The Charlotte News

Wednesday, August 17, 1938

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: After reading the previous day's culling of the Don Marquis, otherwise deceased, characterization of la cOcKaROacHa, archy, in "It's the Heat" and questioning ourselves on just what that more or less extinct thing hurled across the room precisely was--though some vague boutade from methodology we ourselves employed back in the dim ages before this gadgetry came along we had, but even then we used Scotch--, we decided to do a search for it.

We came up with three hits at Bartleby, all on the same topic, with variations on the theme, a topic Cash often covered himself, Americanism: one being anent this ism being translated into literature in the latter nineteenth century and the postulates for its dearth to that point in the republic's history; a second, from just after the Civil War, on this ism as a vision to come of democracy evolving in all things American, requisite for them to be American, even the army and navy, not just within electoral politics, discussing then democracy's machinations as well as its attainment to the ideal to which theoretically it strives and is inextricably, by definition to maintain itself as such, wedded; and the third on this ism as bred into the individualist to set out to become an individual raised by bootstrapism; excerpts of each of which we liberally clip and post for you below.

(So, seeing as how it is now high time to heat up the old biennial national campaign grid-iron again, let us have at it in that fondest of American democratic traditions, say to hell with all those freakish sycophants of stodgy stoogism as doing only obeisance to the dog of fascist mentality, those who for their continued economic will and sustenance want always to pass on to us guilt over anything less than that which is nice and tidy, neat British stiff-upper-lipped starched collars and the like; rather, then, let's get back to the business of being recognizably Americans and give each other, at least for the next 50 days or so before mid-term elections, the almighty hell we all most indubitably deserve, and unreservedly so. This in fact being more or less derivative of the tradition born of the prairie, the eidolon of the cycle, the letting loose of inhibitions once in that cycle, upon which release the return then to the business of governing democratically afterward--as opposed to governing by fascist fisticuffs all the time in its absence. So let us then, in the name of Walt Whitman and everything else which is the stock of that we call American, have at it again.)

So, there you have it, three views of this ism, all hung around a search for one word culled from Cash's culling.

Now, get ye out of here, you la cOcKaROacHa, lest we throw the word at you again, Chan-Chan!

Mr. J. Spencer Bell, manager of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, strikes straight down the alley of our own pet notions when he tells the local Lions Club that "most of the thousands of dollars spent here annually for musical education is wasted," and that "most of the ones who study music should confine themselves to learning it from a listener's viewpoint."

The case can no doubt be made out for the theory that some elementary knowledge of an instrument is a very desirable basis for beginning to understand music from the listener's viewpoint. And, of course, anybody who actually wants to learn an instrument for his own private enjoyment ought to be encouraged--unless, indeed, he lives in an apartment house.

But by and large, the concern with learning to play instruments is merely a hangover from the nineteenth-century cult of the Young Lady. The staid young person sat in the parlor on Winter evenings and played tinkling little tunes to polite and patient swains, who did their best to look entranced. And it was supposed to make her very valuable for the soothing of a tired husband, when and if he she acquired one. But the custom is as remote from the actual conditions of our age as the customs of the Fourth Egyptian Dynasty. And, to be candid about it, nobody ever did really enjoy listening with his ears to the Young Lady at the Piano. All the persistence of the cult does is to breed a lot of very bad mechanical players, who never have any use for their supposed accomplishments, and who usually know less about the music of the great tradition than an organ grinder.

