Monday, July 31, 1939

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Whether "philly" got misspelt from the original copy whinny he done typed it that way or whether it was the printer's devil that done the deed, or the devil hissef, we don't know. But 'tweren't us. We's perfect. Perhaps, it was a bit of mischief, setting Charlotte to think about the notion of what can become in the morning of the education of even it's able editorial writers on it's afternoon normally erudite daily, what without no library, or suggesting that with such a statewide tax as proposed by Mr. Ritch it might become like the "City of Brotherly Love and Boodle". Can't tell you and ain't gonna propose to. But what can be said, passively speaking, that is, is that correctliness would provide that the young female horsy be spellt "filly". The cigar and the nickname of the city (and perhaps a sissy Phillip or two) is spellt this a way only. The O.E.D. done lists it as a erroneous feminine form of "filly", but that be as close as she gets. So heres a phillip of our falanges: Its wrong. And we done spotted ourself. We's reinterates, though you may thinks we dis-assemble: we's perfect, neigh, pluperfect.

Cause, seize, we's sumtimes got what you might call that 5.8th scents.

Said Fluellen: "There is a river in Macedon, and there is moreover a river in Monmouth. It is called Wye at Monmouth, but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river; but 'tis all one, 'tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both."

There be also a river that runs by Timahoe, but we ain't got there quite yet; yet, nevermore, nevermore, we quoth. 1

Let's Work The Library Situation Out Locally

Representative Marvin Ritch's interest in re-opening the Charlotte Public Library is to his credit, but the remedy he seems to have in mind would be worse than the ailment.

Look, now. Libraries--public libraries anyhow, though according to County Attorney Delaney's opinion, not school libraries--are the responsibility of the localities. The Mecklenburg locality called a special election on a 5-cent Library tax, and it was handsomely voted down.

So Mr. Ritch suggests that, to meet the emergency of no library in Mecklenburg, that the State take over the whole library system in North Carolina.

And what would that mean? Why, that Mecklenburg would be taxed not only for its own library but for a substantial contribution to all the libraries of the state.

It would mean that, to save the people of Mecklenburg from the consequences of their own direct action in voting not to tax themselves further, the Legislature would come to their rescue by taxing them several times over.

Mr. Ritch had better sit down and think it out again.

Though The Last Laugh May Be On The Jokester

A pop bottle tossed at an umpire reads funny, but it's no joke to the unfortunate fellow it may hit. The lower order of baseball fan apparently looks on the umpire as a sort of comic-strip character who's immune to pain and suffering and can endure all the comic inconveniences generally indicated by "zowie!" and "plop!" without bleeding or even turning a hair.

And so when Umpire Callaran was beaned with a pop bottle in Richmond last week, it must have been terribly funny to the man who threw it and all his kind. But it wasn't funny to Umpire Callaran. Strangely enough, the poor chap's head turned out to be made of bone and tissue and cartilage, just like any baseball fan's, instead of some rubbery substance, and he had to be taken to the hospital with a concussion that was anything but comic. He's still there.

As for his assailant, there's a reward of a hundred bucks out for information as to his identity. The League president puts it nicely:

The Far South Pays Too Much To Get Factories

Mayor LaGuardia, among other things, was of course plugging for the old home state--New York--in that speech against "sectionalism" before the Law Enforcement Officers at Wilmington yesterday.

Nevertheless, his warning that the South is on perilous ground in attempting to inveigle factories to come below the Potomac by any means at all, had more than sectionalism in it.

The South needs, is almost bound to have, one of two things: the wider distribution of the ownership of land or more factories. It can have both. It would be better if it could persuade local capital to build as many of the factories as possible, for "absentee landlordism" is even worse in industry than in agriculture. But so long as it appeals to Yankee capital with legitimate attractions, it cannot be blamed for seeking it.

When it comes to the methods used by such states as Louisiana and Mississippi, however, it is heading for trouble. Both these states use as bait a ten-year exemption from taxation for all manufacturing plants established by outside capital. Most of them also sign up labor to work for long periods at their subsistence wages, and enforce the contracts by the police power. And Mississippi goes so completely whole hog that it will even issue bonds and build the factories for outside capital as a gift!

That is to say, the states are busily engaged in trying to give away their wealth--in getting factories which their own people have to pay for, without enjoying the proceeds. Gaining nothing real for themselves, they not only disrupt the national economy but that of the South itself. The programs of these far Southern states are having almost as bad effect on industry in the upper South--particularly in the Carolinas--as on that of Yankeedom itself.

We Should Clearly Make Up Our Minds About Japan

The Japanese have apparently made up their minds to attempt to throw the Western powers out of China. And just now, as in the recent past, it is the British who are getting the brunt of it. But that we are threatened with the same dose is plain enough.

And that being so, it is high time we made up our minds as to the course we really need to pursue. Until the Hull denunciation of the 1911 trade treaty, at least, the British had given signs of being ready to yield and give up Chinese holdings. Yet Britain's investment in China is at least ten times our own. And moreover, there is no doubt that most Americans take unkindly to the thought of risking war to protect holdings which mainly belong to corporations.

War with Japan would be likely to be a catastrophe all out of a portion to the financial stake involved. Indeed, if we could withdraw quietly in good order from China, there is not much question that the people of the United States would generally favor it.

It seems now, however, that that course is no longer open to us. The Japanese are pretty clearly determined to create the impression at least that the Western powers have been ignominiously kicked out of China. And that brings us up against the question of national prestige.

The isolationists will say that it doesn't matter. But there is not much reasonable doubt that if we allow the impression to be created, we shall be in trouble everywhere, including South and Central America. Is the heading off of that worth the rigors an embargo will involve for us--a possible war?

That is the question which needs a definite answer. For a muddled policy now is likely to get us nothing but still more loss of prestige, or land us in a war before we know it.

Oscar Had Precedent For His Zealous Mistake

Mr. Oscar Powell, boss of the Indiana Unemployment Commission, may or may not be in trouble with his own boss, Handsome Paul McNutt, late High Commissioner of the Philippines and now Social Security Administrator and busy aspirant to the throne of the Great White Father.

But if he is, then it seems a little unfair to Oscar.

Whether Oscar acted under orders--or hints--in putting out that bulletin, largely to be paid for by Federal funds, in which the exploits and phiz of Great Man McNutt were generously displayed, will probably never be known. But in any case, it is plain that Handsome Paul did not take umbrage at it until after the Hon. Styles Bridges denounced it on the Senate floor--that his order to deprive the Indiana commission of Social Security funds to the amount of the cost of the bulletin is a pious gesture which came as an afterthought to the consideration that the bulletin might after all turn into a boomerang for his campaign.

So, even if Oscar got out of a jam just out of zeal and admiration for Good Great Man McNutt, it still would look hardly fair for the handsome one to take his ire out on him.

Fact is, Oscar had good precedent to act as he did. For years there must have been passing over his desk the same solid avalanche of Federal propaganda which has been passing over ours--bulletins, pamphlets, books, huge tomes, all got up in the beautiful format of the most expensive calendar stock and liberally sprinkled not only with photographs of "projects" and "achievements" but also with text of this and that great man in Federal office: cuts accompanied with enthusiastic accounts of his splendid deeds.

And if, after all that training, Oscar, in his innocence, thought it would be all right to use a little of that Federal jack for the celebration of his own great man (who already had something close to the official blessing of the President himself), is it any wonder?