The Charlotte News
Thursday, August 3, 1939
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: We include the following letter to the editor of this date, for its pithy repartee with the editors.
And, we note in so doing that 66 surfside years away from it, people are still trying to answer these time-universal questions with varying degrees of ingenuity and disingenuity.
Some wind up saying, well, to hell with it, and seek to blow up the whole of the garden, ta-ra-ra-ka-boome-te-ay. Others just find the--well, well, well.
Dear Sir:
With the thermometer hovering in the nineties and the thoughts of readers leaning towards ice cream sodas, chilled watermelons, ocean breezes and mountaintops, the good editor still wonders why he didn't get nary a letter about the library situation. The question was good but the weather was wrong. If he wants to stir our wilted brains out of our Summer lethargy, he must give us some frothy, frivolous subject to write about. For instance, something like: "Should married women flirt on vacations?" "If a beachcomber makes a pass at a woman over forty, should she consider it a compliment or an insult?" "Where would you like to spend your vacation?" "What would you do with a million dollars?" "Should a speech be like a bathing suit, just long enough to be interesting and short enough to cover the subject?" [That's what she said.] "Questions like this would bring a heavy response, but no heavy subjects until September, Mr. Editor please.
It's funny how you can write so much and yet say nothing, but just back from my vacation, sunburned, scatter-brained, busied and distrusted, who am I to snicker at three bucks?
MRS. JOE MILLER
2143 East Fifth Street.
[Madam's suggestions are entirely in order. For next week, unless something of moment intervenes, the question before the house will be, "Should married women flirt (harmlessly) on vacations?" For the rest of this week including Sunday, however, the assigned topic is to write as you please. --Editors, The News.]
And, having taken the long way around ourselves a time or two, especially by way of San Francisco to get to Huntersville, to spell you from the daily press of 1939 Charlotte a month away from learning war had begun in Europe, we offer also the following--done primarily for the benefit not only of writers and poets who prophesy with their pens, but also editors too worried of their skins for fear of being smighted or not alike by someone throwing rocks inearnestly from your winder cork--from the olde master of Missouri, the Missisissippi, and points west, notably the place where the coldest winter he ever spent was the summer bent against the blensched, blent bleoman come whistlin' through that rocky Golden of New Albion as Drake on a pale gale and points of rays, back around to Plymouth, 'gain to save the lost boast of Carolina's coast, after taking that which De Soto's host had gained in swain from Florida to Tennessee as a thundering gaol ghoul offering gyle to the inhabitants, 'til death head found, thence the remnant bound across the Red River and down and back again to the mighty Miss., hiccoughed out its mouth, turned afresh to the murtherland--'cross the wide Oceania.
At least, that's our re-write of his oft-quoted chilly wind aphorism.
(Pardon us. Just following our senior editors' assignments, today, as they took the day off, went to the Coast, and left us in charge.)
So here 'tis:
Journalism In Tennessee
[Written circa 1871]
The editor of the Memphis Avalanche swoops thus mildly down upon a correspondent who posted him as a Radical:--"While he was writing the first word, the middle, dotting his i's, crossing his t's, and punching his period, he knew he was concocting a sentence that was saturated with infamy and reeking with falsehood."--Exchange. |
I was told by the physician that a Southern climate would improve my health, and so I went down to Tennessee, and got a berth on the Morning Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop as associate editor. When I went on duty I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair with his feet on a pine table. There was another pine table in the room and another afflicted chair, and both were half buried under newspapers and scraps and sheets of manuscript. There was a wooden box of sand, sprinkled with cigar stubs and "old soldiers," and a stove with a door hanging by its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black cloth frock-coat on, and white linen pants. His boots were small and neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal-ring, a standing collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief with the ends hanging down. Date of costume about 1848. He was smoking a cigar, and trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he had rumpled his locks a good deal. He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he was concocting a particularly knotty editorial. He told me to take the exchanges and skim through them and write up the "Spirit of the Tennessee Press," condensing into the article all of their contents that seemed of interest.
