Indianapolis Times, Volume 42, Number 72, Indianapolis, Marion County, 2 August 1930 — Page 4

PAGE 4

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Romance L'rifts Off F:iver The last Mississippi river packet steamboat line has gone from Memphis, Tinn. —and it you have any feeling at all for the color and romance of a by-gone generation, that announcement is guaranteed to make you a little bit melancholy. A few day:i ago the Valley Line Steamers, Inc., sole survivor of the Memphis packet lines, put its three steamers up lor sale and discontinued operations. Memphis, a." a result, is without packet steamer service for the i.rst time in more than a century—for the first time, az a matter of fact, since the Mississippi had any steamers at all. Os course, there still is traffic on the river. The big barge fleets are said to carry a greater volume of freight annually than the old-time sidewheel packets did in their heyday. Furthermore, this kind of trade is increasing. Enormous cargoes come down the river each month, to spill into the funnel at New Orleans for shipment the east coast, to California and overBut who can get excited over barges and tugboats? Those old steamers represented a bit of romance left over from a more leisurely and colorful era than our own. They were survivals from a generation which,, in retrospect, sometimes looks more attractive than ours. And Memphis was lapped in the glamour that they gave. Trying to imagine Memphis without packet steamers is like trying to imagine Gloucest ~ Mass., without fishing schooners. It just isn't right. The picture looks \yong. Memphis ought to do something about it. Probably it's a mistake to get sentimental about it. After all, the Mississippi valley is a greater artery of commerce now than it was in Mark Twain s day. Its cities are more prosperous. Life is easier for a bigger percentage of its people. The railroad and the automobile, which slew the packets, have certainly been blessings to the valley, as to the rest of the country. But we have lost something, just the same. Our modem age is efficient and progressive—but it gives us no substitute for the gleaming white-paint-and-brasswork packets of the old days. It is, in fact, just a little bit dull. The loss of Memphis’ river steamers symbolizes the tendency of the age. Idiotic Enforcement The muddle of which some policemen are capable when they go out to enforce Sunday "blue laws’’ is something almost beyond belief. In Philadelphia the other Sunday two working boys' clubs played a baseball game, with a group of kids from an orphan asylum as their guests. No admission could be charged, and no fewer than ten policemen were present to see that no fee was collected. At the end of the fourth inning the boys tried to take up a collection from the crowd to pay the day's expenses—baseballs, ground rent and the like. They promised to give any surplus to the police department, to be spent on charity. But the police were adamant. As soon as the hat started to go around the police broke up the game and arrested the boys in charge. Stunts like that are simply silly. "Blue laws,” socalled, are designed to prevent the commercialization of the Sabbath. A game like this one ought to be innocuous enough for any one. ;

