happened in front of the a Congress Hotel. An insurance sales- it man stood hot and panting and mop- r- ping his brow, after a day's hectic chase a around the loop in pursuit of his prey. ig And all things considered, he had is fared rather badly. He had just missed every green light in the loop, dashing es out into the broad highway in time to :h have trucks rumble merrily over his 3. toes, and street cars nail him as they /e shrieked and clanged around the cor- ie ner. In his haste he had stumbled into :e a street cleaner's cart, just as it was ie rudely jolted by a backing taxicab; but r- it was hardly his fault that a rivet from the heights of a new building had 10 bounced off the edge of his bonnet. His ie last lap had been featured by a vast e- crowd blocking the only entrance to his ly goal, enthralled by a pretty maiden in ly a window, displaying, among other us things, a new toy. as And then the Tapper, who, tapping er the weary one on the shoulder, cheer- :h fully inquired: Pardon me, sir, but lie can you tell me how to get to LaSalle d- and Van Buren Street?" w Mr. Bedraggled struggled for speech. Then pointing a feeble finger in the be general direction of Grant Park's open H spaces, he wheezed: "Take the I. C. to to Englewood and come up on the Lake )le Shore Limited." — J. P. P. TUEO4ICAG0AN Home Suite Home A Mans Co-oft [Begin on Page 11] which provides that no one may buy or rent in the building without approval of owners. The saving in upkeep of the co operative apartment, as compared with the separate residence, is a feature which appeals strongly to the owner of the latter. That saving is roughly the difference between the wholesale price paid for the large quantities used in the big building and the retail price charged the individual owner. So much for the economies of the co-operative apartment. In addition, an organization that makes a specialty of building, selling and managing co operative apartments on the south side, offers to show doubting Missourians that their flats have been sold by orig inal purchasers at a profit of from 30 to 100 per cent after ownership of from one to three years. So say all the pros — but don't forget little brother Con. The opposition tells of difficulties in disposing of a piece of property not entirely controlled by the seller and of certain doubtful legal aspects in the control of ownership. Co-operative ownership is admittedly too new to have been tested fully. However, the proof of the pudding is the eating thereof. Builders and own ers are smacking their lips — so far. RUTH AND LEWIS BERGMAN. Punches and Tickets With Seat Plot (Continued from page 15J Moving picture celebrities from Hol lywood. Prominent theatrical man agers and stage stars. Members of the Lambs1 Club. Members Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Association of Commerce. Members of Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions. Representative Masons, Elks, Moose, Odd Fellows, Knights of Py thias, Knights of Columbus, Modern Woodman and other fraternal organ izations. Active bootleggers, leading gunmen and racketeers. Retired bootleggers. Prohibition enforcement officers. Law yers. Night club entertainers. Musicians. Junior business execu tives. Bond salesmen. White collar slaves. Visting firemen and other ex cursionists. Peasants. g c Hie CI The Full A DISTRESSINGLY remote adoles cence devoted to pursuits culmi nating rather naturally in occupancy of such a chair as the present serves to backlight the current rebellion into striking (positively not a pun) grotes- queries. The rebellion operating (re peat above parenthetical remark) to de prive us of pictures to talk about, per haps a bit of reminiscence will be con doned. At any rate, here are the shadows: So early as 1907 the job — it was not then a profession — of operating a mo- tion picture machine had its attractions. There were electric switches to throw, compact and simple mechanisms to set in motion and stop at pleasant inter vals, lenses, to focus transverters and similar contrivances to guide with easi' ly experienced hand and eye. There was nothing that could be quite earnest ly described as "work," but the young men lucky enough to be designated these duties were not without fore sight. The then unique office was presently shrouded in a dense fog of formulae out of which emerged the great body of men whose manipulation of the now ridiculously simplified mo tion picture projector is so priced as to have made the Stutz roadster a favorite avocation of the fraternity. In the same year, the girl who could play Alexander s Ragtime Band and Hearts and Flowers equally well — it was several years later that the male Im-movie 25 NEMA Limousine condescended to play for pictures — be gan inflation of the myth that now glares at the theatre owner over the bulky