Indianapolis Times, Volume 45, Number 200, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 December 1933 — Page 14

PAGE 14

The Indianapolis Times (A scmrrs-noWARD newspaper* EOT W. HOWARD .......... President Walcott powell Editor Earl D. BAKER Business Manager Phone —Riley 5551

Member of United Preß*. Scrlpi*s - Howard Newspaper Alliance. Newspaper Enterprise Association, Newspaper Information Service and Audit Buroau of Circulations. Owned and published dally (except Sunday* by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Cos.. 214-22 C West Maryland street. Indianapolis, Ind. Price In Marlon county, 2 cents a copy; elsewhere, 3 cents —delivered by carrier, 12 rents a week. Mall subscription rates in Indiajia. $3 a year: outside of Indiana, Cos cents a month.

*•. *. > t

Cite Light and the People Will Find Their Own Wav

_ SATURDAY. DEC 30. 1933 A HAPPIER NEW YEAR OINCE hope is brightest when it follows fears. Americans generally will greet the infant 1934 with stout hearts. Without selfcomplacence they can watch their country slowly emerging from a crisis that might have wrecked a less robust democracy. And among their good resolutions they can pledge one to help the nation’s leaders build upon the luckless past a lasting reformation. In ten months the Roosevelt leadership has built part of a recovery system unique in the history of capitalism. Under NRA nearly two hundred industries have framed for themselves fair-play rules; re-employed 2,500,000 workers and made possible the beginning of national economic planning. Under PWA. TVA. CCC and CWA. charity doles have been supplanted by jobs, some 5.000,000 put to work on government pay rolls, billions of federal dollars poured into pay envelopes to prime the private plant. Under AAA and other influences farmers' buying power has been increased by an estimated $1 000,000.000 a year. All this, notwithstanding that millions still are jobless, wages lag behind prices, the masses lack security, some employers continue to chisel. Many banks have weathered the storm, farm and home owners—many of them at least—are having their mortgage losses cushioned by government credit, railroads, insurance companies and other corporations have b'-en aided by RFC credit. But the safety of the people’s savings awaits a strong and unified bank system, credit facilities for smallincome classes, strict security regulation, tax reforms, reorganization of local units to insure the solvency of states, counties and cities, and a definite national monetary policy. Repeal has lifted the prohibition curse. But tlufre remains problems of control, of revenue, of crime. Civil liberty is more secure. But twentyseven lynchings this year warn of the menace cf mobs and the need of stronger laws to curb them. Cuban intervention has been avoided, Russia recognized, Latin-American relations improved at Montevideo. But the danger of war Is greater in the Far East and Europe. The President is attempting new peace leadership. The dying year has seen a brave beginning In the ever new struggle for justice and social well-being. May the new year 1934 advance us nearer that goal! FROM 531 TO 178 TT no longer is possible to doubt that coal mining can be made safe, where mine owners are willing to take simple precautions. In the years between 1907 and 1910, inclusive, an average of 531 persons a year died In mine accidents. During the last four years the average has been cut to 178 a year. The faithful, quiet work of the United States bureau of mines in urging employes to adopt rock dusting can be credited with most of the decrease. On last Sept. 11. seven persons were killed and one was injured by an explosion in a Pennsylvania mine. But because the mine was rock-dusted, the explosion was confined to a small area. Two hundred men in other parts of the mine escaped with their lives. In spite of the excellent results accomplished by the bureau of mines, its W'ork is not nearly finished. The United States still has the highest death rate from accidents of any country in the w'orld except Chile, and mining still has the highest death rate of any industry. Now that a demonstrated method of making mines safer is available to any mine owner at reasonable cost, there should be no delay in taking advantage of it. No one who ever has stood at the mouth of a shaft, watching the faces of women and children waiting to hear the fate of their men trapped underground, will concede that this matter can be put lightly aside to aw'ait more prosperous times. PROFIT REGULATION ESSENTIAL WHEN Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia university, warned the nation the other day that our society is going to disintegrate unless we find some way of subordinating the profit motive, he touched on the key problem of this difficult and perplexing era. It is a peculiar situation that we are in, these days. We live in and by a social setup which depends for its functioning on the motive power supplied by the lure of profits. By and large, this setup has worked pretty well during the long years of our history as a nation. We don't propose to give it up; nobody yet has succeeded in convincing us that anything we might try in its place would be even halfway satisfactory. Yet we face the uncomfortable fact that the very force which keeps this machinery functioning—the profit motive—is a force which can wreck the whole business unless we find some way of regulating it. Part of this regulation can be applied by law. A good part of it, however, must come from a changed mental attitude on the part of all of us. We need to realize that we do the job we have to do, not only because we get paid for it, but also because we are render- j ing a service to our fellow citizens. That's a notion to which we have given a great deal of lip service in the past. Unfortunately. we have stopped there. We quickly lose sight of our ideal when the weight of dollars in the other pan of the scales gets too heavy. And yet this idea that the service one ren- i ders is more important than the money he , makes is no Utopian concept. We needn’t j despair of making it a working rule for every? day conduct. There already are some call- L ! togs where it is accepted and enforced fully, i

