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Paul Fairie
@paulisci
Usually politics, silly jokes or curiosities from old newspapers. Summary: Dr. Cronk, Headline of the Year, . Researcher, instructor, .
Calgary, AB, CanadaJoined December 2009

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I love this. The full article is essentially the 1920 equivalent of "No one wants to work anymore!" After lamenting that easy, well-paying farm jobs are going unfilled, the article mentions, "People are reluctant to leave their city jobs, which pay a lot more."
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A shortage of farm labour
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JAZZ IS BLAMED FOR LACK OF FARM LABOR

Tempting offers of farmers meet little response

--Lincoln Journal, 31 Mar 1920
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1/I have been asked by some people why I haven’t made a public statement about the assault on our Deputy Prime Minister. To be blunt, I had to sit with my thoughts for a couple of days. Because this incident is not isolated & it brings up too much pain. And fear. Yes, fear.
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After this, he seems to disappear from newspapers, never to again advance his theory that one day our ears would become so big that we'd have to cover them with hair while they were picking up radio signals.
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The same month, the now Dr. Fritz Pfuffer blamed city noise more generally for our increasingly larger ears, and he now forecast that women of the future would be covering their ears with their hair because of how big their ears would be.
Claims Noise Of City Makes Ears Larger

VIENNA, Feb 9 -- The noise and clamor of modern city life are producing a race of elephant-eared men and women, says Dr. Fritz Pfuffer, a Vienna ear specialist. He predicts that in the not too distant future human beings will have auditory extremities the size of a daschund's.
Women says Dr. Pfuffer will be hardest hit. The grandchildren of women who now wear their hair over their ears will have to continue the fad because their ears will be so unsightly that they must be covered up.
--The Buffalo Times, 8 Feb 1926.
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By February 1926, he was now called Dr. E. Pfuffer, and was claiming that New Yorkers should start wearing ear muffs year round to make sure that they did not have mule-like ears in the future.
NEW YORK-- Ears are getting bigger because of the increasing noise they are forced to assimilate, according to Dr. E. Pfuffer of Vienna who is visiting here. New Yorkers, he said, should wear ear muffs winter and summer, to shut out some of the noise or their ears would be like mules a few hundred years from now.
--The Montreal Star, 1 Feb 1926.
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The earliest I can find him quoted is August 1925, the same date as the above article. Here he is in the Stockton Record claiming that one day our ears would become so big that they would receive radio signals directly.
Dr. Pfuffer said it was not improbable that in the course of centuries human beings would develop "radio ears," great floppers capable of receiving radio directly from the air.
--The Stockton Record, 18 Aug 1925.
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This clipping about jazz making us have elephantine ears one day quotes Dr. P.O. Pfuffer, Viennese aurist. I had to know: what was the deal with Dr. P.O. Pfuffer, Viennese aurist? Mostly, it seems as if he liked talking about how big ours ears would eventually become. 🧵
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Elephantine ears
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Jazz Age Blamed For Elephantine Ears; End Not Yet
By United Press
LOS ANGELES, Aug 18

Big ears are the outcropping of the present jazz era--in another million years humans will probably have aurical appendages as big as elephants, according to Dr PO Pfuffer, Viennese aurist.
"Ears of the city dweller are gradually getting thinner and broader," the Viennese expert said today. "It is due to evolution, and the tremendous din and conflict of complex noises in which we exist.
"A constant jazz diet causes a rearrangement of the cochlea," Dr Pfuffer explained. "The cochlea is a snail-like structure of the inner ear containing 3000 harp-like strings.
"Jazz and other din increases the number of strings."

--The Pomona Progress Bulletin, 18 Aug 1925.
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Newspapers used to regularly publish dreadfully lengthy lists of visitors to town. Newspapers also used to get complaints about "partiality in mentioning visitors, giving news about some folks and leaving out others".
PERSONAL

HL Robertson, of Friendsville, one of the leading men of that thriving little place, spent yesterday in the city on business.

George B Ludworth of Washington DC was a visitor in the city.

Harrison Seals, of Goin, spent yesterday in the city, circulating among the wholesale merchants.

M Dove, of Frankfort, Ky., spent yesterday in the city on business.

AW Pitts of New York is spending a few days in the city.

--The Knoxville Journal and Tribune, 23 Jun 1897.
Unjustly Blamed

From the Rogersville Herald

Newspaper publishers are blamed for many things they cannot help, such as using partiality in mentioning visitors, giving news about some folks and leaving out others, etc. They simply print the news they can find. An editor is not a perfect mind-reader and should not be expected to know the names and residences of your uncles, aunts and cousins, even if he should see them off on the train. Open your face and tell him about it. Its news that makes a newspaper, and every man, woman and child in the neighbourhood could be associate editors if they would.

--The Knoxville Sentinel, 7 May 1897.
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