shoulder of the belligerent opera tor. The musician's burden in the cinema was, and is, a no less roseate bubble. Perhaps it is most readily sen sible at this time in the spectacle of the trick organist, the former billiard hall entertainer whose tuxedoed per' formance at the $50,000 console in some obscure manner derives its price tag from the F. O. B. cost of the in strument instead of the performer's B. V. D. lyrics and C. O. D. (the music publishers support these folks in awful regalia for featuring specified ditties) melodies. Of the stage hand, veteran overload of the speakies and but lately come into the cinema scheme of things, be it said merely that he had preceded his pres ent companions along the devious and remunerative lanes of organization. Thus the grotesqueries, the wholly American spectacle of specialization without the customary American in- gredient of propriety. And so on to the wholly un'American grotesquery which has to do with pickets, boycotts, battles and bombs. If there is un reality in the basis for demands made, there is none in the means traditionally employed for their enforcement. Hence to the most engaging grotesquery of all — that all this should be in the name of light entertainment for the appar ently very common people! It is not, of course, to laugh. The cinema has come to be a very real part of the thing thoughtlessly called civili zation. As fixtures of the cinema, even dispensable fixtures, the operators and their allies are likewise factors therein. If it is within the scope of their wis dom to annex great assets for their part, surely the matter is the business of employer and employe. If they would not so completely overlook that other business of theirs, which consists in furnishing a steady supply of enter tainment to the bulk of the citizenry, people who prefer to write about pic tures would not have to stuff their col umns with vaporizings destined for publication long after the logical date of armistice. — W. R. WEAVER. 26 Bridge Variations With Poison and Antidote MR. WORK, MR. WHITE HEAD, et al. have reduced bridge to a science for those who wish to take it as such. But the entire lot of them have this invariable failing of the pure scientist. They leave out of account the application of their sublime mathematics to an uncouth world. The young bond salesman prepared to no trump his way to the pages of Success should, in addition to a knowledge of what to do with four card suits, be prepared to cope with some of the variations on the game, which, loosed unexpectedly upon an earnest young bridge addict, have often caused him to gnaw upon chairlegs, toss andirons at dowagers, or perform other jocosities suitable to a family cocktail party. Diagnoses and pharmacopaea for some of the more virulent of these out breaks are given below: Phonograph Bridge: Players of phonograph bridge are generally de tected either the first or second time they become dummy. The ailment starts with a twitching which finally induces the victim to rush to the phono graph and put on the piece she heard last night at the opera or Ali Baba's Cave. Added to the soothing effect of jazz blues on a five no-trump attempt, you have the pleasure of your partner's arising to shut off the machine at the fifth trick of the next hand, completely missing your high-low on clubs. No cure. Radio Bridge: The symptoms of this ailment are identical with those of phonograph bridge, with the exception of the instrument used. Attempts to get Zanzibar and points east may be frustrated for the evening by alleging that there is a lady going to bed with her shades up across the street. While the group is at the window, pour your rickey over the interior of the radio. Fashion Bridge: Mrs. Castle saw the dearest blouse in rayon crepe, which causes Mrs. Allard, your partner, to trump your high queen while describ ing the ducky white flannel sport coat at Tremaine's. At this point take a package of Eight Brothers' Famous Chewing Tobacco from your rear right- hand pocket, and tuck about five and one-half of the family into your left cheek. As soon as the ladies have with drawn, go to your club and play bridge. Honeymoon Bridge: Wumpsey is so engrossed in Honey's eyes that she leaves you in a one double. Tell her about the time Honey made the red headed jane walk home from Wheaton. Telephone Bridge: It is intensely aggravating when playing with pro fessional gentlemen such as physicians or bootleggers, to have their clients call them repeatedly to the telephone, inter rupting the rubber. Go to the tele phone yourself, call up the president or manager or anyone of the fifteen vice- presidents of the telephone company and call him a slab-sided old horse- thief. He will accommodate you by ordering service discontinued at once on the line. Baby Bridge: Your college room mate's