100 years ago

october 12, 1911

Freeland Bros. are erecting a large barn on the lots on the north side of Main street near the Santa Fe tracks. The barn is to be used principally as a sale barn and will accommodate several carloads of horses.

There are forty or fifty automobiles in Marion, so the counters say. Six years ago, there were none. Jerry Forney was the auto pioneer of the town, bringing the first one here in 1905. It was a curiosity, then, as these machines were not in all small towns at that time. Now a fellow is out-of-date, and feels something like an old fogey who doesn’t own an automobile. “The world do move.”

There was a small fire at Edmunds & Griffith’s barber shop yesterday morning, caused by their gasoline water-heating device. Only slight damage was done.

Randolph Carpenter is carrying his right arm in a sling as a result of an obstreperous auto crank. The arm was broken Tuesday morning in two places, but was promptly attended to at Marner & Coffman’s hospital and this fine young man is getting along all right.

K.C. Roberts of Kansas City, state manager of the “Spirelle” corset people, was in town the first of the week. Miss Mary Pratt is the local representative of the company in this community,

It costs seven hundred dollars to fire one of our big battleship guns just once. A comfortable little home shot away every time one of those guns is fired. A college education for some worthy young person blown away in one blast. A very good library burned up in the flash of a gun. A year’s gospel to the heathen exploded in a second of time. How long, oh how long, will a Christian civilization stand for this?

The first frost of the season whitened the earth Monday morning.