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Editorial and City Cite Section of 6oar$t’$ Sunday American, Atlanta, August 24, ton.
HEN you wait at Utica to catch
the Twentieth Century as she
goes through, never fail to
look carefully at the city.
When you have finished look
ing, ask yourself, “What is
most interesting in Utica? ’ and send us jour
answer.
9 9 *
In Utica so much is interesting. The police
man on Genesee street, with the red mustache
and the gentle manner, is an interesting police
man, full of news.
He says, “It’s a fine town, a little quiet. Not
much of a place for men to make a living,
however. The knitting mills here are the big
industry. They employ mostly women, so it
isn’t what you would call a man’s town.'’
That statement of itself is interesting, fore
shadowing the days when the human being city
will be like the city of the bees described by
Maeterlinck—all the gentlemen condemned to
be drones, all stung to death and thrown out
of the hive, after one of them has been selected
to act VERY TEMPORARILY as the husband
of the queen bee.
It is quite pitiful, even for those that sympa
thize with suffrage, to think of a beehive
where all the gentlemen are stung to death by
the lady bees, excepting one single man, who
subsequently dies high up in the air. Utica, of
course, is not like that; it simply suggests it.
9 «r 9
The same policeman, pointing to a corner
red building across Genesee street, says: “That
there is the tony man's club of the place,” and,
pointing to a yellow building exactly opposite,
“This here is the woman’s club. Queer, ain t
it? They are just across the street from each
other.”
Very queer and interesting. It will be still
queerer in days to come, when Utica and all
creation shall know universal suffrage, when
the lion and the lamb, politically speaking,
shall lie dow r n together, and a lady Mayor shall
lead them.
In those davs to come mav the red brick
man’s club and the yellow brick woman’s club
of Utica be united, or at least connected by a
tunnel under Genesee street.
». 9 9
The most wonderful automobile in the world
Suppose the Tiny Ant Were as Big as Man. Well Might
Darwin Say of the Ant y s Brain, “It Is One of the Most Marvellous
Atoms of Matter in the World, Perhaps More So Than the Brain
of Man. ”
What One Day in Utica Developed. The Thinking Ants.
lives in Utica. It belongs to, and is labelled,
“Ball’s Shoe Repairing.”
It seems to have been built for Cleopatra, it
is of pure white enamel, and rushes up and
down Utica, always with the cut-out in full
action. That palatial white enamel automobile
for shoe repairing tells you that you are in the
presence of a provident working population.
Then there is the “Clothes Hospital,” man
aged by Lefkowitz & Son, by whom torn
clothes are mended, soiled clothes cleaned and
sick clothing made new'.
Hence the term “Clothes Hospital.” It has
no nomenelaturial rival, except, perhaps, the
Milwaukee “Pantorium,’’ so called because that
institution mends, presses and cleans “pants.”
9, 9 9
England & McCaffray’s big drug store sur
prises you. For after you have used the pub
lic telephone and asked “How much? ’ they tell
you that their charge is “Nothing.” They don’t
do that in New 7 York, Boston, Chicago or other
less enlightened places. On the contrary, they
charge you ten cents when they ought to charge
you five.
Considering England & McCaff ray’s tele
phone politeness, it seems captious to point out
that they keep their little parcels cf chloroform
right beside the public telephone, where any
body could get them without asking questions
or paying anything. It is dangerous, even in
such a moral, good, pure city as Utica, to have
neat little packages of chloroform distributed
around the public telephone. Too tempting to
bad men from without Utica.
We advise all druggists to keep packages of
chloroform and all poison packages away from
the immediate vicinity of the public telephone.
Business will soon invade the resident sec
tion of Genesee street. Wise men of Utica will
buy cheap property out there now, and make
money later. The man who changed the big,
dismal brick dwelling that was empty and put
a store in the far end is now 7 putting 1 store in
the near end. He is wise.
You might say that the very greatest thing in
Utica is the Public Library. But it isn’t.
It is a beautiful library, with a big room for
children, with little tables, comfortable chairs
and the most intelligent assistants to tell the
children what is interesting, what is good and
where to find it.
And it has an admirable arrangement that
makes it easy for teachers of public schools to
come with the children of their classes, direct
them and help them in their reading.
Every city in the United States could learn some
thing from the Public Library of Utica—built by the
citizens, with their money, not by Andrew Carnegie.
It is a library sufficiently intelligent to supply
special shelves with Italian books for Italians,
French books for Frenchmen and German books for
Germans.
It was interesting on the Italian shelf to see a
little volume of “Health Hints,” by Pope I.eo, with
Dante’s Divine Comedy on one side of it and Fo-
gazzaro on the other. The intelligent lady kindly
asks you if she can help you in selecting your choice
of reading, and is well able to do it.
She tells you that Italians ask for the best books,
and read them.
It is a tine library. Would that every boy and
girl, every woman working in the big mills, knew
what the library contains, AND HAD TIME TO
PROFIT HY IT.
Unfortunately, in Utica, as elsewhere, the library
full of knowledge is like the great ocean, full of
water.
