The Charlotte News

Friday, July 14, 1939

FIVE EDITORIALS

Silver Scheme Has Failed And Ought To Be Junked

A silver price of 35 cents an ounce, whatever it may do to the mining industry, certainly has its points mathematically. Any school boy could tell you that with gold bringing a fixed price of $35 an ounce, the ratio between gold and silver is as 100 to 1.

And that is a far cry from the old 16-to-1 slogan of William Jennings Bryan which he swore by as a means a breaking the money trust and assuring prosperity to the people. It's a further cry than ever from the ambition of the silverites in Congress, as expressed in a statutory order to the Treasury to bind the world's silver until the prize hit $1.29 an ounce or until it held a fourth as much (inventoried at $1.29 an ounce) as it held gold.

With silver at 35 cents, that law is obviously an anachronism, relic of a scheme that failed, and ought to be repealed as quickly as the motion can be introduced and passed.

Lawyer Carey Is Plainly Ag'in The Pack Of 'Em

Lawyer Robert Carey, of Newark, N. J., is demanding that the American Bar Association, presently in session at San Francisco, abolish its Bill of Rights Committee because the latter appeared against Boss Hague, of Jersey City, in the hearing of his case before the Supreme Court. Lawyer Carey explains carefully that he has opposed Hague for 25 years. But goes on to say that the "elements" that fought Hague's high-handed suspension of civil rights were "radical." And that he was "in full accord with most of the procedure adopted (by Hague) to keep a lot of radical pink and red agitators from disrupting the industrial and social life" of his state.

All of which is simply to say, of course, that Lawyer Carey is dead against free speech and civil liberties generally. He would deny it vigorously, no doubt. But it is clear enough that the free speech and civil liberties he believes in would apply only to those who share his own views--and Mr. Hitler himself believes in them to that extent. Apply this man's rule that speech which allegedly "disrupts the industrial and social life" of a state must be banned--apply that to its logical conclusion, and you will destroy all social criticism whatever--end exactly where the Nazis have ended. We have said it many times before, but it is worth repeating in a country where more and more people seem inclined to forget it: free speech is either wholly free speech or it is not free speech at all. It must include the right to say what the majority--even every last man but one--thinks damnable, or it is only a name and a sounding brass. And the same thing, with the necessary changes, applies also to every other civil liberty.

Congress "Can't Find Time" To Do The Disagreeable

It's a politician's Utopia, mates, the way the country is being run in Washington these New Dealing days. Hark ye! The Senate has approved amendments to the Social Security Act which reduces old age insurance taxes, or at least postponed a schedule rise, and increase the benefits.

That is a far more wonderful scheme than Nature's which is based on the law of inevitable consequence.

Note, too, that both houses of Congress have proceeded to enact this new Utopian Social Security legislation, some of which was broached only a couple of months ago, with what amounts to dispatch--in the Congressional manner of action, anyhow. But at about the same time Farmer Bob Doughton was announcing that the Ways & Means Committee had been forced to pigeonhole the President's proposal to tax the future issues of Government bonds. There just wasn't enough time to go into that this session, Mr. Doughton explained.

Oh yeah? It was away back in April 1938 that the President called for this distasteful job to be done. He renewed his request in January of this year. Treasury experts spent days before the Ways & Means Committee advocating the legislation and stressing its importance. But the boys couldn't get to it. They were busy lowering taxes and increasing appropriations.

He Appears Invulnerable; Obligations Due Pittman

In order that the people of the city may have as trustworthy an understanding as possible of the police situation, and not be misled by pregnant published reports which cite no authority, we may say there is nothing to show that the Council's dismissal of Chief Pittman was calculated, directly or indirectly, to be a means of getting at Chief Littlejohn. There are two or three Councilmen, to be sure, who would like nothing better than to see the Chief of Detectives meet the same fate as the Chief of Police. But there is this vast difference--that whereas Chief Pittman was vulnerable to the charge of inefficiency, Chief Littlejohn is not. And he has potent protagonists.

We think Chief Littlejohn may be safely dismissed, but from mind, not from the Police Department.

And as to Mr. Pittman's civil service status and the preservation of his pension rights, again we believe that the very Council which has let him out will do all within its power to see that a good officer is not penalized unduly and that the fruits of a quarter-century of service are not denied him. Any other attitude would be unworthy and would indicate that the majority faction on the Council in firing the Chief was animated by sheer malice, which we do not believe to have been the case.

Hitler Strikes Hard In His New Alliance

The formation of the Little Axis of Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria is a Nazi coup of the first order. In the first place, it surrounds Rumania with enemies on three sides, north, west, and south. Between Slovakia and these nations of the new alliance, King Carol's country is now held formally in Nazi jaws. Again, it takes the Nazi power through to the Black Sea, which places it in position to strike both Russia and Turkey by water. More still, it brings the Nazi power up against Greece on two sides, and puts it in position not only to intimidate that country but to reach the Mediterranean by the conquest of only a very narrow strip of territory. And by token of all these things, it, of course, enormously weakens the Eastern Front which England and France have been precariously building up--may cause Poland to think again before she decides to fight for Danzig, may end by sending Rumania and Greece into the Nazi camp, and at least neutralizing Turkey: is almost certain to do so unless Russia can be quickly brought into the English-French alliance.

But there is even more to that than this. We mean what is suggested in a remark in the AP dispatch from Belgrade yesterday, to the effect that:

The fact is that the Fascists already show signs of weakening. Opinion in Italy is represented by the correspondents as being bitterly opposed to going to war for Germany--as being bitterly suspicious of Germany as Italy's ultimate most deadly enemy.

Signor Mussolini himself has kept absolutely still in the Danzig row--plainly has no stomach for a world war over the matter. And in fact, leading Fascists are reported to have said in private that Albania was taken primarily, not as a threat to England but to head off Hitler from the Balkans. If so, the present coup has undone all that, and placed Mussolini on the spot.