The Charlotte News

Thursday, September 1, 1938

SIX EDITORIALS

George's Colors

One thing this purge put on by the President, with notable unsuccess so far, has done, and that is to bring antipathies and convictions into the open. Witness Senator George's declaration that--

"Now that this purge is on, now that we see that this little elimination committee hesitates at nothing, is willing to sacrifice men, willing to use relief for political purposes, willing to corrupt the ballot, willing to destroy free elections--I'm going back and fight in the open for the things that I believe the people of this state ought to have."

Now, in short, that Senator George is compelled by force of circumstances to sail under his own colors alone, he will take on the floor of the Senate the role he intimates he has been taking in the cloakrooms all the time. Somehow, that implied dual behavior doesn't raise Senator George in our esteem.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Up here in our dizzy-high sanctum, [indiscernible words] where a nearsighted person can see six counties and the farthermost reaches of Morrocroft, we sometimes lose track of so mundane a thing as time. That is because the sun is within view from these towers about 22 hours out of every 24--anyhow, it sometimes seems so.

But, withdrawn as we are, there are ways of keeping up with the passage of the days. The calendar is worthless, because in our abstraction with weighty matters we forget to tear off the leaves. But ah! Our creditors don't forget, nor do they delay. The size of the morning's mail, what with fan letters and bills, is a sure reminder that the first of another month has arrived.

And that, in logical though somewhat roundabout sequence, is a reminder that the days left for registering in the hospital bond election are, counting today, exactly three. This afternoon and tomorrow you may have your name taken down by hunting up the registrar for your box at his residence, and on Saturday the books will be at the accustomed polling place. And of course, if you don't register, you can't vote, no matter how commendable your intentions. So you'd better tie a string around your finger.

A Picked Berry

There was a time when the Hon. George Berry of Tennessee was riding the crest of the New Deal wave. A successful business man in his own right and head of the Pressmen's Union, he became actively allied with the Roosevelt cause when he was elected chairman of Labor's Non-Partisan League, a New Dealish outfit. Thence it was but a step to an official connection with the Administration, which he made in the high-sounding capacity of Co-ordinator For Industrial Co-Operation--a sort of caretaker of what was left of the NRA.

When Tennessee's Senator Bachman died, Governor Browning appointed Major Berry to his place. This led to a political alliance between the two and a bitter feud between the Browning-Berry faction and the Crump-McKellar faction. His term expiring, Senator Berry entered the lists to succeed himself. Meanwhile, disclosures of his activity in buying up marble lands in areas to be flooded by TVA had brought his altruism into question.

That and the potency of Boss Crump licked him. Soon he was crying the WPA had done it--the WPA big shots in Tennessee had voted the relief legions against him. To this Harry Hopkins retorted that there was no truth in it, that Senator Berry was only sore because he himself had failed to get his own man in control of WPA in Tennessee.

We have never seen a man's political career go downhill so fast as that of the former chairman of Labor's Non-Partisan League, the former Co-ordinator For Industrial Co-operation and the soon-to-be former Senator of Tennessee.

MAFLO, Where Art Thou?

So Peewee's back--Peewee the mite who is suspected by the police to be nominally the "Robert Taylor" who bought whisky by the thousands of pints from distillers in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Peewee rolled in early this morning in a dilapidated car with a chauffeur who got out and ran when the officers, tipped to be on the lookout for a liquor car, called on him to halt.

It's a funny business. Chief Littlejohn has been searching everywhere for Peewee. His mother has been worried for fear that he was kidnaped. A police court case against Carl Lippard, whom the police suspected of being the manipulator of the Robert Taylor puppet, was nollprossed for lack of evidence which Peewee, be he Robert Taylor, might have supplied.

And Pine Harbor on the river, whose owner, Dick Smith, the police frankly suspected of "having a connection" to the numbers racket, is padlocked, and two days after it was padlocked the police ran in seven Negroes on charges of selling butter 'n' eggs tickets.

But regardless of these minor harassments, liquor selling and the numbers racket--the two major sources of revenue for the corrupt elements in this corrupted community--go on only a little, if any, abated. And their proprietors, whoever they may be, appear to be invulnerable. It's a case for MAFLO, men--the Mecklenburg Association for Law Observance. If the cops can't convict these big shots of crime, maybe MAFLO could convert them.

Young Democrats' Hero

You can tell a lot about an organization by the speakers it invites to address it. For instance, some years ago the Veterans of Foreign Wars had Huey Long. On the way to the convention Huey went by Sands Point and got a black eye in the washroom there; but never mind that now. He told the VFW what they wanted to hear--that Congress ought to loosen up on pensions to veterans.

Bibb Graves, Governor of Alabama, is [indiscernible words] at the convention of the North Carolina Young Democrats week after next, and that--as the orators say--is peculiarly fitting. Bibb's greatest national distinction is "Miss Dixie," the wife he appointed to hold down Hugo Black's seat in the Senate temporarily while Alabama Democrats decided who would occupy it permanently. And how does that apply to the Young Democrats of North Carolina?

There are Lady Young Democrats, aren't there? And a lot of the male Young Democrats have wives, don't they? And the chief end of all Young Democrats of both sexes is to land on some public payroll, isn't it? Then who, pray, would be a more appropriate choice to address the Young Democrats than Bibb? His household was on two payrolls at the same time.

Movies From Washington

The New Deal is considering another moving picture, this time to dramatize unemployment, its causes and effects. With two hits to its credit in The Plow That Broke the Plains and The River, and with young and artistic Pare Lorenz available for the direction, the odds are that Ecce Homo, as it may be called, will go into production before long.

The two previous pictures are noted for their excellence and, by Hollywood's sights, their low cost ($12,000 for The Plow, $50,000 for The River). They have been distributed free by the Government to theaters which asked for them. Dealing with themes of a physical nature, their showing has aroused almost no controversy, though the movie industry has displayed some uneasiness at the mere thought of Government competition, a taste of which the legitimate stage is getting now from the Federal Theater.

Ecce Homo is not likely to be received so quietly. It is one thing to document the common struggle against Nature, something else again when Man seems to be pitted against Man. Everybody knows by now that when you plow up plains, you get dust storms; and that if you denude the forest, you get floods. But nobody knows for sure what causes unemployment or what to do about it. And in presenting its ideas, the New Deal will have a hard time staying clear of propaganda. Cynics are almost sure to say that Ecce Homo is a political advertisement for the New Deal.

 


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