There is—to take one example—the medical profession. A doctor could increase his income, if he cared to, very easily, by performing a few anti-social acts. If there were no way of subordinating the profit motive, he would perform them regularly—and the medical profession would be in the plight of. say, the banking profession. But doctors have learned that this idea of service to society can be a real, living thing —an ideal which a man with a living to make can follow, to the benefit of himself and those about him. There’s no valid reason why all the rest of us can't learn the same lesson. And there isn’t any other way of making our present kind of work satisfactorily. SENSIBLE WAY OUT TF the current controversy over lynching and A the criminal law does not help to bring about one greatly needed reform in our system of convicting criminals, we shall have missed a great educational opportunity. If we give society reasonable assurance that no man guilty of a major crime will be turned free in the courtroom, we shall do more to undermine the lynching habit than al! the protests of noble men and women can accomplish in generations. ■ The jury trial is not merely a very imperfect device for ascertaining guilt. It literally is about the worst procedure which civilized beings could employ. To concede that it is better than torture, trial by battle, and other crude methods which it superseded in the Middle Ages certainly is no ground for retaining it in the twentieth century. To ride in an oxcart down Park avenue would be no more absurd or out-of-period than our practice of bringing accused men before juries of twelve good men and true. Juries are made up of untrained men, impaneled at random. Those most likely to render intelligent amateur service automatically are exempted because of professional duties. The less intelligent men who remain then are subjected to a rigorous selective process which leaves on the jury, in many important murder cases, only the more colorless of the illiterates who have been summoned for juror service. Those intelligent or honest enough to admit that they have read and formed an opinion on the case must be dismissed. If the opposing attorneys are matched about equally in wit and intelligence, they will accept for jury service only those who appear unlikely to be damaging to the prospects of either the district attorney or the attorney for the defense. At the time of one of the more notorious murder trials in New York City the New York Times published a large picture of the jury. At the very same period the comic sections of some New York newspapers were publishing the likenesses of the jurymen summoned to ascertain the guilt of Andy Gump. It is a literal fact that the Gump jury made a better impression upon the unbiased observer. §uch is the material to whom the confused, difficult and technical facts are submitted in the courtroom with the hope of ascertaining a verdict in harmony with truth and justice. It would be very difficult, indeed, for an assemblage of men to render an accurate verdict even if they could get the facts. But the rules of legal evidence, which stand almost completely at variance with the laws of scientific evidence, do not permit a clear and impartial presentation of the facts. Their application leads, more often than not, to the obscuring of the facts. The judge often adds his part to the distortion of the picture by rulings and comments based upon personal bias for or against the defendant or the lawyers involved in the case. Then the verdict, reached after the jury has retired, is as likely to be affected by the personalities on the jury as it is by the facts to which the jury has happened to listen. If we desire to ascertain guilt we must have a permanent committee of experts who have been trained long and rigorously to sift and weigh evidence. It would be difficult enough for such an examining committee to ascertain the facts in the average murder trial. Such a committee would not be 100 per cent perfect, but it would be about 100 per cent better than the typical jury. We would know that all which is humanly possible is being done to ascertain the facts and to convict the guilty. Once society had confidence in this matter, there would be little demand for lynching and little defense for a lynching party when one rarely occurred. BIRTHDAY GIFT A/fORE than 5.000 American cities and towns are planning to hold ‘‘birthday balls" on Jan. 30 in honor of President Roosevelt's anniversary. Proceeds from these affairs will be used to create a permanent endowment for the Warm Springs (Ga.> foundation for treatment of victims of infantile paralysis. Here is a cause that deserves widespread public support. Mr. Roosevelt himself is a living testimonial to the tremendous value of the treatment offered at Warm Springs. An endowment which would make that treatment available to sufferers all over the country would be a blessing to the entire nation. Let's hope that the drive goes over the top in 100 per cent style. MARRIAGE OR CAREER? npHE old argument about the conflicting claims of marriage and a career in a woman's life seems to have come to some sort of a climax in the alienation of affections damage suit filed recently against a New York corporation by an indignant husband. The husband complains that his wife was a branch manager for this corporation, and that he sought to induce her to quit work and devote all her time to their home. "But the corporation, he asserts, “exerted an improper influence" over her, so that she decided to keep the job and let her home take a secondary place. So now he wants $200,000 in damages. Os all the odd lawsuits, this one surely is one of the oddest. And yet it does serve to touch up that old marriage-versus-eareer argument; and it probably will provide lawyers with a chance for giving the argument a thorough airing in the courts. Germany’s plan to sterilize 400,000 of its people who are subject hereditary diseases may be good as far as It goes, but the list doesn’t include Hitlerism.