wife thinks it would be such a lovely idea to have you out to their suburban home to meet her Cousin Agnes, such a charming girl, in spite of her buck teeth. Baby cries, and the roommate's wife leaves the hand in midair to take him his bottle. Baby is set upon the floor and the parent play ing "woof" on all fours to amuse the darling, smacks the table with one hip and tumbles your highball into your lap. You are then allowed to hold the treas ure. . . . When this happens, seize your hat, walk to the door and inform the company that you have just remem bered an engagement to sit on a flag pole. They will not believe you, prob ably, and you'll not care whether they do or not. Text Boo\ Bridge: Mrs. Grayson bids two spades on the queen, jack, ten, then quotes Mr. Work to prove that that is now proper on account of the increased value of the honors. If she brings up the subject again, hit her with a floor lamp. — JOSEPH ATOR. "But — / DID redouble" TUECUICAGOAN Newsprint Breakfast Reading CORNERING the morning news paper output in Chicago is a fairly easy matter. There are only two general circulation papers. Both may be purchased for a five-cent piece. The Tribune sells for two, and the Herald-Examiner furnishes its advertis ing men with a talking point and its treasury with a substantial addition by insisting on three cents. If one takes the morning newspaper to read, not merely to shield his eyes from rolled hose and oddly shaped knees across the way, it would be an interesting experiment to switch for a few days, or to buy both papers. The Hearst fan, fed up on Arthur Brisbane and the day-to-day announce ment that "Old Glory" is about to take off, would get a real treat out of the TriVs cartoonists and its editorial page. McCutcheon, like Hack Wilson, has batting slumps, and they seem longer each year, but occasionally he turns out something worth the wait. By the way, it is almost time for the Tribune to re print, by "popular request" for the seventeenth year, McCutcheon's "In dian Summer" effort. In the editorial column, the Trib has a big edge. Its writers write, while on the Herald- Examiner they apparently have to fill the space safely. Brisbane is the editorial voice for Hearst, and as he opinionates for all of the Hearst papers at the same sitting, he confines himself to urging bigger and better aeroplanes and to commenting on news items the Associated Press has planted all over the country. R. H. L., Doc Evans and Vox Pop provide entertainment not duplicated in the Examiner. The first named is steadily building up a following, and it is a poor morning now that you cannot pick up at least one paragraph worth reading to the wife over the coffee cups. Doc and Vox are standard stuff, satis fying the physical and mental bolshe viks nicely. The Examiner parries with Teddy Linn, university professor, who has carte blanche for 600 words a day. Linn is always entertaining, and when he rolls out George and his bridge in structions, he is a scream. If you own Work or take bridge lessons over the radio, read Linn. O. O. Mclntyre's "New York Day by Day" is syndicate stuff, but excellent. The rest of the TME CHICAGOAN 27 MU/ICAL NOTET Louise Finest of the Season editorial page is duplicated by speakers at the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary and West-End Business Men's lunch eons. Consider news columns, and the Examiner maintains a distinct advan tage. It has more news and most of it is better written. The Examiner ap parently offers no weekly cash prize for the best headline, consequently, in Hearst's offering you can usually tell what the story is about by reading the heavy type above it. Departmental preference is largely a matter of taste. If you take your base ball, your Dempsey-Tunney, your movies or shows seriously, Hearst gives you more real information. If you don't, the Trib offers a little more entertaining reading. It it s radio, the Examiner gives you information on what to get locally at all corners of the dial; the Trib seems to work on the premise you are going to tune in on WGN. Both papers appear to be suffering from contentment. Each issue looks like the previous one. The afternoon papers, while weak in features and artists, have more ideas in a week than either morning paper entertains in a season. Circulation may be maintained under these circumstances, but the chances are that the readers are spend ing less time wading through the news print than formerly. A third morning paper, with a tre mendous bankroll, is probably the only thing that would jar either paper into a serious editorial effort. Such compe tition seems as probable now as the White Sox finishing in the first division. — EZRA. IT seems strange to us today . that only 27 years ago the musical lead ers of Paris turned down this beautiful apostrophe to their