Indianapolis Times, Volume 45, Number 121, Indianapolis, Marion County, 29 September 1933 — Page 18

PAGE 18

The Indianapolis Times sa tic it rr ns. how •.r> kkwspafpri OT W. HOWARD rrMldßt TALCOTT POWELL Editor E-IRL D. BAKF.R Business Manager Phona—Riley 6531 ,

• • • r • Cita lAuht an<t the Pto pit Will Uni Their Own W<ir

Member of United Press, Bcrlpps - fl’iwsrd Newspaper Alliance, Newspaper Enterprise Association. Newspaper Information berries and Audit Bureau of Circulations. Owned and published dally (except Sundayi by The Indianapolis Tim s .’nhlishlng Cos., 214-220 Went Maryland Street. Indianapolis. Ind. Fries in Marion county. 3 cent* a copy; elaewhere. Z cent*—delirered by carrier. 12 cents a week. Mail subscriptlon rate* in Indiana. S3 a year; outside of Indiana. cents a month.

FRIDAY BEPT J 9, 1933 : THE REAL ALTERNATIVE fpHE distinguished jurist, George W. Wick- *'• ar&ham. has been celebrating his seventyfcitn birthday and has made this the occasion tor certain decisive observations on the state Os the nation. According to the account in the New York Times, “he looked upon the present as the turning point in history, Reighed present tendencies in the political, economic and social fields and issued a warning of grave dangers ahead if these tendencies are not checked." Specifically, Mr. Wickersham feels that we are running a serious risk of drifting into •tale Socialism—"the activities of the govemtnent are devoted to affecting class relations, conditions under which men may labor, Jelling men who shall work for them and for Jiow much, and even how much profit, if any, Iliey may earn.” He "most thoroughly and htterly condemned the organization of a Virtual national boycott against those who do rot come in under someone or another of (lie codes and agreements under the NRA.” Mr. Wickersham also was alarmed by the entry of the government into business, as for example at Muscle Shoals. He held that "competition by the government is destructive of the rapacity of the individual to support himJelf.” It seems to be the attitude of those who ihare Mr. Wickersham's view’s that we easily and readily can take our choice betw’een the inuch-feared "state Socialism" of Mr. Roosevelt and a return to the New Jerusalem days of the Coolidge administration, so dear to the memory of millionaires. There appears to be no recognition whatever that the weaknesses and excesses of the Coolidge-Mellon regime led to the Hoover depression and would, had it not been for Mr. Roosevelt's appearance on the scene, have dropped us into complete economic collapse and brought us to the eve of Fascism. It seems extremely difficult for the conservative mind to understand that the age of Coolidge and Mellon belongs to the past as definitely as does the carboniferous era of geological record. The rugged individualism and economic anarchy of that period neither can be recovered nor endured. Nobody who knows it for what it really w’as would wish to bring it back if he could. The alternative before us is not the choice between Mr. Roosevelt's state Socialism—better state capitalism—and the millionaire's paradise of the Mellon regime, but one betw’een the Dew deal and a complete collapse of capitalism and democracy. If the new deal fails to restore prosperity the jig will be up vith the capitalistic system ©f economics and the democratic form of government. The bottom will drop out of the present economic order once and for all. An attempt prbbably will be made to salvage it through reactionary Fascism but Mr. Wickersham in his birthday observations expresses his horror of Fascism. Fascism w’ill be bound to fail in Its American version, because an unworkable system can not be supported for long* even by bayonets, machine guns and poison gas. American conservatives fail to realize that Mussolini has sponsored an economic program in many ways more radical than that of Mr. Roosevelt. American Fascism, under Republican auspices, would be nothing else than regimented Mellonism. and it would be a friendly optimist who would concede that it might operate for five years. Once the Fascist spurt goes under, economic disintegration will lie at hand. The possibilities then will be Communism or reversion to m<ye-or-less universal vagrancy on a very low’ standard of living. Communism will be the more probable result. Mr. Wickersham does not need to worry about the political or economic future so far as he is personally concerned. But his grandson well may end up in a lumber camp in Alaska sawing wood under the direction of the American Soviet. When our conservative publicist* begin to consider the real alternative to the new deal, they are likely to be able to keep their blood pressure under control when contemplating the latter.