ANOTHER ARMY' 'P' UROPE is stirred by announcement that a German scientist has invented the world’s deadliest bullet. “The Winged Horror” travels 4,000 miles an hour, pierces the heaviest armor plate, explodes upon impact. In central Europe bayonets sprout from seeds of hate. Russia and Japan watch each other across the snowy steppes of Siberia. In contrast to these martial preparations is the work of a little peace-time American army, bivouacked in mountains and forests. A report upon its victories has just been posted by its commander, Robert Fechner. This aimy of 300,000 young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps is defeating real enemies of the nation—insect and rodent pests, plant scourges, erosion, forest fires. At the front only since last May, it has built 12,671 miles of forest trails, 68,000 erosion dams, 4,229 bridges. It has eliminated insect pests on 1,675,000 acres, rodent pests on 3,566,000 acres, poisonous plants from 47.500 acres. Its work on the nation's forest empire of 600.000.000 acres, while only begun, means a richer, mere beautiful, more secure nation. As nations evolve toward civilization there will be fewer armies of destruction and desolation, more armies like the C. C. C. BROKERS SEEK A HEARING TT is hardly a secret that there exists in congress a great deal of sentiment in favor of putting the New York Stock Exchange under some kind of thoroughgoing regulation. Heads of the exchange themselves realize the fact, and a New York paper currently reports that they are planning an intensive “good will drive” to “sell the exchange to the public.” These men feel that the sentiment in favor of regulation arises from an unjust and misinformed public opinion. Naturally, therefore, they are going to do what they can to get their side of things before the public. This, of course, is fair enough, and we can use all the light we can get on the subject. But one is entitled to wonder whether the public’s hostility is entirely “unjust and misinformed.” After all, the relationship between the depression and the orgy of stock market gambling of the boom days is direct and inescapable. DECLINING ARISTOCRACY 'T'HE pressure which a changing, world puts on an established society seldom was 1 better illustrated than in the recent decline of England's old and blue-blooded Gresley family. This family was one of the last in England to remain in possession of an estate granted in the time of William the Conqueror. For twenty-eight generations the family had made its home on this estate. It had seen England develop from a feudal kingdom to an industrial democracy, had seen ruling dynasties come and go, and it had been itself unchanged. But now the end has come. Economic conditions have forced the family to put the estate up for sale. It has been bought, according to cable dispatches, by a real estate man “for speculative purposes.” Changing times and business depressions have cut wide swaths in England's aristocracy. The breaking of this tie with feudal days is a symbol of the shift which English society is undergoing. A scientist predicts that in fifty years;, people will have nothing to laugh at—unless they read the history of today. With the price of gold going up. we don't hear of any people being praised as w'orth their weight in gold. Officially winter began Dec. 21, to weathermen it came on Dec. 1, but for us it needn’t come at all.

