WQP GiPl wim Morxeu in. Iter Bag „ JOBS! Jobs seem to be the ques tion of the hour. Jobs have been a question in many mil lions of homes. It does not matter whether jobs are really beneficial for men and women, boys and girls. Some men say that they never have had a Job and that they never want to have a job. They believe i:i working for themselves. They are the exceptions. The mass of man and woman kind seem to be Job wanters. Job hunters. A job is the beginning and end of all things. So "Jobs." High-up officers who come back from the war to tell us who had to stay at home, work eighteen hours a day, pay the taxes, subscribe to the Liberty bonds, war work, charities, etc.. wor ry about our sons who were having the time of their lives being heroes, that the main thing to be done for the re turning soldier is to see that he gets a good Job. Jobs! Jobs! Jobs must be pulled out of the air as conjurers pull rabbits and other zoological specimens out of a silk hat Any man who was a sldier must have a good Job at good.wages. Now, a man may be a great soldier and a poor Job seeker, a poor job getter and a dern sight poorer job holder. In fact, it might be argued that the better soldier a fellow is the poorer job hold er he may very well be. It's all in the point of view. Anyhow, the born soldier must naturally be a "soldier." Remember the old ante bellum quip. "Boldler, will you work?" Most great soldiers have always despised work. Did not Bill Anthony, the hero of the Maine, go bad after be quit the serv ice and went to work. Bill Anthony was a model soldier, but a poor job holder. He had no time for that. Doubtless there are oodles of good Job holders coming out of the army. They mayhap have been poorer sol diers than the fellows who never worked. Anyhow, it is a case of "jobs." The soldiers are coming back by the ship load to a grateful country and de manding jobs. Most of them had some sort of Jobs before the war. Where are the jobs gone? In some instances the girls have got them. And the girls don't want to give them up to the soldiers. If the girls did want to give up the Jobs It is by no means sure that the soldiers would want to take them. The argument is this: Girls have jobs. Soldiers need jobs. How about the Jobs the girls have for soldiers? The girls say that the jobs they have are girls' jobs, not men's jobs, and that no self-respecting hero would take such jobs, that a hero should WAR SONGS THAT BECAME POPULAR™ THE origin of some of those old time war songs of our grand fathers' day that the Yanks carried "over here" with them, and sang with as much fervor as those that were written for them, are most in teresting. There was "Maryland, My Mary land," for example, which was called the Marseillaise of the Confederacy. It was written by a young man named James Ryder Randall. He was a Bal tlmorean, but w hen the war broke out he was on a paper in New Orleans. He was not strong enough to enlist, but being an ardent southerner he fdlt It very keenly when his native state hung back and refused to Join the Confederacy. When he heard that the Baltimore people had at last fired on northern troops he was overjoyed, and that night he got up out of his bed at midnight and wrote the poem, "Mary land. My Maryland." "The entire poem," he said later, "was dashed off in & very few minutes." It was pub lished in his own paper first, and was later copied in every paper in the South. have, if not a hero's Job, a man's job. Too many men say the girls, were holding down girls' jobs before the war. Instead of setting the job mar ket awry, the girls say, the war set the market right It put men in men's jobs and women in women's jobs. So. the girls cry, let it go at that. The girls hold the girls' jobs, the boys will find men's jobs. Most former soldiers agree with the girls. They do not want the soft and white-collared jobs back. They want pick and shovel, drill and ax jobs, men's jobs. But, meanwhile, many soldiers, good boys who have served their country and made the world safe, etc., feel that they need to eat. They don't care so much about sleeping. They can sleep anywhere, but they got the habit of an appetite and food to satisfy it in the army and they can't get over the idea that they need to eat to be happy. So. in a pinch, some soldiers said, they might marry the girl, but not take her Job. An Interesting Troblem Is >ow Before the Country. It all combines to make a new and interesting situation, one which is lia ble to bring about a tremendous eco nomic and social change in the Unit ed States and turn the old stand-bys topsyturvy. Here It is: What shall we do with our surplus women.* Or have we surplus women" Or surplus men? During the war the girls had lots of work to do. Every employer wanted them. The boys were all gone. Who but the girl.s could take the places left vacant by the draft and volunteering? The girls took the places vacated by the boys. Mostly the girls needed the money. Few people who do not need money care about Jobs. Say what you will it is not the job that attracts. It is the money that is said to go. or sup posed to go, with the Job that fetches them out of bed at 7 a. m., jams then in a street car and tosses them in fac tory, shop, store or office. The job don't matter so much. The money is everything. Well, the girls quit high school in their sophomore years, quit the kitch en, the parlor and the "upstairs" and went to work in the shop, factory, store and office. Now we tell them "You must give up your Job to returning soldiers." The girls don't seem to relish that a bit. They have been doing pretty well during the war. While brother, sweetheart and husband has been he roing his women folk have been work ing, in