THE SHIFTING SCENE ONE of the exciting things about the current activity at Washington is that if you take your eyes off the screen for as much as five minutes you find the picture changed almost beyond recognition by the time you look up again. It is doubtful if any world capital ever has displayed before the spectacle of so many men working under such high pressure on Jobs of such tremendous importance. When General Hugh S. Johnson last spring remarked jovially that he and his aids had ' to "re-orient a couple of thousand universes’’ and had only a little time to do it in. it sounded like a good Joke. Today it begins to sound like a rather conservative description of what actually is being done. Not until we get a breathing spell and are able to sit down and add the figures up column by column will we be able to estimate Just how far the tide has carried us in the last six months. Look, for example, at some of the implications back of the most recent trends of the recovery program. Uncle Sam seems about to plunge headfirst into the banking business with somewhere between two and four billion dollars hi his fist. Just where, in the course of a year or so. will that leave our old banking iystem? And Just where will it leave our old philosophy that the government ought to stay •ut of business? Then there is the new organization setup

that seem* to be in prospect for industry. People at Washington talk of grouping all Industries into some six or ten grand divisions, with Uncle Sam keeping a finger constantly on the master switch of each outfit. Coupled with it there is the grand shakingup of organized labor, with strings running from each union to Washington; profitstabilizing, and consumer-protecting devices which seem* destined to become part of our government; there is the ever-increasing extension of direct federal financial aid to local governmental subdivisions that can no longer raise the money they need. What are we going to look like when all of these things are in operation? No man alive can say right now. We are going somewhere at a terrific pace, but it may be a year or more before we get a chance to look at our tickets qnd see what station we re bound for. A GOOD INVESTMENT TF the recovery program were only increasing employment and raising wages it would be worthy of enthusiastic support. When it brings about fundamental economic reforms at the same time it is doubly worth while. Achievement* in behalf of the nation’s most important natural resource, its forests, are a notable example of what has been done to make the recovery program of permanent, far-reaching benefit. The NRA lumber code, for instance, lines up owners of all private forests in the United States behind forest conservation, something the country never has been able to accomplish before. Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace regards this as “the most important development of forestry in recent years in that it opens the way toward some measure of regulation in the cutting of private forests. It strikes at the heart of the problem of forest depletion by destruction lumbering.” D-struction of forests from other causes is being curbed by the civilian conservation corps. These young men in forest camps throughout the country are clearing fire breaks to check forests’ most deadly natural enemy. They are eradicating the plant dis ease and insect pests which threaten some of the finest public forests in the country. If there were no employment, the money spent on this work would be a wise and sound national investment. Finally the Public Works Administration has set aside $5,000,000 for checking soil erogion, a problem resulting for the most part from earlier destruction of forests and only to be cured by reforestation. The investment in forests will bear dividends for the United States for many years to come. THE WHITE COLLAR MAN TN twenty-eight cities more than $30,000,000 in back pay is owed to school teachers. In Atlanta thirteen doctors post notices that they must have cash for their services, declaring that “for four years physicians have not collected enough to maintain their families.” On New York's emergency work pay roll at sls a week were found thirty-five doctors and dentists. twenty-six engineers, fifty-eight musicians and nineteen accountants. These brief news items are distress signals from the great group of almost forgotten men and women in the white collar class. From the New Deal this class, by the very nature of things, is drawing a low deuce. The wage-earners have their minimum-wage and short-week pledges in the codes and their unions for enforcement. The employers have their fair-practice codes and trade associations, the farmers have their AAA. A small, but valiant group, the consumers’ advisory board, battles alone for the white collar class. The best the government can do is to try to hold back the cost of living until buying power catches up. "In the whole picture of national recovery the needs of the white collar group must be considered to be fully as vital as the needs of farmers and industrial workers,” says Mrs. C. C. Rumsev, chairman of the consumers’ advisory board. "They have been just as hard hit, but less attention has been paid them because they are a heterogeneous group without leaders. To restore the purchasing power of these people is necessary to recovery.”

