From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Dec. 30, 1915:

• “The announcement, ‘Turn out boys and break rock,’ fell unpleasantly on the ears of the prisoners in the city jail this morning. It was official notification to them that the plans which the city officials have been working on for some days to keep them from having nothing to do with their time in jail have been perfected. One prisoner said he was too sick to work. Others demurred at spending the day on the rockpile. But when Chief Fisher told them that under the provisions of the city ordinance the man who refused to work would go on a diet of bread and water the hammers began to swing, and the work of transforming the refractory chunks of Kansas limestone into small pieces started. The city has made a schedule of amounts that will be allowed toward the prisoners’ fines for the work that is done…. The news that the city rock pile is actually in operation is believed to be the most unwelcome bit of information that the police court ‘regulars’ have heard for some time. The city officials look for some decrease in the police court business on account of it. While many of the habitual offenders don’t mind very much ‘lying out’ a jail sentence, they are not on good terms with work and sidestep it at every opportunity.”
• “With the opening of the Cordley school, situated on Nineteenth street between Kentucky and Vermont, the congested condition existing before the holidays in the Quincy school will be relieved. After the Christmas vacation the first, second, third and fourth grades which have met in the afternoon in the Quincy school will attend the Cordley school. This will relieve the Quincy school of 112 pupils. The building has not been entirely finished but is in such condition that it may be occupied…. Work has also been done in the old school buildings to better equip them for the work of the next term. Large radiators have been placed in room 8 of the high school building, a room which has not been property heated for several years…. New blackboards of slate have been placed in the New York and the Quincy schools. These are to replace boards of an older and inferior type.”
• “Seventy Lawrence girls have been nominated in the all-Kansas master motion picture contest which is to result in the selection of the cast which will present the ‘Sunflower Princess,’ a film phantasy of the Sunflower state. This will be a fine opportunity for some Lawrence girl to get a vacation and an inside acquaintance of how moving pictures are built, and of the lives and activities of film actors. It may well be a Lawrence girl who is selected as the permanent member of the Mid-Western Stock company.”
• “The continued cold weather brings the question of warm footwear for the poor more forcibly than ever to the attention of the citizens of the city. The doctors state that one of the elementary rules of health in winter is warm dry feet. The Social service league is busily engaged in distributing all the shoes that they have at their disposal…. Anyone having old shoes which are still in good condition, or those who wish to furnish money for the buying of shoes, is asked to get in touch with Dr. E. E. Stauffer, who is in active and direct charge of the work.”
• “The S. O. S. call to all those who wish to pay their taxes is being sent out from the treasurer’s office today…. I. C. Stevenson says that many an ‘old dog’ will go wrong on account of the recent law which makes a dog taxable as personal property…. The taxing of dogs as personal property has reduced in one year the number of dogs in Douglas county over one hundred.”