Danger Spots in the Prison Mess Where will the lightning of revolt strike next in our prisons? This question is discussed in able fashion in the August Survey Graphic by Winthrop D. Lane, one of the most talented and experienced of our prison investigators. The article is especially timely, since this is the anniversary season of the breaks last year at Dannemora and Auburn. Lane lists some thirteen institutions in which he thinks that more breaks and riots are likely to take place. He says that he names these places more as a warning than as a result of a desire to prove a prophet. The following are the danger spots which Lane suggests: New York State Prison. Auburn, where there already have been two outbreaks. Ohio Penitentiary, Columbus, where 322 prisoners were burned to death, April 21, last. State Prison, Folsom, Cal., which probably has a larger percentage of men serving long terms, with little hope of release in the near future, than any other prison in the country. State Reformatory, Mansfield. 0., about which little has been heard. It is not a reformatory, but, a prison, and one of the most overcrow’ded institutions in the country, with a serious problem of idleness. Kansas' famous “mine prison'—the State Penitentiary at Lansing, where many men are employed in a coal mine. A strike occurred in this mine three or four years ago. At that time the morale of the institution was very low, caused by the almost complete cessation of paroles. West Virginia Penitentiary. Moundsville. The plant of this institiftion meets scarcely a single standard of a modern prison. Missouri Penitentiary. Jefferson City, one of the three largest prisons in the country and one of the most ineffectively run. New York State Prison, Dannemora. where several hundred men still are segregated for the part they are believed to have taken in the dramatic riot there last summer. Washington State Penitentiary, Walla Walla, where, because of idleness, many men are confined in cells twenty hours a day. State House of Correction and Branch Prisons, Marquette, Mich., which receives the ‘•troublemakers’* from other penal institutions in the state. Maryland Penitentiary. Baltimore, where the morale is poor and the plant one of the worst in the east. The two United States penitentiaries at Atlanta and Leavenworth, both were very badly overcrowded and at Leavenworth there was a serious _ riot last summer. Probability of outbreaks at these institutions has been lessened by enlightened policies instituted by the new United States superintendent of prisons. Sanford Bates. Lane also notes the conditions which are most likely to provoke more revolts: 1. Long sentences due to our hysterical desire to curb crime by severe punishment. Crimes that draw a sentence of from one to five years in England and Germany are here penalized by sentences of fcom thirty to forty years. 2. Elimination or reduction of “good conducttime by which prisoners earn a shortening cf their sentences. • 3. Fewer paroles, and these granted only after a longer term in prison. 4. Excessive overcrowding, with this condition getting worse from month to month. This is due to longer sentences and fewer paroles, which pile up tije prison population. 5. Unpardonable' idleness. Men are locked up for years with nothing to do. The rqason that Lane believes that we may have more riots is that nothing significant is being done to eliminate the conditions that cause riots: “Not only do conditions tending to provoke outbreaks still exist, but some of these conditions are worse than they were when the outbreaks of the last year occurred." that the American Dental Association has approvwd whisky and brandy as medicinal agents in the practice of dentistry, the time is not far distant when the dentist's office will be referred to simply as h filling station. .

The Indianapolis Times (A SCRrPPS-HOWABD NEWSPAPER) Owned and publish*.! daily (except Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Cos., 2U-220 West Maryland Street, Jn<lianapoli, Ind. Price in Marion County, i cent* a copy: elsewhere. 3 cents-delivered by carrier, 12 cento a week. BOtt) CUkCgY KOX W HOWARD, VKANK O. MORRISON, Editor ’ President Business Manager r hone—itlicy real ' batukday. auo. 2 -„ Member of United Preaa. Scrippa-Howard Newspaper Alliance. Newspaper Enterprise Association. Newspaper information Service and Audit Bureau of Circulations. “Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way.”

Fred Marvin Bobs Up Again The stirring of the anti-red pool by the Fish investigating committee and the like has brought to the surface much buried wreckage. Even Fred R. Marvin, erstwhile czar of the now defunct Key Men of America, has bobbed into public view again. A couple of years ago Marvin was the Paul Revere of the scare-mongers. As head of the Key Men he got out daily data sheets which described the efforts of Professor John Dewey, President Neilson of Smith college, Norman Thomas, Harry F. Ward, Felix Frankfurter and others to overthrow the American system of government and the Christian code of morals and to install Communism in shirts and women. He shrieked daily that Washington was in immediate danger of occupation by Muscovite huskies. He got a case of especially high blood pressure when Rosika Schwimmer, the unspeakable humanitarian and internationalist, applied for citizenship. Here was a woman who refused to kill even under public orders. Marvin denounced her as a Bolshevik agent ar.d a German spy. He had become rather careless of his language, since most of those whom he had accused of serving jointly Haus Hoorn and Moscow had laughed off his shafts. But since Madame Schwimmer could not be a citizen, she had plenty of time on her hanls and she "called” Marvin. Arthur Garfield Hays took her case and they got a judgment against Marvin of $17,000 for libel. The judgment was upheld on appeal. Thereupon Marin discontinued his daily data sheets and left the country temporarily at the mercy of Stalin's undercover men in Columbia university, Union Theological seminary, Harvard law school and the women's colleges. He next founded the so-callled New York City Chamber of Commerce to combat the reds, but his sucker-list was apparently not as large, alarmed, or generous as that which kept alive the Key Men of America, Inc. Then he started the American Coalition, of which he now is secretary. But it never seems to have come out of eclipse. The anti-red flurry in the last weeks, however, appears to have reassured Marvin. He came back to life and addressed the contact camp of the Seventy-eighth division at Sea Girt, N. J. Facing the officers, he expressed his great satisfaction at being with them: "In this day of jazz and jamboree, pomp and prohibition, frivolities and frailties, ;t is good to have men who think of government.” He transfixed his audience with documentary evidence that since 1890 Communists have been trying to break down our system of government and our national defenses. He them that world peace is a very simple problem. Communism is the only factor which threatens world tranquility. We wonder if Marvin can not be accused of a little red propaganda himself. Here he was addressing a group of men, all dressed up for fighting and nowhere to go, and telling them that only the Communists can give us anything to fight about in the world. If we don't have Communists, why soldiers? The chief trouble with his assurance that, if we want a good scrap we must breed reds, is the fact that they do not seem to make such headway in stirring up a fight. Here they have been boring away for forty years, and yet our government never was stronger nor our national defenses more elaborate: The reds were not even able to make any progress last winter, when industrial conditions were very bad, and when we were deprived of Marvin’s daily bulletins from the front line trenches. Maybe the linotyper who called them radio production statictics had good grounds for the spelling. Someone of these days a tennis star is going to be embarrassed by being photographed holding only one tennis racket. In the future the fellow who says, "Let's sit this one out,” be asked to produce credentials on his tree-sitting record. Jobless shoemakers in San Salvador held a parade to protest the introduction of shoemaking machinery. What you might call their last stand. Drought stories from Memphis, Tenn., report a baby three months old who never has seen a drop of rain. He probably wouldn't recognize it if he saw one, anyway.