MERCHANT MARINE DURING the Coolidge administration It was considered the part of patriotism to wreck the government's merchant marine. The frankly-stated policy was to get rid of the vessels which had cost hundreds of millions of the people's money; no matter what the loss, to get rid of them. The result was that shipping companies obtained some tremendous bargains. Ships acquired by one Henry Herberman, according to testimony taken by a senate committee this week, had cost the government $42,000,000. Mr. Herberman paid $1,000,000 for them. At the same time he got mail contracts assuring payment to him of $18,000,000 over a ten-year period.. In one instance, according to Senator Black, Herberman’s company was paid $13,672 for carrying one pound of mail. There is a lot of romance connected with shipping—romance, heartache and mystery. What could be more romantic than the story of C. Bascom Slemp, retiring from office as private secretary to President Coolidge and picking up a fee of $15,000 three months later for helping Mr. Herberman obtain some of those ships? Heartache? Why. Bascom wanted $50,000 for that little job. And mystery. The committee hasn’t yet discovered just who paid that $5lO tailor bill for Chairman O’Connor of the shipping board. OUR SCHOOL NEEDS MOST school officials in America today would be struck speechless with delight if they could only manage to get enough money to keep their activities up to the average level of the last ten years. But two investigators of Teachers* college, Columbia university, who have spent a decade studying the nation's educational plant, have just issued a report showing that the level, attractive as it seems now. isn’t high enough. The physical plant of our public school system, according to these investigators, is pretty badly antiquated. Eighty per cent of all rural schools and 60 per cent of urban elementary school buldings. their survey says, arc unsatisfactory and need to be re-

placed by modern buildings. Thousands of children are studying In buildings which do not meet minimum requirement* of lighting, ventilation, sanitation or safety. This replacement job, of course, will have to wait. About the most we can hope for now is that our schools manage to keep open somehow. But eventually it looks as if we would have to embark on a huge building program. LET’S FINISH THE JOB ONE of the most welcome of all the NRA's accomplishments is the way it has clamped down on child labor. In a curious back-handed way, this program has struck a powerful blow at one of the most disgraceful features of American industrialism. Nevertheless, the job isn’t entirely done yet. The National child labor committee reported the other day that a lot of ground remains to be covered. The number of industrial workers between 16 and 18, the report asserts, is still "well over a million,” in spite of the NRA codes. The simplest way to finish the job would be to go ahead and ratify the pending child labor amendment to the Constitution. Several states which previously rejected the amendment have reversed themselves and approved of it this year. It would be a good thing if the remaining states did the same. KEEP IT ON GENERAL ART J. SMITH of th* Philadelphia Smiths is reported to have sent forth a call to 1,000.000 "Khaki Shirts” to converge on Washington next month and demand that President Roosevelt proclaim himself dictator. The fateful date of the Smith coup d'etat is Oct. 12. Unlike the Mussolini shirts and the Hitler brown shirts, the khaki shirts claim to speak not for the upper nor middle classes, but for the masses. They offer themselves, they say, as storm troops to Mr. Roosevelt in his fight with big business to put over the new deal. Few will take “General” Smith’s ambition to march on Washington very seriously. About the only interest the average American has in Mr. Smith s shirt is the hope that he keeps it on. WHEN ARE HANDS OFF? 'T'HE President, it is announced at the White House, will keep his “hands off” the New York City political fight. Unfortunately, one of his "hands,” his political right hand, in fact, already has got into the fight. To make his purpose good, the President will have to call Mr. Farley off. He will have to repudiate statements accredited to his postmaster-general—or persuade the latter to do so himself. The postmaster-general appears prepared to cut the political throat of the President’s good friend, Major La Guardia. Unless stopped, this performance is certain to throw a chill into Progressives throughout the country who have been giving loyal support to the President. Burial lots in Madrid are being sold on the installment plan. Wouldn't it be great fun to die ahead of time just for a last laugh on the collector? There’s no banana and no oil in banana oil, say scientists. Just a dash of pyroxoline, some amyl acetate, some acetone and—well, let’s just keep on calling it banana oil. U. S. gets a patent on the blue eagle, b&t that won’t bar us from giving Henry Ford the bird. Prince M'Divani hints that Sam Insull’s a love thief. But a million investors sing “he never got ours.”