M.E. Tracy Says:

ANNOUNCEMENT that a new' death ray had been discovered by British scientists came just in time to swell the Christmas spirit. Here is something, provided the scientists have made no mistake, which should bring peace with a vengeance. Meanwhile we must be content with the novelty of the thought. Not that the thought is original—but at last we have some reason to believe that it soon may ba translated into practical form. The alleged ray is devilish enough to satisfy the most exacting and refined homicidal complex. It can, if reports are true, be employed to transmit the germinating qualities of bacteria over great distance; or, to put it more succinctly, to broadcast disease. Just picture to yourself the prestige of an operator who could send some deadly affliction from England to France, or even to America, while sitting safely in a little cage at London. a tt tt HIS prestige wouldn't last very long, of course, because the whole world would set out to find a preventive. There must be a preventive, you realize, since otherwise this death ray would have exterminated all of us long ago. Finally, and most consoling, the reported discovery may be just some more bunk. Every so often we hear about the advent of anew death ray. No less than a dozen have been advertised since the war, but somehow they have failed to materialize. The strangest part of it all is that men should continue to hunt for a death ray, just as though the race was not already in possession of a sufficient number or variety of murderous devices. Obviously the killer complex still flourishes. Though somewhat squeamish about messy, oldfashioned methods of slaughtering each other, we are not prepared to give up the basic idea. What we really crave is refinement on the one hand and a reduction of risk on the other. Repugnance to the ancient style of hand-to-hand combat has played some part in perfecting war engines. We moderns would just as leave not see our enemies or, more accurately perhaps, not let them see us. YOU don't get the intimate reactions from dropping a gas bomb or poisoning a water system that you do from seeing a foe die at your feet, nor does the prospect of getting killed by a bit of stray vapor or an unwary drink seem half so disagreeable as that of expiring under the bloodshot eyes of an enraged enemy. A flood in China does not strike us half as horrible as one close at home—which should reveal the comfort of broadcasting death. It would take the sting out of strife if we could sit safely down on this side of the Atlantic while sending death by air to people on the other side. No doubt they would return us the compliment, but even so the crude, personal element would be lacking. One wonder if there ever will come a time when men will realize that certain discoveries are not worth making, or that intelligence can serve a better purpose than perfecting instruments of murder.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns. Make your letters short, so all can have a chance. Limit them to 250 words or less.) By Perry Rule. Contributors to Times columns have pointed out that the state administration machinery was top heavy with commissions and boards. Governor and legislators were stigmatized as moral cow T ards for not fearlessly enacting remedial legislation. This condition in the state government loomed large and ugly in public view 7. The McNutt administration’s inconquerable fidelity to duties brought about the needed reformation. In place of deserved praise, sarcasm, satire, ridicule and inexcusable scorn and unjust criticism were heaped upon the administration. When the present state administration becomes history and is then more fully understood those reorganization acts will be concurred in and the administration accomplishments in the reorganization w 7 ork will be recognized as neither excelled nor remotely equaled by any previous state administration. The salary of the LieutenantGovernor has been a point of attack on the reorganization program. Formerly the Lieutenant-Governor drew 7 sl2 a day while presiding over the senate. After that session the Leutenant-Governor did not work for the state, receiving for this idleness a gift of SI,OOO a year, requiring a total disbursement of $1,720. Under the new setup the LieutenantGovernor is performing the following duties: Executive office of the department of commerce and industry; commissioner of agriculture; executive manager of the state fair board; member of state board of education; member of state board of public works; member of state board cf commerce and industry; member of state board of the department of state and secretary of the state fair board. By H. H. Kimmerling. After trying in vain to reach E. F. Maddox, a former contributor to The Times, through letters, I will appeal through the Message Center, hoping to get in touch with him. I do not have the time or inclination to bandy words with Mr. Maddox in a long drawn-out argument nor would I impose upon the good graces of The Times to devote space for any controversy in that line. Relative to a couple of letters to The Times by Mr. Maddox wherein he threatens that he w 7 as going to stamp out everything socialistic in our public schools, and proclaiming himself as doubly patriotic and making a fool of himself in general and since it is my delight to take some little nim-com-poop pate-rot and use them as an illustration to show the public just what silly and inconsistent drivel they have been listening to. Therefore I issue this challenge to the Mr. Maddox for open debate on the topic: “Resolved. that with the purport of the j Declaration of Independence and ! the fulfillment of the Constitution | of the United States w 7 e can have ; scientific socialism without changing j a word in either one.” Now, Mr. Maddox, if you are sin- 1 cere in your ideas and still persist | in trying to foist them upon the people of this country you will avail yourself of this opportunity to be heard. By Will H. Craig. It doesn’t pay to w'orry over spilt milk. We get nowhere by reciting! the mistakes of the past. The thing! to do is to recognize the errors of the past and present and go after them with hammer and tongs. i

