The evening world. Newspaper, January 4, 1904, Page 12

‘Publishea by the Press Publishing Company, No. 88 to 6 Park Row, New York. Entered at the Post-Office ‘at New York as Second-Class Mail Matter. & VOLUME 44......... eiseeseeeeeeesNO. 18,476. FOR SAFETY IN THEATRES. ‘The ordinance prepared by The Worid, providing that the asbestos curtains in theatres shall be lowered be-) > tween the acts and that all scenery and fixtures shall be thoroughly fireproofed, has met with general ‘approval.| 4 It is hard to see how any opposition can be offered to Its ¢ passage. Meanwhile the managers themselves are begin-| ming to xct. Several of them are already lowering their fire curtains between the acts, and in many cases The % Evening World’s suggestion that the emergency exits % @hould be regularly used in dismissing audiences has! 4 ~~ Laws against stealing aro necessary for the restraint) $ of the criminal minority, but the average citizen is alg @ thief and does not have to study the Penal Code before g @eciding not to pick his neighbor's pocket. So in the mat-| ter of the protection of life in theatres, while we should! ¢ have the most stringent laws to keep unscrupulous man-! @gers up to the mark, we have a right to assume that 3 ‘most managers will be willing to do the proper thing, it! P4 00-00-0204 Seat Fatal faci; aa a wR Now Liv dust GIVE HER A CHANST ~ TM So GLAD LEAP YEAR CAME - SHE Cant RESIST PROPOSING TO ME NOW THE w EVENING #. WO =) LET ETT ee Dam SO¢OOe ollo Puadoodle J THINKT SEE Ir IN HER EYES. SHES JUST MAKIN’. UP HER MIND TO PoP THE FATAL LDS w H OME " & OOP 0945080004 you DO Loon $9 ExPECTRUL OD PEDLDOCDH SOOTHE LV 0H00 00 Billy books for a New Year's Proposal, but Gets heft. 4900000000008 BYE, BYE, Busy, ive Gor A PREVIOUS ENGAGEMENT, know what it is, without being clubbed into It by a iceman. It Ought to be particularly easy to enforce the require- ts of safety in theatres, Tenement-house abuses fm the dark, but a theatre lives in the glare of blicity, and public disfavor is its death warrant. The men Iandiord may fight for his abuses in court, but theatrical manager, after Chicago, would dare to t an order to protect his audience against fire? Fire Commissioner Hayes has ordered a weekly in- on of every place of amusement in New York. Let simply announce the results of each examination the public will attend to the rest. There {s no law requiring a manager to spend $20,000 gorgeous acceusories for the production of a new spec- Why does he do it? Simply because the public that sort of thing. Could there be a better adver- t Just now than an announcement that every pos- je precaution had been taken for the safety of ences? The merest fraction of the cost of mounting production would make every pie of and every costume fireproof. Suppose a manager d invite the Fire Commissioner and the represen- ives of the press to visit his stage some day, with the lege of touching matches to anything they saw, 1d not the results of that visit be reflected in the receipts? In the light of the Ohicago disaster the manager with conscience will do what he can to protect the lives of patrons without any outside pressure at all, The who has common sense, even though he may fa conscience, can be made to do his duty vnder the Jash of pubdlicity. For the one who has neither con- folence nor sense let us havo the rigors of the law. ON THE HOME STRETCH. ‘This is the last week of work for the Democratic Na-| Honal Conyention—the last opportunity for our business, ‘thén 'to prove that their enterprise is not bounded by the ‘walis of their own counting rooms. It is @ week {n which The members of the Democratic National Committee @ught to be submerged in facts and arguments. * Here are a few points worth impressing upon those ‘who hold that New York is not conventently situated: In the past seventy-two years the Democratic party has) held nineteen National Conventions, one in New York and the rest in six other cities—an average of three con- ‘ventions for each town. Over sixty thousand more Demo- eratic votes were cast in New York City at the lest genera] election than in all those six other places com- bined. ‘The Republican party has held thirteen National Con- ‘Yentions. Thus the two parties have had in all thirty- ene conventions in eight cities outside of New York.! ' here are more Democratic votes in New York City and fta,immediate suburbs than in those eight cities and their euburbs all put together. ; Three-fourths of all the doubtful electoral votes that ‘will decide the Presidential election are controlled by the voters living within dally commutation-ticket distance of New York City. »~ Between two and three times as many delegates ould go home to bed every night from a convention held fn New York as from one held in any other city {m the coultry. Cuban experiences ought to be among the six best sellers of the year. There {s an especial fascination in the titles of two of his chapters—"My Project for Landing tn United States Territory’ and “Reasons Why I Was ‘Obliged to Abandon the Project.” ‘There is a mystery for you! What possible reasons could -have obliged Gen, ‘Weyler to abandon a project so attractive and so feasi- ble? Possibly he may have heard disparaging accounts @f the quality of the board in American jails! EAST SIDE TRANSIT NEEDS. Mr. J. B. Bloomingdale, President of the East Side ‘Rapid Transit Association, naturally takes issue with Mr.