The Charlotte News

Wednesday, March 8, 1939

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The editorial on Rep. Bulwinkle, "Not Much Economy", reminds us precisely of a rather rocky speech we heard from the House floor yesterday, from a Gentlelady of North Carolina--all about economy and how her Party, the Republican Party, had preserved for all the great conservative spirit embodied in those vaunting words of the "Declaration of Independence and the Constitution", "pursuit of Happiness". She laid special emphasis to that word, pursuit, said that it means what it says, to pursue, not to be provided by government--and that her Party was in pursuit of that goal always, to enable pursuit of Happiness, as opposed to providing it.

We couldn't agree more.

Actually, however, while it may seem a trivial pursuit, we had forgotten in our study of the document that this remark re "pursuit of happiness", was actually in the Constitution. Maybe the Preamble, we thought. But not there. It says merely, rather dryly and without the pursuit of the Declaration:

We're still looking.

Fifth Amendment? No. It, rather insipidly and morosely we think, sets forth this jejune language:

Ah, we think we understand the problem. (Actually, we cheated a little, as we have heard other similarly situated people, who have attended probably one too many "Get Rich Quick by Ripping Off Others' Property Without Money Down" seminars, state in likewise confusion this notion that "pursuit of Happiness" is a Constitutional right.

For that Declaration, embodying the spirit of the nation, but not its legal underpinning, that provided only by the Constitution, said early in its text:

That phrase in the Fifth, "life, liberty and property", undoubtedly becomes transposed and inscrutably entangled with "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" such that the latter, with the two former, ejusdem generis, becomes one of those unalienable rights within the Bill of Rights--the one which, significant as the Gentlelady is also "pro-life", naturally, for it is a Happy thing to be alive, as none of the Dead ever smile, is bereft of those words, supposition of which gave rise to that specious doctrine made up by those Liberal Democrats, Harry Blackmun, et al., who crafted that noxious Roe v. Wade from whole cloth, posited on this chimera not in the Bill of Rights, one and the same, the "Right of Privacy". "Happiness", by contrast, as the Lady assures, is there in that document, front and center, even though hidden away in such phraseology that one may not read it except with those special glasses of which the Lady has, no doubt.

But then again, maybe it isn't there at all, this Happiness. It is, after all, a very sad document which has brought nothing but reckless debate, unnecessarily litigious pursuit, even civil war.

In short, come to think of it, let's dump it all out and start over. Seeing as how the Party of the Gentlelady has already excised the Fourth Amendment entirely and excised from the Fifth that confusing clause about "Due Process" anyway, we are off to an exceptional start toward that goal of Happiness. But, if we excise the one about Due Process, then, by the Gentlelady's own implication of language... Ah, banish the thought. The Gentlelady and her Party, as always, know best.

This, incidentally, we feel compelled to remark, is the same Gentlelady, who while running initially for her current post in Congress eighteen months ago, remarked Happily in debate that she believed in the right of her constituents, under the Second Amendment, to have assault weapons, and thus supported her Party's President's desire to lift that nasty Liberal Democratic Congressional ban on their sale, even though she admitted she wasn't quite sufficiently familiar with them to know for what they were precisely used, those assault weapons.

Did you hear the one about the Peanut on her way to Canterbury?

In any event, the Gentlelady was holding forth in the well of the House yesterday all about this pursuit thing, as opposed to the Party of "tax and spend", the Democrats. That it was her Party, the Republicans, in favor of that pursuit of Property, that is Happiness, which was the one which had brought the country back from the brink of economic ruin to its present "recovery".

Huh. We didn't know that. But, undoubtedly, as the Gentlelady says it, it must be True.

Yet, it seems to us that the House has been majorized by the Party of the Gentlelady from North Carolina now since January, 1995, the Senate, save for 19 months from mid-2001 through '02, ditto. The Executive department, since January 20, 2001, (though, as we know, not resulting from majoritarian rule on that one, at least not exactly as the Framers set it all out). The Supreme Court's majority appointees, also, since 1972, including five of them who...never mind that.

Yet, as the Gentlelady must have her facts straight, there must be some other secret branch of government, the Anti-Happiness faction, (AH), to which the Lady alludes on which the Democrats have a monopoly and by which, secretly controlled everything until recently? We don't know.