SOMEHOW, one doesn’t expect to hear philosophical reflections when Joe E. Brown opens his mouth. Nevertheless, his recent public pronouncement that a home, wife and family are necessary for making a man happy is a.? wise as any proverb by Solomon. “Children,” he adds, "would put a stop to many divorces in the fllm colony.” Heartily as I agree with his first opinion, the second. I think, needs looking into. Without doubt, to most mature and settled people children are often the brakes that prevent smash-up 6 in the divorce court. But individuals who possess as little stability as that shown by the

. 1 ! ! : —" -... i.. ' "■■■— ■

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

: : A Woman’s Viewpoint : :

Still a Long Road Ahead

Bubbling Ev Merle Nichols. In reply to V. D. Vincent who asked George Stevens to explain his recent criticism of our state leadership and the “terror gang.” I hope the editor publishes my little message before Mr. Vincent dies of sleeping sickness; he must be asleep if he doesn’t know who the terror gang is and that Indiana is the laugh of the nation at present. It is my candid opinion that Mr. Vincent either is getting his pockets full from the present administration at the expense of us taxpayers, or that he is one of the many who crowed so loud before the election that he hates to think he’s whipped until he has to. You’re licked Old Boy! You and me both, and if you’ll follow me to the little voting booth next time you sure won’t hear the rooster crow for I have had more than enough of this “Cocky” administration. Note—lt may be that Mr. McNutt will be so scared to let us vote that he will hunt up some clever means of postponing the election again, but we’ll make it by and by and when we do the present bubble will fade out m the atmosphere.

The burdens of taxpayers are too heavy for them to bear. To wait for relief in this state until after the meeting of the 1935 legislature will make sick the hearts of the taxpayers and make some desperate. A special session should be called. I want to cite a few things that would leave from $30,000,000 to $40,1 000,000 in the taxpayers’ pockets and enormously increase the purchasing power without destroying the efficiency of government: 1. Provide- for election of county adjustment boards instead of appointment by circuit judges. The results of present law are shown in the recent repudiation of tax laws and the farce of “expediency.” Let the taxpayers and not the taxeaters pass on the budgets. 2. Abolish the townships and establish county units—save $10,000,000 and have better schools and government. The new bunch wbuld make a stiff fight before 1935 legislature, and if beaten probably would win in the courts that always favor the taxpayers. 3. Let us have a five-year moratorium on road bulding, cut gas tax to 2 cents, giving 1 cent to state and 1 cent to counties for repairs. This would leave about $15,000,000 in the pockets of taxpayers to increase their purchasing power for necessary commodities. 4. Repeal registration and pri- j mary election laws and save sev- : eral millions of dollars. No one : w 7 ants the registration law but some “uplifters” and our primary system is contrary to our representative or republican form of government. 5. Repeal the newspaper “graft” law of 1927 and save the taxpayers a million dollars for useless legal j printing. 6. Repeal all mandatory salarylaws, including the SBOO minimum

Daily Thought

As arrow's are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth.—Psalms, 127:4. T TOW sharper than a serpent’s * -*■ tooth it is to have a thankless child.—Shakespeare.

