The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 10Brann, William Cowper
General
The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 10
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
attraction wass to be a "Kween Karnation" and her maids of honor,
the latter consisting of the most beautiful young ladies of the
various Missouri towns. I presume that these fair blossoms were
(or will be, for I know not the date of the brummagen blowout)
paraded through the streets bedized in royal frippery to make a
hoodlum holiday while the megalophanous huckster worked the
perspiring mob with peanuts and soda pop, and the thrifty
merchant marked his shopworn wares up 60 per cent, and sold them
to confiding country men "at a tremendous sacrifice." I infer
from the dispatches that Halliwell was made lord high executioner
of the "Karnival"--at least accorded ample space in which to
wildly wave his asinine ears. Miss Edna Whitney, described as
being "one of the most beautiful young ladies of Chillicothe,"
was put forward by her friends as a candidate for the honor of
representing that city at the royal court of "Kween Karnation,"
the citizens to determine the matter by a voting contest. Now
Miss Whitney, while dowered with great beauty, popular and of
good repute, is a working girl instead of a fashionable
butterfly, being employed in a cigar factory. When it appeared
certain that she would bear off the honor, the snobocracy of
Chillicothe, furious at being "trun down" by a working girl,
appealed to Halliwell to exclude her from the contest, and this
miserable parody of God's masterpiece promptly wired that her
business occupation was an insuperable barrier. How's that for a
country boasting of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity"--its press
and politicians ever prating of "the dignity of labor"! The
contest, I'm told, was open to all "respectable young women"; but
a working girl, though pure as the lily and fair as the rose, is
not considered "respectable" by the would-be patricians of
Corncob Corners and the grand panjandrum of the Kay-See Karnival!
Working girls must not presume to be pretty or popular or enter
into contests for holiday honors with the high-born daughters of
successful swindlers, but will be kindly permitted by the lordly
Halliwell to stand on the curb and see beauts who are only by the
grace of boodle, roll by like triumphant Sylla on Fortune's bike.
During the Saturnalia in ancient Rome the master acknowledged the
brotherhood of man by ministering to his slave; but Kansas City,
thanks to the omnipotent Halliwell, has cut the working class off
from mankind--the hewers of wood and drawers of water are no
longer considered human! Surely we are making rapid
"progress"--are nearing that point in time when the working
people will enter a protest against insult added to injury by
tying a few bow-knots in the rubber necks of presumptuous
parvenues. If it be a disgrace for a woman to work then is this
nation in a very bad way, for few of us are the sons or daughters
"of an hundred earls"--can go back more than a generation or two
without finding a maternal ancestor blithely swinging the useful
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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