Denso itn INK SLINGS. — Abraham Lincoln said: “Prohibi- | ‘tion strikes a blow at the very prin- | «ciples on which our government was founded.” —Speaking of Mr. Hoover, Senator Borah said. “There is one individual whom he does not know exists in this country, and that is the taxpayer!” —Senator John J. Blaine, Republi- can of Wisconsin, said: “In 1920 Mr. Hoover asked for and was willing to accept the nomination for President on the Democratic ticket. —Now that the country has gone so perfectly dry the ladies of the W. C. T. U., probably see no further use for “Miss Mollie” Petrikin’s temper- ance hall and are planning to convert it into an apartment house. —And Mr. Hoover points with pride to all the rottenness that has been uncovered in government in Washington during the last seven years. Don’t say he doesn’t, because, if you do, we’ll know you didn’t read his acceptance speech. —Really, the Hon. Holmes is hav- ing such a fine time tearing around over the country telling people that he ought to have a third term that ‘we haven’t the heart to start punec- turing his tires this week. Perhaps by next week, if they're still standing up, we'll take a few shots at them. —We're glad that the country is as near dry as it is, but we can’t resist the urge to ask what has become »f the gentlemen who assured us that there would be no use for jails after the Volstead act got operating. Pos- sibly they are out hunting vacant rooms to relieve Sheriff Dunlap’s over crowded boarding house. —If you haven’t joined the ranks of Y. supporters you didn’t catch the significance of that parade of youth, last Friday night. As they marched | hopefully under the banners beseech- ing all to help preserve the place where they spend so many hours in Christian atmosphere and wholesome activity we wondered where they would be if they hadn’t the Y to go to. —Farmers are no longer being fool- ed by the claim that a tariff benefits them. They are coming to know that tariff is a tax imposed on a commod- ity, grown or manufactured in some other country, that is imported into this country. The farmer knows that this country grows more wheat than it can consume. In consequence, it exports wheat, instead of importing it and a tariff doesn’t affect the price by a single cent. —Matthew Patterson, Member of the State Legislature and leader of the Republican organization in the nineteenth ward of Philadelphia, is under: fifteen thousand dollars bail for his appearance at court to answer charges for sharing in the liquor graft collected by police of that city. ‘Of course Patterson won't be tried be- fore November so that he will have freedom to turn in his ward for Hoov- er. —Of course a man’s religion doesn’t fit or unfit him for public of- fice, but since some think that Al Smith’s does we want to ask them what they’ve got to say about Her- bert having been married by a Roman Catholic. Smith is a Catholic just like you are what you are or we are what we are. He was born that way. Hoover was born a Quaker, but when he came to take the most momentous step in his life he didn’t hesitate to let a Catholic seal the bargain for him. —The Berwick ministerial associa- tion has set November 4 as a day of special prayer for the defeat of Smith. Smith might be defeated, but it won’t be in answer to any such misguided petitioning. If the good Lord had wanted to mix politics with religion he would have answered the prayers that went up all over the country for ‘Smith’s defeat at Houston. Then his politico-servants might have been working for Him, during the four months of the campaign, instead of for the Republican party. —A desperate effort is being made to fool the country into thinking it is prosperous. The fact that gam- blers in the stock market are making ‘millions doesn’t furnish money for Centre county farmers to buy their seed wheat with. Henry Ford and John D. Rockerfeller probably need steam shovels to handle the coin that is rolling into their coffers, but labor around here needs a microscope to ‘see what’s in its envelope at the end of a hard week’s work—if it is lucky enough to get continuous employment for six days. —To the unknown person who has been mailing us marked copies of “The Christian Witness,” “The Voice” and the “Pentecostal Herald” we want to say this: Don’t send any more. Doubtless there is lots of good read- ing in the publications, but we haven’t time to pick it out from among the feeble political essays they contain. Besides, we don’t believe that Dr. H. C. Morrison, Mrs. Morrison, G. A. Mec- Laughlin or John Paul, who are the editors of these publications, know as much about the things they are at- tempting to write about as we do. We are not being boastful. We are only stating a fact when we say that be- cause one happens to be called to edit a church paper it doesn’t follow that he or she is either an intellectual giant or a spiritual