BY. MRS. WALTER FERGUSON

majority of the Hollywood clan do not make good parents. Being emotionally unbalanced, they are necessarily immature in their approaches to life and therefore essentially unfit to train children. non OF course we find it very hard to think intelligently on this subject. It has worn a halo so long that to question the tradition about parental love blanketing all faults is still considered almost as evil as the deliberate disfiguration of a sacred image. Yet we all realize that undying adoration is not the sole quality that distinguishes the excellent parent. In the first place, the child who is reared properly must grow up

teachers’ salary law and the foolish tenure and pension laws. All these laws were fixed when prosperity was at its peak. 7. Abolish boards and commissions as promised by Governor McNutt. Among these are the industrial board and the fish and game wardens. Both are doing judicial work not permitted by the Constitution and w 7 hich properly belongs to our circuit courts. 8. Abolish county agents, truant and parole officers and save several hundred thousand dollars. There are many other grafts and wastes that could be eliminated and save money to the taxpayers, but it is a long time to wait until 1935. The plan outlined above can be carried out at a special session and leave $40,000,000 in the pockets of the taxpayers. Democrats should jump at the chance to clean up the mess into which they have plunged the state. It is their own salvation. Republicans elected them to office on a platform of economy and retrenchment. Republicans can turn them out next year unless they “show w 7 orks meet for repentance.” By Sir Herschell. All red blooded Hoosiers will commend Booth Tarkington’s defense of his young nephew as one of the six greatest short story waiters in Einstein’s universe. Too often we Hoosiers have been indifferent in awarding glory to our fellow Indianians before they die. We hardly I notice them till they swamp the magazines. This young writer now has opportunity to wear the laurels on his beetling bows while he still is young enough to tote them. I also think it is nice in Booth not to neglect the family when he has a chance to hand out the honors. Too many folks nowadays are so prone to forget kinfolks. I have just taken my Bible back to the circulating library, otherwise I would like to quote somthing I saw there about one’s duty to his family. As an ancestor of Bill Herschell, I would like to pass my humble opinion to the newspapers that Bill may not be as big a poet as William Shakespeare, but—l would rather read "Aint God good to Indiana” any day in preference to Romeo and Juliet which I think w r as wTitten by the big shot from Avon-on-the-Stratford. Anyhow, I’ll say Bill is entitled to rank among at least the ten greatest poets, dead or living, who are Shakespeare, Milton, Robespierre 'next the fellow who wrote Poppies in Flanders field whose name I forget), Tennyson, Will Herschell. Dante, Homer, Will Rogers and Mary Bostwick. Miss Mary may have no uncle to speak for her in this connection, so I will just include her without anybody’s suggestion I w'ould like to see some more uncles come forward in Indiana. Let’s take a census of all our world’s greatest. Would this not be a good movement for our Chamber of Commerce to get behind? By R. A. As an inmate, not a so-called visitor at the Marion county home, I w 7 ould like to tell J. W I do'not think j the institution is so badly managed. : The present attendants working for Dr. Ruse, superintendent, are efficient and capable. Any place you ?o, you will find two classes, good and bad. Why should a man w'ho is j honest and will work not be treated better than a man who is so mean that his relatives won’t help him, i and as a result spends one-half his time at this institution and the remaining time at the penal farm? I hope J. W. reads this and explains it to the taxpayers and likes it.

amid surroundings that seem firm and fixed to him. Children need a sense of security and of that kind of serene continuity that only normal family life can give them. Nothing hurts them so much in their inner beings as the fear of impending upheavals. To a little child, his home is the world. And when the home falls his world ends. Much as it may be regretted, therefore, it seems to me those members of the movie colony—and of any other group who change husbands and wives as casually as they do apartments had best leave the begetting of children to somebody else. Because the first quality of the good parent is a sens* of responsibility toward the preservation of. the family.

