The Charlotte News

Thursday, August 4, 1938

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "Economic Germany" refers itself to those who believe Nazi Germany had the right idea economically, as discussed in "Germany as a Business", July 3, 1938.

Incidentally, we think the editors had best watch their smart replies to such erudite men as Mr. Godwin; they might just wind up dead if they don't. For some Nawth Car-linians, well, they don't cotton to no smawt alecks. (They read quality publications, too--such as the Textile Bulletin.) Like as not they'd have a hangin' if they could, over such smawt tawk; since they can't, they'll just tell some other folks on another coast a bunch of lies to cover up their little bribe-taking schemes in danger of being undone and let them do the hangin' for 'em. That's the style! Bravery. Freedom.

Yessir. Yepper.

They're here alright, the dog days, the mad dog days, the mad dog Earl days, all over again.

We've an idea. Let's play a game. It's called Red Rover.

Mere Amateurs

Maybe those cops in Rock Hill need not be so red in the face as our headline writer had it yesterday. It was funny, to be sure, that they failed to recognize their own license number when a citizen telephoned it in and said that its owners were driving up and down the main drag in such a reckless fashion as to suggest they were drunk--funny that they spent an hour trying to Hawkshaw themselves. Still, better men than they have been known to be absent-minded. And as for the rest of the charge--that they were driving in a wild fashion through the streets--they are not the only cops who behave like that.

We bet you, indeed, that if they came up to watch the Charlotte cops, the only reason they would have to blush would be that they can't do the thing in true big town fashion. Only the day before yesterday we saw police cars screaming through packed and jammed West Fourth Street at a pace that made us dizzier than that man on the seventeenth story ledge, and taking the Church Street corner on two wheels. We bet you the Rock Hill coppers can't do that without smashing somebody instead of only scaring them to death.

Site Ed. Note: It should not escape the Notice of the attentive that Tom Taylor wrote in his own writ another ribbingly humorous play which, they say, played for a thousand nights in Washington during the War Between the States' Rights--until, that is, it bootlessly ended. (If you cannot fully understand that, or its full import, yet, fear not; for it it shall come to you and, then, ye shall be free. See?) (Do you see? See?) (As, candidly, we have reported to you once before, we were in our youth not great students of the comic section, reserving instead our comic interpretation for finding "Lois" in the editorial page. Ah, but there is humorous chestnuts, or two, there, too. Yes, there, maybe most especially, all to be savored on the fires in later time, side by side the other strips, long mustified in the graveyard of all strippers, the City Fathers' cemetery of Independence Square. You do understand all of that, now?)

Now, it seems, everybody's havin' them dreams...Hawkshawing themselves, hen-pecked sheens, flailing around inside televised movieola scenes, issuing primal screams in the dark to sharks unseen...and so we go along, until we join--the Baum Smirch Society...

No Fumble Here

One cause, at least, which we don't believe Militant Mecklenburg is going to fumble (see the communication in our letter column to the right) is that of the proposed Memorial Hospital. The generosity of the board of St. Peter's and the vestries of the Episcopal churches is something for any town anywhere to take pride in, and it furnishes a marvelous example for the rest of us. The $100,000 popular subscription is not yet raised, and we don't want to give anybody the impression that the thing is already done and that it is unnecessary for him to make a contribution. It is necessary that everybody in the town and county give every penny he can possibly spare.

But we think that the evidence already shows that they are going to do exactly that. And we haven't a doubt that when that is accomplished the bond issue will be voted. The opportunity is simply too good to be missed. The health and lives of everyone of us in the city and county, and indeed, in the whole surrounding territory requires imperatively that Charlotte should have such hospital facilities as are proposed in Dr. Walsh's recommendations. And if we don't do it now, we shall have presently to do it anyhow at much greater cost.

But, then, as we say, we are going to do it--now. We are going to have that hospital which, especially with the proposed tie-up with the University, will be adequate to the needs of the city and territory--and excellent proof that the place is not always as thoroughly cantankerous as it sometimes gets credit for being. Turned in your subscription yet?

