Indianapolis Times, Volume 45, Number 59, Indianapolis, Marion County, 19 July 1933 — Page 4
PAGE 4
The Indianapolis Times < A SCIIPPI.HOWAIt D EWSFAPJS*) ROY W. HOWARD President "AM'oi'T ROWBLI .... Editor EARr. D. BAKER Busiueis Manager Phoua—Riley 5551 rfeg ' MemV>er of United Free*, Scrippa - H'-wuril Newspaper I -q Alliance, Newspap-r Knterj. ‘ : '.y=Sj prise Amo-viillo.i. Newspaper Information Service end Au- = (lit Bureau of Circulation*. Owned end published daily B, BBS (ei apt Sunda. i InESBH (t'anapnlia Tlniea I’liblu-blng s r reel. Indimapolia, Jnd. ice iii county, 2 .o*iia cenia—delivered liv carrier, Vi t t,-. n„t,t ,h. mnts a i.eeV. Mail aubgi ripJ tea in Indiana. S3 n reoplt (fill fnl year; oiHslie of Indiana, 65 Ihtir Ouin Way cents a month. WBTWESDAY. JULY J 9. I*M.
18 TO 0 EVEN Dixie! Down where they liked their liquor, but talked dry, the prohibitionists promised to stop the repeal wave. They failed. Alabama and Arkansas have jumped into the wet column, along with every other state that has voted so far—whether east, west, north, ©r south. The score now is 18 to 0. Repeal has eighteen more to go for the necessary thirtyaix states. Victory is certain. When? That is the only question. If the drys can delay action in enough states, repeal may be put off until 1934 or 1935. But that is improbable. The dry delay tactics failed in Ohio and Missouri. Evasive methods are close to failure also in Virginia, Colorado, Oklahoma and Kentucky—all of which are expected to vote this -year. In addition to thase four probable states, the number which have voted or fixed dates total thirty-five. In two more—Utah and Montana-r-the Governors have power to fix dates. That makes a possible total of fortyone states to vote this year. With forty-one states, or even thirty-nine, voting this year, the chances of ratifying the repeal amendment before Christmas are very good Indeed. In fact, after the example of Alabama and Arkansas, the drys can not be certain of a single state. Tennessee doubtless will bolt the drys Thursday, The basis of the repeal landslide is, of course, public recognition of the failure and folly of the prohibition experiment. Two other causes have operated. One is the depression deficit and tax burden, and the need of revenue from now tax-exempt bootleg liquor. The other is the pressure of President Roosevelt on Democratic Governors and party leaders in the once arid areas of the west and south. When historians come to the Roosevelt administration, they are apt to point to rapid ratification of repeal as proof of the President's political courage and skill. THE PAYOFF BEGINS EXPERTS on the problem of crime, some of them of the most pronounced wet affiliation and prejudices, have predicted that the end of prohibition will be followed by a criminal orgy without precedent in American history. The kidnaping epidemic seems to be a forerunner confirming this prophecy—which in no way partakes of a dry argument. Most of those who feel that we face an unprecedented crime wave believe that repeal is necessary and that we must take our chances on the crime matter. The basis for a future crime orgy has been comprehensively laid by the developments of the last twenty years. It is a law of social psychology, formulated by Gabriel Tarde and others years ago, that the socially inferior tend to ape the socially superior. The latter capitulated pretty thoroughly to the prevailing “something-for-nothing” psychology of the era of speculative finance capitalism. Freebooting in railroads, banks, utilities, receiverships, and other high-honed racketeering becomes shockingly frequent. It was inevitable that, sooner or later, we would succeed in “Americanizing'’ the small fry—especially the foreign small fry. Their ancestors, if they lived in this country, usually had made an honest living conducting shoeshining parlors, clothes-clcaning establishments, fruit stands, restaurants and the like, or at hard labor on roads, streets, and railloads. The younger generation looked with envy, not at the bowed backs and wrinkled brows of their parents, but rather at the achievements of the American buccaneers who had made away with their millions, with little or no service to society. If our usurers of high estate could get theirs, why should anybody drown himself in perspiration? About the time this something-for-nothing psychology was filtering through the skulls of the small fry, along came the noble experiment. This was a “natural” for the budding racketeers. Nothing could have been consciously designed which could have suited their purposes more perfectly. Public opinion in many sections of the country very definitely was against prohibition and not a few regarded the bootleggers as crusaders for the old American liberties. Prohibition promoted other rackets —the hijacking racket among the wet outlaw's, rackets in foods, milk, transportation, building construction and the like. All were relatively safe, since the