city. The little drama of the pretty shop-girl who breaks away from a tender and simple bourgeois family for the love of a Bo hemian seems a trite subject. But in four acts, acts of contrast between the ties of home and the intermittent squalor and brilliance of the old Mont- martre, Charpentier has written (the libretto is his own incidentally) an epic of the City on the Seine. Such is the opera "Louise." The passage of almost three decades robs his music of the daring that ap parently frightened the old-timers. We find that it leans strongly on Wagner, but it has rightly, little of his brawni- ness. The subject is too wistful, too graceful. Only in one choral climax in the crowning of the Muse of Mont- martre and in certain moments when the slowly rising anger of the Father arises to the surface of his phlegmatic temperament do we find Charpentier scoring in the grand manner. For the most part he is lucid, a little pensive, a little passionate and always sweet. Practically the only sweetness in oper atic music that is not satiating. The Ravinia performance was large ly Rothier's, yet Gall and Johnson did some noble singing. We liked her "Louise" least in the first act where she was too much the skittish flapper, not the girl-woman already in revolt that Garden makes the heroine. From that curtain on however she sang and acted convincingly and her notion of "Depuis le Jour" deserved its ovation. With Bori so ill that she had to tune down to one performance a week and with Gall rushed across the ocean to take soprano leads, it became sud denly very logical to do "Louise" at Ravinia. Both Gall and Rothier are old hands at their respective roles. Johnson, quickly intelligent, took up the part of Julien in midsummer. Hasselmans was already on hand to conduct Charpentier 's score, one long familiar to him. The net result was the finest performance of the Ravinia season and one of the greatest I have heard- anywhere in certain years of listening to music. The tragedy of "Louise" is a grim one, but the history of Charpentier's struggles to get his piece heard is grim mer still. The Opera-Comique was as reactionary at the end of the nineteenth century as the Opera is and always has been. Modern music that could be heard, found its way only into enlightened salons. The traditions of Gounod, firmly upheld by the vapid Massenet, dominated the Opera utterly, and, to a lesser degree, the Comique. It was only after bitter struggles with poverty and stupid men (always excepting Al bert Carre to whom the score is dedi cated) that "Louise" got its world premiere, with Messager at the con ductor's desk, in February, 1900. Johnson's part, a rather negative role inasmuch as the contest lies between father and daughter, he did adequately, although but lately learned. He was least at ease in the Montmartre duet where his manly ardor was interrupt ed by frequent glances at the con ductor. Claussens, as the mother was correctly bitter, but I have yet to be convinced that she has much of a voice. The leadership of Hasselman's showed an easy expertness with the score. But I reaffirm that the performance was mostly Rothier's. The Father is Baklanoff's role at the Civic opera in the winter. And he manages nobly with it. But he is not a Frenchman. Furthermore he cannot understand the meaning of that role as Rothier, who comes from bourgeois folk of Rheims and who has sung it for almost a generation. Everything he did was perfect. From his plodding en trance in the first act, home for supper of onion soup and a quiet reading of his journal, until the final explosion when he drives the daughter he loves from his house forever and curses the city that has bewitched her, he re mains a transcendent portrait of the Parisian artisan and father. If he had not sung a note it would have been an unforgettable piece of acting. The audience got him unmistakably and were mightily stirred. For there was none of the customary politely en thusiastic applause. Instead a Con tinental orgy of stamping and cheering as the theatre rang with his name. A grand old man. — ROBERT POLLAK. 28 THE CHICAGOAN Chicago, III., September 10, 1927. Dear Marion: Such a good time as I have been having! There has been no time un til this afternoon for letters. Susan and the family are their nicest. I have seen Aunt Sally twice, once for dinner and again last Monday after noon when she had all the sixteen cousins in to tea for me. Thoughtful of her. She said that when she was a girl and used to go visiting that it took all her time for duty calls, that there wasn't any left for mischief. I have been teaing, dancing, golfing, swimming, lunching, having dinner, do ing something every minute of the time. Met squads of new men, most of whom are nice. And I shopped. Rather! I looked for a coat, did Mother's errands, found the stuff I