Ah, but the whole thing, to our ears, candidly, sounded a little squirrelly, or at least a little foxxy.

On the other hand, someone, as the Gentlelady told us she did, who grew up in the North Carolina backwoods without electricity, very poor, in a one-room shack, has to have access to the Truth. (For Abraham Lincoln did that, too--but the Gentlelady cannily left that unexpressed and thus to the interstitial spaces of that illimitable empyrean, the aggregate imagination of her backwoods constituents, to fathom.) Passing strange, however, is the fact, we must remark, that the Lady isn't quite that old, by appearances anyway; must have been growing up in the late 1940's, early 50's, when virtually all of western North Carolina, from which she hails, was electrified by the advances brought on by TVA in the 1930's, a project invented and nurtured for decades afterward by those tax and spend Democrats. Then again, we won't presuppose anything so testily brackish to season with tainted tangy questions the unerring Purity of Happiness, to spit fire in the face of Truth, of which the Gentlelady is amply possessed; perhaps the Gentlelady is indeed of sufficient age to recall precisely the Great Depression--as well the Party on whose doorstep its origin is generally laid, as well the one to which is attributed its egress. We cannot quibble, however, with the Gentlelady's faltering grasp of the obvious paradox in her statements, however, for, without electricity in those backwoods, the poor Gentlelady obviously grew up without radio.

But, then again, of course, she wouldn't have to be so old as that anyway, for exception no doubt will be found wherever any general rule prevails, and the farthest reaches of those backwoods of western North Carolina are probably no exception to that rule--such as that secret place where survivalists go, and still go today sometimes, to gather and secret, squirrelishly, their assault weapons together, for that emergent time when the Government comes to get them for doing nothing more extra-legal than pursuing their Happiness hunting squirrels--just as the Man on the Horse from Asheville, of equal illimitable imagination as the Gentlelady, once bragged in the Senate as to the marksmanship on which was displayed by all his stalwart backwoods constituents, likewise to any would-be invader, thus of no fear us any Nazi and thus no need for any aid to Britain to combat them.

Thus it is, as always, that Truth, Happiness, and the American Way, prevail--blissfully.

As we said, we don't know. We are sure, nevertheless, that the Gentlelady is familiar with Lincoln logs, having, no doubt, hauled away many for miles on snowy nights in those backwoods of the western stretches of the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, where lonesome travelers often go.

But, it was all very Truthy, anyway. (Incidentally, we don't mean to prick the lexicologic bubble of commedia dell'arte, but they are right, those who say that the word has been extant for some time prior to its supposed new inclusion by lexicographers in 2006, though it is truthy to suggest that Pierrot's rapport with words provided it a new patina of irony.

As to origins, however, says the O.E.D.:

To which we add, antonymically to truthy, as aforestated, synonymous with its new patois: Foxxy. As in, "The Gentlelady's use of the English language to convey ideas knows no bounds of creativity, partaking of this, partaking of that, always to make the Partycular point plainly, that she is one Foxxy Lady.")

Also for the general benefit, we include the following two pieces from the editorial page of this date, one on the eclectic uses of the persimmon and the tree from which it comes, and the other on the medicinal and therapeutic potions of cobra venom which, it says, among other things, increases intellect.

So be sure and stock up on both for a long, brilliant, albeit shady, life in high cotton. And pass some on to whomever you might think need it.

Baltimore Evening Sun

In view of what has happened to the chestnut trees, it is alarming to hear that a blight is killing off the persimmon trees, too. According to the Department of Agriculture, a persimmon disease "is spreading like an epidemic." Detailing a few of the persimmon's virtues, a Washington dispatch says:

Of course it is gathered for human food, and lucky is the person who knows where to find a tree. Eaten green, it will twist your face into a horrible grimace, but when it has become shriveled and purplish it has a tangy, wild sweetness unmatched by any other woodland taste. Yet food is only one of many gifts from this delectable tree. Secretary Wallace has cited its use in the manufacture of high-grade golf clubs, and the Federal Soil Conservation Service gives it an A-1 rating as an agent for controlling soil erosion--since it will grow equally well in wet or dry, rich or wornout land.