legal profession, already ethically impaired through its affiliations with the reputable racketeers in speculative finance, was only too eager to defend the lesser racketeers, for value received. The depression further stimulated the growth of racketeering, since it threw out of work millions who otherwise might have preferred to cam an honest living. From these millions it was easy to recruit the few thousands needed as the underlings of the master minds of the racket world. Revelations of the doings of our financial moguls only strengthened the conviction of the racketeering element that they should get theirs, get it quick, and get it good and plfenty. The idea that when prohibition is ended the boys who have made millions in illicit selling of booze meekly and contritely will turn to blacking shoes and slinging hash is downlight silly. They will apply the technique they have mastered to the dope ring, kidnaping, bank robberies, hi-jacking of legitimate liquor supplies and the like. They will find crafty lawyers all too willing
to defend them from the “strong arm” of the law. The kidnapings which we have been reading about well may be only the first rumblings of the oncoming tornado of organized crime. Legal beer only has begun to make inroads into the bootlegger's domain. He still has his monopoly on hard liquor. When repeal comes, the real shift will begin into new of profitable activity. It may go so far that w f e shall have to declare martial law in certain localities. There is little hope of curbing organized crime through the usual channels of criminal jurisprudence, since the latter are all too often allied with gangsters. Whatever methods pi repression may prove necessary, they never will be wholly successful unless supplemented by deeper reforms which discredit the something-for-nothing business “ethics,” secure the punishment of malefactors of great wealth, emphasize the fact that the man who earns his living is neither a boob nor a sucker, and provide a job for every person eager to follow an honest calling. CRUSH THE KIDNAPERS NO society in which kidnaping for ransom becomes as common a racket as it has become in the United States recently is offering its citizens anything very substantial in the way of security. No crime emphasizes the helplessness of a community as does kidnaping. There always will be human passions that will result in murder, there always will be desperate men who commit robbery, there always will be weak men who commit forgery and defalcation, there always will be gamblers and panders and confidence men. The most society can hope to do is keep such crimes at a minimum. But kidnaping is different. It can not be an organized racket unless the society in which it thrives lias demonstrated its utter inability to protect the lives and persons of its citizens. Its appearance is the gravest symptom that the machinery of law menl can display. • Today wc just have about reached a point at which we must discuss some extremely revolutionary revision of our whole system of law enforcement. Police methods could not be move disorganized than they are now. From New York down to the smallest hamlet, each police force is entirely independent. There are fortyeight states, each with a separate jurisdiction. The powers of the federal government to co-ordinate and direct the war on crime are very limited. The cards are stacked in favor of the racketeer. He could not ask for a better set-up. The editor of the Daily Post-Tribune of La Salle, 111., recently suggested to President Roosevelt that changes be made in the law, so that federal agents could take a hand in all kidnaping cases, and not just in those where the victim is transported over a state line. This is an excellent proposal, but it may be that we need to go even farther than that. It may be that we need to follow AttorneyGeneral Homer Cummings in his scheme for a nation-wide federal police force. It may be that we need to surrender our old fondness for local independence and make every cop in the land part of a great centralized organization, just as we already have put our national guard under federal authority. It is perfectly obvious that we must do something. The kidnapers could not operate as they have been operating if the existing machinery had not proved its utter inadequacy. A RIDICULOUS “RED” SCARE A STUDENT at the University of Wisconsin told a legislative investigating committee the other day that he had been hired by the secret service to supply federal investigators with information about the activities of Communists at the university; and one is forced to wonder just what humorless subofficial it was who decided that such a course was necessary. No one with any common sense thinks that anything important in the way of red activities is taking place at any state university. It was another Wisconsin student who explained how the stories about Communism at the university got to Uncle Sam's ears. On May day, this