M.E.TracySays:

THE following resolution was adopted by the conference of mayors at Chicago last Saturday: “There are in the United States at this time approximately 1,500 governmental units actually in default are in default in the payment of principal or interest or both upon their outstanding indebtedness, and a recent survey discloses that the number of defaulting units is rapidly increasing. “The fact that these cities are in default Is having a serious effect upon the credit of all solvent communities. Because of constitutional restrictions, the states are unable to enact necessary remedial legislation, and action by the national congress is necessary if these hopelessly insolvent units are ever to be restored to a solvent basis.’’ Whatever you may think of that resolution, it reveals the starkest reality of our recovery problem. The burden of debt, contracted in boom times and through cheap dollars, is not only sapping the country’s life blood, but proving an obstacle to every plan of rehabilitation. a * * THE notion that we can borrow our way out of such a condition by substituting federal debt for municipal and private debt is just one more of those asinine delusions which characterize the present era. False and exaggerated conceptions of prosperity led us Americans into the same kind of an economic morass as war led Europe. We fell for the absurd idea that nations, communities and men could not possibly over-borrow, that good times had become permanent and that the human capacity to pay was limitless. Well, German reparations collapsed, the war debts collapsed and inflated credit for our own economic structure is in the process of collapse. Still, we have the obsession that continued borrowing will correct the evil and that we can extricate ourselves by haring the federal government not only take over all existing I. O. Us, but accept a lot in addition. a a a MORE than half the wealth of this country is hypothecated for debt in one form or another, and nearly one-third of the income iu being absorbed by interest and amortization charges, yet we pursue the rainbow dream of paying up by borrowing more. The mortgaged farmer is told to relieve himself by getting an additional loan on his crop, and the insolvent city is advised to provide work through bond issues. By some hook or crook, it is imagined that the federal government can be made to shoulder most of this load without digging deeper into taxpayers’ pockets. . Not only is a large portion of this debt uncollectible except through forced levies, but thd bulk of it is unjust because of the rise of money. Most people are paying nearly twice what they borrowed if the amount were reckoned in wages or commodity prices. We are attempting to advance both by legislation, or increased taxes, but the process promises to be too spotty for common benefit. Clearly something must be done to reduce the debt burden all along the line and bring the relationship of money to labor and goods back where it was when the debts were contracted. My owm thought is that this can best be done by controlled inflation.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

(Times readers ars invited to express their views in these columns. Make your letters short, so all can have a chance. Limit them to SSO words or less.) By 3. Pierce Cummings. For the sake of saving part of a measly 2 cents on the Marion county tax rate, certain members of the tax adjustment board W’ould reduce the levy for old age pensions. Such an attitude is entirely out of line with modern concepts of Christianity or even the most simple justice. Because the needy old people have no paid spokesman in their behalf is no reason why they should be handed a stone Instead of the bread promised in the pension law enacted by the last legislature. After all, is human need to rule, or is the rule even in this era to be one of greed without any regard to the dictates of humanity? What will it profit the county to reduce the old age pension fund? For every dollar taken from that fund, one will have to be added to poor relief costs, or to the cost of maintaining poorhouse inmates. There is a growing conviction that those who reach an age where they no longer can earn a living are entitled to something better than a poor relief basket or a place In the Marion county poorhouse, which, despite its location in the most populous county of the state, is rated as second-class in the forty-third annual report of the board of state charities. By Taxpayer. It seems to me that the public service commisskn of Indiana, aside from any other standpoint, has an opportunity to carry out one of the platform pledges given the people during the last campaign and election in. granting a petition now before them for the use of natural gas in Indianapolis, and that pledge was to give the people of the city and the state lower utility rates. According to the petition filed with the public service commission and signed by the president and vice-president of the Indiana Gas Service Corporation, this company is offering the gas consumers of Indianapolis gas at twice the heating