There are many other uses not mentioned by the experts. These uses were explained by John Charles McNeill, a North Carolina poet who wrote in old-fashioned Negro dialect. To begin with--

Anyone who has ever taken refuge in such shade from the dizzy midsummer heat of a cotton field will appreciate that stanza. Furthermore--

For cotton pickers, being paid by weight and not by bulk for what they gather, know that the tree's shade will conserve the early morning moisture on the picked cotton.

Above all, the persimmon tree is a sociable tree. When there is any merriment in the fields, it usually occurs beneath those modest branches. There is kept the water bucket and drinking gourd, the jug of cool cider, the buttermilk crock; and there the watermelon is fetched cold from the branch to be sliced. When autumn nights come and there is a hint of frost in the air, some field-hand Nimrod and his yipping, sharp-nosed curs (or maybe an old, mellow-voiced bluetick hound) will cast their moon shadows in the field, huntin' possums grown fat on dead-ripe simmons.

Department of Agriculture, get busy! Don't let that blight kill off the persimmon trees.

Philadelphia Bulletin

Persons approximately inebriated might be wiser if they were slightly bitten by a cobra than persons badly snake-bitten who take whisky for a cure. In view of the revelation that cobra venom, properly administered by a physician, increases one's ability in an intelligence test, a partial cure for snakebite might sometimes be more desirable than complete recovery. Baltimore pharmacologists who report the result of cobra venom found that diluted venom relieved suffering in chronic arthritis, neuritis, neuralgia and other ailments, and that its toxicity is low compared with its therapeutic efficiency.

Most people despise snakes. Because they creep and crawl and make humans creep. Friends of non-venomous snakes have argued their case for long--they devour mice and other pests, and help nature keep its balance. Yet they may have other and more valuable uses. Perhaps the poison species are all living drug departments of the animal world, created for paregoric, anesthetic and remedial purposes. The snake that lured Eve into eating the apple may not have just made snake eyes and other gestures, as supposed, but bit her just a little bit to make her brighter.

The uses of discussion and debates were never better illustrated than in the gradual classification and amendment of the City's new omnibus charter. Mr. Currie's exposition, for instance, of the disproportionate voting population in the various wards, none of which under the law may have more than two representatives on the City Council, or need have any at all.

But in the last municipal election, Ward 7 cast 1,792 votes to Ward 3's 334; Ward 6, 1,727 to Ward 11's 451. How obviously, if we are to limit representation by wards, those wards should be of approximately the same size. But why, after all, should we have representation by wards? The ward spirit, as we have encountered it, is very low. Nobody, that is, upon meeting an old acquaintance on the street, hails him by exclaiming, "Well if it isn't Joe Doakes, the old Ward 1 boy himself!"

The law under which representation is now apportioned got through in a hurry, almost without notice. Senator Bell had a notion and the House delegation amended it. Actually, the people most affected had virtually nothing to do with it. And there is not the slightest sense in perpetuating a scheme of representation which, as may be seen at a glance, is all out of whack.

There was one very curious thing about the New Jersey Senate's confirmation yesterday of Boss Hague's son as a justice of the State's highest court. If that Senate had been made up predominantly of Hague's fellow Democrats, nobody could reasonably have expected anything but confirmation. But in fact it was predominantly made up of Republicans, and it was Republican votes which put over the job and balked a public hearing on the fitness of the candidate.

And that, masters, is a puzzler. No more grotesque nominee for such a post has been put forward anywhere in the United States since Reconstruction. The Haguelet has never served as a judge of any sort. He has been a member of the bar only three years. There is not the slightest reason to suspect him of either knowledge or brains. On the contrary--the fellow spent eight years as a student in universities and law schools and failed to graduate from any of them--uniformly made an exceptionally dull showing.

And all that being so, how did it happen that the opposition failed to seize an opportunity which seems made to order for its purposes: to reject the confirmation with roars of outraged virtue?