lad explained, one undergraduate hung a red flag out of his window. This undergraduate was a thorough-going young capitalist, the son of the president of a big Illinois manufacturing concern, and he hung out his red bunting as a prank, pure and simple. But someone took the flag seriously, some federal official got worried—and the sleuths got busy. And the whole business looks more than a little ridiculous. THE PATRONAGE EVIL TJRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S action in putting all postmasters under civil service seems to be a long step in the right direction. And it leads to the hope that our major political parties eventually will have sense enough to drop the patronage game entirely. That the federal service suffers because parties try to reward their hacks with public office is notorious. It also is beginning to be clear that passing out these jobs usually creates more enemies than friends. The number of jobs is strictly limited; the job hunters are like the sands of the sea, uncountable. For one who is chosen there are a dozen to b rejected, and those who are rejected are very apt to get sore about it. Deciding to fill government positions on a merit basis might turn out to be good politics, as well as good government. RAW DEAL FOR CUPID A MOTHER hard times victim is that giant dwarf, young cupid. He who shot so well in the up-and-coming days is being blinded in a rain of fell statistics from Washington. If you ever considered the depression a light matter, read ’em and weep. The year 1932 reached an all-time low for weddings. In that year there were given in marriage only 981,159 couples. This was fewer by 79,032 than in 1931, and 1831 was lower in percentage of weddings to population than any year aince the Civil war, excepting only the great war year of 1917. Last year registered also anew low in
births. Only 1,961,618 babies arrived, compared with 2,112,760 in 1931. Births per 1,000 people have been going down steadily since 1915, when the figure was 25.1. Last year it was 17.3. Fewer marriages bring fewer divorces. Marriages fell 7 ; .* per cent. Only ten states recorded wedding increases last year, and these all adjoined states with strict marriage laws. lowa, where marriages used to flourish as the tall corn stalk, saw the wedding business drop by 43.5 per cent—the national record low for the year. Since we want? no Mussolini or Hitler to tongue-lash blushing brides and bashful benedicts to the altar, there is little to be done about the marriage slump. Nothing, in fact, but wait for better times, now on the horizon. OVERPAID EXECUTIVES of the lessons of the depression seems to have been that some of our brightest executives were overpaid grossly. A case in point is furnished by the story of an Ohio bank, the Guardian Trust Company of Cleveland, which took to its bed at the lime of the recent bank holiday, plucked fitfully at the covers and then quietly breathed its last. The Ohio senate now is investigating this bank, and it has found that its president was drawing a salary of around SIOO,OOO a year, which is more than me President of the United States gets. In one year salaries to the bank’s leading executives totaled a sum greater than the dividends paid to stockholders. To earn a salary of SIOO,OOO a year, a man has to be very, very good. When he repays his employers by permitting his firm to drift straight into insolvency, one hardly needs to be unduly critical to suspect that he was being overpaid greatly. One wonders just how many firms that went bankrupt in the last few years were supporting big shot executives in a style to which they had no right to become accustomed. CONTRIBUTORY NECLIGENCE ? David L. HUTTON (Mr. Aimee McPherson) says it was an act of mental cruelty for his distinguished spouse to telegraph that she had borne him a child when as a matter of fact she had not. • , On this ground, he asks to be divorced. With no desire whatever to influence the action of the courts, we are forced to agree that it might be a little annoying to a husband to be misled and confused on the question as to whether he had any children or not. However, Mr. Hutton had notice when he married the then Mrs. McPherson that she was a woman to whom strange things happened. There was a story about a kidnaping, for instance. There were other things. Is there such a thing as contributory negligence in this matter of damage from mental cruelty? Scientists are so absent-minded. One in Canada reports the discovery of something 100 times sweeter than sugar, but neglects to tell who she is. Man criticizes woman for her extravagance, but she never spends $25 for a fishing outfit to catch a fish that could be bought for 25 cents. Despite all this hot weather we've been having, the average girl is more likely to be son-struck than sun-struck. Bourbon is the best base for a mint julep, contends Irvin Cobb. Wouldn't you have supposed that a man with that name would have preferred corn?