Site Ed. Note: Oh, here comes the little death-head's creature yet again, ye cross-boned squire's-mire scarabaeus-- So, while about beating the band, we would be remiss to paste up the fact that once, in the fourth grade 'twas, a pleasant fellow with a broad grin and a sardonic sense of himself and others, obviously, came about our school, room to room, hunting up volunteers for his school band class. We only had to choose our instrument for the endeavor and we were in the club. Now, what was it we wanted to learn? We looked through the catalogue. The strings were out, for they were not part of the band per se, relegated to a separate class altogether. And our double-dip favorite of all, the long-necker without a bow, picked with the fretted fingers, whether bare-fleshed pinked or with the clickety of the plectrum, pervaded with the odor of fine-rubbed finishing along the mahogany or ash curves, what have you, we hadn't even the least opportunity in either case, as they, too, weren't part of the band. So, our sphere from which to make choice was circumscribed by brass, woodwinds, percussion. Percussion in our soul, yes, but too accessible, too much the thing of pedestrian fealty. Any here among us could take out a pencil and tap the ring-binder's blue canvas 'til it bled itself ragged, with taps, af' all. Woodwinds?--ah, no, no, far too prissy, keen to our hears, but for us to finger was far, far too confined a task. We weren't cut to be a flautist. Ah, now, that left brass. Perfectly contrasting with our external quietude, put however in strident suit to the inner turbine where all was churning fast and mighty the plaintive dirge, the exultant radiant--brass, brass, ah. Which one, though of the four choices provided should we? (We didn't have access to the circ-tubes, as they were far too cumbersome for little tykes such as ourselves.) The slider seemed to us a little indefinite as to definition of position constituting the stops to provide that being emitted. We needed definition in those days, something by which to cling, so fast was the churning. That was out, the slider, therefore, though we liked its basic construction. The three-fingered duo?--seemed much too simple to master, with only three fingers from which to choose. Though they were kind-hearted dollies, whether muffled or full-throated. Besides, whenever, in our experience, we puffed our cheeks we found it immensely discomforting, as if our head were about to explode in the bargain. To boot, they were much too stubby and light. Thus. Ah, the choice had narrowed now. And what a choice. This was it-- that fine brass tube with the serpentine curve kewling, ophicleide-like, around at the bottom, a piece of pulchritudinous splendour if ever there was, this brassy thing. And all the buttons, pearly buttons, lots and lots to choose from, enough to occupy both hands, no less. (And what better way to maintain from the idle, with which we know not what it might do otherwise?) This, this, then, was an instrument with which to wield--glory. What is more, our papa had tried his hands at it when in school as well. Thus 'twas pluperfect in the service. Tradition! So, we marched ourselves, positively, down to the Conn store on Fourth Street, our papa and mama in tow, and proceeded to pick us out the finest Conn we could afford, even if a little used for our impecunity, nevertheless a fine brassy Conn. We were mightily excited by its smoothness and, what's more, we could see ourselves in the bell. --And so, to make a long one shorter, for the next six years, through fall leaves in the rakish curves, wind in the pane, rain dribbling through the reeded gutter, winter snows freezing our booties like ice, and spring breezes through the sheltering warmth of the tree leaves rushing by, as Aprils ticked to Mays, back then to each again that ever-dreaded September, we tried mightily to learn to manipulate this smooth, pulchritudinous brassy thing to our will, mightily, mightily we tried. Alas, however, we came to the conclusion that, for ourselves, at least, it was of the type of practice which the inditement above relegates to the waste bin of musical genius. Alas, again, we had to put down our Conn, finally, and concede by the time about which high school came, that we were but meant to play no more than one musical Conn chord, that of listener. Yet, for it, that participation for six years, we hasten to add, that musical experience in band, we think the middle bridge above summarizes perfectly our own thus inculcated--a definite sense, without which not we would likely endowed be aught, bereft of any full conception otherwise of that which simply goes: every good boy (or girl, in another key) does fine. So, while we didn't learn to play much of any but what might pass on occasion as contemporary jazz swung by the Owl and the Pussycat, most definitely of the most extemporized, and probably inimitable, let alone in time unduplicateable, form, at least with any celerious continuity, that is--for living in an apartment house, we could scarcely practice at times long save in sounds of silence, with great rest, which, in truth, did not lend itself so well to this particular piece of brass, which, in turns, is why we rested in sly-silence during audition as well--we did learn at least one thing about music and musicianship. It goes...

Back in 1932, Mecklenburg County's tax rate was 55 cents, and if you took off the 16.4-cent school tax, which the State got, the net County rate was only 38.6 cents. And the revenue produced by this levy, $346,000 was earmarked for general charity, which was an alarming jump over the $34,663 expended for that purpose the year before.

That year 1932 was a hard one, messires, and it got harder as it unrolled. But look ye at the County tax rate for the last half of 1938 and the first of 1939! From 55 cents in 1932 (38.6 net), it is up to 86 cents, all of which is net. The poor fund is up to a dizzy $369,461, in addition to which there is an item of $44,772 for old age assistance, and another item of $24,780 for aid to dependent children. If you eliminate debt service, half of the County's budget is for charitable purposes.

It is the New Dispensation, of course, and speaking on behalf of the recipients, we can say positively that it is welcome. And as for the property owners who provide the wherewithal, they are dismayed but unprotesting. They are very much like the County Commissioners who made the appropriations and fixed the rate--they dislike it but, pinching where they can, they can't help it. About all they can do is to go off and hope that somehow some day everything is going to turn out all right.

A man yesterday told the House committee investigating un-American activities that there were six major menaces to democracy at work in the United States. He named them in this order: communism, socialism, nazism, anarchism, ultra-pacifism and atheism; and to back up his choice of communism for the leading menace, he prepared to prove that the Communist Central Committee had spent in the United States more than $700,000 for propaganda and organization activity in the last two years. He showed the intent Congressmen a billboard, 60 feet long by eight feet wide, bearing hundreds of pieces of what he called "red periodicals" published in America.

The extent of the communistic leaning in this country no man knows. Several CIO unions are commonly reputed to be pretty closely allied with the Reds, but there again no man can tell for sure. About the only reliable, statistical information on hand is that in 1936 the Communist Party's Presidential candidate polled a measly 50,159 votes out of more than 45,000,000. And as for the $700,000 the fellow avers the Communist Central Committee has spent in two years, it isn't much more than John L. Lewis and his United Mine Workers spent on Roosevelt in one year.

And as for the 60 x 6 billboard decorated with hundreds of pieces of Red literature--shucks! Frank Gannett, the newspaper publisher who singly took on the court bill and the reorganization bill, at one time was sending that much through the mails every week.

A communist menace there may be in this country, but it appears pathetically picayunish and impecunious in comparison with 100 percent American institutions.

It is a terrific indictment, this which Mr. Hull yesterday brought against Japan, Italy, and, above all at this moment, Germany. But all of them will undoubtedly retort at once that it is only a case of the pot and the kettle. More than that, they'll be able to make out a pretty good case merely by citing the record. The Mexican War and annexation of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico was a case very much like that of the Sudeten Germans--constituted an "invasion of territory of a sovereign state," and "seizure of hitherto independent political entities." Our conduct in Haiti, Nicaragua, etc. surely amounted to an "attempt to adjust international differences by armed force" and "interference in the internal affairs of other nations." In the suppression of Aguinaldo's rebellion we indubitably disregarded "accepted principles of international law," as did the national government in the Civil War. And if it be true, as is sometimes charged, that McKinley made the Spanish War for political reasons, then we may be justly taxed even with "contemptuous brushing aside the rules of morality."

But two things at least can be said in answer: (1) that we at least never adopted these things as open and boasted principles of conduct, and (2) that we have at length pretty well reformed our ways.

To that last, it will certainly be responded that we have reformed our ways, as the British and French have at least partly reformed theirs, only after we have got all we wanted, that all our high protestations about loving peace simply means what the French and British protestations meant: that, having hogged everything in sight, we want to be left alone in the enjoyment of it; and that the methods of Japan, Italy, and Germany are necessary to readjust the balance.

But in connection with that it is interesting to notice that Mr. Hull said something else yesterday, too--that, in effect, he warned that, in case of another great war, it is unlikely that the United States can stay out of it. And that warning puts a very different face on things. You can, if you like, make out some case for the notion that the antics of Hitler, for one, have been necessary to make the old allied powers realize that they couldn't go ahead forever starving Germany to death. But if you accept that, and the doctrine that only force counts, isn't it still about time Mr. Hitler hauled up and paid heed to Dr. Hull? With things as they now are, doesn't he stand to gain a lot more in the end by the route which Hull indicates than by risking a war with France, Britain, Russia, and quite likely the United States? A war he has no chance to win?

He who sets up to play the bully to the bitter end had better make sure that he is the stoutest man in sight.

Site Ed. Note: We had pretty well reformed our ways, that is, until March, 2003--when we went from Aces high to Snake Eyes low--in the desert storm. Oh, what a family...