paragon. STATE RIGHTS AND FEDERAL UNION. VOL. 73. Governor Smith’s Western Tour. ! Governor Smith’s tour of the West has been a continuous ovation. His first speech was delivered at Omaha and his theme was farm relief. He met with enthusiastic approval of the people of that section. Senator : Norris, of that State, appraised it as “fine.” “Men who believe in the theory of the McNary-Haugen bill,” the Nebraska Senator continued, “should be satisfied with the Omaha speech of Governor Smith.” His Okla- homa speech was largely devoted :o | religious intolerance and the evil of the whispering campaign. He strip- ped the mask from the Klansmen in one of their strongholds and exposed the hypocrisy of the pretense that Tammany is an issue in the campaign. Last Saturday evening he address- ed an immense and enthusiastic audi- | ence in Denver, Colorado, on the men- ‘ace of the water-power trust. “The | benefit of the development of water ' power,” he declared, “should accrue to i | the people themselves,” and chargad that the “inaction on the part of the | Federal government, the silence of | the candidate and the meaningless plank of the Republican platform in- | dicates a sympathy with the wide- | spread propaganda against public ‘ownership spread throughout the i country by an organization known as ! the joint committee of the National Electric associations.” Most of the | officers of that organization i formerly associated officially with Mr. | Hoover. i But it was at Helena, Montana, the | {home of Senator Walsh who exposed the oil scandals, that Governor Smita struck the true keynote of the cam- Republican managers were permitted {to get away with the pretense that | the party had no responsibility for the {crimes of the period since Harding | became President. In his speech of | acceptance, however, Mr. Hoover | clearly dispelled this notion by his | statement that “the record of the (last seven and a half years constitute a period of rare courage, leadership and constructive action. Never has a political party been able to look back upon a similar period with more sat- isfaction.” That fixes the responsi- bility. . i, ks And for what is the Republican party responsible during that period? The leasing of the naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming and Elk Hill, California, to oil speculators who bribed a member of the Harding cab- inet and other officials of the govern- stowed upon them. The late Presi- dent Roosevelt said “the preservation of a fuel oil reserve is essential to the very life and future existence of the navy,” and Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy during the World war said, “any man who would permit the oil reserves of the navy to be tapped is risking the very nation- al existence of the United States. It is outrageous and wicked. Without plenty of oil for future emergency our naval vessels would be as useless as a painted ship on a painted ocean.” While the conspiracy to rob the government of this essential element in its defensive equipment was in pro- cess of organization Secretary Hoov- er was fully informed concerning it. An oil operator who desired to avail himself of the opportunity to reap the immense profits promised wrote to Mr. Hoover protesting against the secret methods and asking for open competition. But he got no comfort from the Secretary of Commerce. Mr. Hoover forwarded his letter to Secretary of Interior Fall, the head of the conspiracy, and told him to make whatever reply he liked. There is no record of Mr. Fall’s action in the matter but the secret negotiations were continued and the corrupt deal consummated. The iniquities constantly in pro- gress in the Department of Justice where Attorney General Daugherty was outraging every principle of law and justice, the crimes of Colonel Forbes, director of the Veterans’ bu- reau, and those of the custodian of alien property, must have come :o the eyes and ears of Mr. Hoover, for they were common gossip of the Cap- ital and of the country for months. But he made no protest and even now claims they were incidents of which the Republican party is and should be proud. And he asks the people :f the United States to register approval of them by electing him President un- der promise to continue the policias of Presidents Harding and Coolidge. ——If Tom Cunningham had “told the truth” and “the whole truth” %o the Senate Slush Fund committee dis- trict attorney Monahan would know where much of the graft went. ——Governor Fisher sets the pace for macing operations by giving four per cent of his salary instead of the i ligious: intolerance stopped they o + ment and the party for the favor be- | Whispering Lies and Intolerance. Republican campaign managers, realizing that the “whispering cam- paign” is likely to prove a boom- erang, are trying to shift the respons- ibility for it to the Democrais. Chairman Work pretends