Boss Lewis had hardly got the plan out of his mouth before Boss Green's mediation committee denounced it bitterly, saying:

But to the layman's eye, this angry dismissal of the Lewis plan will itself seem anything but realistic. Certainly, one of the facts in the case is that the vertical union, as developed by the CIO, is here to stay, and that the CIO is now too greatly developed for the AFL to attempt to make its membership come back under the old terms. And certainly, another fact is that the public is growing increasingly tired of the everlasting jurisdictional fights between rival unions of the two organizations--fights which keep conditions on the industrial front in a continual uproar and make a rational agreement between worker and employer impossible.

Old Boss Lewis, we know, is as adept at sleight-of-hand as Boss Green himself, and maybe more so. And it may be that he is up to tricks which escape us. Obviously, he is jockeying to appear in the more favorable light if agreement fails. But, so far as we can see now, his plan looks like a very reasonable basis for negotiation. His proposal that the CIO shall have equal representation with the AFL in the proposed new Congress of Labor is only in keeping with the actual facts as the power and numbers of the two organizations. The proposal to bar both himself and Green from office in the Congress and to retire Green at full pay may have personal spite in it, and yet it is not probable that peace can ever be arranged with Green at the helm. And the proposal that the Railway Brotherhoods shall be brought into the Congress to hold the balance of power between CIO and AFL and to settle all jurisdictional disputes looks like exceptionally good sense.

Indeed, there is only one hole we can see. That is, how on earth are the Brotherhoods, made up of canny men, to be persuaded to assume their role as umpire between Kilkenny cats?

Mr. Bulwinkle, the Tenth North Carolina's man in Congress, had somehow given us to understand that he was alarmed at all the money the Administration was spending and will be glad to join his colleagues of a similar mind in putting a foot down. Nothing of the sort came out of the Bulwinkle-Jones Democratic primary, to be sure. Nothing of greater public interest came out of the primary than the demonstrable fact that both men wanted the place and were prepared to get it at all costs.

A couple of years ago, however, Mr. Bulwinkle did raise his voice for economy. He said--here, we have his very words:

This was excellent doctrine, excellent, and we seem to recall applauding it at the time. But it is noteworthy that Mr. Bulwinkle's votes-of-record did not at all give effect to the spirit of his words. The unblinkable truth is that, on every test in this 78th Congress, Mr. Bulwinkle has failed utterly to put his foot down for a balanced budget or anything like it.

Now, all these measures may have been advisable, and perhaps Mr. Bulwinkle was entirely justified in voting for them. But that is not "curtailing expenditures regardless of where the money goes." Net savings today, in fact, as result of Mr. Bulwinkle's economy drive, are not a nickel.

Has the little reader ever seen a revenue bill, the thing which the House in Raleigh passed on first reading last night? Well, it is practically a law book in itself. It runs to 300 or more pages, and every line of text is numbered, so that the master of ceremonies can call out, "Turn to line 8, p. 156," and the Little Legislators may rustle over to line 8, p. 156, and there read:

In life, death is last, but in the revenue bill, death comes first. That is, the revenue bill, after a brief preamble, starts out morbidly with Schedule A, Inheritance Tax. Here one runs into such fearsome levies as 8% of the first $10,000 on up to 17% of $2,500,000 or more. Continuing into Schedule B, one finds that the forethoughtful Legislators have overlooked nothing. Every activity in North Carolina must pay the State a license tax, even traveling carnivals and circuses, according to the number of wagons in their train. And so on page after page through Licenses into Franchise, where tax talk is in terms of big money again, and from Franchise into Schedule D Income Tax (Greetings!) which leads inevitably to Schedule E, Sales Tax, a section which is considerably shorter than the duration of this "temporary" tax; and after Sales Tax comes Schedule F, a tax on CERTAIN BEVERAGES--the little reader will know what--and in rapid order from that point on come Intangible Personal Property Tax, Compensation Use Tax, afterthoughts and postscripts and the final lurking statement: "Ratified this...day of...A. D. 1939."

It was this business-like tome, all the way through from death to done, that the House passed on first reading yesterday. And what does the little reader suppose set off the greatest debate of all and the most vehement exchange of opinion? Why, the tax on slot machines "for amusement only" and the proposed tax on illegal punch boards. And so the revenue bill got passed on first reading.