REASON

THIS is the asbestos age of the American people; their statesmen simply can not set them on fire. They 'will sit through a news reel at the talkies and see everybody from President Hoover down pass in review and never clap a hand. It is something more than summer lassitude. tt tt tt We haven’t heard a political giant cheered since the World war. and outside of the candidates for office nobody in the land has named a baby after a President in the last twelve years. All of which is a wonderful thing for the babies. a a a -i IN a way. it would seem as if there should be a law against naming the helpless after those who for the moment loom large in public favor, for it’s a terrible handicap to bear the name of some politician who later throws down his echo by being caught with the goods on him. a a a And on the other hand the peace and tranquility of the great would be promoted now and then if their names were not passed around so promiscuously. Every week some of Washington's oi Lincoln's namesakes are sent to the penitentiary and the result is far from satisfactory. St ss tt When you pick up the paper and read that George Washington Heminway just has been caught stealing chickens and sentenced to six months at the penal farm it makes a distinct dent in the hat of the Father of this country, as you visualize him, crossing the Delaware. tt tt tt WHEN you turn to the next page and read that Abraham Lincoln Hopkins was apprehended the previous evening in the act of removing a spare tire from the Lizzie of a neighbor, the reaction utterly fails to synchronize with the reverence you have always had for the preserver of the nation. a a a So it's a good thing our ebbing enthusiasm has given temporary immunity to the cradle as well as the pedestal, but it makes one wonder what is at the bottom of it. Certainly the American heart has not turned to a dill pickle. a a a ONE is disposed to ascribe it to the personalities of our Prasidents, for since the World war they have been emotion-proof, neither Harding, Coolidge nor Hoover ever having caused a fellow-countryman to bust a glove, while Woodrow Wilson was not what you would call highly combustible. a a a And in the absence of the personal appeal we do not applaud: we have not the instinctive homage for constituted authority, found in Europe; we still rise when the band plays “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but we do it as if we were a^ne^^ne.