to deplore such methods of campaigning and the Republican press of the country join in a chorus of approval of his ami- able protest. As a matter of fact no scandalous charges have been made by Demacratic leaders or newspapers against the Republican candidate for President. Previous to his nomina- tion Senator Curtis, now his running mate on the Republican ticket, Sen- ator Watson and other Republican leaders accused Mr. Hoover of var- ious moral, mental and political de- linquences, but no Democrats have done so. On the other hand charges against Governor Smith have been whispered into the campaign from the begin- ning. One woman of New York State is said to have written to a woman in West Virginia that Governor Smith was so drunk at the New York State fair that he had to be helped to his feet when called on to speak. An in- vestigation, promptly instituted by Governor Smith, proved that no such letter had been written or else that it was a deliberate and malicious lie. Other charges of immorality or pro- moting immorality against the Dem- same and apparently under full sanc- tion of the Republican campaign man- agers. The iniquity of such a system of campaigning is freely admitted by his speech of acceptance, expressed abhorrence of religious intolerance. But the whispering and intolerance continues and the source of it seems to be a Ku Klux Klan branch of the Republican organization, maintained lican National committee. The head of is a paper “Colonel” named Horace A. Mann, of Tennessee, who holds se- Work and Hoover want the whisper- ing campaign or the campaign of re- do so” by dismissing Mr. Mann a muzzling Mrs. Willebrandt. ——The chairman of the Republi- can State committee is working over time to persuade himself that Hoover will have the usual majority in Penn- sylivania. es | Hoover’s Farm Relief Futile. Mr. Hoover’s scheme for farm re- lief by tariff taxation has not had a persuasive influence on the minds of those most concerned in the subject. The Detroit News, on the fringe of | the “wheat belt,” expresses the senti- | ment of the intelligent wheat growers when it says “there is today a tariff of 42 cents a bushel on wheat—but while the price of September wheat is $1.08 in Chicago, it is not $1.50 in Winnepeg, but $1.11. The tariff shuts | out Canadian wheat but it does not | increase American wheat prices. If: it were $1.00 a bushel it would accomplish no more than it does." There is no relief in a higher tariff.” The price of wheat is fixed | by the market in which the surplus is | disposed of. | It is estimated that the bumper crop of this year will create a wheat ! surplus of upward of 200,000,000 bushels. That is to say, after the do- | mestic markets have absorbed all they | can hope to dispose of for home con- i sumption there will remain in the | hands of the growers or the storage houses that vast quantity which must be disposed of abroad. This surplus comes into competition with the sur- plusses of Australia and Argentina in the world market at Liverpool. If there had been short crops in other wheat producing countries, the price at Liverpool would be high because European demands must be supplied from those sources. With an excess supply at Liverpool the vendors must | take what they can get and be thank- ful that it isn’t less. i Tariff taxation can be beneficial only | on commodities of which the domestic | market absorbs all or nearly all the product. But even in such cases the | advantage is limited to few, compara- tively speaking, for it increases the cost tothe consumers without com- pensatory benefits. Tariff mongers “kid” themselves, and try to make consumers believe that it raises wages to a high level and thus contributes to prosperity. But the records show that wages are in no respect influenc- ed by tariff legislation. Even the in- dustries most favored by tariff tax- ation buy labor in open markets and at the lowest rate possible to obtain it. At present the highly protected traditional three. cotton and woolen mills are not pay- in ing living wages. BELLEFONTE. PA.. SEPTEMBER 28. 1928. Political Corruption in Pittsburgh. The taking of testimony in the Wil- son-Vare Senatorial contest, so far as the contestant is concerned, ended in Washington on Tuesday of last week. The Senate sub-committee will sit in Philadelphia on October 1st to take testimony in behalf of Mr. Vare and later in Pittsburgh for the same pur- pose. It has been announced, how- ever, “that Vare will not attempt «n affirmative defense against the nu- merous allegations of fraud and cor- ruption in 1926 State-wide election, but will confine himself to contradiction of testimony already put into the rec- ord by the Wilson side.” It is diffi- cult to imagine what the numerous witnesses subpoenaed by Vare are for under the circumstances. But the closing session of the com- mittee, in Washington, was interest- ing at