IT has been established fairly well by a considerable amount of research that cancer tends to be inherited. It also tends to breed out of the race and, in human beings, the question of heredity is not one that can be very well controlled by ordinary human marriages. There are two ways in which the question of the inheritance of cancer can be studied by scientific investigators. One is to obtain the reords of all family trees of persons dying from cancer. The other Is to experiment with mice which breed rapidly and have a short life span. For the purpose of comparison, the life of the mouse in days is slightly beyond the life cycle of the human being in years. The most widely-known experiments on mice that have cancer are those by Dr. Maud Slye. Working on many thousands of mice, Dr. Slye concluded that the susceptibility to cancer is hereditary and that it behaves as a simple "MeUdelian recessive”—that is to say, that it breeds out of the race rather than in. Other investigators insist that it is a dominant characteristic, ac-

“XTRA. WE DO OUR PART.” IN Stickers carrying this promise now adorn what seem to be several million automobiles. The Blue Eagle twinkles encouragement at you from an interminable line cf machines —most of which are blocking traffic or hogging the right of way or dashing at you from around corners. I don’t want to become a carping fault-finder, but I do wish we could depend upon the veracity of these drivers who have blossomed into patriots under the New Deal. And that, alas, is probably expecting too much. The automobile driver has become almost as much of a menace as the depression.' Those of us who managed to scrapp through the latter

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: : The Message Center : : I wholly disapprove of what yoo say and will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire

Hereditary Tendency of Cancer Shown --■= ■■ = BY DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN ■■ ■ ■ - -

: : A Woman’s Viewpoint : : i—BT MRS. WALTER FERGUSON

Waking Up at Last!

Blames Employers By a Widow In Want. I don’t think a thing can be done to oust these married women out of jobs that they are holding, while the jobless men, widows and single girls have dependenets who suffer. I don’t blame these selfish married women as much as I* blame the employer. It seems that these firms, when ’they need more help, always give married women preference and still claim to be 100 per cent NRA. content at one-third the price now being paid for artificial gas of the Citizens Gas Company. Two years ago when attempt was made to bring natural gas into Indianapolis, the hue and cry was made that natural gas would ruin the Citizens Gas Company and that it was up to the city to protect the integrity of the Citizens Gas Company and to stop anything w’hich would prevent the city taking over the property of the Citizens Gas Company under a sacred contract made some twenty-five years ago by which the city of Indianapolis was to take over the property of the Citizens Gas Company at the face value of the stock, which is $25 per share, 80,000 shares, or a total of $2,000,000. Os course this contract has been made, but it’s a bad contract for the city, for stock of the Citizens Gas Company now is selling on the market at around sl2 or about half the face value, and under an act of the last legislature, the city has the authority to take over the stock of the gas company or any other utility at the market value of stock. But It seems to a taxpayer that while the sacredness of the contract and the integrity of the gas company is to be considered, the city fathers and the newspapers might feel a little compunction for the integrity of the manufacturers of Indianapolis and the domestic consumers of gas, who eventually pay the gas bills. The hue and cry is raised immediately that a great cut in the income of the Citizens Gas Company would mean ruin for the company.