FREDERICK B 1 LANDIS

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

SCIENCE BY DAVID DIETZ Sun Spots Occur in Cycles, Which Are Approximately Eleven Years Long. The fact that sun spots occur in cycles has engaged the attention of astronomers for almost a century. Within the last few years, the work of Dr. Harlan T. Stetson of the Perkins Observatory of Ohio Wesleyan university has proved definitely that radio reception improves and declines with the sun spot cycles. Many authorities suspect that there may be long-time changes in our weather which can be traced to the sun spot cycle, but this has not yet been established. S. H. Schwabs of Dessau was the first to discover that sun spots occurred in cycles. He announced his discovery in 1843 after twenty years of study. During those twenty years, he had made an almost daily watch of the sun spots. The systematic study of sun spots was begun by Professor Max Wolf of Zurich in 1880. He collected all observations of sun spots which were available up to that time and summarized them. He devised a system of counting sun spots which took into account both the groups of spots and the number of spots in the group. This method is still in use. The result of the daily count is known as the “Wolf number” for that day. tt tt tt Length THE sun spot cycle is approximately eleven years long. That is, it is usually that many years from a time of maximum sun spots up to a period of minimum and back again to a period of maximum. However, the time from one maximum to the next may be a longer or a shorter period. Russell states, "The average interval between maxima is 11.13 years according to Newcomb; but this is subject to great fluctuations, the observed intervals ranging all the way from 7.3 to 17.1 years. ,v "The rise to maximum is usually, but not always more rapid than the fall which follows, the mean duration of the two, according to Newcomb, being 4.62 and 6.51 years. "W. J. S. Locyer has pointed out that the rise is more rapid both in actual duration and as compared with the fall, when the maxima are highest. The whole length of the interval between minima, however, seems to bear little relation to the intensity of the maximum.” During the period of sun spot maximum, the sun is covered with spots daily. On some days as many as one hundred spots are visible. During the period of sun spot minimum, spots are very scarce. Sometimes an entire month will pass without a single spot being observed. There is also considerable variation in the intensity of sun spot maxima. Three or four cycles will exhibit maxima of high intensity. These will be followed by several of low intensity. t u n Latitude ANOTHER interesting fact about sun spot cycles is known as Spoerer’s law of sun spot latitudes in honor of the astronomer who first pointed it out. Spoerer showed that when a sun spot cycle is starting up, that is when a minimum just has been passed, the new cycle is heralded by the appearance of a few small spots at considerable distance from the sun’s equator. These spots occur in latitude 25 or 30 degrees north and south. As the cycle continues, more spots appear. In additiqn, many of the new spots occur in lower latitudes, that is, closer to the equator. In this way the two belts in which the sun spots occur widen out. Then as the maximum is passed and spots become fewer in number, they cease to appear in higher latitudes. Consequently, the sun spot belts begin to shrink in size. But the spots now are all in low latitudes. As the cycle comes to a close, only a few spots are left, but these are a few degrees north and south of the equator. The new cycle nov; begins again at high latitudes. Asa rule, evidences of anew cycle are in sight before the last traces of the old one have completely died out. The result is that at a sun spot minimum there usually are a few spots scattered in four widely separated zones, A few spots belonging to the old cycle a few degrees north and south of the equator, and a few spots belong to the new cycle at distances of about 30 degrees north and south of the equator. *

Readers of the Times Voice Views

Editor Times—What is the matter with our writers of law, the lawyers and officials who are supposed to know what law is? Have they become so foundered with knowledge that they no longer are capable and have no sense of justice, or are they a class of people that can not see anything but dollars and just play vaudeville to get them without any thought or regard for justice? For example, we will take the delinquent tax law that has been running for eleven years. In enforcing this law they are selling liens against the property for the amount of the tax penalty and costs and giving only two years to redeem it. If the party is unfortunate and unable to redeem it, a deed is given to the party who paid the amount of the tax penalty and costs, thus confiscating the property of the owner and robbing the heirs of their lawful inheritance if the owner should die. The late revised statutes published in March, 1930, are very encouraging to the unfortunate heirs, as it states that infants, idiots and insane persons may redeem any lands belonging to them sold for taxes, within two years after the expiration of such disability in the same manner as provided in the preceding section for redemption by other persons. The foundation of law is justice. Is robbing the infants, idiots and insane of their lawful inheritance and means of maintenance, justice? How do they expect infants to live and redeem their property at compound interest of 6 per cent with the purchaser of the tax lien being given a deed for their property and giving them nothing for it or the use of it? The expiration of the disability of idiots is death, What