least. The last witness was C. C. McGovern, of Pittsburgh, minority member of the Allegheny county Board of Commissioners, elected as an independent in 1927. McGovern stated that “nine of the fourteen com- mon pleas judges of the Allegheny county court benefitted by frauds committed in the 1927 primary elec- tion.” The Mellon machine had nam- ed a slate and the independent vot- ers of the party set up a ticket. Both sides adopted fraudulent methods but the machine was most successful and won the majority of candidates. That were ; ocratic candidate have been proven having been a purely Republican con- | equally false, but they persist just the test it probably made little difference to the public which won. But the evidence revealed the tem- per as well as the purpose of the Mel- lon machine. It proved that the Mellons, though new in politics, have i paign. In the campaign of 1924 the | chairman Work, and Mr. Hoover, in a clear understanding of the salient features of the game. Control of the courts is essential toa perfect part- nership between politics and crime and the Pittsburgh machine did its best to acquire that advantage. That it only succeeded in part is fortunate ‘and supposedly financed by the Repub- for the public and may account, in some measure at least, for the with- | this branch of the Republican machine drawal of former chairman Mellon from active leadership. His organi- zation had the money and the mater- i cret conferences with Mr. Hoover. If ials to win and failure to make a com- plete job must have been humiliating as well as disappointing. It made a sad ending of a brief effort. ——Forcast of the election leaves the result in doubt but gives Smith a shade of advantage. It gives him 147 electors sure against 126. That “is not as deep as a well nor as wide as a church door,” but if it is main- tained it will be enough. ——A straw vote favoring Smith in Philadelphia doesn’t guarantee that he will carry that city in Novem- ber, but it indicates a sufficient de- crease of the corrupt majority there to enable him to carry Pennsylvania. ——Unless the people of the Unit- ed States have taken leave of their : senses the election of the next Presi- dent will be based upon more import- ant questions than the church attend- ed by the candidates. —Great guns! We just realized that Thanksgiving will be on us in two months and then Christmas and then we'll start counting the days un- til the fifteenth of April. ——Billy Sunday would be doing a great favor to Mayor Mackey if he would shift the cleaning up process away from the district attorney. attorney. ——DPhiladelphia celebrated “Con- stitution day” with great enthusiasm on Monday. The gangsters and racketeers obligingly “laid off” for the day. —The old and disreputable sys- tem of macing State officials for cam- paign purposes, abandoned during the Pinchot administration, has been re- sumed. ——Mr. Hoover seems to have had a surprisingly close affinity with wat- er power magnates. “Birds of a feather flock together.” ——Senator Curtis, Republican candidate for Vice President, contin- ues to “pin his faith” on an increased tariff tax on rutabagas. ——Evidence multiplies that relig- ious bigotry rather than prohibition fanaticism keeps up the “whispering campaign.” m—————r eens. ——Gene Tunney seems to be as lucky in love as in the fighting game. Polly Lauder is an all-right girl, all right. ——A survey shows that there are more saloons in operation now than before the Volstead law was enacted. NO. 38. | Governor Smith and the Oath of Office. From the Philadelphia Record. Governor Smith is described by his opponents as “wringing wet.” Trans- lated, this means that he believes in temperance, but not in prohibition. And because he is frank enough to say that if elected he will advocate modification by legal processes of the Volstead act, the deduction is drawn that Smith as President would coun- tenance disregard for the Constitu- tion and the law. This deduction is based on the as- sumption that no Executive can be depended upon to enforce a law of which he disapproves. But it leayes out of account Alfred E. Smith’s Fharactery training and written rec- ord. To begin with, Governor Smith has a rather uncommon regard for the sanctity of an oath. In his accept- ance speech he emphasized the fact that when sworn faithfully to exe- cute the laws and preserve the Con- stitution of his country he may be depended upon to “live up to that oath to the last degree.” Particular- izing, he added: “I shall to the very limit execute the pledge of our plat- form ‘to make an honest endeavor ta enforce the Eighteenth amendment and all other provisions of the Fed- eral Constitution and all laws en- acted pursuant thereto.” These might be regarded as mere- ly fine words if they stood unsupport- ed. But they happen to be supported by Smith’s record in four terms of the New York Governorship. His