The Charlotte News

Tuesday, January 25, 1938

SIX EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The first piece was aptly titled, as the place where it flows was a place, often enough, where the lynched were hidden from view, that is when the lynchers did not want their quarry displayed as warning to others.

Nix cotton's growth per acre or set the weevil afoot? where Robin cayrs his way and leaves it to King Richard, the suot, to task be set to cought hym the aregh Shire Reeve of Notynhhame, wherein we used far away and ago to lyuen, ye Pam; til Nix did his part, and requisitioned their art to his own tale and then, he spun and he spindeld and swiggled his swin, til cought hym there, he was, ye Tim, twistin' by the linn, the veriest croc in the whole brere green o' the din.

The rest of the page is here.

Of Time and the Filibuster

The "solemn covenant" of Southern Senators to continue their filibuster against the Wagner-Van Nuys anti-lynching bill until they win, seems to rest on the presumption that the Senators have unlimited time at their disposal, and that time fights on their side.

But is that really so? It seems a bit doubtful. For, according to the lynching figures for the 1930's, we may expect that at least eight persons will be lynched in the South during the current year. On average, that is to say, of one every 48 1-2 days. To be sure, these lynchings are not always evenly spaced. But it is generally true, we believe, that the first victim is usually salted down well within the first month-and-a-half of the year.

And if a lynching should occur while the filibuster was going on, does anybody believe it would be possible to continue the filibuster? We suspect that not even Southern Senators would have the nerve. From which we conclude that, if the law of averages holds, the Senators have really entered into a "covenant" to run a desperate race with time--that, since twenty-six days of the year have already gone, they have, at the outside, just nineteen and one-half days in which they can still hope to win their fight.

Star-Gazer

There is a tale in Hans Christian Andersen, as all our literate little readers will remember, about a china shepherdess and a china sweep who, tiring of standing eternally on the table and looking at Grandfather's commonplace countenance, climbed up the chimney to have a look at the stars. And having gone up there, they found the view a little dizzying and the air chilly and uncomfortable, and so forthwith climbed down again, glad to take their old post on the table.

Something like this seems to have happened to that California seal who got himself inland three miles toward Hollywood before the cops discovered him bellowing his head off. For on no other hypothesis but the will "for to go and for to see" can the seal's land excursion be explained, since all the sealologists are agreed that a seal can smell salt water many miles, and so could never have turned landward without meaning to do just that. And for what, ladies and gentlemen, should anybody, or any seal, journey toward Hollywood but to see the stars?

But the seal seems to have repented of his aspiring even earlier than the shepherdess and the sweep. He never, as a matter of fact, got to seeing the stars at all, but only the hot dog men and the ice cream men and the cops who came out to meet him. And he thought so poorly on them that he promptly turned around and went back to his salt water as fast as his flippers could take him. Let him be content, hereafter, to sit on a sand bank, with a nice fat fish in his mouth. It is better so, for they do say that Mae West is really a little dumpy and unmistakably middle-aged.

Site Ed. Note: Whether it was the sixth or the seventh, the piece does not disclose. Likewise, whether it surfaced at Hollywood and Vine or elsewhere.

Nix, Nature!

Under the crop control bill now taking shape in conference, the Department of Agriculture expects to cut the acreage planted to cotton to 26,000,000 or 27,000,000 acres. This is in line with the general belief that to reduce the supply of cotton to normalcy after last year's [indiscernible word] crop of 10,748,000 [indiscernible words] bales will be about right. Given the ten-year average production of 179.3 lbs. per acre, 27,000,000 acres will make a crop of about 10,000,000 bales.

But, ah! it wasn't so much excessive acreage planted to cotton that brought about last year's glut; it was favorable growing conditions--yield per acre. Instead of an average of 179.3 lbs., Nature turned to with a disconcerting will and served the cotton farmer to an abundant helping of 264.6 lbs. per acre. And in that yield, the D. of A.'s allotted 27,000,000 acres would produce a crop of 14,300,000 bales--which is to say about 4,000,000 bales too many.

Hence it follows logically and ineluctably that the Department of Agriculture, in addition to inducing the cotton farmers not to plant more than 27,000,000 acres, must somehow persuade Nature to yield exactly no more and no less, 179.4 lbs. per each of those acres. Either that or, if the crop shows signs of running too large, to turn the boll weevil hordes into the fields.

In Defense of Robin

Stories coming out of Asheville have it that lawyers for Bill Payne and Wash Turner plan to put up a "Robin Hood" defense for the pair when they go on trial today.

Well, it is somewhere set down, we recall, that Robin instructed his fellows of the greenwood in this manner:

The hye sheryfe of Notynhhame
Hyme holde in your mynde.

And in their opinion of high sheriffs, we suspect that Robin and Bill and Wash were of the same general mind. Still, that sheriff of Nottingham was an usurping scoundrel. And for the rest, Robin, as the legend has him, was no murderer. He left it for King Richard, riding home from the crusades, to hang even the sheriff of Nottingham. He is described as "a protector of women." He was the greatest archer in the world. "He went hym forthe full merry syngynge." And if he was a robber, yet he robbed only to take from rich villains and give to the honest poor. There is a very strong suspicion among scholars, indeed, that Robin was only an ancient forest elf made to be the spirit of the great heart and open-handed generosity, the righter of legalized wrongs.

And that that character really fits with those of desperate Bill Payne and Wash Turner, we have more than a doubt.

Et Tu, Brute?

Senator Glass has found something in the New Deal, third phase, with which he is in sympathy. The President's casual remarks about bank holding companies started the Senator to thinking and conferring with Henry Morgenthau, and as a result is now drawing up a bill to do away with bank holding companies.

And this, we suppose, is a great satisfaction to the aforesaid bank holding companies. Haven't their proprietors extolled Senator Glass as one of the few remaining statesmen, saying, "Good old Carter. If we just had more men in public life with his sound views..."?

* * * *

Governor Bibb Graves discloses that for six months he has been "working along the line of" public ownership of utilities in Alabama. Nothing has been done yet, and no decisions reached, but the Governor is still holding conferences and still "working along the line of" public ownership.

And this, we suppose, finds the utilities complaisant, even tickled slightly pink. Haven't they contended all along that their main objection to what the Federal Government was doing to them was that it was usurpation of the rights of states? And doesn't it follow that if the states should assert their own rights, the utilities would be bound to cry, "Bravo! Death is sweet at the hands of such a worthy fellow"?

Or what do you think?

Censor in Chicago

Police Commissioner Allman of Chicago has reversed the edict of his censor board banning the showing of a March of Time newsreel, "Inside Nazi Germany," in the moving picture theaters of the Illinois metropolis.

That would be nice of the Commissioner, if only he hadn't explicitly stated that he came to the decision after much weighing of the facts, thereby plainly inferring that he believes that his board had an authentic right to issue such a ban.

And obviously, it hasn't. There is no provision in the Constitution, of course, specifically applying to moving pictures. But it is manifest that the guarantee of the right of freedom of speech and the press was meant to be a guarantee of the right to the unhampered communication of ideas--and that, in logic, such pictures as this one are really only extensions of the spoken word and the printed page.

We know nothing about the picture in the case. It is quite possible that its showing in Chicago, with that city's many thousand voters of German extraction, will bear out the board of censors and stir up ill-feeling; but what of it? Ill-feeling is one of the risks that must necessarily be taken as the price of the free communication of ideas.

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