From The Tacoma Times, October 23, 1912. By Berton Braley. While the contest rumbles all about, While the leaders hurry to and fro, While the speakers agitate and shout, While the streams of oratory flow, ‘Mid the talk that no one understands, ‘Mid the noise that all the country fills, Don’t forget the weary hearts and hands, Don’t forget the children in the mills! While we talk of tariff and of trust, Dream of referendum and recall, Down amid the clamor and the dust Childish toilers labor till they fall. While the war for ballots rages on, While the keen excitement ever thrills, Don’t forget the faces pale and wan, Don’t forget the children in the mills! These, who never know the joy of play, These, whose youth is filched away by greed, Turn to us their faces pinched and gray Asking us for comfort in their need. So, amidst the tumult and the press, Don’t forget the cruel toil that kills; Hear them moan in utter weariness, “Don’t forget the children in the mills!”
Category: The Tacoma Times
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Lest We Forget
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The Actor
From The Tacoma Times, October 11, 1912. By Berton Braley. We laugh at the way he swaggers and poses And talks of his triumphs in various parts, We grin at the tale which he grandly discloses, And yet—there is sympathy deep in our hearts; For his is a life which is brief in its glory And long, oh, so long, in its struggle and strain! Who minds if he boasts of a fame transitory And tells of it over and over again? For when on the stage he is placing before us The passion and beauty and wonder of life, The work of the masters who never can bore us, The love and the laughter, the stress and the strife. He makes us forget, for the time, all the real, The everyday world, in the world of romance; He wakes us again to our youthful ideal When love was a melody, life was a dance! And this he must do, though his own heart is breaking, Though life has been cruel and fortune a jade; Though fame stays a day and is years in the making, The “play is the thing,” and the role must be played! He serves us full well where the footlights are gleaming, So give him his “bravo,” his glad curtain call, And leave him in peace to his boasts and his dreaming— He’s earned them, in truth, and he’s paid for them all!
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Coming Home from School
From The Tacoma Times, October 10, 1912. By Edmund Vance Cooke. The buoyant boys, the gladsome girls are coming home from school! My blood runs red with revelry, though years have made it cool. The flit of little bodies and the bobbing mob of heads, Canary yellows, raven blacks, thrush browns and robin reds! The swirl of girlish garments and the letting loose of lungs, The babble and the Babel, yet the fusion of the tongues. O, Wisdom, thou'rt a droning dunce! O, Learning, thou'rt a fool! O, let me be a child again, and coming home from school. O, School house, I remember well how once I stood In awe Of your massive, passive countenance, your wide, omnivorous maw. An Ogre, you, with appetite for little girls and boys; You swallowed us in silence and you spewed us out with noise. Your stony stare glared at us as we hastened from or to you, But you never smiled, you never frowned in all the years I knew you, But we — we shrieked in ecstasy to rid us of your rule, And it's oh, to be a child again and coming home from school. As many hours as Jonah's days within the spacious fish The tyrant school house held us, and as much against our wish, And the vitals of our liberty had scarce begun to sprout Till this new Promethean vulture, all relentless, tore them out. Yet, even as a traveler across the scorching sands Is all the more rejoiced because he comes to fertile lands, So we leaped as from a desert to a garden sweet and cool; So it's oh, to be a child again and coming home from school! Of course, I've not forgotten that the troubles of our youth Were as vital in their seeming as our real ones are, in truth, But, by our backward vision now, how fruitful was our day! And the work we thought was irksome gave us appetite for play. And shall our eyes be wiser, when our present day is past? Tucked in our turf-trimmed coverlet, shall we behold, at last, That Life was all a lessonhouse, which irked us by its rule, But we are children once again and coming home from school.
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Look Who’s Here!
From The Tacoma Times, September 28, 1912. By Berton Braley. Now we are back to the months with the “r” in ‘em; Now are the bivalves again to the fore; Restaurant cooks on the menus are starrin’ ‘em; Oysters are back to their glory once more, Raw on the halfshell or stewed most deliciously, Skewered with bacon or temptingly fried, Ah, how we welcome them! How expeditiously Food such as this is invited inside! Doubtless there’s plenty of germs to avoid in ‘em, Microbes of everything under the sun, Cholera, ptomaine and double typhoid in ‘em; Still, now the season again has begun, We will take chances on what we may meet in ‘em, Spite of the warnings of doctor and sage. Oysters are bully, and folks who have eaten’ ‘em Frequently live to a noble old age
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The Poor Tool
From The Tacoma Times, September 20, 1912. By Berton Braley. Of all of the nuisances known unto man Since old Doctor Noah saw land, The worst it has been my misfortune to scan Is always right near to my hand; And though I have tried it again and again, I never shall care for the postoffice pen. It’s sticky and clotted and gummy and old, It’s cluttered with shavings and hair; In damp, muggy weather it’s covered with mould, And though you may handle with care, You’ll find, when you’re through, that your fingers — all ten Are blackened with ink from the postoffice pen. It scratches and sputters and stutters in spots, It spatters your cuffs and your sleeve; It tears through the paper, it smudges and blots, And a trail of distress it will leave; For never in all of humanity’s ken Could anyone WRITE with a postoffice pen.
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Sure Fire
From The Tacoma Times, September 17, 1912. By Berton Braley. My son, when you go to a vodyville show You’ll notice that people will shriek At jokes they have heard since the long, long ago And heard twenty times every week; The moral is plain, if you’ll read as you run; A novelty adds to our zest, But when it comes down to extracting the “Mon” The old stuff gets over the best! It may be all right when you’re courting a dame To talk about Ibsen and such, But take it from me—if you’d win at the game, You won’t stick to Ibsen so much; You’ll tell HER that SHE’S of a beauteous mold, A stunner becomingly dressed; You’ll tell all the lies that men always have told The old stuff gets over the best. In politics, business, society, art, However the world has progressed, It still remains true to the words I impart, “The old stuff gets over the best!”