hold upon the people of his State is not due wholly to his advocacy of con- structive legislation and his outstand- ing executive ability. It is traceable in part to the fact that he keeps his word. What he promises he per- forms. His worst enemies will not challenge that assertion. It is possible that a great many wets share the belief of a great many drys that a Smith Administration would mean a further let-down in en- forcement work, the result of which is a national scandal. Holders of that opinion wet, or dry, are deceiy- ing themselves. Smith, as President, could not perform the impossible feat of drying up America. But he could, and would, root corruption out of the public service and sever the connec- tions between the bootleggers and Washington. It is noteworthy that in his accept- ance speech Governor Smith put his finger at once upon the cancerous spot in the present systen~ the statement of a former Republican prohibition administrator that “three fourths of the dry agents were polit- ical ward heelers named by politi- cians without regard to Civil Service laws.” Such conditions, the Gover- nor said, “cannot and will not exist under any administration presided over by me.” Whether the. country does or does not desire to modify the Volstead act —a question to be decided, not by the next President, but by the next Con- gress—it should not entrust the ad- ministration of existing law to the party under whose auspices it has been flouted. It might be well to at- tempt to restore respect for law by putting responsibility into the hands of a man whose regard for the oath of office is second to nobody’s and whose superior initiative and execu- tive ability give promise of results. A total of 7517 visits for ail- ments were made to the dispensary , of the Pennsylvania State College in , the last academic year. Perils of Pedestrians. From the Houston (Tex.) Post-Dispatch. If walking were not such a hazard these would be wonderful days in which to walk to and from your place of business. It is not laziness which causes a man to use his car for go- ing even the shorter distances, but ‘the danger of being run down and having his wife marry again on the life insurance on which he has toil- ed so hard to keep up the premiums. At every corner one must look four ways, and then make a run for it, lest some car which was not in his line of vision at the start come hurtling out of nowhere and knock him some- where. In the course of time it will be necessary to establish pedestrian paths, even as bridle paths are main- tained now. And if the air-flivver be- comes what it promises—or threatens —to become, those ways will have to be subways. Politics and Wheat Prices. From the New York Times. The Republican party will certain- ly not possess this year the excep- tional advantage which it derived from the harvest accidents of 1924, and the probability is that, with wheat selling virtually at pre-war prices, the platform declarations on “farm relief” and the attitude of the candidates toward it will play an in- creasingly important part in the po- litical wheat-growing communities. Their outspoken, dissatisfaction with the Republican party’s attitude and their gratification at the Houston platform indicate which side ought to be helped by that phase of the agri- cultural situation. ——Joe Armstrong, of Pittsburgh, is so reckless in speech that the av- erage person will accept Mr. Beidle- ‘man’s word against Armstrong's oath. #Te rited SPAWLS FROM THE KEYSTONE. —Mahlon N. Haines, owner of the only { buffalo in York county, announces that he ! will kill the beast and sell the meat, the proceeds to go toward the Visiting Nurses | Association. The nurses hope to buy an | automobile with the proceeds. —Because of the heavy potato crop im ; upper Berks and lower Lehigh county, the Lehigh potato belt, a week’s special vacation has been ordered in some of the township's schools to enable children to belp their parents pick potatoes. ; —Guy W. Brown, former State Senator, banker and church treasurer of Fayette City, Pa., was indicted by a federal grand jury at Erie, last Friday, on 33 counts listed in three true bills which charged the embezzlement of funds and bonds amounting to $137,596.28. —Having traveled 423.1 miles ip Blair county’s first balloon race which started from the Altoona speedway Labor day, Captain Harry E. Honeywell, St. Louis, was on Tuesday named winner of the event. His distance was scaled by the Urited States Geological survey. —A trail of powder leading to six sticks of dynamite concealed under a chicken coop, discovered after a fire swept the J. B. Esch garage, at Indiana, and damaged the residence of Mrs. Rut Kukle, caused State and borough authorities to make an investigation. The firse damage amount- ed to $25,000. Nine passenger automobiles aud three trucks were destroyed. —The Blaw Knox company of Pitts- burgh, has