I wrote as follows:
SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS The editors of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake evidently labor under a misapprehension with regard to the Dallyhack railroad. It is not the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off to one side. On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important points along the line, and consequently can have no desire to slight it. The gentlemen of the Earthquake will, of course, take pleasure in making the correction. John W. Blossom, Esq., the able editor of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, arrived in the city yesterday. He is stopping at the Van Buren House. We observe that our contemporary of the Mud Springs Morning Howl has fallen into the error of supposing that the election of Van Werter is not an established fact, but he will have discovered his mistake before this reminder reaches him, no doubt. He was doubtless misled by incomplete election returns. It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is endeavoring to contract with some New York gentlemen to pave its well-nigh impassable streets with the Nicholson pavement. The Daily Hurrah urges the measure with ability, and seems confident of ultimate success. |
I passed my manuscript over to the chief editor for acceptance, alteration, or destruction. He glanced at it and his face clouded. He ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentous. It was easy to see that something was wrong. Presently he sprang up and said:
"Thunder and lightning! Do you suppose I am going to speak of those cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such gruel as that? Give me the pen!"
I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or plow through another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly. While he was in the midst of his work, somebody shot at him through the open window, and marred the symmetry of my ear.
"Ah," said he, "that is that scoundrel Smith, of the Moral Volcano--he was due yesterday." And he snatched a navy revolver from his belt and fired--Smith dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot spoiled Smith's aim, who was just taking a second chance and he crippled a stranger. It was me. Merely a finger shot off.
Then the chief editor went on with his erasure; and interlineations. Just as he finished them a hand grenade came down the stove-pipe, and the explosion shivered the stove into a thousand fragments. However, it did no further damage, except that a vagrant piece knocked a couple of my teeth out.
"That stove is utterly ruined," said the chief editor.
I said I believed it was.
"Well, no matter--don't want it this kind of weather. I know the man that did it. I'll get him. Now, here is the way this stuff ought to be written."
I took the manuscript. It was scarred with erasures and interlineations till its mother wouldn't have known it if it had had one. It now read as follows:
SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS The inveterate liars of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake are evidently endeavoring to palm off upon a noble and chivalrous people another of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard to that most glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack railroad. The idea that Buzzardville was to be left off at one side originated in their own fulsome brains--or rather in the settlings which they regard as brains. They had better swallow this lie if they want to save their abandoned reptile carcasses the cowhiding they so richly deserve. That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, is down here again sponging at the Van Buren. We observe that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Springs Morning Howl is giving out, with his usual propensity for lying, that Van Werter is not elected. The heaven-born mission of journalism is to disseminate truth; to eradicate error; to educate, refine, and elevate the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better, and holier, and happier; and yet this blackhearted scoundrel degrades his great office persistently to the dissemination of falsehood, calumny, vituperation, and vulgarity. Blathersville wants a Nicholson pavement--it wants a jail and a poorhouse more. The idea of a pavement in a one-horse town composed of two gin-mills, a blacksmith shop, and that mustard-plaster of a newspaper, the Daily Hurrah! The crawling insect, Buckner, who edits the Hurrah, is braying about his business with his customary imbecility, and imagining that he is talking sense. |
"Now that is the way to write--peppery and to the point. Mush-and-milk journalism gives me the fan-tods."
About this time a brick came through the window with a splintering crash, and gave me a considerable of a jolt in the back. I moved out of range --I began to feel in the way.
The chief said, "That was the Colonel, likely. I've been expecting him for two days. He will be up now right away."
He was correct. The Colonel appeared in the door a moment afterward with a dragoon revolver in his hand. He said, "Sir, have I the honor of addressing the poltroon who edits this mangy sheet?"
"You have. Be seated, sir. Be careful of the chair, one of its legs is gone. I believe I have the honor of addressing the putrid liar, Colonel Blatherskite Tecumseh?"
"Right, Sir. I have a little account to settle with you. If you are at leisure we will begin."
"I have an article on the 'Encouraging Progress of Moral and Intellectual Development in America' to finish, but there is no hurry. Begin."
Both pistols rang out their fierce clamor at the same instant. The chief lost a lock of his hair, and the Colonel's bullet ended its career in the fleshy part of my thigh. The Colonel's left shoulder was clipped a little. They fired again. Both missed their men this time, but I got my share, a shot in the arm. At the third fire both gentlemen were wounded slightly, and I had a knuckle chipped. I then said, I believed I would go out and take a walk, as this was a private matter, and I had a delicacy about participating in it further. But both gentlemen begged me to keep my seat, and assured me that I was not in the way.