want for curtains — heavenly sheer organdie just the shade of sun light — and bought most of my childish wardrobe for fall. You will be surprised when you see what I bought instead of a coat. Last Saturday afternoon Sue and I went all over town, quite literally. The fur coat sales are on full tilt, the most beautiful things you ever saw. So many of the furs are entirely new, and pelts are being marvelously used that were never considered wearable before. Every kind of cat that ever existed, I believe, and a good many that never were on land or sea. The tawny furs, leopard, ocelot, red calf, blond pony, are smartest except for formal wear, and for that black is the thing. Coats are beautiful and luxurious, well made, but somehow they failed to click. I began to think I had come in too early or that I was just finicky, for some of the tweeds and wool mixtures like men's overcoating, especially some collared with long haired fur that I looked at at Maurice Rothschild's are lovely, and at Carson's they had some beautiful plain fabrics and an enormous quantity of "made" furs, furs that are artificially patterned and colored. Friday we were in Field's, up in the sport section on the sixth floor and a man was just arranging one of those long show cases with the suit, coat, ensemble, whatever you choose to call it, that now belongs to me. I hope Mother will like it. It is a gray tweed coat-sweater-skirt combina tion with an extra matching blouse of that new transparent velvet we have been reading about. It is imported and rather expensive — in fact, awfully ex- Civic Service For Guests of the Citizenry [NOTE: Going and seeing, burden some enough to the resident, is happily ob viated for the resident's out-of-town guest by The Chicagoan's own Hehise, whose letter may be copied with suitable change of names and dispatched to eager home folks at will.] pensive, except for the unlimited possi ble variations. You can wear the sweater and coat and skirt for day-time and sports; the velvet blouse, skirt and coat for after noon, or the velvet blouse, with a pleated matching satin skirt that I found in the misses' section, for more formal afternoons and for dinners. The combination of velvet and tweed is the most chic. It's absolutely new. You have no idea how beautifully the textures accent each other, the velvet by contrast seems so soft that you can scarcely keep your fingers from smoothing its softness and the tweed becomes unexpectedly luxurious. Oh, I'm really in love with the thing. And it fits divinely. Field's can certainly do things well when they try. I got Mother's shoes, though there was some delay in getting her buckles fixed. I had a large notion to order for her a pair of gray suede slippers with one rather broad strap across the instep and a nice steel button. They were smartly cut and had a low heel that looked as well as a high one but was quite wide at the bottom, you know how she hates spike heels, but it was one of their new models and they could duplicate it in any shade so I didn't bother. At Carson's they had the most beau tiful pony coat I think I have ever seen. It was made of very pale blond skins and soft as fabric; the collar was an entire fox, head and tail just as we wear them for separate fur pieces. I should think it would be a good way to fix up your black broadtail. Broad tail is to be one of the most important furs this winter and black is especially good. You could use your silver fox on it without damaging the skin at all. They had a very good looking cordu roy suit there, too. A little formal to me, but you would like it, I think. And it would fit in well with the things you already have. Dark brown with natural colored sweater blouse of a new kind of jersey that has rabbit hair woven into the yarn. It is the softest stuff you ever felt and I imagine it will be extremely good style. I wanted a sweater of it to go with my last year's kasha but they couldn't find one. Field's are to have some later. I got a darling clothes brush for Bud. That was at Carson's, too. They have all the letters of the alphabet made into brushes with either green or red backs of this celluloid stuff which looks like the so-called jade that fountain pens are made of. I thought it might please him and maybe he might occa sionally brush his clothes. You never can tell. Anyway, it's cute and if he doesn't like it I'll take it back and send it to Mary Bindley for a going away present. She likes funny little things like that and it would be nice to carry in one's bag to brush dust and powder at odd times during the day. Thursday we had lunch at the Woman's Exchange. They serve home made food here and you can also buy baked things to take home just as you can at ours. We had corn soup, bacon and chutney sandwiches (good) a tomato stuffed with a sort of glorified^ Waldorf