Billings Senior High School - Kyote Yearbook (Billings, MT)

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THE K Y O T E 19 muih of the principles of health and growth. In large cities young children are made to work in factories day after day without knowing what a vacation means. They have never looked upon the green fields and blue rivers of their country. They have never received even a common school education. They know nothing of the great world about them. I heir little li es aie often blotted out before they have u chance to begin to live. Who is at fault in this! The father, if he is able to earn a living, but in a great number of cases he is not, for wages in the large cities are not of the l e.st. In other cases the father squanders all of his earnings. Often the employer is to blame. He takes no pains to ascertain the age of the child. If lie looks strong enough to do the work required no questions are asked. We should find some adequate remedy for this evil. It should lie made difficult for fathers to squander their money. The employer should lie com- pelled to pay salaries large enough to enable laborers to keep their families comfortably. The children themselves should lie forced to attend school for their own good that their earning capacity may la increased for later useful- ness These little citizens should be educated and taught the real values in life. They should be enlightened so that they can recognize and form high ideals. The child laborer of today is making the wrong kind of citizenship. If we could only see the evil in its true light, the reforms already l cgun along this line would te prosecuted so rapidly and effectively that the problem would disappear in a decade. One man among all others the Americans dislike—that man is a coward. There is no one so unpopular among his fellow men as this type of man. One who strikes down another fur faithfully carrying out his duties receives short shrift from the hands of American justice. On the other hand every one admires the man who does his duty, who waits not for an opportunity to come, to him hut looks for the opportunity. It takes a brave man to face a line of battle but it takes a braver one to face alone the forces of unlawful people. If all were as faithful in carrying out our duties as some have recently proved themselves to Ik , it would not lx? long before we made an ideal nation out of ibis land of ours. Some of our true Americans stand out in the limelight and show their fellows what fearless men may do. We need more citizens who are faithful and upright. We do not need any more boards of trade with their bull and bear operators. We want more men like Roosevelt, La toilette, Johnson, Hughes and Folk. Men who stand for the best and the highest in our American life. It is only through the youth of America that we can hope to continue her better citizenship. Tin problem comes to each one of us to decide; whether we «■hall east our lot with that class which stands for the upbuilding of the nation or with that other class which does not look to this end. Ix»t us do some good in the world. Let us join the ranks of the men who uplift and are striving for a tetter citizenship. Ix t us ever have before us a high ideal. I et us all be true Americans in the fullest sense of the word and do all in our power to uplift ouu fellowmen, to weed out the present evils and to bring the standard of Ameri- can citizenship back to the standard of our Puritan forefathers. —Ray Van Hoi ten, 08.

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18 THE KYOTE out the undesirables we must deal with the problem of those undesirables who are native born. Men with bad characters can l e seen in saloons of most American cities. Some of them intoxicated, some of them partly so. These men do not have high ideals. They will never move the world or figure in the uplifting of their country. Some of them are young men. Indeed, the solution of the problem lies with the young men found here if it is to be solved at all. The older men are past remedy. These men, as they are, represent so much waste material of humanity. They may, indeed, celebrate the Fourth of July as noisily as any but they celebrate with the wrong spirit. They are only make believe Americans. America could dispense with a large majority of them and never feel the loss. Some of them argue that the world owes them a living but the world refuses to honor their checks. Why do so many of these men go to ruin when there is a place for them in the upbuilding of the nation! God has bestowed upon them as many gifts as he has on others. They could Iw really happy if they only would. All men can have good characters if they have the will power enough to say “No ’ We admire the character of Macbeth but his great ambition gets the better of his will power and he is led on and on until he sinks to a level in which our sympathy for him is dead. So it is with many men who might have figured as leaders in our history had not their desires mastered their will. Hut liquor is not the only evil that ruins character. Take for instance the bad literature that we often find in our I ook stores. Such books do not in- spire people to good thoughts and deeds. They do not have one spark of genius about them. They are not only useless, but they are positively harmful. We flatter ourselves that the day of the yellow back novel is passing but it is not entirely passed. We still have something of the problem to solve. I et us do our share by instilling a love of good literature into the minds of the young with whom we come in contact. Men of this type of citizenship, whose ideals have been formed with associations with the dime novel, the saloon, and the gambling house, are very nearly useless to our modern civilization. Some philanthropists have argued that the sooner a mail of this type drinks himself to death the better off the land will l e« With this view we do not agree. In our modern times no man lives unto himself. He may not have a family to suffer by his mirifc Trigs but however bad he is, he has some economic value, some labor value in Hie world. The world has a right to demand this of him. Suicide is as much a crime as murder. This man's relation to his fellow man, slight though it may tx. s still of enough importance to deny him the right to make away with his own usefulness. When we view the problem from the standpoint of the philanthropist, yhen we consider not what such a man is, but what he might be under proper gih ance and with proper ideals, his possible usefulness in the world becomes infinite - So the real citizenship of America has an added problem. In addition to stopping the growth of such evils it must provide for and reform that other misguided class of men. These men not only injure themselves but also the people with whom they associate. Another practical problem before the citizenship of the United States is the child labor problem. Our intense commercialism lias made us forget

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THE KYOTE CLASS POEM We must leave you, our clear Alma Mater, And we feel just a little bit blue, As we go from your sheltering embraces To face the old world anew; No more can we claim you as ours, No more will you shoulder our blame, We must step into rank with the others, Who work their own way toward fame. • For four years your story’s been ours, Each fall we have entered the race, 1 if growing still sweeter and better, Each morning has found us in place; Every day we have met in old ’Sembly, Awaiting the ring of the l ell That called us to loved recitations— In which our grades usually fell. These» four long years have we struggled, Count ing you the most cruel of foes, To spite you we've often been driven To waste numerous hours, and those Meant zeros and failure in lessons. The instructors? Yes, they’d make a fuss, For it kept them continually guessing Wouldn't “Naughty eight” really mean us? We have looked toward this moment with yearning, But now when our dream is fulfilled, There’s a love in our hearts deeply burning, Which time has no power to kill; It causes us fain to remember Ne'er again shall we meet in this hall, And we realize now, as we sever, That you’ve been our true friend through it all. And now, for the vast deal of trouble We’ve brought those who for us did their best, For mistaken ideas of school life— We considered it all a good jest— We heartily, frankly crave pardon, To forgive and forget is your fate, For school years have not been worth living If your good will goes not with ’08.