Dog Days

The sun is in the house of Leo, the Lion now. And nightly Sirius, the dog star, burns white and brilliant, the most magnificent of all the evening lights save only the moon. Long ago the Egyptians took his rising for the cause of the annual flooding of the Nile, which made the richness of that narrow strip of green sandwiched between barren sea and barren desert, and began the dubious thing we call civilization. The Greeks thought he was mighty potent, and a bit baleful, too. And our English fathers thought he ran dogs nuts, and stopped hens from laying. But, ourselves, we don't know, and don't care. All we know is that his rising does somehow usher in the full glory of the silly season, and so gives us excuse to write editorials without having to bother to pretend to think--which we probably couldn't anyhow. Thus:

In London the thermometer read 85, and the bally blighters called it a heat wave and went on a three day Bank Holiday. And some of them proved they took it seriously by coming down with "heat prostration."

In Tennessee Governor Gordon Browning said he was going to send troops into Memphis to keep Boss Crump from hogging an election. A Federal judge told the Governor he can't do that. The Governor said he could, too.

In London Italian delegates to the Universal Congress of Esperanto, the proposed international language, refused to take their seats because there was a representative there from Barcelona in Loyalist Spain.

In Hollywood, Sourpuss Leroy Prinz, film dance director and authority of female pulchritude, looked into 80 college annuals and came up with the news that there are no pretty co-eds anymore.

In New York Father Divine rode down the street in a parade of 1,500 of his followers. "You are God!" the followers shouted to him. Father Divine smiled.

Man in a Box

Consider the case of poor Mr. Shelley, the District Attorney in Harrisburg, Pa.

In his determination to avoid trial and charges of bribery and defrauding the Government of Pennsylvania, Governor George Earle, who maintains that these charges were cooked up by Republican judges for political purposes, has had his stooge Legislature pass a whole series of laws designed to strip the courts of their legitimate powers. And among them is an astounding one which revives the ancient lettres de cachet of the French kings by giving "to the Legislature power to commit to the penitentiary any public officer or private citizen and to hold him there until he answers all questions and turns over all names of witnesses, documents or other evidence he may have."

And under that provision, he has ordered District Attorney Shelley to turn over to his stooge Attorney General all the documents, etc., on which the charges against himself are based. And on the other hand, Judge Paul N. Schaeffer, confronted with the order, has himself issued a counter-order to poor Mr. Shelley not to turn over these documents under any circumstances. You see what that means, of course. If he refuses the Governor's command, he can be sent to the penitentiary indefinitely for that refusal--at least, until the new laws can be held unconstitutional--, and if he obeys the Governor's command, Judge Schaeffer can, and probably will, clap him into the hoosegow indefinitely for contempt of court! In short, poor Mr. Shelley is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

Economic Germany

Those people among us who read somewhere that according to the phoney figures in the Nazi regime, the total German deficit is only about two billion dollars, and pronto leap to the conclusion that life under the Nazis is a better economic bet than life in the United States under the New Deal, might have a careful look at a little Associated Press dispatch buried up inside the newspapers today.

Already in Germany the factory owner is subjected to restrictions and taxes like these. He must make what he is told and how much to do by a committee for the industry, responsible to Berlin, and sell it for what he is told to sell it for. If he fails to do a satisfactory job of running the mill, it can be taken away from him at whatever figure the industry committee fixes. He must hire--and pay--the laborers assigned him whether he thinks he needs them or not. And though those laborers have to work 60 hours a week for small pay, the government takes away from him what it itself judges to be the spread between their productivity under that schedule and the short hours of the old Germany. That, and income taxes which, for the very smallest industry, begin at about 20 per cent and go up far more rapidly than our own, is what the life of a factory owner in Germany is like. And now, quoting the AP dispatch:

Pressed for funds to finance its tremendous public works and armament program, the German Government today boosted corporation taxes for all companies in which income exceeds 100,000 marks (about $40,000) annually. Companies previously paying a 30 per cent corporation tax will be assessed 45 per cent this year and 40 per cent in 1939 and 1940.


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