many instances getting more money than he ever got in his life. The girls have got swell clothes, a perfumery that they had never heard of before the war, silk stockings, sls At that time there lived in Balti more the famous Cary girls, relatives ot General Lee. They, too, were ar dent southerners. One evening they were giving a party, and wishing to spring a new song on their guests they discovered that the words of this poem. "Maryland, My Marylalnd." which every one was reading and re citing at that time, could be perfectly adapted to the old college song, "Lau riger Horatius." So one of them sang it at the party and it made a tremend ous hit. Some time later she and her sisters asked permission to mpke a visit to relatives in Virginia. It was granted and they made the journey in an old wagon, which was loaded to the top with trunks and boxes, supposedly containing their wardrobe. As soon as they had crossed the line it was discovered that they were all filled with clothing, bandages and other comforts for the Confederate soldiers, and they were not permitted to return to Baltimore, as a punishment. While they were living there in Virginia, in exile, as it were. General Beauregard shoes, layouts of cosmetics and a lit tle money in the new meshbag. Ihey don't want to give up the nice ?85 a month job to any soldier, not even if he is humpbacked from pack ing around Distinguished Service Crosses, Croix de Guerre and citations. Sister has held down the job for two years, enjoyed the big boost in sal aries that came after April, 1917, got herself a few closets full of fine clothes, cutlivated an expensive taste in candy and likes the life generally. She docs not want to go back to school, to beg for lunch money, to wear whatever clothes she can fake, frame or borrow and to hang around Top, who is growing hollow-eyed with the high cost of living, for what ever is left by the butcher, baker and coal man. bather's wages have not been increased In fifteen years. He got set in a peace industry in the days when we had no idea we ever would be in a war again. The indus try was hit hard by the war. "Pop" is lucky to be working, not to speak of making a living. So daughter wants to hang on to the job. What is she to do? Her brother, her invited them to make a visit to camp. One evening while they were there the famous Washington Artillery serenad ed them. They asked if there wasn't something they could do for them in return, and some soldier shouted, "Let us hear a woman's voice!" The Cary girl who sang immediately stepped out beneath the stars and sang "Mary land. My Maryland." This was the birth of the song as a war song. The soldiers went wild over it. They sang' it far into the night, and in a few weeks it was known by every regi ment in the South. "Dixie," strange to say, was written by a northerner, a famous old min strel man. Dan Emmett. In those days, every minstrel show ended with what was called a "w'alk-around," a repre sentation of plantation life, and old Dan was very successful in writing these "walk-arounds" for his com pany. One night, three or four years before the Civil War, Dan was told that he would have to have a new one ready for the next rehearsal. It was a cold and dreary day, and as he was standing in front of a window trying sweetheart is out of a job. But then, so far as she is concerned, they'd much better be out of a Job than that she should be out of it. When they had jobs they gave her mighty little consideration. They wore good clothe, smoked cigars or cigarettes, played pool, drank a little beer, ate at good restaurants —when there were good restaurants—played ball, had a good time while she "stalled" through on cheap calicos and cheaper ginghams, a few ounces of talcum powder, sat on the porch without a dime in her bag, rocked and waited for some one to come along and take her to the drug store for a soda or to tit picture show for a look. Boys Think It Is Right For Sister to Stay at Home. "Awh," say the boys, "mat's all right for a gu-rul. Say, what do women ex pect?" What do women expect? The earth, kid, the earth, you hear some one say. Bova may think that it is all right for a girl to "plant" on the porch to get a nucleus of an Idea, a phrase that the members of the troupe had used so often on their tour through the North that winter popped into his head, "I wish I was in Dixie." With these words as an inspiration he wrote the famous song. In 1861 a chorus of girls sang it in a theater in New Orleans! The Washington Artill ery heard it, made it a part of their repertory, and it has been sung ever since. "John Brown's Body" was an old negro spiritual, a camp-meeting song. The old words were used until Julia Ward Howe wrote her famous "Battle Hymn" for it. The favorite song of the Spanish war v.as "A Hot Time in the Old Town To night." U was a popular street song when the war started and the soldiers simply took it for their own. They sang it so much that some of the for eign correspondents wrote home to their papers that America entered Cu ba singing their two national anthems, "The Star Spangled Banner" and "A Hot Time in the Old Town." Sunday after Sunaay, evening after evening, rocking till her heels hurt, and thinking until her soul aches that she could get away from it all. Girls don't think so any longer, "How," said a pert and pertinacious yOung miss of 18 who has been in the polite phraseology of a soldier brother "dragging down her ninety bucks a month' in an office during the war, "would some of the boys like if they had to stick around home seven days a week and wait, without a nickel to their name, for the great day when some beau managed to hold out enough from his mother, his tailor, his