_ wW SS 7

Stomach Gets Out of Place at Times

BY DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN Editor, Journal of the American Medical Association, and of Hygeia, the Health Magazine. EACH of the organs in the human being’s interior has a place varying within reasonable limits which may be called its normal position. If the organ gets loose because the ligaments that hold it in position are too long or too loose, unusual symptoms may result. Thus one hears of floating kidneys, twisted ligaments, dropped stomach and intestines, and similar abnormalities of position of various internal organs. A stomach that has dropped down out of position may get six or seven inches lower in the abdomen than it ought to be and still not cause any considerable difficulty. If, however, it gets into a position in which there is difficulty in emp-

IT SEEMS TO ME

T 7 DISON ought to catch them younger. Os the forty-nine smartest boys in America assembled in East Orange, N. J., the most youthful already is 15. Far be it from a slippered pantaloon of 40 to suggest that 15 definitely establishes a lad in the sere and yellow as far as future achievement is concerned, but I insist that the age of flexibility already is past. That is over by six or seven. , In fact, future experience and education is relatively trivial. If this theory is correct, as I believe, educational processes in America are ill-contrived. The average family spends hours in earnest consideration of the question. “Where shall we send him to college?” or the problem may be even more fundamental one of, "Can we send him to college?” Naturally, such decisions are worthy of earnest deliberation, but they pale before the importance of, “Which kindergarten shall we choose for him?” In most cases this vital query is •stressed lightly. Some school or other is chosen because it is just around the corner and Norah can call for him and still cook luncheon. If it is a place which suffices co keep a growing boy in fair spirits and out of mischief, that is plenty in the eyes of most parents. Yet

chance have they to redeem their property? If it is not the intent of law to rob any one, would it not be illegal to sell property at less than its appraised value? Would not the selling of the lien against property for the amount of the taxes, penalty, and costs, and giving a deed to the purchaser for the amount of the lien, show the intent of the law to be confiscation and robbery? H. D. ROBINSON, Richmond, Ind. Editor Times—We note that William Green, American Federation of Labor president, while in this city, advised “that every member become a committee of one to find out the stand of every congressional candidate on the employment bureau bill and the anti-injunction bill.” I am only a poor coal miner, now thrown on the scrap-pile, being 60 years old. When I applied to one company in this city for. a job, the employment manager said, “On account of your age. your. usefulness is past.” As such, dare I question this great Mr. Green, though I know him personally. Why did he refer to only those two bills? Would it not be better for every member, or let us say, every voter, to know the stand of every candidate on every bill that comes up? Why refer to the two bills only? I would say also, would it not be well for Mr. Green to instruct every “member” that, when election for officers in the organization comes around, "every member becomes a committee of one to find out the stand of every candidate concerning the welfare and strength of action that should be taken in regard to the organization.” If such instructions had been

There Goes Another One!

DAILY HEALTH SERVICE

tying the contents of the stomach into the intestines after food is taken, the difficulties accumulateMoreover,* the changed position brings about changed positions in other organs and causes pressure in unusual places and these secondary features of the disturbance also bring about unusual symptoms. Incidentally, women suffer far more than do men with dropping of various organs. Dropping of the stomach is seen in from 20 to 30 per cent of women as compared with about 5 per cent of men. The symptoms usually associated with dropping of the stomach are those associated with lack of proper activity of the stomach. There is the sense of fullness, eructations, early satiation on eating, and many of the other symptoms associated with dyspepsia. in proper position is to put into it Os course, the certain method of finding out whether the stomach is some substance which appears

at 3 or 4 the child is learning with a rapidity which can never be matched again. These are the years when the concrete piers are set and all the structural steel put into place. a tt a Credit Due FROM Yale, or Princeton, or Harvard your son may get an imposing facade, but the sort of man that he is to be was determined long before he came to the cloisture of any of these universities. In later years he may mention the debt he owes to Copeland of Harvard or Phelps of Yale. It is even possible that in after-dinner orations he will stress the fact that Princeton made a man of him. Or possibly his eyes may grow moist with tears as he mentions Cayuga’s waters and the cleansing effect they had upon his soul. But I believe the young man errs in his estimates. He should remove his hat not for "God, for country and for Yale,” b'trt rather for these first two and "Miss Blank’s Day School for Infants.” Wiser heads than those carried by the average collegian have fallen into the same mistake. Keats wrote a poem to celebrate the fact that he came suddenly upon Chapman’s Homer. But there was nothing accidental