Editor Journal of the American Medical Association and of Hygeia, the Health Magazine. cording to the Mendelian law. A recent investigator on the subject in the Radium Institute in Paris, working also with many hundreds of mice, supports the conclusions of Dr. Slye to the effect that there is a constitutional and probably hereditary factor in the cause of cancer. These investigators can not be certain, however, whether cancer is hereditary as a dominant or a recessive trait. In fact, there is even some question as to whether various types of cancer do not differ in the tendency to be hereditary as dominant or recessive. When the statistics of all of the people having cancer are studied, the conclusion seems to be that an average of 14 per cent of patients with cancer have had cancer recorded in their families. This fact is not, however, exceedingly important in determining the question of heredity, since the death rates in general show that cancer accounts for about one-seventh of the deaths of people who died after 4C years of age.

without starving to death, may expect to be rim down under the wheels of the former. The public needs no more information on this subject, only an occasional Jogging in the ribs. However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for all of us to step around to the school house and find out for ourselves how many of these NRA enthusiasts are doing their level best to bend their fenders on a baby. u a IF some of the kids escape it will not be the fault of certain truck driving patriots or other dashing men and women who are agreed, it seems, on the speed rate as well as the recovery act. Indeed, if the NRA goes anywhere nearly a fast as its automobile

This argument was used tw’o years ago. But this argument is contradicted by experience of other gas companies who are now and have been for many years selling gas at the rates proposed in the petition, because the record of the gas industry discloses that the citizens of any community enjoying low priced gas tremendously increase their purchase of gas and the losses that might occur to the Citizens Gas Company by reason of decrease in the rates as at present would be entirely offset by increases in sale of gas due to low price that can not now be secured by gas companies selling high priced gas. Asa matter of fact, the records show that during the last two years the Citizens Gas Company has lost about 6,000 customers due to high prices and the depression. If the public service commission wants to keep a Democratic pledge made to the people of this state, it will give an early and serious consideration to an opportunity which would save the citizens of Indianapolis more than a million and a half dollars in their annual gas bills.

Questions and Answers Q —Did St. Gaudens. the sculptor, ever live in the United States? A—He lived at times in New York. The last years of his life were spent on his estate, “Aspet,” at Cornish, New Hampshire, where he died. Q—What is the reference in Lowell’s lines: “We sinai's climb and know’ it not?” A—lt refers to Moses’ vision of the glory of God in Exodus 24. Q—How much money does the United States owe to foreign nations? A—The United States has no debt to foreign governments. Q—Give the correct pronounciation of the word “eczema?” A—Ek-zi-ma: accent on the first syllable. The second syllable has the "I” sound as in habit.

In England it was shown that one death in six between the ages of 40 and 50, and one death in four between the ages of 50 to 70, was due to cancer. Thus there is a 14 per cent or greater probability that at least one parent of any patient may have had cancer. Furthermore, the mere fact that the majority of cancer patients are not able to remember cancer as occurring in their families does not prove that cancer is not hereditary. If cancer is a recessive trait, it may pass over a considerable number of generations without manifesting itself. There are some families in which cancer practically is unknown and others in which cancer is exceedingly common. Even here, however, it is not possible to jump at conclusions for the simple reason that there may be other factors besides the family constitution associated with the development of cancer in these families. Such factors may be the place in which they live, the habits of diet, the possibilities of irritation from smoking or chemicals, or some other aspects of the family life. /

driving boosters, we shall get somewhere, very quickly. Perhaps to the junk heap. Unless we “Do Our Part” on the road as well as in offices and homes, we can hardly pose as beneficent friends of suffering humanity. And if my reasoning is not crooked, the pushing, inconsiderate driver is not likely to be an unselfish gentleman in business. Nothing shows up your character like driving an automobile. The vain conceited man always goes too fast and never gives an inch to anybody, and the stupid woman who disregards rules and signals, will, you may be sure, not abide faithfully by any code regulations. Let’s hav£ sonfae of this NRA generosity on the highway.