They then talked about the elections and the crops while they reloaded, and I fell to tying up my wounds. But presently they opened fire again with animation, and every shot took effect--but it is proper to remark that five out of the six fell to my share. The sixth one mortally wounded the Colonel, who remarked, with fine humor, that he would have to say good morning now, as he had business uptown. He then inquired the way to the undertaker's and left.
The chief turned to me and said, "I am expecting company to dinner, and shall have to get ready. It will be a favor to me if you will read proof and attend to the customers."
I winced a little at the idea of attending to the customers, but I was too bewildered by the fusillade that was still ringing in my ears to think of anything to say.
He continued, "Jones will be here at three--cowhide him. Gillespie will call earlier, perhaps--throw him out of the window. Ferguson will be along about four--kill him. That is all for today, I believe. If you have any odd time, you may write a blistering article on the police--give the chief inspector rats. The cowhides are under the table; weapons in the drawer--ammunition there in the corner--lint and bandages up there in the pigeonholes. In case of accident, go to Lancet, the surgeon, downstairs. He advertises--we take it out in trade."
He was gone. I shuddered. At the end of the next three hours I had been through perils so awful that all peace of mind and all cheerfulness were gone from me. Gillespie had called and thrown me out of the window. Jones arrived promptly, and when I got ready to do the cowhiding he took the job off my hands. In an encounter with a stranger, not in the bill of fare, I had lost my scalp. Another stranger, by the name of Thompson, left me a mere wreck and ruin of chaotic rags. And at last, at bay in the corner, and beset by an infuriated mob of editors, blacklegs, politicians, and desperadoes, who raved and swore and flourished their weapons about my head till the air shimmered with glancing flashes of steel, I was in the act of resigning my berth on the paper when the chief arrived, and with him a rabble of charmed and enthusiastic friends. Then ensued a scene of riot and carnage such as no human pen, or steel one either, could describe. People were shot, probed, dismembered, blown up, thrown out of the window. There was a brief tornado of murky blasphemy, with a confused and frantic war-dance glimmering through it, and then all was over. In five minutes there was silence, and the gory chief and I sat alone and surveyed the sanguinary ruin that strewed the floor around us.
He said, "You'll like this place when you get used to it."
I said, "I'll have to get you to excuse me; I think maybe I might write to suit you after a while; as soon as I had had some practice and learned the language I am confident I could. But, to speak the plain truth, that sort of energy of expression has its inconveniences, and a, man is liable to interruption.
"You see that yourself. Vigorous writing is calculated to elevate the public, no doubt, but then I do not like to attract so much attention as it calls forth. I can't write with comfort when I am interrupted so much as I have been to-day. I like this berth well enough, but I don't like to be left here to wait on the customers. The experiences are novel, I grant you, and entertaining, too, after a fashion, but they are not judiciously distributed. A gentleman shoots at you through the window and cripples me; a bombshell comes down the stovepipe for your gratification and sends the stove door down my throat; a friend drops in to swap compliments with you, and freckles me with bullet-holes till my skin won't hold my principles; you go to dinner, and Jones comes with his cowhide, Gillespie throws me out of the window, Thompson tears all my clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my scalp with the easy freedom of an old acquaintance; and in less than five minutes all the blackguards in the country arrive in their war-paint, and proceed to scare the rest of me to death with their tomahawks. Take it altogether, I never had such a spirited time in all my life as I have had to-day. No; I like you, and I like your calm unruffled way of explaining things to the customers, but you see I am not used to it. The Southern heart is too impulsive; Southern hospitality is too lavish with the stranger. The paragraphs which I have written to-day, and into whose cold sentences your masterly hand has infused the fervent spirit of Tennesseean journalism, will wake up another nest of hornets. All that mob of editors will come--and they will come hungry, too, and want somebody for breakfast. I shall have to bid you adieu. I decline to be present at these festivities. I came South for my health, I will go back on the same errand, and suddenly. Tennesseean journalism is too stirring for me."
After which we parted with mutual regret, and I took apartments at the hospital.
Ye be slanderin' with recondite blatherskite, ye hapless Augustan hell-hardy minute-wheel pinion of the Titan deep's midnight slide, then we be doin' this--and till hell itself shall freeze should it be necessary.
Ye dig, ye cold-blanked, yella sheet-sock idoletizer, you?
