THE SPIRIT OF THE

MONTH

Transformation

Russia continues to

slough off its past

Japan forces Korea into

progress

Americanism grows

contagious

Indians are made into citizens

Commercialism brings forth culture

Reform overtakes organized labor

Maud Charlotte Mary Victoria, youngest daughter of Edward VII., King of England, was born November 26, 1869. She was married July 22, 1896, to Prince Charles, second son of the Crown Prince of

Denmark, who is now king of Norway

The World Go-Day

VOLUME X.

JANUARY, 1906

NUMBER 1

N

Taming Football

OW that we have become accustomed to the Russian revolution, to the change of dynasty in Norway, to the defeat of bosses in America, to the discussion over rate regulation in Congress and to the steadily increasing disgrace of the insurance disclosures, we have set ourselves to reform football. From the President of the United States to the humblest member of a school or college faculty there arises a general protest against this boy-killing, man-mutilating, money-making, gladiatorial sport. One or two academies, with a determination to capture the head of the procession in the new crusade, have informed the world that they have actually voted to abolish the game in the more or less distant future. The age of heroes, not to say martyrs, evidently is not past.

*

Football ought to be reformed and our universities ought to reform it. About this every one is agreed. The football enthusiast is as loud in his lamentation over the game as the president of an insurance company, who maintains a bribery agent at a state capital, is in bemoaning at a reform club graft in politics. But their suggestions do not appear to the parents and guardians of future gridiron heroes to be very radical. They amount to hardly more than a provision that not more than a dozen or fifteen men shall pile up on top of the man carrying the ball; that, on the whole, it is bad form to hit an opponent in the face when the umpire is not watching; that law schools should not be too eager to admit boys

(Copyright, 1906, by THE WORLD TO-DAY COMPANY,)

into their universities who can not graduate from high schools, but who can play football; that the service which an institution shall attach to the various sinecures given to football players shall at least be something more than suggesting the healthfulness of certain brands of cigarettes. Take it altogether, we have a great deal of talk about reforming football, but very little serious attempt on the part of anybody to reform it.

The fact is that the American people are being educated to enjoy what the reporters call the "fierce but clean attacks" of opposing teams. The thousands upon thousands of men and women who gather around the football field, however they may talk about brutality, are singularly indifferent to the sight of a man slowly recovering consciousness through the assistance of a trainer who slaps him in the face with a wet sponge and of attendants who hold him up while he recovers his wits by staggering around the field. If a man has a few dollars staked upon the game he takes a certain savage delight in the punishment meted out upon a player who is preventing him from turning his hours of recreation into a means of justifying his absence from his office. Even the sight of a grand stand falling and wounding and killing some of the spectators themselves does not interfere with the general enjoyment of an afternoon. At this point we surpass the ancients. After the Coliseum was built the Roman populace at their gladiatorial games never had the opportunity to watch a falling grand stand.

The police will not permit bull fights. Why should they permit. football? Is it any worse to kill a bull than a boy? The game is virile and not for weaklings? Prize-fighters are proud of their profession and talk about their manly art. Football calls for courage and for team work and for loyalty to a cause? Certainly, so does war. The Duke of Wellington spoke better than he knew when he said the battle of Waterloo was won on the football fields.

*

The only way in which to reform football is to stop playing it, and then play another game with the same sort of ball. Just what that can be which ought to replace the present melee we call a game, we leave to the experts to decide. But of one thing we can be reasonably assured, the new sport should be one which will not require the services of doctors, the maintenance of hospitals and the celebration of funerals.