Next Tuesday will be groundhog day, but every day is some road | hog’s day and they don’t all drive a ' bus or a freight truck either, —Mr. Grundy’s coming out party in Philadelphia, Saturday night, was a grand affair, but lots of promis- ing debutantes became complete “wash-ou Tid NET : . —Princes and paupers = shared the; loot in Scranton - slot-machine racket. The then mayor and the dive-keepers were equal in the divi- son, ‘so the news stories insinuate. —All the news from- the London maval disarmament parley indicates that even if they don’t intend to scrap a lot of war vessels the dele- gates are determined not to start a scrap among themselves. —The uptown folks who are so in- convenienced becaiise the post-office has been moved ought to be reconcil- ed to the change if for no other rea- son than that they are meeting their downtown neighbors half way. —Spring is just around the cor- ner. While we are likely to encoun- ter some pretty rough going over the seven weeks that intervene news from the ball training camps in the south will keep our minds from con- centrating too hard on it. —Soviet Russia has stricken Sun- day off’ its calendar, That sounds like Soviet Russia, but the acqui- escence of a Boston Methodist preach. er in a proposal by the clergy of that city to have the law against blasphemy stricken from the statutes of the Bay State doesn’t sound like the Methodist church. —This Mr. Primo Carnera, who has just arrived from Italy to fatten his bank account at the expense of American fight fans, is somewhat of a mountain of flesh, “Big Boy” Pe- terson tried to climb it last Friday night and fell unconscious after sink- ing only two hooks into the moun- tain. —If Governor Fisher could have persuaded Senator Grundy to accept Taylor or if Senator Grundy could have persuaded Governor Fisher to accept Samuel Lewis when they met in Philadelphia, last Saturday night, the millions of Republican voters would have had no more say as to who their nominee for Governor will be than the Watchman will have. Why waste money on a primary? —In another column of this issue we publish a lengthy communication bearing on the proposed closing of a portion of Lamb street in order to provide more playground for the school children, We hope that all of our Bellefonte subscribers will read it carefully, for it concerns a matter that is much in controversy and should .be - settled ..one way or the other, soon. It is a public question. One that should be considered whol- ly impersonally. It is the duty of every citizen to approach the solu- tion of such problems guided only by the fundamental principle that good government is the greatest good to the greatest number. —In 1929 it cost New York State $876,537.00 to keep 25,028 miles of roads clean of smow. During the same period it cost Pennsylvania $914,809.00 to keep only 7967 miles of roads passable. Out in Ohio they swept 6,138 miles clear for $93,802. [f a heckler should ask any of the Republican spell-binders, who will be on the stump next fall blatherin’ about the beneficence and economy >f his party’s government, just why such an amazing disparity in cost should be, he will probably reply: Hell, don’t you know that they didn’t have as much snow up in New York, or out in Ohio, as we had here in Pennsylvania, And the crowd will selieve it. We just can’t understand Pennsylvania's abject submission to solitical bossism, unless its elector- ite is properly described by the lit- le boy who declined the verb “dim” 18 “dim, dam, dum.” —Candidly we think Congress is wasting entirely too much time >andying words about prohibition, [t’s the law of the land and every >ody who has the urge and isn’t ufraid of being caught violating it loes violate it. In fact the reaction »f human nature to all law is exactly ‘he same. There are mighty few »eople on the face of the globe who, vhen the law crimps them a bit, wouldn't take a chance were it not ‘or the consequences. The agrieul- . ural regions of the country can al- vays be depended on to vote for any 1ypocrite who bears a dry label yet it their farm products show in Har- ‘isburg last week there was more iquor in evidence. and the evidence f more liquor about a certain hotel vhere the big guns of the show jongregated than there was there luring the inaugural ceremonies of yovernor Fisher, three years ago. Jur idea of the prohibition question s that it is really one of temper- ince and not of law. And so far as )ersonal experience is concerned we relieve that Francis Murphy, Fred Jota, who was once secretary of the ocal Y, M. C. A, and several other eople we might mention converted nore people from the wet to the dry lan of living than the Volstead or ny other law could or will do in this ommunity. Please don’t misunder- tand us, We're not against the Vol- tead law. We are only expressing . deep conviction that law can't hange human nature. It might re. train certain of its impulses. The fact that an alliance existed between the American Tariff League and. the . Repubican National com- mittee during the Hoover cam- paign has been . proved again by evidence brought out by the Senate Lobby committee the other day. The American Tariff League, of which Senator Grundy was vice- president until his recent appoint- ment professes to be a non-parti- san and non-political organization and by that false pretense has en- ticed some Democrats to its mem- bership. W. W, Barbour, formerly president and now treasurer of the League, testified that during the 1928- campaign it arranged to hook-up with the Republican National com- mittee through its chairman, Hubert Work. ' Later the partnership was dissolved for the reason that it was in violation of law, : But notwithstanding the dissolu- tion the “hook-up” continued to func- tion. The League agreed to ‘do the tariff research and educational pub- licity work” for the campaign com- mittee and continued to do so clan- destinely after the dissolution. In pursuance of this undertaking the League collected and disbursed a fund