given years ago, and the “members” had taken notice accordingly, some of those holding office today drawing big salaries from their unfortunate “members” i now would be among the unemployed. Green shouts about increase in union* membership “in the south,” but he did not mention the loss of the 300,000 or 400,000 union soft coal miners. Why did Green have to go south and forget those miners who built the United Mine Workers of America and made William Green what he is today? What did William Green and John L. Lewis do to those miners in the 1922 strike? They divided the miners and lost the strike. They since have been very good friends and have helped each other in keeping the miners divided, until today very few are left —and those left have no faith in Lewis or Green. Leave Green in office, and the American Federation of Labor will become what the United Mine Workers of America is today under the leadership of John L. Lewis. S. A. NELSON. 1446 Naomi street. Who were the proselytes of the gates? They were converts among the Greeks and Romans, to the Jewish religion, who were permitted to enter the outer court, called the court of the Gentiles, of the Temple of Jerusalem. Who were the “Seven Sleepers?” In medieval legend there were seven Christian youths of Ephesus w r ho, during the persecution under Decius <A. D. 249-251), hid themselves in a cave and fell into a miraculous sleep that lasted 196 years.

opaque to the X-ray and then take an X-ray picture or to look at the abdomen with the fluoroscope, with the patient in a standing position. Thus the exact location of the stomach may be determined. If the falling of the stomach has been established for a long time, all treatment must be palliative and related to giving the stomach the amount and kind of work that it can do. The diet must be regulated as well as the amount of food, the times the food is taken, and the patient’s conduct before and after eating. If the condition is seen early it is possible by the use of various supportive appliances, by suitable exercises of the abdominal muscles bymassage and hygiene, by increasing abdominal fat and lessening the amount of fluids and food generally to give the tissues a chance to build up more adequate support for the falling organs.

Ideals and opinions expressed in this column are those of one of America’s most interesting writers and are presented without regard to their agreement or disagreement with the editorial attitude of this paper.—The Editor.

-nv HEYWOOD Jil BROUN

and epoch-making in the contact. At 5 or 6 some influence, known neither to me nor the poet, worked to Homerize young Keats and make him the sort of person who would be knocked into an inspiration by the nodding bard. u Changes Needed TF it is tr.ue that the first years are the only ones of vital consequence, then many of our customs and traditions should be altered. Instead of ambling back once in ten or twenty years to view the familiar elms and watch the baseball game, we should return with greater celerity to the front basement of the Blinks’ play school. Here it was in all truth that life’s lessons first began. The day on which some professor informed, “I think, therefore, I exist” deserves no such red lettering as the morning when building blocks were put into your hand and the alphabet first swam into ken. As far-seeing a gentleman a,s Thomas Edison should not send his scouts to gather for him youngsters of 15 or more who already are matured and marred by mistakes in training. If the sage of Menlo park were indeed a wizard he would have his agents lurk around the kindergartens and there mark down for future service to the cause of scientific research such tots as seem most adept in cutting out the paper dolls and stringing beads on wire. n u Young Captains THESE are tomorrow’s captains of industry if life is kind and mumps and measles not overly severe. Already it is written in the books that the small towhead with a kite will be the one first to make a non-stop flight from New York to Yokohoma. Even as we watch him in his play he is soaking in the knowledge and interest in air currents which will serve him so well later on in the lonely wastes of skies which lie over the ocean. Os course, the Edison questionnaire might have to be amended in some respects. And as a scientist it seems to me that he should go to the source and not be content to make his choice from veterans of 16 and 18-odd with minds all neatly packed and signed and sealed and delivered. Even a wizard can not mold them then to his heart’s desire. For better or worse the essentials of the job are finished. The play has been rehearsed. Nothing remains but the performance. (CoDvrieht. 1930. by The Times)

Daily Thought

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries thav shall come upon you.—James S:L Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession as they torment us with their loss.—Gregory,