DEC. 30, 193

Fair . j Enough | HI WESTBROOK PEOLER IT is a great relief to be told what to do in case of beggars on the street, because always up to now I have handled this problem on a catch-as-catch-can basis as opposed to the scientific method. Hereafter, obedient to a new scheme which is being instituted in New York. I will call a policeman to arrest the subject for his own good, explaining in a nice way that though he may not realize it just now. I really am protecting his own interests, and that in the course of time he will thank me for my kindness. If he doesn't, that will only prove that he was an unworthy case and society will thank me. instead. The policeman will walk the subject off to the precinct house, where he will be filed away until they have collected enough subjects, assorted, to make a batch, and he presently will come before some judge who may have qualified for his job by hanging around some political clubhouse and poolrbom and promising to kick back one year's pay out of five to the party funds. Various judges will hear such cases from time to time and New York judges were shown by the Seabury investigation to be very various. The judge will turn the subject over to a staff of professional assistants who will ask his name. age. purpose in life, favorite flower and actress and the nature of his dreams. Out-of-towners will be sent home, prepaid, to beg on their own home grounds, eliminating just that much unfair competition against the locals. Os the locals, those who are fit and willing to work will be given jobs in due time. Unfit locals will be hospitalized, a word which I will take time out to abhor along with the noun set-up and the verb to tie-in-with. And the utterly unwilling will be jailed up for periods of as long as three years. U tt tt I WILL say that I am being a great hypocrite here and there as I go along in this essay as I seem to be putting myself away for one of those open-handed heart-of-gold characters who perform a great | deal of private charity and detest j that kind of generosity w 7 hich asks i for fingerprints and vouchers in I triplicate. A man should have sufficient self- ! confidence to feel that he can always make a living but anything can happen in a life time and it frequently does and I learned a long time ago to give a moocher a soft answer and a little something just in case. There is also a selfish personal satisfaction to be derived from small but rugged individualism when the man with blue fingers and skinny legs falls in step and mutters “caw-fee.” I used to frequent some years ago a saloon down near the Bowery run by a big, fat man named Dan O'Rourke which had been a long time back the headquarters of all the best professional panhandlers in New' York. It was The Moocher's Union League, and the O’Rourke family, Dan and Mamie, Riggs and Joe, told me so many fascinating stories of the tricks and wiles of the artist moochers that I was able to sweep them all together after a while and sell a composition on the subject to one of our slick-paper magazines. The boys at O'Rourkes’ used to soap their eyes to make them cry. They carried fake telegrams about the dying baby down in Wheeling or they would swing along on crutches with one foot swathed in bandage soaked in red ink. Late at night, after professional hours, their crutches formed a stack be-' hind the piano and the pennymoney which they turned in across the bar filled a big sack regularly once a week. tt tt tt BUT knowing very w r ell that there are characters so low as to impose upon my kindness I still have found it hard to say no or call a policeman, and especially so in the last few years. One night, near a speakeasy in the fifties, a melancholy young man, drooping like a willow in the rain, asked me, for God’s sake to give him the price of a bed. as he w-as sick and cold, and. reckoning that I was about to frivol some ihoney away, anyway, I gave him some. But the next day i saw- him in the crowd around the stage door of the Hippodrome shooting craps. If a man looks sick and weak, and I have noticed that most of the moochers do not seem to be in the best of health, it is hard to remember the exact adress of that place down on South street, four miles away, on foot, where they will put his name on file and notify him in his regular turn if they hear of a half-day’s work at 30 cents an hour. The new scheme solves the problem, however. I don’t have to remember the address on South street and tell him how to walk there, refraining for the sake of his manhood and selfrespect from reducing him to beggary with something in his hand. I call an officer and everything is attended to in a humane way, consistent with the best interests of society, himself and me. 'Copyright. 1933. bv Uni'l Feature Syndicate. Inc.i

Year Is Done

BY AUSTIN JAMES The year is through, Another chapter of our life is ended, Twilight has come, The closing hours have found us and descended, But e’er we pass Between the portals of the night in sleeping. We hesitate— And with ourselves commune; our council keeping In looking back To face the challenge seen in retrospection, What smiles or tears Have we, in living, brought? Thus, our reflection. The year is through, If we have done our best in gen’rous giving, And by some word Or deed we’ve helped a man to better living, If we have lived A life of truth and strength—a ltf* of aiding The friends we have, Then we can smile upon the year that’s fading. But if we've failed To do these things—instead have given sorrow, God’s kind to us. Another year is coming with tomorrow.