From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for June 14, 1911:

• “With the Glorious Fourth of July only three weeks away, the first consignment of noise-makers appeared in Lawrence windows this morning. Unless Woodland park provides the celebration, Lawrence kiddies will have to go to some other city in search of a riotous, ear-splitting, old-fashioned Fourth in which a score of fingers are blown off, a few houses set afire, a dozen runaways caused, and a few timid old people frightened into hysterics. The nation’s natal day is to be observed very sanely in Lawrence…. ‘I am in favor of a celebration,’ declared Mayor Bishop. ‘We don’t want to deprive our small boys and girls one bit of pleasure. The council neglected to pass an ordinance forbidding giant fire-crackers, but I shall instruct the police to see that none of any great size are exploded on Massachusetts.’
• “The Journal-World today for the first time in the history of a Lawrence newspaper presents a full two-page advertisement to the public. Advertising has doubled in Lawrence in the last five years, but it has only this afternoon reached the metropolitan state. The Journal-World congratulates the Weaver store … upon being the first store to take a two-page advertisement in a Lawrence newspaper. The Weaver store has been working up to this for some time. It is a live wire.”
• “This is Flag Day, but Lawrence merchants have had so much decorating to do within the last month, that no bunting was hung out today. Flag Day is not a holiday in Kansas, but patriotic citizens are expected to decorate their homes and business houses with the national colors. But very few flags were flung to the breeze along Massachusetts today.”