Long Way Around*
Mr. McCrae's Scheme Is Better Than This One
The plan proposed by John McCrae's committee for reopening the library question seems about the most feasible suggested yet. And whatever their legal authority, the County Commissioners plainly aren't going to order another election, which will cost $4,000, unless they have quite positive proof that the people of the county have decided that they want another chance at the question. And the petition method is about the only way such proof could be developed.
The railway trainmen are probably right when they blame the Legislature for the development of the trouble in the first place. But their proposal that Governor Hoey call together all the interested City and County authorities with the members of the Legislature from such counties does not get very far. A program of library laws clearly ought to be drawn up for the next Legislature, so that this sort of thing will not occur again in the future.
But such a conference, as the Brotherhood proposes, would have no legal power to act. To get to any results from its deliberations, it would be necessary to call the Legislature into special session. And to do that to save Mecklenburg the $4,000 cost of a special election, would be like spending a dollar to save a nickel. Or burning a haystack to find a needle. Or emptying out the bottle so you could fish up the cork. Or reaching Huntersville by way of San Francisco.
The Hatch Bill Message
The Question At Issued Is Finally What States' Rights shall be made to mean
The Residence message on the Hatch Bill yesterday is a pointed criticism of the whole theory of States' Rights as it is now being battled around the country.
Senator Austin, of Vermont, the Republican leader in the fight for this bill, pontificates:
"The sanctity of the ballot has prevailed."
But that speeches full love Takes every. Actually, as the President and first, the bill is at best only a step in the right direction. Federal employees are certainly entitled to protection from coercion my their Federal bosses. The but his same reasoning, so are they entitled to protection from coercion by Congressmen and their state or district machines. And for that matter, so are state employees entitled to protection from coercion my such machines. About these things, however, the Hatch Bill says nothing -- say specifically to make sure that they do not, with an its provisions.
In candor, there is in a doubt that at least some of the dominant motives in the passage of the bill were concerned with other things than the "the sanctity of the ballot." One of them was the will to cripple the Roosevelt forces in the 1940 convention, greatly to strengthen the and tie-Roosevelt forces. The Republicans backed that because they hope for an open split in the Democratic Party -- because in any case, they believe that they can more easily beat and ultra-conservative Democrat. But there was more here, too.
All along, Congressmen have looked with steadily growing jealousy and anchor on the rising power of the executive branch over patronage and loads -- had chased them bitterly under the feeling that here was a vast new vote-barreled being created and at least partly taken out of their hands -- heavier and hotly to get full control of it for themselves. That is one of the cheese things which is lame behind their clamor about States' Rights.
The same sort of thing is illustrated in another field in the case on Pennsylvania.
Up there, in the name of states' Rights, they have passed a "worker get off relief" law. The force people back into private employment? Not at all. The counties are is starting relief projects of their own, entirely separate from Federal relief, all which these workers will be employed and "prevailing wages." What that means that anyone who has any acquaintance with Pennsylvania politics will now. In some it is this: Boodle, all the boodle, for the local politicos.
About the desirability of retaining as much local controls possible -- the desirability of States' Rights as such -- we have no doubt. But States' Rights as the cloak for the right of the local politicos to power over the bureaucracy and to the slag, is even shabbier that was a cloak for slavery. Nobody looks at the gangs which run affairs and most of the states can really believe that there is any prosperity to of good government and them -- or even that they are more trustworthy then the Federal gang.
And approve any genuine concern for "sanctity of the ballot," Congress will have to go much further than it has gone.
That Council's Baby
Only It Shows No Urge To Accept Responsibility
Somewhere down at City Hall a baby is mewling and fretting. Nobody wants it. Judge Frank Sims pitched it back into the Council's lap yesterday, and the Council recoiled and let the unpopular infant lie where it had fallen.
The record seems to show that it is the Council's baby. This is its history.
Judge Sims made some charges about the Police Department that were sensational--sensational in spite of the brevity with which they were touched upon. The Council was shocked, apparently, and demanded, upon immediate insistence of Councilman Baxter and others, that, Judge Sims be required--well, make it requested--to appear and name names.
The stage was set with microphones and the like, which surely the Council would never have permitted to intrude upon its session unless it had so desired, and names were named. Charges were supported with affidavits and the whole town talked of nothing else.