.AUG. 2, 1930

M: E. Tracy SAYS - As a Matter of Common Sense, No Man Knows Hoio He Would Answer Edison’s “Desert Question” if Confronted With it in Reality. A Sa method of picking geniuses, there is not so much to be said for the Edison plan, but as an event which stimulates a certain number of boys to study, and a certain number of older people to cudgel their brains, it has proved a howling success. Edison has the faculty of asking, not only difficult, but searching questions, better still, he is interested in the original native faculties, the type of mind that accepts knowledge as something to be used. His questionnaires make the average high school and college examinations seem pale and insipid-They call for something more than can be parroted from textbooks, but something that the average individual is likely to meet during life. What Edison seems desirous to know is the kind of men boys are going to make, not only as engineers or scientists, but as citizens and members of society. It would be just as well if our educational system gave more heed to that side of the question. a a Confused on Morals WE have attained a fair degree of success in systematizing and co-ordinating our mechanical knowledge. There is general agreement on its fundamental principles and how they should be applied. When it comes to morals, however, we still are badly confused. Asa matter of fact, the confusion is increasing. Not only the Mosaic, but the midVictorian, ideas of right and wrong are breaking down, with little of constructive nature to take their place. Optimism suggests that we are approaching the advent of anew moral code, but there are equally good grounds for suspecting a drift toward chaos. a u a Perplexed on Morals EDISON’S much-discussed "desert question” furnishes vivid proof of how perplexed we have become. Eight people stranded with only food enough for three to get out of it, and what would you do if yon were boss? A brilliant scientist of 60. his socialjv-inclined wife and 6-year-old s< i, two half-breed guides, one 58 and one 32; your fiancee, your best friend, and yourself, with the power to save three and doom five in your possession. Sea law, as practiced in clipper ship days, would have enabled you to answer for one immeditaely, but that law gradually is fading. We are not beginning to doubt whether a captain should go first. The idea that the strong should save the weak gradually is giving place to the idea that we should consider what is best for society, as though we could tell in our calmest moments, much less when confronted by a life and death emergency. it it No One Knows Answer AS a matter of common sense, no man knows how he would answer Edison’s “desert question.” If confronted with it in reality, the chances are that things would have become pretty strained, that minds would have grown taut, and that most of. the eight would have ceased to be themselves. Under such circumstances, people generally fall back on their elemental emotions, and childhood traditions. Under such circumstances, too, most every one demands a voice and there is far more likely to be a general wrangle than implicit obedience to the boss. Brave men often have turned cowards under the strain, while cowards have turned surprisingly brave. Women, though given the chance to save themselves, sometimes have elected to die with those they loved, as in the case of Mrs. Strauss and Mrs. Hubbard on the Lusitania. tt tt tt Shall Fittest Survive? THREE generations ago the boys were taught that the head of such expeditions must stay unless told that his going meant rescue. Now we are not so sure. Whether jazz or intelligence is responsible for the change, we are beginning to wonder if those who have the strength should not save themselves, if chivalry is a virtue, if cavemen were not right. Survival of the fittest” crops up as a natural corollary to the hypothesis of self-rxpression—meaning the fittest physically, not the fittest spiritually.

—iqoAy+(6jTHe|“

HARDING’S DEATH August 2

On Aug. 2, 1923, President Warren G. Harding died suddenly at a hotel *n San Francisco. He had set out on a tour across the United States and to Alaska in an effort to reassure the farmers and reawaken enthusiasm for the administration, and it was on his trip back from Alaska that he became ill. The graveness of his illness became apparent when he addressed, the Seattle Press Club only a few days before his death. A writer who covered the event wrote: “When the President appeared before the Seattle Press Club . . . his address was in the nature of a valedictory, in the .sense that it marked the President’s farewell appearance <n public for an indefinite period. "So the people of the country may as w'ell make up their minds that they will hear little and see nothing of Presdent Harding for several months.” The death of the nation’s chief executive was announced in these words: “The President, died instantaneously without warning and while conversing with members of his family at 1:30 p. m. Death apparently was due to some brain evolvemcnt, probably an apoplexy.”