M.E.TracySays:
COMMENTS on President Roosevelt's order placing some 15,000 postmasters under civil service show how deeply partisan politics is imbedded in our attitude toward government. The snock to Democratic job seekers and the elation of Republican holdovers claim most of the attention. Patronage, rather than efficiency or eeconomy, appears to be our chief concern. A century of party building has caused us to think of the government as a means o fimproving political organizations. That, more than anything else, accounts for the trouble we are in with regard to crime, finance and social conditions. Without the spoils system, politics could not have so completely commercialized. Bossism, racketeering and the kind of lawlessness that thrives on lax law enforcement owe theier rise largel yto the appetite and resources created by patronag. The habit of giving out jobs whenever a party comes into power has developed an unwholesome attitude toward government. We have come to look on government as a feed bag, rather than an institution, as a source o freward for those who win. Conversely, we have come to think of it less and less as an agency for public service. XXX YOU can trace most of the extravagance and mismanagement from which we suffer to this pernicious viewpoint. Our political leaders have been schooled not only to seek jobs, btu to make jobs. Maintenance of their machines and organizations has been shifted gradually from voluntary contributions to the public treasury. All branches of government have been affected by the periodic shift in personnel, while civic consciousness has given place to a partisan scramble for plums. Instead of being directed toward improved service, our political energy has spent itself on ways and means to recompense party workers. Faithful and efficient officers have been ousted ruthlessly to make room for inexperienced henchmen, and when this failed to make sufficient room, party leaders have not hesitated to create new jobs. The hunger for pay developed by such a method is associated intimately with the incompetence, graft, and crookedness with whibh we are afflicted. XXX IT requires no expertness in sociology to trace the rise of gang rule and racketeering to the political philosophy which puts a premium on spoil, or to realize that high taxes and debt hark back to the same cause. Why should officeholders strive to be careful and efficient when it counts for nothing? On the other hand, why shouldn't they work for the interest of the party machine when it counts for everything? President Roosevelt has done something bigger than save 15,000 postmasters. He has struck at a method which slowly is undermining our i system of government and which definitely is responsible for the fact that the United States of America has become the most lawless civilized nation. Our inability to enforce laws, to balance budgets, to engender a spirit of economy in public service, harks back to the simple truth that we have ignored merit in office, and that we have dangled jobs in front of politicians as rewards for political campaigning.
THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES
: : The Message Center : : == I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire = I
(Timex renders ore. invited in express their limes in these, columns. Make pour letters short, so all can hare a chance. Limit them in SiO words or less.) Bv Depositor. While President Roosevelt is giving the United States and. the world anew deal, why doesn't the Indiana banking commission give us anew deal, or try to earn its salary, and investigate some of these closed banks in the small towns. The Union State bank in Rossville has been closed since Nov. 4, 1931, and has paid only 19 per cent so far. On March 10, 1932, it paid 10 per cent; Aug. 20, 1932, 6 per cent, and on April 27, 1933, 3 per cent. With prices going up, we depositors could use our money. The alibi is they can t pay, but they have been keeping a liquidating agent there since the bank closed and I am wondering who pays his salary. By G. 1,. The men on the street know who are the small percentage of society who now obstruct the government in its strenuous effort for the recovery program. These same people also will remember in their purchases the evildoers who hold back the return of normal times and strike back and avoid purchases of goods known to be handled or manufactured by them. In other words, old man Boycott can be effective and settle the account with his immense power. The concerns which now work to capacity go straight for the rocks of overproduction and self-destruc-tion. The firms of merchants and manufacturers which have submitted their code for minimum hours and wages to the government should make it known to the public now, for information as to their fairness. Let the chambers of commerce, merchants and manufacturers’ associations and better business bureaus help to get in line. The code of the Central Indiana Dairymen's Association, Inc., Indianapolis Dairy Producers Council, Inc., and Indianapolis Milk Dealers Exchange must have been submitted recently. In their notice to customers as to schedule of increased milk prices, they say: "In accordance with the federal agricultural act, designed to relieve the present distressed economic condition, and under the direction of the commis-
This is (be second of three articles on typhoid fever. TYPHOID fever follows a long and serious course once a person becomes infected. After a person gets the germs in his body, from three to twenty-one days elapse, known as the incubation period, during which the germs develop and liberate their poisons. The average length of time is ten and a half days. The condition begins with the usual symptoms of infection, such as headache, pains in the body generally, a feeling of exhaustion and loss of appetite. Sometimes there are chills. Quite frequently there is nosebleed, and almost invariably there is either constipation or diarrhea. As the disease goes on, the person becomes sicker and sicker, de-
THE day fast approaches when Mrs. Sabin Bnd Mrs. Boole can join hands. Wets Bnd drys cpeedilv must unite to further the cause which every woman in America champions—the cause of temperance. Temperance has nothing to do with the eighteenth' amendment, the beer bills, or the wet and dry issue. It is a thing apart, an almost forgotten virtue in the land. The fpct that we are so prone to rush to extremes, that we are ruled by emotion rather than reason, made possible the eighteenth amendment, and also brought about its destruc- : tion. The very fervor with which ! we ballvhooed for teetotalism in ' 1916 contributes strength to our rei volt in 1932.