salad, and some cup cakes, nice ones with the frosting down the sides as well as on the top. A girl named Lucy Fahnestock, a friend of Susan's, was with us. She is engaged. She bought a luncheon set made up of round yellow linen doilies, middle sised, big and little, with the cloth fringed out for about an inch all around. Aunt Marion could make some like wink. I got a new lip stick, Guerlain and very dark, and now I want a small dark hat to go with the new outfit, and shoes, either black suede or plain leather, I can't decide which, and some stockings. I will match your samples tomorrow if I can, and I shall see you soon. Thinely, — HELOISE. TI4C CHICAGOAN 29 Recommendations Among the New Books ANEW Sitwell, Mrs. Constance, complete with the Sitwell back ground of country house life on a large scale, and spacious wanderings, the fourth Sitwell since the war to put name to title page, appears in "Flowers and Elephants" (Harcourt, Brace), the story of a year in India. Read, as in deed you ought always to read, the book first and the preface afterwards. What you find is a syncopated travel story, high spots only, written by a young girl, who, in England, in the Sues Canal, in Ceylon, with her brother in a cantonment in northern India, in Central Asia, in the hills, an elephant round-up in the jungle, at the court of a Maharajah, still toys with the idea of stringing colorful im pressions in solitude and just not marrying. This in spite of the fact that almost every chapter is punctuated with encounter, and the whole held to gether by a recurring Jack who sounds serious. Turn then to the preface — by E. M. Forster, author of Passage to In dia — and be bidden to read it not for these things at all, but for its contrast ing of East and West, its philosophy. A travel book of a different and more definable sort, just out today, is "Vanished Cities of Northern Africa'' (Houghton, Mifflin), a new collabora tion between Mrs. Stewart Erskine and Major Benton Fletcher, who does the pictures. Timgad has been called an African Pompeii. But an excavation goes on, it turns out that Africa holds not one Pompeii but a dosen. Cities left to burial in the desert sand, when the Roman occupation gave place to the Arab. From Tunis to the oases of the Sahara, the authors follow con- SUNDELL-THORNTON ANNOUNCE THEIR FIRST SHOWING OF THE FALL SEASON. CLOTHES AND ACCESSORIES FOR MEN, SELECTED AND STYLED TO MEET THE DEMANDS OF THE MAN WHO INSISTS ON GOOD TASTE IN HIS EVERY ITEM OF APPAREL. THE ULTIMATE IN PERSONAL ATTEN TION AND SERVICE IS ASSURED YOU. SUNDELL-THORNTON JACKSON BLVD. — AT WABASH KIMBALL BLDG. TEL. HARRISON 2680 Built to excel — not undersell UNIVERSAL BATTERY COMPANY Chicago TI4ECI4ICAGOAN O N S O R E D B Y HARGRAFT PACK THE V^prth Woods INTO YOUR PIPE BOWL THE campfire sends lusty orange flames to glow against the black and silver sky. The wind chants in the pines. Nobody talks. How a pipe tastes then! Sportsmen travelling deep into Canada found Hud son's Bay tobacco there — and promptly claimed it finer than any they had ever smoked before. When they returned, regretfully, to civilization, they brought Hudson's Bay tobacco along. But never expecting to recapture to the full those magic smok ing hours. But then — it happened. Hudson's Bay tobacco scoffed at geography, tasted as it did beside the campfire. Brought the outdoors indoors. Released the North Woods tang and zest in every mellow puff. Most every good shop is now a Hudson's Bay Company Post — for tobacco. Try it. Measured by mediocrity it is higher priced — measured by your pleasure it is priceless. TfrtibtorifilfrtQ €otttpa8^. i INCORPORATED 2?? MAY 1670 HUDSONS BAf ^Tobacco Cut Plug — sweet and mild Imperial Mixture — rich and mellow Tort Garry — -full-flavored and cool H ARGR AFT &r SONS! stantly in the footsteps of the Romans. But Africa holds other vanished cities as well, some older than those of the Romans, Carthage, and the ports of the Phoenicians, some younger, medieval towns of the Arabs and of the Moors. There were perhaps never two novels whose anonymity seemed less explicable than "Miss Tiverton Goes Out" and 'This Day's Madness." Now comes a third, 'The House Made With Hands" (Bobbs-Merrill) to explain the ano nymity of the other two but not to raise it. This story, now published for the first time in America, was the first of the three to be published in England, and it gives the effect of be ing autobiographical in detail, in feel' ing, perhaps even in its characters. At any rate the effect of the author's hav ing wanted to write what she wanted to write about this house in the London suburbs, its garden, its people, without being trammelled by the amenities. A quiet book, like the others, but one which even more endears itself to the reader : Barbara's life at the Chestnuts, from flower time to