Whiskerites, more than 300 strong, crowded into the district court room at the court house, Thursday night, May 19, to revel in the completion of their organiza-tion and the first session of the kangaroo court. George Cowton was elected presi' dent, George Bartenbach, vice-president, and Jim Webb, secretary and treasurer. Mr. Bartenbach, as temporary chairman, called the meeting to order and presided during the election of the president.

The meeting evolved itself into a session of the kangaroo court with the appointment of Ed Hannon, Louis Heyde, Paul Kirk, Lloyd Kelly, Paul Holmberg and Archie O'Brien as judges, Bill Mullen as public defender and Harry Grimminger as prosecutor. Organization of the court was the source of no little amusement which reached its climax when A. V. James, master mechanic for the Union Pacific with headquarters at Omaha, was accorded the honor, if any, of being the first to face the bar of whisker justice.

James had been taken into custody at the grandstand at Burnett park, where he eagerly was awaiting the start of the ball game, and was escorted before the newly organized administrators of justice by Chief of Police H. B. Francisco and Officer Al Bockhahn, accompanied by a special detail of the Whisker Club.

Reading of Complaint

In the complaint, James was charged with maliciously and obnoxiously employing a deadly weapon, more familiarly known as a razor, in removing the only natural adornment of his countenance, all in direct violation of the laws of Whisker-dom, to all of which he had subscribed during a visit to the city last week.

James, when questioned by the court, expressed his intention to plead guilty, but the public defender jumped to his feet and addressing the court, protested vigorously. He believed James entirely too hasty, he said, in his expression of guilt, pointing

out that the offense, shaving, had been committed at North Platte and not within the jurisdiction of the court. He later also argued that the defendant, when he enrolled in the club, believed he was joining the whisky club, not Whisker Club.

Harry Grimminger, handling the prosecution, brought out the seriousness of the offense and stressed that the defendant freely had admitted that he had joined the club and that he had applied a razor in excess of the laws of Whiskerdom. Ignorance was no excuse, Grimminger emphasized, expressing the conviction that, the fact that James resided in Omaha was sufficient evidence to attract the wrath of the court in the imposition of sentence.

Court Decision Lenient

After brief deliberation, the court returned its verdict as follows, an appeal to which was promptly overruled and the defendant turned back to police authorities:

"The jury has agreed that this man is guilty and should be punished. He signed the petition of the Whisker club knowing that he was signing something. He should have known that it meant whiskers. We take into consideration, too, that his last shave was in Lincoln county at North Platte, which is in fact a suburb of Grand Island. It is no excuse to this court, and we are inclined in the sentence to show-leniency to the prisoner because he is a first offender-sort of like a boy in the criminal code. And for that reason your court will recommend to you that the prisoner be given the sentence of this kind: That he be turned over to the warden of the city bastile and there confined for ten days on bread and water in solitary confinement and that during those ten days he to have no literature to read other than Mrs. Leary's cook book. And that he be given his option of paying into this court a fine of $1 and costs of this proceeding and grow whiskers or serve the sentence which we have recommended."