Jayhawk State needs women!
Discovering ancient editorials from the archives of the Los Angeles Times inspires a wide range of reactions: curiosity about the burning issues of past ages, respect for the institutional scope and memory of the paper, a humbling sense of historical continuity. But often the only possible response is: “Huh?” That’s the case with the following witty and weird lark from the Taft era. We may never learn the causes of the Kansas wife-dearth that sent the Times’ editorial board into a paroxysm of fun-making and Middle English vocabulary, but we hope the fervent Christmas wishes of Midwestern bachelors came true and that you’ll spare a thought for those singletons less fortunate than you this holiday season.
Dec. 24, 1911Pobres Diablos!Who would not feel a sympathy for the poor family unable to have a Christmas dinner when the day comes around? Is there anything on earth more deplorable than such a case? Ah, yes, yes, indeed there is.Listen to the worse than Macedonian cry that comes to us these Christmas days from Ulysses in the Sunflower State, yclept Kansas.This cry of despair rises from the throats of the members of the “Grant County Bachelors Club.” Sad is the case of the fellow who gets no slice of turkey with his Christmas dinner. But, oh, the woe that sits so heavily on the soul of these Kansas bachelors. They are poor not merely for Christmas day, but for all the days in the year. Their poverty is not in the inability to get a slice of the succulent and savory American bird, but alack and alas! These poor fellows cannot get wives.A new Salvation Army to the rescue! You know what the Salvation Army and the Volunteers of America and the Associated Charities and divers other similar institutions are organized to do. It is to relieve the distress of all who are in want and despair. Now let us have a Salvation Army and eke the Volunteers of America and also the Associated Charities and every other and all charitable organizations duplicated in order to secure wives for these Kansas indigents.Turkeys cost 30 cents a pound and more, which fact indicates that they are scarce. We cannot imagine what is the matter with these fellows in Grant county, Kansas. There is no dearth of marriageable women in the world, right marriageable and right womanly. There are arms wide open and hearts warmly palpitating to embrace these poor, lonely bachelors down there in the Sunflower State.But on second thought and due consideration it looks as if there might be, and as if there probably is, something radically wrong with these men at Ulysses, Kan. You remember the old rhyme, “he either fears his fate too much or his deserts are small, who dares not put it to the touch to win or lose it all.” Our advice to these Kansas boys is to pack their grips and make a little trip out here to the Coast and, if they are good-looking, well-disposed and promising, thoroughly broken to domestic harness and to go quietly in the double yoke, we’ll soon fish them out.