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"QUEER FISH I HAVE KNOWN."-"ROCKEFELLIUM JOHNDECUSSUM OCTOPUS."

shores no less than the Americans turn to the cartoon; and if it be something striking, it is carefully studied until its meaning is comprehended even by the slow-thinking artisan whose early opportunities for education have been meager. To the more intelligent the cartoon, if it be the work of a bright and strong mind, means much, for here in a few strokes of the pen a whole situation is summed up and presented. Sometimes it is the unmasking of a colossal wrong or a glaring and infamous scandal, such as the recent revelations of insurance corruption on

the part of the great New York companies. Sometimes a man who is the masterrepresentative of some evil aspect or tendency of life is presented in a drawing so typical that ever after the evil genius who is responsible for so much misery is associated in the public mind with his wrong-doing, much as in olden times criminals who were branded ever bore the sign of their infamy. Sometimes the indifferent and slothful public that idly permits itself to be victimized by the bold, cunning and daring criminals in broadcloth who pose as the pillars of

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society, is pictured as the pitiful incompetent that it has actually demonstrated itself to be. But it matters not what important lesson is emphasized by the talented cartoonist: he impresses the important truth on the mind with great distinctness, and in an age when men do not read slowly and carefully and in a land where there is all the time a vast influx of persons who can understand pictures better than they can comprehend labored arguments, the cartoonist becomes a powerful aid to the editor as an opinionforming influence and an important factor in the furtherance of moral integrity in business and political life, as well 28 a tre educator of the people on questions that are of vital moment to them.

One of these popular edvators whose work is appealing to hundreds of thousands of our people is J. Campbell

Cory of the New York World.

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Mr. Cary's success affords auther Custration of what plors and perseverance can accieve in this land, when there is present a fixed determination to succeed along some speed. Tine, accompanied by industry and application. It is amazing, when one looks the Seid over, to find how BAZT SOCressmen in America have risen to the foremost ranks or have achieved a large measure of success without a college education or the special training supposed to be essential to success on special lines. This is said, not for the purpose of disparaging collegiate education or specialization in work, when such advantages are within the reach of the aspiring youth, but rather as a fact that cannot fail to impress any person who makes a wide study of the long list

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Cory in New York Weld

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of successful lives in the annals of our nation. And this fact is further dwelt upon because we wish to stimulate and encourage those who have the strength of will, courage, determination and the application necessary to success, but whose circumstances render impossible extended special training or collegiate education. Mr. Cory is one of thousands, aye, and tens of thousands, of men who have risen to success without the advantages of special training or academic education, by improving the talents given them through pluck, persistence and patient industry.

He was born at Waukegan, Illinois, in 1867. When twenty years of age he began to earn his living by making pictures, al

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Cory, in New York World.

"HIGH LIFE INSURANCE."

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istic education. For many years the

drawing of horses was his specialty, his

success being so marked that his work brought him in a good income, not, however, as much as that being earned by successful cartoonists, so he at length turned his attention to caricature. During the Spanish-American war he launched a weekly periodical of his own, with the usual result: kindly reception and criticism, but financial failure. After eleven weeks of precarious livelihood the weekly expired and Mr. Cory became regularly associated with the New York World. There his best cartoons have appeared and there he has

CORY

A CARICATURE OF CORY BY DAN. SMITH.

worked steadily, excepting during a period of four years, when, under the infection of the Western mining-fever, he gathered his savings together and with pick and shovel went to Montana, where, to use his own words, he "achieved some small success and some greater failures.' That the treasure state" of the northwest still holds him in thrall, however, may be inferred from this recent remark: "I like the [mining] business, and having paid the price for my education in that line, it is my intention some day to resume operations with pick and shovel."

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In speaking of his aims and convictions Mr. Cory says: "While I have no political affiliations, I always strive to favor the best man and the most worthy cause." One of the most unfortunate aspects of newspaper life, and indeed of life in general, since the ominous shadow of the commercial autocracy has fallen over government, college, church and press, is the absence of strong, clearly-defined and bravely-adhered-to moral ideals and

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convictions among those who mould opinions and shape the course of government and civilization. No nation can rise, aye, or can escape a steady moral decline, where a careless opportunism dominates in state, in church, in the college and the press, taking the place of an aggressive moral rectitude or character; for the great moulding influences that operate through them environ the individual and exert a regal or determining sway over the nation or civilization, writing the fateful words "glory" or decay" across the pathway of the future. This does not mean that individual growth or unfoldment does not come from within, but it does mean that when sordid, egoistic and selfish interests dominate in society, they act as prison-bars for the spiritual ego and as a canopy shutting the soul from the freedom, light and warmth that are as essential to the evolution of the divine or perfected character as are the light and warmth of the physical sun and the pure air of heaven necessary to the unfoldment of the divine potentialities in the seed-the fruition of flower and fruit that are empearled in the life-germ, but whose perfect expression is dependent upon freedom and normal environment.

A great work confronts the really great and true men and women of to-day-the work of so awakening the latent moral or spiritual energies of the people that the spell of the golden god shall be broken and a democratic renaissance shall come, instinct with the same irresistible moral enthusiasm that more than a century ago broke the age-long scepter of arbitrary privilege and dogmatic authority, destroying the prison-walls of ignorance, superstition and unreasoning adherence to hoary error that had stifled growth, bound freedom, dwarfed the popular mind and enslaved the people for the enrichment and the power of the privileged few. B. O. FLOWER.

Boston, Mass.

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