The trouble is to get the water from the ocean
onto the HARKEN SOIL, and to get the knowledge
from the library into the barren mind.
The lady w ho wants to help you select your read
ing comes from Massachusetts—Plymouth.
She tells you to go to Martin’s Restaurant for
your dinner, and adds: "I would suggest the Hotel
Utica, but it would cost you twice as much, and I
expect you wouldn’t care for that.”
She judges you, as she would NOT judge a book,
by your poor cloth binding.
9 9 r
The Hotel Utica is interesting. It has its elevators
arranged in such a way that when they stop on the
ground floor an electric light turns on automatically,
right at your feet, and keeps you from stubbing your
toe when you get out.
The New York Central is building a new railroad
station to cost $750,000. And that is interesting to
Utica, which has waited forty years for that station.
Utica’s population has crawled in all many hundreds
of thousands of miles across a long bridge and down
a narrow runway to a freight shed called a station.
The fact that the New York Central of its own ac
cord is building a new station in a town where it
has no competition is interesting, but not the MOST
interesting thing in Utica.
9, 9 9
The MOST interesting thing in Utica is the collec
tion of ants that do NOT walk on the fly paper
which has been put around the elm trees of the gen
tleman who lives in the red brick house on the cor
ner of Cottage place and Genesee street.
Genesee street is a great avenue of beautiful elms.
The wise man who lives in the red house on the cor
ner means to save his elms from the caterpillars.
And around each tree he has put a nice, fresh, glis
tening, sweetened, sticky piece of fly paper.
The idea is to have the innocent caterpillar as he
crawls up the tree walk on the fly paper and stay
there, to die a sad, sweet, sticky death.
There were no caterpillars on the fly paper w hen
this writer looked. They were to come later. But
there were many flies and small moths and other
w ild things on the fly paper.
And the interesting thing in Utica, THE GREAT
MORAL LESSON IN UTICA—greater, perhaps, than
any lesson ever preached in the editorial columns of
the Observer or the Dispatch—was the conduct of
the black ants, dashing up and down the tree trunks
encircled hy fly paper.
Other insects got on the fly paper, HUT THE
ANTS DID NOT.
They ran up and down the elm tree, above the fly
paper, and below the fly paper,
BUT NOT A SINGLE ANT WAS TO BE SEEN ON
THE FLY PAPER.
9 9 9
Your faithful correspondent watched those ants
for thirty minutes, and several small Utica children
helped him to watch.
The ant would dash madly down the tree, bound
for home, eager to see his family. The moment he
came to the fly paper he would stop. He would not
even put one foot on the sticky sweetness.
His little antennae, little telephone lines sticking
out beyond his head, told him instantly that there
was danger there.
His mad downward flight w 7 as checked. And so
it was with the ants running up the tree—although
why the ant should run up, or why he should run
down, no one could guess.
No matter which way he was running, the wise
ant would stop suddenly when he came to the fly
paper and brace himself.
He would run backward, forward and sidewise.
He would keep on investigating until he had found a
little hole in the bark UNDERNEATH the fly paper.
He would dart underneath the paper in safety and
continue his business instead of perishing as did the
flies and the moths and the silly insects on the sticky
sweetness.
J 9. 9,
Oh, young men, and young women, and all you
citizens of Utica and other cities, observe the wis
dom of those ants!
They were tempted by that fly paper undoubt
edly. THEY LIKE SWEET THINGS.
And the little moths fastened to the fly paper are
just the kind of food that ants like to take home to
their loving families.
Each ant could have been a hero by reaching out
getting one of those flies or moth millers and carry
ing it home all covered with sticky sweetness.
But one step on the fly paper might mean de
struction. And the ants had brains enough to know
it, although nobody knows HOW they know it.
l’robably they have been actually thinking and
using the brains in those little round heads, while
the moth millers and flies have been wasting their
time. Take this to heart, young men.
9 9 9
After watching ONE individual piece of fly paper,
and one large collection of ants for a sufficient
length of time, each piece of fly paper on each tree
was inspected. And the man, jr, perhaps, widow
lady, who lives in the red house on ihat corner will
confirm this testimony that there isn’t a single ant on
any piece of fly paper.
Young men, take a lesson from the ants of Utica.
Learn to go by the open saloon door, refusing to go
in, as the ants refused to tread upon the fly paper.
And learn to shun the gambling room and the
card game, w hich waste time and breed crime.
And, young women, take a lesson also from your
relative, the ant.
Learn to do without that which will hurt you, no
matter how tempting it may be.
The fine dress that you can’t afford may be as
dangerous to a tempted woman as fly paper to a fly.
And you business men, who laboriously spend
your life piling up money and then squander It like
idiots in Wall Street speculation, why can’t YOU
learn to recognize the fly paper that is fatal to you,
as the ants learn to tell what is dangerous to them?
A lesson to everybody, big and little, old and
young, rich and poor, is contained in the wisdom of
the ants.
And that is why they are the most Interesting
thing in all Utica, w hich is, perhaps, the most Inter
esting city in the United States—excepting two or
threet