Christmas dusk and back again, year after year, with the comings and goings, the marryings and dyings, and Barbara's own romance in its slow, grotesque blossoming. With the concert season at hand, the wise Chicagoan will do well to think of preparedness. Among the new books there are several that will be of assist ance to him. Of these the most gen eral is "Music: Classical, Romantic & Modern," by Eaglefield Hull (Dutton), a book that covers the range of our music from Monteverdi and the Scar- lattis to Jazsberries, and that offers a most extraordinary series of appendices; technical terms, tiny biographies of musicians, lists of gramophone records, an appendix on English folk song, a bibliography of music and musicians. But the most exciting of the lot is undoubtedly "Ludwig van Beethoven's Pianoforte Sonatas" by William Beh- rend (Dutton), translated from the Danish. Mr. Behrend discusses the Beethoven Sonatas as a sequence, much as the literary critics have discussed Shakespeare's sonnets as a sequence, ex cept that here one is following not the thread of a possible love story but of a whole life. However when he thinks of Beethoven as writing his autobiog raphy in the sonatas, an intimate form of expression addressed to the instru ment that had been his as virtuoso, Mr. Behrend is not thinking primarily in terms of moonlight shining through ar- TI4E CHICAGOAN 31 bors of eternally beloveds. The story of Beethoven's life is of musical de velopment even more than it of event. There is also a new pamphlet in the Musical Pilgrim series, issued by the Oxford University Press, "Schubert :I: The Symphonies" by A. Brent Smith. These pamphlets are by way of being program notes, superone. — SUSAN WILBUR. One Man Shows Survivals of Summer NOW is the high tide of the year when all Chicago artists are buy ing those expensive Windsor Newton paints — yes, even the two who really do live in garrets. The reason for this wilful waste of money is that the big gest event of the year will occur in a few weeks and everyone is working like mad to get his entry ready to sub mit to the jury. After those amiable gentlemen have separated the chaff from the wheat, the triumphant will emerge as the envied ones who made the American Artists Show. As you know, the exhibition is known officially as the Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, and opens at the Art Institute in October. In the meantime, I note that four one-man shows are occupying the temporary galleries at the Institute. J. Jeffrey Grant's brilliant landscapes in oil are, by far, the best showing. His clever handling of broken color makes his canvases vibrate with luminous color, and he gives a delicate tonal qual ity to his tranquil summer skies and fields that shows the sensitive work of a master craftsman. Though most of his subject matter is German, I think his painting of "Maxwell Street" is the cream of the exhibition. Aside from its intrinsic value as a composi tion, he has caught the strident, bizarre spirit of Chicago's Jewish melting pot perfectly. H. Leon Roecker who, by the way, is one of Chicago's own, is included in the one-man shows. His oils are color' ful, modernistic landscapes and figure work. His impressions are good, on the whole, though I notice his design is weak and he has a penchant for green that becomes rather boring. The other painter is Edward T. Grigware whose handling is much more conservative than either Grant's or Roecker's. His work is uniformly interesting and he is particularly to be commended because, in spite of the "MEMBER IN GOOD STANDING" WITH THE YOUNGER SET! -OU are as likely to meet with Fatima's inviting aroma along the trout streams of the Cas cades as on the breezy beaches of the Gulf. For wherever the younger set is pleasure bent, this favored cigarette is "one of the crowd." ATI M A A few cents more — for the best that money can buy UCCETT (, MYERS TOBACC fact that he is an oil painter, the few water-colors that are included in his show are surprisingly good. And that, of course, is almost unheard of. Most painters cannot mix their mediums sat isfactorily. Edward Pierson completes the show with an exhibition of sculpture and wood carvings. His "Baby Portrait" is an anatomical triumph. Another coming event that gives us something to look forward to is the feverish New Arlimusc exhibition which will be held at 1501 N. La- Salle St. in October. Some of our very young primitives will exhibit hopeless nudes, disguised under the name of art. There are bound to be some commendable canvases and some very bad things, designated modernism, to cover a lack of basic composition and tone. At any rate, it will be a shocking and entertaining show and, no doubt, the police will have the situation well in hand. — v. o. b. 32 Anent the Yokel Editor, The Chicagoan: In the Tribune of