SEPT. 29, 1933

It Seems to Me —BY HEY WOOD BROUN=

NEW YORK. Sept. 29—Ring Lardner is dead, and bo the question arises. "Will he !?re<r~ Not. of course, that the question never was raised before his death. Lardner was discovered ten or fifteen years ago. And he had the good fortune to discover himself long before the critic* came in caravels. I rather think the explorers failed to touch the mainland. In many of the most rapturous comments on his work there was a touch of condescension. Some of those who leaned down from the high stools of appraisal certainly conveyed the impression that the curious genius of the man had in it a touch of the miraculous and accidental. Several year* were required before the literary lads could leap the fact that here was a significant commentator w r ho expressed the life of America in the language and from the point of view of a baseball reporter, a a m The Baseball Reporter IT is audacious to predict what posterity will say, and it is entirely possible that posterity may make a fool of itself. In fact, I warn posterity in advance, which is the usual custom, that it will err gravely if it fails to realize that the best short stories of Ring Lardner are those which concern the game itself. When other people try to read meanings underneath and in between the sentences of any man's work I generally set them down as officious guides who merely annoy the bus riders with their megaphone monologues. Yet I can not resist the temptation of pointing out that Ring Lardner was saying in effect that w’hat is true of a shortstop or a rookie outfielder may be true of a very considerable section of the human race. He interpreted life shrewdly by dealing with it in terms of the individuals he knew best. In addition to ball players Ring Lardner liked song writers. Or perhaps he didn't like them. At any rate, they fascinated him. Every estimate of the man which has been written in the brief space since his death has identified him as a "humorist." That would be well enough if the world were not so generally misunderstood. He was a humorist, but that doesn't mean he was a “funny man.” If there is proper judgment over Jordan his mansion will be on the street with Mark Twain and decidedly not across the court from Bill Nye or Petroleum V. Nasby. .. a a a Slow Smouldering Heat SOMEWHAT after the manner of Twain. Lardner had such a fierce impatience with so many things and men and theories that he had to sneak up on them through the waving grass of the light and laughing touch. But certainly he was pained and would be now to have anybody think that "The Champion” was a funny story. Some critics have hailed this particular story as his masterpiece. I can not agree at.all. To me it marks one of his failures. The sawed-off shotgun shows too visibly above the rushes. Although Lardner’s output was comparatively small, it would be foolish to assert that every word he wrote was precious. There is a decided variation in the quality of his stories and essays, and yet I doubt that he often did a careless piece. In spite of newspaper training he was not one of your slapdash writers. I think that composition was agony to him, and he and Flaubert could well discuss the torture of the long search for the one essential word. As to his methods, this is largely surmise. As far as I know, never in his life did Ring Lardner begin any serious discussion with the words, "Well, this is the way I write.” Still, it is easy to build up a circumstantial case in support of the theory that he had a passion for the thing called style. His few criticisms of other authors were chiefly directed against the people who seemed to him sloppy writers. He couldn’t endure the work of Theodore Dreiser. There, again, remains meat for debating societies in the years to come. The Dreiser canvas is undeniably much larger. But the Lardnerian brush stroke is incomparably more skillful. Let posterity fight it out. n n * Touch of Universality AND, speaking of Dreiser, I think there is one discovery Ring Lardner never made. He knew he was an artist and a stylist, although he would have been burned at the stake before saying so, but I doubt that he ever realized that he was in some essential way a proletarian artist. I mean he dealt with subtleties of emotion in such a way that even the vast army of simple-mind-ed magazine readers took him to their heart as one of their own. I have talked of Ring entirely in terms of his work. I saw him often over a long period of years. I <Jid not know him. There must hav® been few who did. and he was not among them. I do not think he ever spoke fully and completely until he touched the keys. iCopyright. 1933. by The Times)

Remembering

BY HELEN WELSHIMER All summer long I have wished I knew Why I keep on Remembering you. Why candlelight And a ragged star And a tall green path That runs too far. Or a yellow lamp On a rain-blown street And venders’ blooms That are oversweet. Can make me start In expectancy— Do you have trouble Forgetting me? Copyright NEA Daily Thought Open thy mouth, Judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy. Proverbs, 31:9. OUTWARD judgment often falls. Inward justice never.—Theodore Parker.