The Council was so impressed by the gravity of Judge Sims' disclosures and his further remarks about the Police Department that it did two things:
1--It proceeded that same session (four members dissenting) to discharge Pittman as Chief of Police.
2--It unanimously ordered the named Chief of Police to file charges against the officers mentioned.
Chief Nolan made a request for legal assistance to prepare the charges and to conduct the case. The request was denied. Subsequently two of the four officers cited were brought before the Civil Service Commission and, in a hearing distinguished by formality of slated procedure and informality of presiding, these two officers were cleared.
We believe all reasonable men will concede that if one side is represented by lawyers, the other side, if it is to make the best of its case, ought likewise be represented by lawyers. As much was clearly demonstrated in this first hearing.
And so Judge Sims, having named names at the Council's insistence and having made available the affidavits he had procured, felt very strongly that he had been led out to the end of a limb and left hanging by the Council's contradictory refusal to assign a lawyer to conduct the case it had itself initiated.
We don't blame him in the slightest, either for not caring to be placed in the position of having given voice to charges only to see them presented without benefit of counsel as a target for the opposing counsel, or for not wanting to go through with a piece of business that the Council undertook wholeheartedly and now seems inclined to trade half-heartedly, or for disliking to expose the makers of his affidavits, some of whom are respectable, to the cross-examination of defense lawyers without benefit of counsel on their own side to advise them of their rights and to object to questions which they do not have to answer.
Site Ed. Note: Don't ye be tellin' the boss, now, but we steppéd out and lettêd the machine do that first writ-up on the Hatch Message and, well, it be botched, we think. So we got it corrected, double-quickly, though not before half the papers went out in the afternoon all confounded and confuzzled. We like our job, so you keep your trap shut and this nice and on the Q.T., now, or we'll be have to be tellin' 'em in the Tower all about your sandy cavorting down there at the beach whilst on your vacation last week. Tsk. Tsk. We seen you.
The Hatch Bill Message
The Question At Issue Is Finally What States' Rights Shall Be Made To Mean
The President's message on the Hatch Bill yesterday is a pointed criticism of the whole theory of States' Rights as it is now being peddled around the country.
Senator Austin, of Vermont, the Republican leader in the fight for this bill, pontificates:
"The sanctity of the ballot has prevailed."
But that speech is full of Pecksniffery. Actually, as the President infers, the bill is at best only a step in the right direction. Federal employees are certainly entitled to protection from coercion by their Federal bosses. But by the same reasoning, so are they entitled to protection from coercion by Congressmen and their state or district machines. And for that matter, so are state employees entitled to protection from coercion by such machines. About these things, however, the Hatch Bill says nothing--save specifically to make sure that they do not come within its provisions.
In candor, there isn't any doubt that at least some of the dominant motives in the passage of this bill were concerned with other things than the "the sanctity of the ballot." One of them was the will to cripple the Roosevelt forces in the 1940 convention, greatly to strengthen the anti-Roosevelt forces. The Republicans backed that because they hope for an open split in the Democratic Party--because in any case, they believe that they can more easily beat an ultra-conservative Democrat. But there was more here, too.
All along, Congressmen have looked with steadily growing jealousy and anger on the rising power of the executive branch over patronage and votes--had chased them bitterly under the feeling that here was a vast new vote-barrel being created and at least partly taken out of their hands--have yearned hotly to get full control of it for themselves. That is one of the chief things which has lain behind their clamor about States' Rights.
The same sort of thing is illustrated in another field in the case of Pennsylvania.
Up there, in the name of States' Rights, they have passed a "work or get off relief" law. To force people back into private employment? Not at all. The counties are starting relief projects of their own, entirely separate from Federal relief, on which these workers will be employed at "prevailing wages." What that means, anyone who has any acquaintance with Pennsylvania politics will know. In sum it is this: Boodle, all the boodle, for the local politicoes.
About the desirability of retaining as much local control as possible--the desirability of States' Rights as such--we have no doubt. But States' Rights as the cloak for the right of the local politicoes to power over the bureaucracy and to the swag, is even shabbier than it was as a cloak for slavery. Nobody who looks at the gangs which run affairs in most of the states can really believe that there is any prospect of good government in them--or even that they are more trustworthy than the Federal gang.
And to prove any genuine concern for "sanctity of the ballot," Congress will have to go much further than it has gone.
Framed Edition
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