The Charlotte News

Friday, May 26, 1939

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: For more on Fritz Kuhn and his American Bund, see "The Nazi Way", May 14, 1939, "Good Racket", August 20, 1939, "Guest Speaker", September 22, 1939, "No Hotbed", October 1, 1939, "Pot and Kettle", August 1, 1940, "Love-feast", August 20, 1940, "Hocus Pocus", August 23, 1940, the latter three on the unholy concordance between the Bund and the Klan. The Bund would grow by spring, 1941 when Charles Lindbergh would speak to several thousand in Madison Square Garden.

Monkey see.

Crime Prevention Bureau Would Be Step In Right Direction

The proposal, originated by Officer Bill Timmons and sponsored by the American Legion, that the City Council establish in the Police Department here a Crime Prevention Bureau, looks like a step in the right direction. The proposed bureau would be in charge of two cops, with some aptitude for and experience in dealing with boys. And young first offenders instead of being sent to jail, would be paroled in their charge. The facilities of the YMCA and other organizations would be used in trying to set them on the straight way. And, probably, a "Boys' Town" would be organized--under which the boys would undertake to govern themselves.

There are few if any criminologists left in the world who would agree with Lombroso that the criminal is a special human type, with definite physical and mental stigmata. Now and then a hereditary combination may turn out which makes its unfortunate possessor inevitably anti-social in the world we live in. But for the main, modern criminologists are agreed that the principal factor in the making of a criminal are environment and bad methods of cure. What happens usually is something like this: a boy, who all his life has been too poor to have enough to eat, so yearns for a bicycle that at last in desperation he steals one. He is caught, a court sends him to jail, where he meets hardened criminals, whose ways he eagerly sets himself, with the imitativeness natural to boys, to mimic. He comes out swaggering and toughened. The thing is almost at once repeated all over again, and by the time he is twenty he is a seasoned criminal, past redemption. Common sense says that the sensible thing to do is to go another way about it, and attempt to divert him into social channels at the beginning--by giving him a better break in life and something to hope for. Sentimental coddling? The merest self-interest suggests it is foolish to dismiss it so. For our present methods cost the taxpayers literally hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

The Methods Used Are Not Without Irony

There are several things which are a little ironic in the arrest of Der Führer Kuhn on charges of having embezzled $14,589.59 from the German-American Bund.

The first thing is that the American authorities are apparently unable to lay hands on him save on such account. There was some talk a while back about deporting him on the ground that he had come over specifically to organize a Nazi revolution in this country and that he had sworn falsely when he denied all such purpose at Ellis Island and when he took the oath of allegiance to the United States. That such is the truth seems to be at least plausible. But for one reason or another, that plan of attack has petered out. And maybe it is just as well. Kuhn deserves deportation. But after all, his organization hasn't got very far among us as yet. And deporting him might set a precedent for the hounding of men whose only crime is bona-fide political beliefs, to which, under the Bill of Rights, they are entitled.

But irony remains. The Bund plainly exists for the purpose of destroying the American form of government. Its funds are collected for exactly that purpose. Whence we have the interesting proposition: that American authorities, in order to lay hands on Mr. Kuhn, are forced to set about defending the integrity of those funds and making certain that they are used precisely to the purposes for which collected!

Administration Appeases With "Tax Reduction"

Tax reduction, it's wonderful!

Secretary Morgenthau and Undersecretary John Hanes and Senator Pat Harrison kept at it, in the face of severe disapproval at the White House, until they reached yesterday, in what Mr. Morgenthau called an atmosphere of "goodwill all-around," complete agreement on a program.

This is the program:

Income tax on corporations (with more than $25,000 income) is now figured at 16 1/2% to 19%. Only those corporations, however, which deny stockholders any feel at all of their earnings have to pay the highest rate. And only two per cent of the Government's revenue comes from this top-lofty source.

Wherefore, to help business, and much against the President's will, it has been decided to substitute, in place of the variable rates of from 16 1/2% to 19%, a flat rate of 18%. A rate higher, that is, than the present average rate, and higher than any corporation would have to pay which cut its stockholders in for as little as 60% of earnings. An actual increase, that is, in taxes.

Tax reduction, it's wonderful!

How They Got to Alabama Is A Bit Of A Poser

In Grove Hill, Alabama, Mr. W. D. Dunn keeps a grocery store. The other day he ordered in some bananas, as is his regular custom. He saw them safely hung up and went on about his business, thinking no more about them until a terrific squeaking caught his attention. Then he rubbed his startled eyes and wondered if the D.T.'s sometimes fell on a perfectly sober man. For there on the floor were a dozen baby monkeys, which had fallen out from hiding among the bananas--twelve, count 'em. At least there had been twelve. A kitten kept in the place had already killed three of them, apparently under the mistaken notion that they were a new kind of mice. Later a fourth died, and now Mr. Dunn is puzzling his head trying to decide precisely what makes up a balanced milk diet for the eight other little monkeys. At least, so we read in the dispatches which these days are full of astounding news.

Several things about that story intrigue us. For one--they obviously must have come from some of the Central or South American countries on a banana boat. Which is to say that the whole passage to Mr. Dunn's store must have taken a number of days at least. Can baby monks, which are born practically as helpless as human babies, go for long periods without food? And don't they get seasick? Another thing that puzzles us is the number of them. It is our impression that the authorities have always reported that the monkeys of South America do not by ordinary bear more than one infant at a time. (We just looked it up in the encyclopedia). And that being so--do monkey mamas establish communal day nurseries among the banana trees of the plantations? Or did some super Mama Dionne among our arboreal cousins produce 'em all at once--douzeptlets, as it were, or what would you call them? If so, did she create a great commotion in the plantation when she found that the bad man from the ships had kidnapped them? And did Father Jocko join her? Or is this a plain case of desertion? Did the pair of them, these simian Dionnes, reflecting that, after all, they had no Dr. Dafoe and Canadian Government, simply and cannily go off and leave their bounteous gift from heaven? Ourselves, we think the case requires to be rigorously looked into by both the scientists and moral authorities--including the FBI and maybe General Van Horne Moseley and the Hon. Robert Rice Reynolds and his Vindicators. After all, these monks are aliens here as stowaways and without passports.