barber, the poolroom, the cigarette store and the baseball game to take her as far as the corner and buy her a glass of soda? "How would the boys like to rock on the porch until it seemed that the whole world was rocking, too, until their souls rocked within them, un til chaos seemed present, evening aft er evening, week after week, year aft er year? "I have two brothers older than me. They made anywhere from $35 to SSO a month before the war. They paid board—sometimes—when mother felt strong enough to drag the money away from them, which was not often. They never gave anyone in the family a dime. Once in a blue moon mother'd make one of them take me out. Be lieve me, it would be some battle. I often begged mother not to kill herself battling with the boys to take me out, though, the world can bet I'd have given an eye to get to a picture show or to a dance. But there always was a battle and the last word could be, 'Well, she pays her own car fare if she goes with me.' They'd sit like a bear with a sore head all the time they had to be with me. After one or two trials I gave it up. Never again with one of Hrothers for me. "Well,, when Jack and Jim, our hall room boys, went to the war I got a job. I got $65 a month first and S9O a few months later. That was more money than both my brothers had been getting before the war. "I paid my board regularly, S4O each month, to mother. No fight to get the board out of me. "I was glad to pay it, I knew what battles mother had to get it out of Jack and Jim irregularly. And I paid more board than both of them put to gether were supposed to pay. I say 'supposed.' They really never paid half the time. Always a stall instead of the cash. A suit of clothes, shoes, dentist, a party, club dues; 'a feller gotta spend something once in a while, ain't he?' and all that sort of stuff. If they ever paid mother the full amount of their board on one pay day she'd have dropped dead with surprise. She got part of it when she felt fit enough to go to war for it, which was not often. "After I paid mother 140 a month I had SSO for myself. Just think of It, Little Lucy, the Cinderella of the fam ily, who never had a dime she could call her own, ha.'ing fifty big round dollars a month to throw to the bird 3, the birds that make clothes and hats and shoes and stockings. Good Clothes Make Them Feel Different. "Oh, the joy of that first pair of silk socks. They informed me for the first time in my eighteen years that I had limbs. Prior to April, 1917, I felt that what are called limbs are merely props on which to peg around. When I pulled on and soothed the silk socks —well, I hate to talk about myself, but Anna Pennington had nothing on Lit tle Lucy. "A decent pair of well-made shoes, too. A fine frock. And a regular coat. A fur about my neck, rubbing my checks. A little stuff to touch up the eyebrows and the cheeks. Not much. Just a touch. A little red stuff for the lips now and then under the elec tric light. A real hat. A Bniff of Mary Garden, $5 an ounce, but an ounce of it goes a million miles. "I had been a little home body, in calico and gingham. When I wanted G Grmir^rvv to put on style I had to go to a young married woman next door and borrow her coat and furs. I never had a reg ular beau. Mother said I was too young. But younger girls had beaus. At least something in pants to take them out "When I got the clothes and the furs and began to sit up and take notice the beaus came around all right. If men were scarce I did not notice It. They did not come around and sit on our porch, either. They'd never give me time to rock. I had such good clothes that they thought it added to their commercial rating to be seen out with me. They came In troops. Old, staid married men who had grunted when I bowed to them, took off their hats and gazed admiringly at me. One old grouch who lives in our block ac tually stopped and said, 'Why, Lucy. Grown up, ain't you? Some cute kid. Wish I was young again.' Don't Think Returned Boys Really Want Jobs. You see what a few clothes on the back and a few dollars in the mesh bag will do? Everything was going fine; life was one long, sweet song, when the war ends, and Jack and Jim came home. "Johs! Those boys never got them selves a Job in their lives. Dad al ways had to go out and hustle them their Jobs. "Any old Jobs at all. Anything to keep them out of the house so that mother and I could make up the beds. Boys are great to sleep, you know. Up all night, and in bed to noon. It's a great life. But I weaken on it "Now our heroes are home from Pike. That was as far as they got with the work of making the country safe for democracy. And father, moth er and me want them to have Jobs. Not real Jobs, but any Jobs that will take them out of the house in day time. "To tell the truth, the boys are not bothering much about Jobs. They nev er did. They talk about wanting jobs. But will they go out and hustle jobs? "Not while pop and mom and I are alive. "Pop's run pop-eyed taking care of his own job, but he'll have to take half an hour off some day and force these heroes of ours upon the pay rolls of some of his friends. "Jim had the gall the other night to eay, 'Lucy, can't you quit? Mother needs you around the shack. Can't you tlx it so that I can get your jjob?' "I almost died. Why that hero couldn't hold my Job an hour. Mother does not need me around the house. She needs the S4O I pay her, on the spot, every month. She's got a few clothes and a chaise longue she want ed all her life and has joined a club and has quit looking at the four walls of the kitchen sixteen hours a day, as she did when the boys 'worked' and I was at home.'
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers