The Charlotte News

Tuesday, January 3, 1939

SIX EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The Cat being away, the proverbials will play... "A Puzzled Fellow" has Cash slipping out of the objective anonymity of the editorial column to make objection to the paperwork associated with wage and hours limitations.

We shall make special effort to find for you, in this regard, Dave Clark's public pronouncements of Cash as a Communist. That way, if you are in favor of Cash most of the time, you can understand the Cash dark side--his being Red, sanguinarily so, in fact; and, contrariwise, if you are opposed to most of what he says, you can laugh with us heartily and rejoice in the notion, Comrades, that after all, you were Right all along.

Dave, as we have made mention before, liked it like that, probably, over and over again, in fact, inveighing against all the pieces, all the bits and pieces, of anyone who might disagree with his anti-alien view of things.

But, of course, we wholly agree with old Dave. After all, Dave only wished to keep the Martians out of the Southern labor market, those with their disputatious officious intermeddlerism calculated to annoy the deputary will of good old folks like Dave, those who, after all, only favored the little guy over those bad, bad Red unions and their bad, bad Red ways, who, obviously to the benefit of all, as those who gained succor from him, spent his entire life collecting information on Red people, those such as Cash and all of those other Reds, those as Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and Karl Marx, William O. Douglas and Friedrich Engels, Winston Churchill and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, (yeah, those S.O.V.'s, who smoked cigars, both of them, obviously thus Comrades), subversives as, and those who like, Pete Seeger, too, all those subversive poets and singers of songs about subversive topics, such as labor organizations stimulating the practice of collective bargaining--(have we said that already?).

And let's not forget, while about it, as Cash, himself, subliminally communicates to us in his Red, Red, Redness, (just seeking cheap publicity for his Red, Red network, no doubt), John W. Cash and Nannie L. H. Cash, probably the Hed Reds in North Carolina and South Carolina, respectively--(Hamrick, we heard, is Russian, or at least Czech)--all in bed together, of course, by design, to overthrow the good blessings of humble country folk like Dave and his deputariat down yonder in Mawn-roe and such places. Don't that beat all?

Dave preferred the honest way of bargaining. That is, going hat in hand to your employer, sitting down man to man, (unless of course you happen to be a lady), and laying out your case why you believe you deserve a raise, or a break in hours, or better health care, or what not. And if your employer says no, well, there's always another job, that is if you can find one in the midst of a depression, where you can then go with hat in hand, man to man. That was, after all, the only Christian way to do it, not all of this collective, Communist-inspired stuff, after all.

So, we shall give ourselves nineteen days in which to find these no doubt illugubrious pronouncements by Dave exhibiting his most eloquential loquency, at which point we shall be, no doubt, glad all over, just because, it will prove, once for all, we're at the scene.

Incidentally, we have determined that the August 14, 1959 edition of The Shelby Star, wherein appeared the announcement of the death the evening before of that Red Nannie Cash, had on its editorial page, in Drew Pearson's still continuing Washington Merry-Go-Round column, one all about the tough labor bill then pending before Congress, together with a brief history of the rackets committee investigating the Teamster corruption under James Riddle Hoffa--a great American, who only had the widows and orphans in his tender bosom always--, whilst remarking on that McClellan (D-Ark) committee's "bird-dog counsel Bobby Kennedy". Hurumph! Sounds like more Red conspiracy stuff to us.

And in continuance of the musical note of the day before, we reprint the following little filler to the right of the editorial column of this date. (And we didn't read ahead to get there.)

That Basket in Latin

(Baltimore Evening Sun)

The rhyme:

A tisket, a tasket,
A red and yellow basket,
I sent a letter to my mother,
And on the way I lost it,

having lately been converted into a foxtrot tune, is now also available in the Latin version, the translation having been made and sung last week by the Latin students of Tilden Junior High School, Philadelphia, as follows:

Mehercle, niehercle,
Corbula, fusc-et-fiava,
Ad matrem literas misi
Et in via amisi.

Hatty told Matty...

Less Than Convincing

The Associated Press reports that M. Daladier, having landed this morning at Bizerta, "will swing immediately into a series of military, naval, and air reviews counted on to wipe away a doubt that France is ready to fight--if necessary--to keep the tri-color flying over her North African protectorate."

But the unpleasant fact is probably that M. Daladier can do nothing now which will really convince his opponents that France is prepared to fight, short of actually beginning to fight. Last Summer and Fall M. Daladier said over and over again that France was ready to fight if Czechoslovakia were invaded. In the end, he slipped out of that promise on the technicality that Czechoslovakia had voluntarily consented to her dismemberment. But that fools nobody, of course. Czechoslovakia accepted her fate because France made it quite plain that she did not mean to keep her word. And with the object lesson of France's behavior on that occasion still fresh in their memories, the dictators are not likely to be greatly intimidated by M. Daladier's bellicose gestures.

We Are Agin It

Twenty years ago the Rural Police Department was established and for nineteen of those twenty years it was an integral part of the department factional feuds which characterized Mecklenburg politics. In fact, back of the establishment of the department lay County politics. The history of the department reflects the political avengings and rewards of the groups which rule Mecklenburg. Linked with the natural dislike of policemen by virtually everybody that history has done a great deal to destroy confidence in the department.

It is only during the year just ended that the rumors have disappeared and in their stead something approaching respect has made its appearance.

And now, as is customary in good old Mecklenburg, on the eve of the convening of another Legislature, some unnamed person or group is said to be trying to persuade the County Commissioners to sponsor a bill which would abolish the County Civil Service Board and again place the Rural Police Department at the mercy of the hands of the Commissioners, who are themselves debtors to the political factions.

Whether or not the Rural Police Department is being run as well as it might be we frankly don't know. But there is one thing about it every citizen of Mecklenburg does know and that is that the way not to run it is to put it back again in politics.

Not So Expert

Senator Walter George yesterday came out with a statement that most of the laws passed by the New Deal need overhauling and "rationalization." And most unbiased observers will be inclined to agree with him. It is quite true that most of the New Deal measures, many of them designed to make the most sweeping changes in our political and social life, were drawn up on short notice and passed without any close examination into their possible operation and results. Senator George wants to take time now to do the studying and examining that ought to have been done in the first place.

But somehow we can't be too sympathetic with the Senator when he complains, "one great difficulty with many of these laws is that they were not prepared by Congress..."

That ought, indeed, to be true. It is a function of Congress to draw up legislation and pass on it, and that function ought not to be delegated to others. Moreover, it is natural to expect that Congress should have the "wide knowledge and experience" which Senator George lays down as necessary to draw up good legislation. But in point of fact, it is generally not so. No Tommy Corcoran or Ben Cohen ever drew a bill as bungling as those regularly on display in the Congressional Record--from the hands of Congressmen totally unaided and uninfluenced by any of the Brain Trusters.

A Puzzled Fellow

The Editor is away, and so the Associate Editor proposes to write himself an editorial in his own right. For the benefit of Mr. Elmer Andrews & Co., and so that his Boss may stay out of jail, he begins by making solemn deposition that the Publisher hasn't wickedly coerced him into saying what he is about to say. In point of fact, he hasn't seen the Publisher but once since the wage and hour bill was passed, and then only to thank him briefly for a bonus at Christmas. Furthermore, the Associate Editor proposes that he is not by any stretch of the imagination an Economic Royalist. In fact he was bawling in the national prints for all the announced objectives of the New Deal before ever the New Deal was. And Dave Clark has several times so far taken notice of him as to call him a Communist. Maybe Dave was right, too, for the Associate Editor does Actually think that a floor under industrial wages isn't a bad thing.

All the same, the AE is a little sore and more puzzled these days. What he is sore about is that the bookkeeping incident to the Federal Government's making sure that the Publisher doesn't exploit him (who always made a point of not being exploited, anyhow) has made it necessary to set back the end of the work week at The News a whole day, with the result that his check next week is going to be short a day's pay--just when he needs it most. And what he is puzzled about is that, among the numerous forms he has had to fill out in connection with the Government's protective zeal on his behalf, was one in which he had to record that his sire's name was John William Cash and that his mother's was, before she married, Miss Nannie Lutitia Hamrick.

What the AE wants to know is what the heck that has to do with his hours and his pay, and the Publisher's burning zeal to exploit him? To save him, he can't imagine the information serving any purpose save the employment of a lot of clerks to keep track of it--clerks who will naturally appreciate their jobs and dutifully vote for the men who made them for them.

Site Ed. Note: As to the Foxie Press of late, those Foxies and those Miscreant Chanticleers, who insist that they are going to get a judge impeached in Vermont, and that they are going to insure "justice" to the family of the unfortunate little girl (while these same strangers pump for a Supreme Court nominee who condones strip searches of 10-year olds (see Doe v. Groody, (3d Circuit, 2004)--on those facts, meaning that, even assuming the propriety of inclusion in the warrant of the information, based on an anonymous "confidential reliable informant", contained in the supporting affidavit, Judge Alito had to assume the officers executing the warrant would in good faith have believed that the ten-year old daughter of Doe, the alleged drug dealer, would be a customer of her own father and thus likely be secreting methamphetamine on her person in her own home--yes, yes, thanks King George)--just as harmful psychologically, if not more so, for its being conducted under the ægis of police "protection", than the repeated assault by the young man, predatory and ineffably despicable as that, too, is---we say simply, shame on you.

Who do you think you are? God? The whole state legislature, judiciary, and executive of the State of Vermont, rolled into one?

You are encouraging vigilanteism and you shall have blood on your hands if you pump these lunatic fringies, always out there, to act. Think about it, Foxies and Chanticleers.

The judiciary is supposed to have independence to do its job. Are you judges, too? (Certainly, given your salaries, you ought have some expertise besides being script-readers and blabber-mouths to the unerudite booby.)

A judge views, in such cases, probation reports, including a psychological work-up on the person standing for sentencing. Have you read these reports in this case? Have you the experience or expertise to understand them? (Certainly, you ought, given the apparent authority with which you utter your pronouncements, gradually inoculating your millions of minions to the mithridatism which is your province.)

The judge, and only the judge, has the discretion to sentence, within certain limitations established duly by a given state legislature, or Congress in the case of Federal judges--and should be given a free and independent hand in so doing. In fact, if there is any criticism to be made, it is that legislatures, encouraged in the abstract by desires for relative uniformity in sentencing, have gone too far on occasion in tying the hands of judges from responding to the particulars of a given case, whether the particular facts of the crime, the convicted, or the victim, in rendering a sentence. And precisely, that is because, over time, you Foxies and Chanticleers have dutifully felt it your solemn obligation, (to help insure continued mithridatism--not to mention fatted wallets), to step up, crowing, to sensationalize this and that case, here, after the fact of sentencing, so that all the littles out there can start saying, "Oh, of course. Let's lynch this judge and then all the judges--except the nice conservative ones the good Foxies in their little Foxie Hen House, with the Chanticleer a-dooing, tell us we should like, like the man who countenances strip searches of ten-year olds."

You remind us of the Shiite Muslims over there who are despicably interfering with the trial of that idiot, prompting a fair judge to resign his post mid-trial.

In fact, Foxie-Chants, why don't you go over there and cover first-hand that trial, instead, and leave us alone for awhile. Or maybe, with defense attorneys being murdered, you suddenly came down with a bout of the Chicken Flew? After helping to send the troops over there to die, you certainly ought be willing to put your money where your big fat mouths are. But, as usual, you prefer the kliegs in the studio there.

Even if it may bleach some of the yellow from your starched collars, we shall try to educate you a little, as the editorial below recognized in 1939: Parole and probation are no picnics. As we ourselves have heard many times from people assigned to a stern parole or probation officer, they would rather be in lock-up, many of them, than endure the militaristic discipline commensurate with these rigorous regimens, in ostensible freedom, but one which is in fact more regulated, for that relative freedom, than lock-up itself usually is. No fellow inmates with whom to commiserate for one, no one with whom to make plans for future ventures, no one with whom to while away the hours--only work at some menial, minimum wage job, to and from that job to the confines of a little room somewhere, eat, sleep, and back around again. The course is so difficult that only those capable of positive contribution, those who have lost their way and yet have the wherewithal to reach inside themselves and find their way back again somewhat, will correct and make it. Those who falter have their probation or parole revoked and go to jail for the duration of whatever sentence was in the offing initially--probably years in the case at issue out of Vermont.

So hold your Four Horsemen awhile, Chanting Foxies, if you can, and give the system a chance to work. The experiment may pan out--and if so, it would save the taxpayers a huge amount of dough, and prevent, not by lock-up, but by positive contribution to society, the next victim from the same fate as the little girl in the present case. The tragedy, unfortunately, is there, whether the man is alive, dead, in lock-up, or on probation. Only society itself might ameliorate the worst effects of that tragedy already complete, though not complete in what could yet become its worst effects. It is up largely to the parents of the little girl, not to wallow in the despicable act, but to enable the little girl, over time, to come to grips with the notion that it was not her fault or her mark of infamy or soil to her childhood, but rather only that of the man who did the act--and that she remains innocent and, most of all, a child. That the act is a foreign thing, belonging only to the man who did it, guilt and all, not hers.

Of course, we forgot. For rehabilitation and forgiveness to work would be as anathema to our perfect Foxies abounding these days. The Higher Ones, that is, who have never strayed from saintly courses. In fact, shall we start examining ever more closely these human specimens of perfection who regularly purvey to us nightly about how we should be so perfect?

How much do they earn? From whom do they take their orders? Who holds the purse strings? What meetings do they attend? What schools did they attend? What were their grades? Who did they know? What did they do in those schools? Did they ever inhale? Do they eat their vegetables all up? These and many more questions, an inquiring public would like to know--as long as they have now set themselves up as legislature, executive and judiciary all at one, not merely commenting on the news, but actively engaging in trying to warp and change it now, that is not merely offering opinion for the future, but trying in a particular story to get a judge impeached, to get "justice" for a little girl's obviously distraught parents. (Never minding that the convicted rapist will, deservedly, bear some scourge from the act for the rest of his days.)

So what, Foxies, shall we do? Send him to prison for 10 or 20 years, release him back then to society after wasting away behind cold walls, more likely than not then to offend again, with no or at least little psychological help in the meantime--whatever given, quickly neutralized by the environs in which he is accommodated?

Punishment? To whom?

Meanwhile, you Foxies speak of a man who has more justice and fairness in his little finger than you have in your whole "fair and balanced" network of Foxie-Chants, the man who believes in hope, not punitive dissociation from reality, as a "charlatan". Yes, yes. (The man is from South Carolina originally, actually.)

We rather think it you, F-C, who is guilty of mountebankery; so why don't you just move your network south to Mawn-roe, channel 311, where, no doubt, it would be far more at hawme?

By the way, Foxie-Chants, happy MLK Day.

Come to think of it though, Fo-Ch'er, it's all just one Big Red conspiracy. You're Right, as always.

In fact, we think it all came from that there Negro devil music comin' through back there on the radio. We are glad to see you have put a genuine stop to it, too, by occupyin' all the bandwith of the airwaves for your jabbering on Righteous things. In fact, we would never think of doing away with you, for you are, truthfully now, our soul and heart's inspiration.

Convicts and Parole

Most people think of parole as merely a device for extending mercy to prisoners. And the notion that it all adds up simply to "coddling criminals" is still common. But Edwin Gill, Commissioner of Paroles, says in his report for 1938 that the prisoners themselves do not look upon it as a favor--and that the confirmed offenders do their best to avoid being placed under it.

For it does not mean that the offender is turned loose on the public, and left to look out for himself and follow his own course. On the contrary, no prisoner is made eligible for parole until a plan for his rehabilitation is worked out and accepted by the authorities. He must have a job, and a reasonably good chance to fit into the community to which he is sent. And he is not at liberty to change his plans without the consent of parole and public welfare agencies.

Altogether the system seems to be admirably conceived and applied. And, what is the main thing, it works. Out of 611 paroles granted by Governor Hoey only 25 have had to be revoked.

Victory For Spain

The Spanish Government is quite right. It is a victory. The Associated Press reports that the Insurgent forces, which is only a stooge name for the Italian and German forces which are attempting to conquer Spain for Fascism, are winning, but only yard by yard. And the Spanish Government is altogether correct when it reports that as a victory for itself.

The whole history of the war has been the story of the invaders' advance "yard by yard." The invaders, with the usual Fascist flair for propaganda, claim that they are fighting to save religion in Spain. And Spain is one of the most religious nations on earth--that nation in which that lie has as good a chance of success as anywhere on earth. Yet, and for all that, the invaders have been stopped in their every objective. The Spanish people, that is, can't be fooled. And they love their country better than any ideology.

By all the rules they are due to have lost that war long ago, for the invaders have an overwhelming superiority in arms. Nevertheless, the advances have always been "yard by yard." And if they are ever going to win Mussolini, Hitler, France & Co. must take Barcelona. And so long as they advance upon it yard by yard, they haven't much chance.

 


Framed Edition
[Return to Links-Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News--Framed Edition]
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.