| ont’s suggestion that New York should stop build- tunnels until the earning capacity of the present, © Phere is no possible doubt on that point, From the ‘ery beginning of the rapid transit agitation the need of | un east side tunne) has been recognized. That it was not jaded in the first contract was due simply to the fact it at that time we were crowding too close to the debt ‘he first thing to be done was to relleve the long- Lpepasure by enebling passengers from the lower ‘of the island to go “to Harlem In fifteen minutes.” agreed that after that no claim would be more of the congested population of the east bf now about ready to mature, lercises in the process the common sense! 89049096082 D0OOG OO COO Young Man Afraid of His Pen. By says Young-Man-Afrald- Nixola Greeley- Smith. "I'm no fool.4 There's not a woman alive Of-His-Pen, that has a scratch of a pen fom me. Oh, ver—I've written letters to women, but never without welghing every word be- fore I put it down and deciding that I would have no objection to seeing it in cold type if by any chance it found itu way there. He says it with a loud voice and an inflated chest, as though it were in- deed a thing for pride and boastins. And of course no one familiar with the daily record of divorce suits and breach Of promise trials can doubt that tee young man has good reason for his too much emphasized discretion. But the funny thing about this ultra discreet young man is that he has very seldom any personal reasons for his caution, Oftener than not he ts a very commonplace, moderately good indivi- dual of modest income and appearance, with nelther charm enough to make his letters interesting to a good woman nor money enough to give them value to an Adventures when this fs not the case and his experience jus his much vaunted epistolary -rese! there in surely no excuse for his discussion of Mt, particularly with women. Yet Young Man-Afraid-of-His-Pen han been known to assure a girl, whose only thought on receiving a letter from him would be one of regrot that she had ever been taught to read, of his determina- tion never to commit himself on paper, apparently with no idea that he was making himself offenatve. Kg I never write letters," anxthing to say to I aay it. What's the use of writ- ing? Th n of ti world doesn't write letters, you knot © ‘The Important Mr. Pewee, the Great Little Man. so 8 # — He Calls on Mayor McClellan to Give Him a Few Points on Running the Town, Design Copyrighted, 1903, by the Press Publishing Company (The New York World). * PEEWeEE! OF Course ! SURE: TVe HEARD oF Yau BeFrore! “HE MUST HAVE SNEAKED IN THROUGH THE KEYHOLE Theatre That Is PERFORMANCE Not Fireproof, oF Civic DUNES _ SDE," said the Cigar-Store Man, “that the 66 managers are proving to New Yorkers that every theatre in town fs as safe as the bottom of the ocean in case of fire.” “You can easily prove that a building {s safe in case | of fire, until the fire happens,” answered the Man Higher. Up. “I have seen people stamped to death trying to get away from e small fire in a cirous tent, and there is nothing easier to get out of than a circus tent unless i¢ ‘be a jail with an embezzling bank president inside who has a pull with the Administration. “How an audience in a theatre is going to act with a fire playing tag with its coat-tails depends entirely on the audience and on the way it is handled. If it ie a hysterical crowd with a lot of screamers in it the mo:: of them are going to be used as supports for the fect of those stronger. You can’t stop a panic with an as- ‘bestos curtain sixteen feet thick once the panic gets busy. A panic in a crowd never dies down until everf- body in the crowd is efther dead or helpless or out where there is plenty of room to run in circles. “About a year ago there was @ worse theatre fire in Cincinnati than the Iroquois fire in Onicago, ana act a person was killed. Only a few were brule™ This fire happened while Sothern was playing Hamlet at the Grand Opera-House, “The theatre was packed when a fire started under the stage. It got beyond the control of the house- workers, and the audience got wise. Smoke was pour- ing through the floor in the orchestra down in front, and the stage was afire on one side. DEGIIDSHEFODIGSG-H9GSSGGOM PF8-9G OOO n308 Somepopy PLease Pur A @RK IN FERIN' WID/ DE CITYS GOOD STRONG