Typhoid Follows Long and Serious Course ■ BY I)R. MORRIS FISHBEIN
With Unclean Hands
Hurts Farmer By Farmer I SEE that Indianapolis has saddled another tax on the farmer by passing the poultry sales tax law. No doubt, the ordinance will serve its purpose of pouring more money into the city treasury, but it may help defeat the national purpose of encouraging the farmer. Tire new ordinance forced every farmer to pay $1 for the privilege of selling his own poultry produce on his own land. Retailers, I see, must pay a tax of $25, and itinerant peddlers will be assessed S2OO. The whole proposition is, to my mind, discouraging to the help-the-farmer movement. If the final goal is to pay the farmer more for his goods, why take away the profit in taxes? This has been the habit of the state of Indiana for a long time, and now comes this localized poultry tax. , Why pick on the poor man all the time? sioner of agriculture of the state of Indiana, the following prices will be, etc.” Not one word of information about minimum hours of work and wages for their employes, which the consumer would like to know; They may, by cut-throat methods, exploit, the public and their employes. They do not give the names of their officers and directors, but hide behind their associations. By Supporter of Roosevelt. The administration plan to boycott firms which fail to heed the demand to increase wages is outstanding in the Roosevelt recovery program. Here is a dead sure way to put a crimp in profiteering, which might prove to be undoing of the whole new setup. No doubt, thousands of firms and business men throughout the country feel the step is too drastic—that it may impose a too-heavy burden on firms whose earnings immediately can not compensate for the pay roll increase. This, to my mind, is a necessary evil in, the recovery movement. Before trade can increase, unemployed must be given jobs, and the earnings of the already employed
Editor Journal of Ihe American Medical Association of Hveeia, the Health Maeaitine. veloping occasionally not only a high fever with a stepladder rise, but also occasionally severe chills. There is a tendency for involvement of the blood vessels and formation of clots. Rose spots appear on the skin at the end of the first week or at the beginning of the second week. In addition to the loss of appetite, there is a tendency to the formation of gas with bloating of the body; and sometimes, because of the ulcers in the bowels and the bloating, sudden severe hemorrhages from the bowel. Sometimes the infection and the poisoning atfect the nervous system so that there is delirium and even the appearance of mental disturb-
A Woman’s Viewpoint —BY MRS. WALTER FERGLSON==
It must by this time be understood universally that the abolition of drinking by law is impossible. But we can not help but hope that those who have worked so faithfully to eliminate this unspeakable tyranny will be equally ardent in their efforts to keep the country decently sober. mm* "P'OR one thing we may be sure. The upright, straight-thinking men and women of the United States do not want, and will not i tolerate, an orgy of drunkenness We had enough of that during the prohibition era. And now we desire that part of t the money spent to enforce the un-
must be scaled upward. The old law of supply and demand must be enforced. This can be done only by rigid enforcement of the boycott. Success of the plan depends almost entirely on the buying public. Partisan politics must be discarded. Every buyer in the nation must cooperate. Such a mass movement will whip into line in a short time any persons or firms turning a deaf ear to the pay increase call.
Daily Thought
I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears.—Psalms 6:6. WHEN sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.—Shakespeare.
So They Say
The government should content itself in the field of industry with acting as a check to private industry’s exploitation and greed.—Dr. Robert A. Millikan, scientist. The only way to write a really popular song is to put one's self first in the state of mind of a less than average person, with less than average vocabulary, range of thought and sense for grammar.— Dr. Sigmund Spaeth, music critic. Experience needs to be cured like wine before it is fit for use.—Owen D. Young, industrialist. It (the Roosevelt recovery program! is the most noble conception ever dreamed by a seasoned practical idealist.—Samuel Untermeyer, attorney. The teacher of the new social order must be educated in the creative, expressive activities of society. With a thirty-hour working week and more time for leisure, nothing is more fundamental than music, art, literature, dramatics, etc.—H. L. Donovan, president Eastern Kentucky Teachers’ college.
I ance during the course of the disi ease. The physician who examines a patient with typhoid fever makes his diagnosis from the history of the case and from the appearance of the symptoms and also by careful stu- , dies of the blood. It is possible to examine specimens of the blood and to determine by i the use of a test, called the 'Widal ; test after the Frenchman who dis- | covered it, whether the condition ' certainly is quite typhoid fever. Any serious complications such as . hemorrhage, perforation of the i bowel and changes in the heart action and in the nervous system dej mand prompt and careful attention by a physician. NEXT: The treatment of typhoid j fever.
enforceable prohibition law shall be directed into a steady education for temperance. Evolution has been in progress We recovered from a fever of emotional insanity that produced the legal ban on intoxicants. Next we endured, because of it, economic and moral chaos. We suffered racketeering and crime and poured streams of money into the pockets of rascals. Now we are ready for temperance. We want our children to be neither wets nor drys, but creatures who can exercise self-control and curb their appetites. As we teach them not to be gluttons, so we shall teach them not to be drunkards.