been awarded by the State Highway Department the contract for erecting 23 steel storage buildings at var- ious points in the State. The contract price is $49,328. The buildings are to be used for the storage of road building and snow removal equipment. Most of the structures are to be 128 feet long and 40 feet wide. —According to papers filed in court at Scranton, by John Stanczyk, a grocer, his wife's love has been stolen by D. H. Abel, a drayman. The deserted mate thinks the drayman should pay him $50,000 damages and has brought action to recover that amount. Among other things, the hus- band claims the loss of his wife caused him such mental anguish that he neglect- ed his business. —Nick Kallas, of Harrisburg, was ar- rested hy a detective of the city of Read- ing at the point of a gun for smashing a window in a jewelry store and taking ar- ticles valued at $655. When Kallas was arrested his pockets were filled with watches, Reading police say. He had made a similar attempt to rob another jewelry store nearby. A city detective observed him in his work. —Donald Jones, Michael Mollick and Michael Markoni, all of Hazleton, were held in $1000 bail each by Alderman Ogrediak, charged with having robbed Michael Burns, also of Hazleton. It is claimed that when Burns was taken sick in a hotel there, they offered to escort him home. but instead beat him up, took $75 from him and threw him into the brush where he was helpless all night. —Awakened by scraping noises in the street, Wallace R. Cutter, owner of the Fairmount hotel, at Sunbury, looked from a window and saw three men loading his 600-pound safe into a truck. Pajama- clad, he ran downstairs, instead of call- ing the police, and attacked the men sin- gle-handed. They jumped into the truck and escaped, leaving the safe. One of the men dropped a small wallet, in which was a card bearing the inscription “honesty is the best policy.” —Mrs. Harry Siegel, wife of a promi- nent Lewistown attorney, received a frac- ture of the skull at the Birch Hill golf club, Burnham, when accidentally struck by a golf club in the hands of her hus- band, last Saturday. Intense interest was manifested in the game and Mrs. Seigel stepped behind her husband, receiving the force of the stroke as it swung over his shoulder. An operation was performed at Lewistown hospital, where the authori- ties say she is recovering. —The record for having traveled the longest distance to enter as a freshman this fall in the agricultural school at Penn State goes to a 19-year-old boy from Val- lenai, Chile, South America. The youth, William Redie Mille, said he selected Penn State because it had been recommended to him in England where he received his pre- paratory school education. Mille express- ed great surprise when he was shown Jessie, Penn State’s famous cow with a window in it’s side which is used for vit- amin experimentation. —Boyd King, and his son, Boyd King, Jr., 10 years old, of Colona, eight miles from Lock Haven, is in the Lock Haven hospital following an auto- mobile crash at the Standing Fishing Creek bridge. King, taking his son and a 15-year-old daughter for a ride, crashed into an abutment at a one-way bridge on his way home about 7 o'clock Sunday night, completely demolishing the car and throwing the three occupants out. King suffered an injury to the hip, several frac- tured ribs and possible internal injuries. The boy has a possible fractured skull. The girl, although badly shaken up, es- ceped with minor injuries. —Residents of Cranberry township, Ven- ango county, in which 18-year-old Love- da Boyle, auburn-haired hitch-hiker, re- sided, are ready to raise a fund to help in her defense, if necessary, on the charge of murder. The girl is now in Akron, O., where she has been held for action of the grand jury on a charge of shooting Robert McCormick, 31, an automobile salesman, early on the morning of September 14, She has declared that she shot in self-defense, and her reputation is such in Cranberry township that residents of that territory fully believe her story. Loveda Boyle made a favorable impression during the several days she was held in jail at Franklin, Pa. —Clearfield county authorities are wait- ing for the result of a fingerprint expert's examinations of a rifle to help them de- cide whether or not a murder was com- mitted over in the Bailey Settlement of Pike township on Sunday evening when James Kragle was shot through the head and killed. Kragle’s dead body was found at his home on Sunday night at 9 o'clock. A high-powered rifle, found near the body, and the hole through his heaa, indicated the cause of his death, but the authorities found no powder marks upon the body to indicate that the gun had been held close enough to his head to have been fired by Kragle, and there are other conditions to lead authorities to be- lieve that the gun was fired by some oth. er person. \