Site Ed. Note: "Children's Hour", we confess, we fixed a little, as it started life off the original print of the page as "Childrens' Hour". But, whoever heard of childrens, even for an hour? So we adopt therefore also for it a slightly altered sub: "The Nepotic Editors Fix Up One to Offset The Avunculates' Littoral Transposition Of The Ap.", as we say "Oink!"--but never, ever "oinkle"--all the way home.

Atlantic Coast Line Gets Caught In Petty Practices

The Atlantic Coast Line is probably incapable of blushing, but the green lights on this great railroad system must feel like turning red at the evidence that came out against it in Federal Court.

Five section hands brought suit against the road, claiming that they had been paid less than the minimum wage. The court found that, as a matter of fact, they had, and that the ACL could not fairly put down as wages such items as the cost of the ice in drinking water and the transportation of section hands to their work.

But could the road put down as wages rent deducted for box cars assigned to the workers and their families as residences, which, incidentally, they never accepted. Particularly could it not put down as wages the rent for one non-existent box car which appeared on the records as the company-owned home of one employee with eleven children.

The Wage & Hour Law is a vexation and a nuisance to most business men. It covers too much territory, is badly framed, requires an excessive amount of bookkeeping and cramps initiative. But, obviously, there is a need for it if so large an employer of labor as the Atlantic Coast Line stoops to such devices as these to save a few dollars.

This Choice Of A Convention City Has Its Risks

Philadelphia put up the most jack and so it was inevitable that she should get the Republican convention. All the same, and though John D. M. Hamilton seems blithe enough about it, some of the older heads in the party councils must have been conscious of faint shudders within even as they accepted. For it might well be embarrassing.

Philadelphia is the American city in which the Republicans have had the most completely free hand since the Civil War. And it is also the American city which is the most completely ruined by crooked politics.

Today Philadelphia's debt amounts to more than 25 per cent of the full value of all real estate in the city, and it has astonishing little to show for it. No subways to speak of, few tunnels, poor bridges. Its pavements are falling to pieces, its streets are dirty, its utilities are poor and one of them is in hock.

Worse, the citizenry, groaning under tax burdens, are catching it. In 1938, over 8,000 homes were sold for taxes. And even worse than that, the manufacturers are fleeing the place in a veritable exodus, leaving hundreds of factory buildings empty and making it always necessary to find new sources of revenue. Several years ago the town adopted a special sales tax of its own. And now it has turned to laying a tax of one and one-half per cent on all wages paid in the city, including even those of sailors who happen to get paid off while in the port.

The boys in the convention are naturally going to spout a great deal of oratory about the splendid accomplishments of the Party of Lincoln in the last 80 years, are going to explain at length how they are the only people properly competent to run the country. But it would be hard to find an answer if some $10-a-week fellow, disgruntled over the wage tax, should rise up in the galleries and ask if Philadelphia is to be taken as Exhibit A.

The Uncle Editors Fix Up One To Offset The AP

Out of Raleigh (of all places) by the Associated Press (of all things) comes a funny story about a tame crow, one "Hoppie," that delights to irk the farmers in a nearby township, probably Raleigh. He flies into a field where some fellow is piloting his jarhead, and every time the man behind the plow says "giddap," Hoppie mixes up the mule by screaming his favorite word, which is "whoa."

It reminds us, somehow, of the pig that couldn't say Oink! Now, every little boy and girl who reads the comics knows that all pigs say Oink! just as unpleasant dogs say Gr-gr! But this little pig couldn't. The closest he could come to it was wr-ink, without an exclamation point.

What happened to him is very sad. Although he was a good little pig, and had a curl in his tail, and knew all the tricks that all the other little pigs knew, such as going to market or staying at home, he never, never got his picture in the paper. It wouldn't have looked right. And so he died of humiliation and a broken heart and something wrong with his voice box that wouldn't let him say Oink!

Norway Seeks To Deprive Nazis Of Excuse To Attack

It is an illuminating commentary on the case in Europe that Norway can even threaten to bring England to trial before the League of Nations or some other tribunal for her action in the Altmark case.

Can anybody imagine her doing somewhat the same thing to Germany? Germany, of course, continually violates Norway's rights under international law, as she violates those of all other neutrals on the North Sea--and in the worst possible manner. England is charged with having violated Norwegian territorial waters in order to effect the rescue of several hundred of her seamen from a floating concentration camp. But every week the Nazi submarines sink Norwegian ships without warning, drown Norwegian sailors.

England's offense, at worst, is that of violation of Norway's sovereignty. The German nonsense adds up, not only to a continual violation of sovereignty but also to mass destruction of Norwegian property and a long and growing list of murder of Norwegians (about 100 to date).

Yet Norway growls and thunders at England, threatens her with trial and condemnation. And whispers her protest to Germany in the privacy of the green room, carefully abstains from denunciation or any shadow of threat.

But that, of course, is no key to Norway's sympathies. Norway is perfectly well aware that if Germany wins the war, she stands to be taken over by the Nazis, along with all the other Baltic and North Sea neutrals. However, much she may be irritated by given instances of English action, she undoubtedly wants the Allies to win as a matter of her own self-interest. At the same time she is desperately anxious not to give the Nazis any shadow of excuse for treating her as Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia were treated.

That is the reason for her loud and ostentatious attitude in the Altmark case.

Earl Long Is Probably Less Than Candid Here

Calling out the militia to stand guard over Louisiana's polls today, Governor Earl Long, successor to his brother, the late great rascal Huey, as Kingfish of the Long gang, has to say:

"I've ordered out the militia to preserve peace, law and order... They don't need that Jackson Brigade to intimidate and browbeat the good people of the state, and I won't allow it."

Well, we have no assurance that vigilantism may not in fact be in the air down there. The decent people of Louisiana are plainly sick and tired of the Long gang and its methods, anxious to get rid of it at any cost. James A. Noe's Jackson Brigade is largely made up of war veterans, and war veterans, unfortunately, sometimes show a tendency to run it over the other side.

On the other hand, Senator Noe protests that his 20,000 Jacksonians are armed only with cameras, and propose nothing but to photograph irregularities at the polls. Moreover, we know that in the first primary, in which Long failed to secure a majority of the votes cast, the Long gang moved heaven and earth to make sure that no photographer made a visual record of its thieveries at the ballot box--smashed cameras and beat up newspaper and movie photographers.

Hence, in the absence of positive proof to the contrary, it is permissible to suspect that Earl Long has really called out the militia, not to preserve peace and law and order but to insure the continued hold of the Long gang on power.