JULY 19, 1938
It Seems | to Me i ==‘BY HEYWOOD BROUN=?-
NEW YORK, July 19—The philosophic concepts of Herbert Spencer no longer are treasured unduly, but he made one chance remark which should not be forgotton by mankind. “To play billiards well is the mark of a gentleman,” said Spencer. "To play too well Is the mark of a misspent life.” Only the other night, as I uas quitting a contract bridge session, after paying my trivial losses, I thought to myself, “Tsn t it fortunate that I can t seem to get the hang of this game?” Os course, I am very far from being the exemplification of Spencers ideal. There is nothing in the way I bid to mark me as either a gentleman or a waster. But if a genie rose up suddenly before me cariy tomorrow morning and said, "I am the slave of the lamp: require what you will,” I would not ask to be among the experts. No, I merely should reply, “Bring me some aspirin, and permit me from now on to remember a little better the sixes, fours and sevens.” XXX The Kings of Contract IT is not my privilege to know anv of the kings of contract well, but by their own testimony their lot is not a happy one. The other night, I met one of the luminaries, and when he was asked whether he had been playing much bridge lately he replied gloomily; “I don't gei much chance. All my time is taken up with politics.” "You are going to run for alderman?” I suggested, but he answered "No; I mean bridge politics.” From his pocket he produced little wad of well-thumbed clippings and inquired, "Have any of you seen what the English papers are saying about Culbertson?” Bv a coincidence the notices were not favorable. I have not the slightest doubt that the men who write the books and win the tournaments and derise the systems are all very pleasant gentlemen. It seems a pity that they have so much trouble in convincing one another of this fact. I have heard prizefighters speak most generously of contenders in their own class. Ball players will admit that the Babe is a marvel and that Hubbell can make a ball do tricks. The big leaguer even may sing the praise of some rival who is not regarded highly by the public but makes an appeal chiefly to the, highly technical criticism of his own fraternity. I never have heard a bridge expert speak well of another. Outside of autobiographical exposition,, there is no such thing as the bridge player's bridge player. to ft n Opiate for the People CONTRACT is the best card game ever devised for the recreation of mankind. It has served to soothe the brow of fever and dull the edge of heartache. We who are about to fail and blunder and get turned down for jobs still can sit and forget while playing one last rubber. It is the very necessary opiate of the people. But, unfortunately, every year one or two overexacting bidders shoot their partners, which, I think, is carrying things a bit too far. J even hate to see homes broken up in less drastic ways around the arguments engendered by a failure to keep the bid open. In other words, any impartial sort of bookkeeping must show that contract, in addition to being a blessed sedative, also is an irritant, a slow poison, and a dash of salt pressed down upon open wounds. XXX Making Best of it IT is my custom when I have pulled some fearful mistake to smile cheerfully at my partner and remark: "Well, after all, its only a game. What's the swing of a. few thousand points between friends?” Unfortunately, this doesn't work. My bland acceptance of the bludgeoning of fate and forgetfulness merely drives any luckless associate a bit more frantic. And yet I'm right. It is a game, and a hundred years from now the world hardly w'ill remember whether I held the spade or the diamond. Something of the bitterness of bridge must be set dow'n as inevilable because of the natural cussedness of man. But I would indict the experts for fostering and cultivating this spirit in contract. It js their stock in trade to set up the illusion that social disgrace and ostracism are the fruits of incorrect bidding and unscientific plaj r . They have taken up where the mouth wash man left off. Indeed, they have gone a step farther by insisting that even your best friends will tell you if you bungle on a two-demand bid. But we need not pay much attention to them, for it is all too obvious that they themselves have not attained serenity and peace of mind and love for all mankind. I intend to go on playing just as badly as I do now, although I admit that it may take a considerable effort to maintain this standard. And I’m afraid I shall have to give up golf. I broke the course record again yesterday. I’m getting much too good. (CoovriehL 3933. bv The Times; Just Pushin’ BY JAMES L. DILLEY I challenged an old-time checker champ; He looked at me and he frowned. And he said, "My lad, dye play the game, Or and ye jest push ’em around?” I told him I played the game, and he Sat down in front of the board. I played him tight and I piayed him hard, But soon five wins he had sewed. “I guess I push 'em around,” I said, And the old gent slowly smJed. “I jest 3aid that, my lad,” he declared, “In order to get you riled!” I That was long ago, yet to this day, When a man telLs me he's downed, I’m templed to ask "D'ye play the game, 1 Or d'ye jest push ’em around?”