August 28th again Mr. Mencken gives his opinion in regard to America's village architecture and especially the Christian Sanctuary, he also touches on that hateful element known to Mr. Mencken as the Amerinan peasant or Yokel. When one speaks with authority of art it should come from an artist or one that has an appreciation of art. Mr. Mencken is not an artist, because he has created nothing; he has no appreciation of art because to have an appreciation of art one must have a desire to create something besides bile and venom. . Polo ... a magazine designed to supply the Game and those inter' ested with a publication of appropriate authority, readability and interest. Obtainable by subscription only. One year, $5.00; Two years, $8.00; Three years, $10.00. Quigley Publishing Company 407 South Dearborn St. Chicago, 111. The October issue will contain the com' plete account of the International Matches by Peter Vischer and other leading aw thorities. Music, a painting, a picture frame, a cow shed, a haystack, if when finished the prod uct is artistic, then the creator is an artist. All art is nothing but glorified hokum and is based on subjective needs. There is no such thing as a creation being art per se. There fore if the yokels put a steeple on their frame church and to them it represents art, then in time and space it is art. To thr Intelligentcia of every age, the creator of Romeo and Juliet was an artist, because to them it represented life. The author of "The Face On the Barroom Floor" was also an artist. A sentimental song, if it has pathos and has power to bring tears to the eyes of a wash woman, then to her it is art. Mr. Mencken has steam but he explodes it in the void, he has talent, but he is not a genius, because he is too obvious, too con sistent. To be specific, he would have us believe that he is superior and very disgusted with every institution of the present civiliza tion, when in fact he has a fear of obscurity, and he is willing to prostitute his talent, his judgment as to proportion, in an effort to be original. Mr. Mencken's Master, Frederick Nietzsche, was an artist, a genius. His poetry and his religion will live a long time. The master created something, but his disciple — his creations are as the snows of yesterday. When we look back over the making of these United States, and with all the vulgarity of our bourgeoisie, we must give some credit to that hateful clement, known to Mr. Mencken as Yokel. — Rr.v. Floyd Hall, 4841 N. Lincoln St. Wild West Editor, The Chicagoan: I know now why most of the burlesque houses have gone out of business. They can't meet the amateur competition. The other night I went to one of the chop suey houses, where they allow girls to dance with one another, and I was vastly entertained. Two flappers, each sixteen or seventeen years of age, — one of the girls a little blonde cutie with curls caught at the nape of the neck with a barette, and a dress which kept hitch ing way up in the back while she danced, so that about five inches of pink bare skin was visible above her garters. Her partner, fat, sturdy . almost to the point of looking hardboiled, extreme shingle haircut, and black rimmed spectacles, with very fat legs, and a short tight skirt. Another couple, two tall lanky girls on the shady side of thirty, holding on to each other very tightly, their skinny legs making grotesque patterns as they wove in and out to the jazz rhythm poured out by the per spiring orchestra. Then there was the lady who had her "gentleman" with her. He was dressed in a cheap gray business suit, which needed pressing, and she had on a black taffeta, obviously homemade — sleeveless, with a wide piece of cheap white lace thrown over the shoulders to make a cape, and the ends of the lace fastened coquettishly in the back by a large baby blue ribbon bow. The other dancers were not so obvious — the gentleman with the pince-nez and a great air of sanctity, the impetuous young sport with the very wide trousers, etc., etc. — • Aranka Weiss, 1756 W. Division Street, ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^TO "David Belasco's advice impressed me" Said Walter J. Leather to Joyce Todd 'as they started for an all'day motor jaunt through the Berkshires. David Belasco, dean of the American Theatre, writes: "The voice is to the actor what the chisel is to the sculptor. He must beware of dulling its qualities* Naturally I am vitally concerned about the voices of my players, so I always advise the one cigarette that I discovered many years ago that does not im> pair control of the subtlest vocal shadings or cause huskiness or harshness. I mean the 'Lucky Strike.' It is the player's best friend." C2i^ <c£<j£^tt*, 6* It's toasted No Throat Irritation-No Cough. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^i^^i^^^m^^^m^^^^^^^^^^M