The Charlotte News

Saturday, May 7, 1938

SIX EDITORIALS

Is our little lighthouse there at the bottom of each page like the one there in the Ripley's? Who knows?

Whether merely reflecting from somewhere on shore or emitting its own source of light, only the keeper of it at any given moment understands for sure.

Maybe, it's a hybrid, to save energy. Maybe it's possessed of a secret gyro-balancer thingamabbobber, like us humans, to give it perpetual motion until that fateful final day when it, alas, gives out in its rusted decrepitude, an otherwise perfectly frictionless piece of equipment which wastes not and therefore wants not. Maybe, it's magic.

One day, we'll do some intricate and extensive research on it and its inner workings, find out its entire past and where it is and has been, as it spins and spins along its bearinged centrality, to shed a little light for the ships bound for home to avoid their coastal rocky wrecks.

When we do that research, we'll let you know.

This is a tribute to the memory of Miss Doris Bleau. As might have been expected, and was expected, and by the actuarial tables forecast, she is dead. They have prepared to ship her from Miami to Grand Isle, Va., in a coffin with a broader beam by eleven inches than the ordinary coffin. She was 36 years old and weighed 714 pounds.

To the end that gawping humans might gaze upon her and exercise those emotions of amazement which made them pop-eyed for a moment and so contributed to their enjoyment of life, Miss Bleau fed herself with unexampled devotion. Some artists paint, and others by the mysterious processes of genius attain long hair. Others write poems, to the end that their pocketbooks become fat. Others write books and act and sing and play musical instruments and yodel and imitate and dance to various ends, including charley horses, swelled heads and trips to Europe, but they all hope to live long lives. Miss Bleau had no such hope. Forty years, she knew and said, was her limit. So she, the fat lady in a circus, piled on fat in one final great burst of extended eating, mounted from 575 pounds up to the unrivaled figure of 714 and died. A true artist, Miss Bleau, and peace be with her.

Because a Pure Food & Drug Bill now pending in Congress calls for judicial review of orders promulgated by the Government, the National League of Women Voters is through with it. The organization which has fought for the bill, "will now have to oppose it," unless the offending clause is removed.

"Judicial review" sounds pretty cumbersome, but all it means, in reality, is that the courts are still to be open as a recourse for the man who thinks the Government is about to do him wrong. Were it not so, some bureau in Washington could condemn Spink's Spots-Before-The-Eyes Remedy on the ground that the medicine left grease stains where it was advertised positively not to leave grease stains, and, even while Mr. Spink was carrying his case to court, bar his nostrum from sale and effectively put him out of business even though he later won the verdict.

Of course, if all administrative officials could be counted on not to misuse their extraordinary powers and not to make mistakes, there would be no need for judicial review. Quite so. The pencil manufacturers are still putting erasers on their pencils, especially on the latest models. And even with a vast increase in knowledge of medical science, the undertakers are still making a living.