On the next page we find a cartoon, portraying a semi-nude girl-student, sunk in a lounging chair, smoking a cigarette; we are told:
A good woman’s a good woman, But a smoke’s a smoke.
On the next page we find some sketches, seeming to indicate that the “prom” is a kind of college kissing game, and that at the end of this game the girl lies in a drunken swoon. Later on we find three drawings, “The Famous Prom Soak,” which tell us in three funny ways that the “prom” is a place where both boys and girls get drunk and have a headache the next morning. A little farther on occurs an illustration of a boy and girl who are conversing:
A little later we learn: “If it’s stag, it’s a souse-party.” A little later we see a girl walking on an electric-light wire, and it is explained to us, “A modern girl can’t be shocked.”
I think I have quoted enough. I leave it to the impartial reader to decide the question—whose heads are empty at the University of Wisconsin? Is it the little group of devoted idealists of the Social Science Club, who in the face of ridicule and scolding have brought a series of writers and public men, both radical and conservative, to discuss modern problems before the student body? Or is it the little set of snobbish fraternity men, who run the social and political life of the university, and edit its publications for the advertising of their own sensuality and cynicism?
There was one American captain of industry with a monstrously developed bump of acquisitiveness; as he described himself: “I am a great clamorer for dividends.” It was frequently charged that in the early days his clamoring—or at any rate that of his subordinates—did not stop at arson and burglary; it is certain that it did not stop at railroad rebates, “midnight tariffs,” and numerous other violations of law. By such means he made himself master of the oil industry of the country, and was on the way to acquiring the railways and the banks and the Child’s restaurants. He had made one or two hundred millions of dollars, and was busily turning it into one or two billions; but he found rising against him a clamor of public execration, and the poor rich man, whose second most conspicuous bump was of fear, began casting about for some way to take the curse off himself.