DEPARTMENTS- Erc!! Which 4s precisely what the man of the world does, though, of cqurse, he ex- | and judgment so utterly lacking Young Man-Afrald-of-His-Pen, 3 For he has learned that a universal distrust of women 1s quite as foolish as undiscriminating confidence in them, He | 1s careful when he knows he must be, and jn all his life he may not meet more than one woman to whom he feels that he can write without reserve. But he does not Insult her, nor indeed any other woman of his acquaintance by openly proclaiming that he “never | writes,” For after all, it ts very little short ot} insult to a woman's character asx well as to her intelligence, for a man, at-! tracted by motives of prudence, to re- {rain from talking to her on paper ex- actly as he would in a more real and pleasing solitude of two, “Some men who have too much sense to boast that they never write letters to protect themselves, say that they ri frain from doing so from a chivairous regard for the woman, “You never can tell what will become of a letter,” Is thelr plea, “and you ought not to subject a woman to possible hu- mulliation by writing her anything that either of you would be unwilling to have a third person read." But even with this ingenfous but specious plea, Young-Man-Afrald-of-His- roe not a heroic figure, 9ome of the Best Jokes of the Day. THREE OF A KIND, Stubbs—Who were those three ragged men up the road? Penn—One was a tramp, the other had been in a class rush and the third had een automobile racing.—Chicago New: TOO TRUE, Knicker—What Inspired that beautiful lene song of yours, “I Can=yt Live Without You?" Suboubs — The cook leave.4Hanper's Bazar. UNGALLANT, ‘Mies Oldton always reminds me of a bargain counter.” ny threatened to “Sothern stepped to the footlights and informed the audience that the place seemed to be going up in smoke. He told them that the best thing they could do was get out, but that they would all reach the street more ex- peditiously if they did not crowd. They crowded some, but they all got ott. Fifteen minutes after the fire was Z% Kor iL 9OODDOD2OE-0G18-0-006-4-94006-O nisi discovered the interior of the Grand Opera-House was a vacancy. “Ot course the cool example of the actor helped out 3 the situation, but two or three hysterical people would } have started a crush that would have decreased the population of Cincinnati a wholé lot. This danger ot hysteria is the thing that must be provided for, and to guard against {t half the walls of all theatres should be composed of sliding doors, opening either on to the ground level or balconies “There are some alleged first-class theatres dn this town that a salamander couldn't get out of if a fire should start either on the stage or in the auditonium. The police, fire and building authorities know these theatres, and the managers know that a fire would eat them up, but they take a chance. It fs common report on Broadway thet the fire extingnulshers of one famous theatre are filled with water because the extinguishing fluid costs money.” “It 1s strange that the asbestos curtain in the Tro- quois Theatre did not hold back some of the fire,” as- serted the Cigar-Store Man. “Here !s a hunch for you,” volunteered the Man Higher Up, “Tho average asbestos curtain is about as close to asbestos as stage money is to the real cush,” © rs o PS $100 for Headlines for Mr. Peewee’s “Evening Fudge.” The Evening World Will Pay 81 for Each Headline Used, Winners Named Every Day, Beginning Monday, Jan. 11. 100 Headlines, $100. bittle Tragedies Strikingly Told in Four Words. PLEASE SIR, c-can I H-HAVE YouR DAV GHTER Ben Bolt Up to Date, DON'T you remember lust summer, Ben Bolt, ‘When the mercury went up so high ¥ That you sat on the stoop, with a fan every night, And declared that you thought you would dle? And don't you remember those trolley cars, too, How you hung for dear life to a strap, As you travelled around to cool off, Ben Bolt, To every old place on the map? , don't you remember the farm, Ben Pit, Where you wont for two weeks last July: Far away on the side of a steep, stony hill, ‘That they safd was ten thousand feet high? And don't you recall those mosquitoes, Ben Bolt, ‘ ‘That raised lumps on your head by the score; And how you declared many times every day ‘That you'd never go there any more? “Sixteen, marked down ¢rom thirty- five.""—Princeton Tiger. OUT OF IT, Mias L.—Wihy can't I epeak to Maud Grierson down there in the orchestra, mamma? ‘Mrs. L.—Because, my dear, she is not in our clags, Her mother Js not recety- | Ing one-third the alimony youre {s,— Obronicle, as ©, don't you remember you said, Ben Bolt, ‘That the cold-,was so easy to bear, And the joys of the summer colld not, you were sure, With those of the winter compare? So don't let me hear you complain, Ben B i If Jack Frost should now nip at your ! Just think what you sald only six month: Of the heat, and its terrible woes,