The Charlotte News

Monday, April 11, 1938

SIX EDITORIALS

Sunday in the City

For all the gas fumes, smoke, and bang-bang of crumpled fenders yesterday we came up this morning bright and philosophic, prepared to deliver an observation on Beauty, and with considerable pity for the human race.

There we went, lanes and queues of big and little cars piloted by Charlotte's drudging citizenry of the week days, idly and pointlessly cluttering up the highways. Seeking, poor things, escape. Sure--escape from the city, where here and there are few vistas for a man and his family to rest their eyes on. So we wandered around the country, and the women, with that rapacity bred in them, pulled down all the dogwood they could reach, embarrassing their menfolks. Lots of us tramped around Mr. Ivey's tulip garden.

Well, we were seeking a bit of Beauty, that's all, and we're right sorry we had to look so far and bump so aimlessly around the country roads finding it. We forgive the ladies for destroying the dogwood. And we note that, in a city so dull on a Sunday, even a professional ball game is a thing of beauty, for 6,000 of us who took that in.

Its Own Bitter Medicine

In that horrific tax bill passed by the Senate in the last stages of weariness Saturday night, a surprise amendment taxing interest on future Federal bond issues was inserted. Senator Borah proposed it, while Senator Harrison, business's champ, and Senator Barkley, administration spokesman, both opposed it. But it squeezed by 34 to 33.

In conference, where the tax bills passed by the House and Senate now go to be reconciled, the amendment probably will be cut out. There is too much chance that the Government could not sell its bonds, unless it paid a higher interest rate, with the non-taxable feature removed. And this, if you please, is frank admission that for Government indentures to be taxable as are private indentures might jeopardize the Government's credit, that the Government cannot afford to subject itself to the same penalties it imposes on the governed, that taxes are a prime consideration in the marketability of securities. The Government, in fine, balks at taking its own bitter medicine.

Made to Order

Georgia is a state like North Carolina in that it has many counties--160 by our hurried arithmetic. And these counties range in size from mighty Fulton, with its 318,587 inhabitants, to tiny Echols, with its meager population of 2,744. And the people of Georgia, again as in North Carolina, vary in outlook and condition and ways of life according to their environments, which are diverse.

In Georgia, as in North Carolina, statewide prohibition has given way to county option, and the first fifteen Georgia counties to vote went wet, as did the first eighteen counties in North Carolina with a single exception. This is not to say, of course, that Georgia or North Carolina as a whole is wet. To the contrary, previous statewide elections would seem to show that the drys predominate in both states, but less so in Georgia than in North Carolina, and many of the remaining counties will not trouble to vote or will go dry if they do vote.

But it is to say that Georgia, as North Carolina, is a state for which local option was made to order. The counties which are overwhelmingly wet and have no respect for prohibition, may vote the thing out, and the counties which are overwhelmingly dry may keep it. And since local option for states like Georgia and North Carolina is made to order, it fits both the wet districts and dry districts, and is becoming to both.

Pseudo Sheriffs

Give a man a badge and a gun, emblems of authority, turn him loose on the people, and he may not abuse his petty office. But give 77 men deputy sheriff badges and the right to carry guns, and put it down that some of them are certain to impersonate police officers and pretend to authority they don't have.

The story in Sunday's News about the 77 special deputy sheriffs in Mecklenburg County was notable for two things--(1), its thoroughness, and (2), its restraint. We can't add to the first but we can embellish the second a little by reading out loud from between the lines. For instance, one of the special deputies is known to have served "papers" on a woman behind one week with the rent on her cheap little house and to have added $3 in "costs" to the $2 she owed. Special deputies have no right to serve papers.

Then there is the strong likelihood that many of the special deputies for rental agencies are not above flashing their badges on ignorant tenants and saying, "If the rent, plus a dollar (or more) for my services, is not paid by noon tomorrow, out you go." Special deputies have no extraordinary right to collect rents, no right at all to demand fees, no authority whatever to make evictions.

There is the further probability that some of the special deputies are not above acting as collectors of tradesmen's accounts in their spare time, not above flashing their badges to frighten debtors, not above adding a fee for themselves to the amount of the bill proper.

What authority the Board of County Commissioners has over the appointment of special deputies, we don't know; but the board would do itself and everybody else in the County a favor if it would review the commissions already outstanding and determine their necessity and propriety. As for those who have been commissioned only for honorary, half facetious reasons, we think they might beat the board to the draw and resign.

Germany Looks at Adolf

Forty-four and a half-million people voted "Ja." Less than half a million--440,917--voted "Nein." Mr. Hitler has his victory. And so far as that goes, it is perhaps largely an authentic victory. The body of the Austrian people have long favored Anschluss, and three weeks of high-pressure propaganda have perhaps genuinely convinced most of them that Hitler's annexation of the country was all for the best.

Nevertheless, and for all the smallness of the vote against him, Mr. Hitler's victory is not really complete. The astonishing thing, indeed, is that anybody at all can be found to vote against him, with a concentration camp or a broken head in prospect. It took grim courage and fierce loyalty to conviction to do it. And 440,917 men with such courage and such convictions as that constitute a nucleus of opposition that yet may be troublesome for Nazism.

Fulham Looks At Neville

Mr. Neville Chamberlain told the House of Commons the other day that not only all England but all the world had approved his plan of insuring "the peace of the Europe for a generation" by giving the dictators all they asked. It was apparent enough that Mr. Chamberlain hadn't been reading the American newspapers when he made that statement. And it was pretty apparent that he was taking in a lot of territory even with regard to England--seeing that a poll taken by the British Institute of Public Opinion had already indicated that only about twenty per cent of the English people actually favored his scheme.

But it is even more apparent now. For last week they held a by-election in the West Fulham district of London. This West Fulham is a Conservative stronghold. It hasn't been carried by the Labor ticket since 1929. Inhabited by barbers, waiters, taxi-drivers, etc., it has no mass of unemployed. Few of the citizens belong to labor unions; most of them, in fact, dislike labor unions. And the single issue which was argued in this campaign between the Labor candidate and the Conservative candidate was the issue of Mr. Chamberlain's policy.

Well, and the Labor candidate, a woman, won--by a vote of 16,583 as against 15,162. Not a great victory, but a pretty significant one in a district like West Fulham.

 

 


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