variously estimated at from $30,000 to $50,000. No report was made of these collections and dis- bursements to the Congressional committee or anybody else, as re- quired by the Corrupt Practices law. Two employees of the government, Clayton F. Moore, clerk of the House Ways and Means committee, and Edward N. Dingley, tariff expert of the. Senate Finance committee, were employed in the work, which was a direct violation of another act of Congress, : Mr. Barbour undertook to treat the question put to him facetiously but didn’t succeed as well as some of his predecessors in the witness chair. When a member of the committee characterized the tariff League as a lobbying organization he asked “just what is a lobbyist?” Senator Car- away replied, “just look at your own organization, You've got as fine a lobby as any I know,” and Caraway has learned a lot along that line since the investigation began. The significance in this instance, however, lies in the fact that it shows every feature of the Hoover campaign was saturated with fraud and false pre- tense, Whether the candidate ap- proved the devious methods is a mat- ter of conjecture but he seems to fully enjoy the results accomplished. ——Grundy and Hoover are not in agreement as to the date of the beginning of prosperity in this coun- try. Grundy fixes it at the time high protective tariff set in and Hoover at the time he entered the public service, Mr. Grundy’s Platform, Senator Grundy’s speech, delivered at the Manufacturers’ Club in Phil- adelphia, on Saturday evening, may be construed as a public procla- mation that Big Business is in the saddle and intends to shape the des- tinies of the country in its own self- ish way. He attributes all the pros- perity of the past to tariff taxation and measures the progress of de- velopment of the country in wealth, culture and population by the rate of the tax levy on imports. He is especially enthusiastic in praise of that phase of the policy which has eliminated small enterprises and massed operation in mergers, com- binations and monopolies of colos- sal proportions. Mr. Grundy divides the progress of the country into three periods, and very properly describes the third or present period as revolu- tionary, “It was approximately with the enactment of the Dingley tariff of 1897,” he states, “that we came into what I would describe as the second period of this internal economic life—the period of the passing of many of the small and individual industrial units, with their intimate contacts between the owner and his employees; the peri- od of larger enterprise in corporate form and consolidations of many en- terprises of like character into single big businesses.” This is the policy which Grundy worships and which ‘tariff taxation fosters. But by what process of reasoning does Mr. Grundy persuade himself that the vast increase of wealth of the country since the transition of which he speaks may be attributed to tariff taxation? Did tariff taxa- tion produce electricity, the tele- phone, the automobile, the radio? Each of these elements, in the recent life of the country, has added hun- dreds of millions and jointly have produced billions, without any help from tariff legislation. And upon what feature of his activities doeshe base a claim upon the friendship of labor? = All his life he has fought the interests of wage-earners as those who have endeavored to help- ful legislation know, STATE RIGHTS AND FEDERAL UNION. Good Service of Dubious Origin By voting to continue hides, leath- er and boots and shoes on the free list the coalition of Democrats and insurgent Republicans in the Senate performed a valuable public service to the people of the United States. The bill, as reported by the Senate Finance committee, provided for a tax of ten per cent ad valorem on hides, fifteen per cent. on leather and twenty per cent on boots and shoes. The insurgent . Republicans protested that “the rate on hides was not comparable to the duty al- lowed on leather and boots and shoes,” and asked for a Specific rate of five cents a pound on raw and ten cents a pound on cured hides. This demand having been refused Senator Borah proposed that all the articles be continued on the free list, which was adopted by a vote of 46 to 28, . While it is difficult to reconcile the reasons for Senator Borah’s ac- tion with the requirements of an active conscience it is impolite to “look a gft horse in the mouth,” and hardly worth while to venture an analysis. Mr. Borah seems to have been willing to go along with the proposition to burden the con- sumers to the extent of $100,000,000 a year or more, with twenty per cent tariff tax on boots and shoes if an additional burden of several millions were placed by a higher tax on hides. In other words, he had no objection to the robbery if the loot were divided so as to give the West an equal share. But the allocation of the plunder was not to his liking ard for that reason he determined to prevent the robbery. Some reformers are that way. , The pretense of the -demand for a high tax on hides is that the farmers who breed cattle need pro- tection. As a matter of fact the farmers who produce cattle would derive very little benefit from a tax on hides. They sell the cattle “on the hoof” and the proceeds of a tax on hides woud go almost en- tirely to the packing house monopo- lies. But if a tax is levied on hides there is reason in the demand for compensatory tax on leather and boots and shoes even though it does place burdens on the consum- ers. Placing all of these items on the free lst is, therefore, a happy solution of an ugly problem and it may be just as well to accept the favor without going into an analy- sis of the reasons which brought it about. The people get little enough anyway. ——Old fashioned winters may be delightful for making conversation but they are not pleasant to live in. Public Service Commission Denounced The Pennsylvania: ‘Threshermen and Farmers’ Protective association was addressed at a banquet in Har- risburg, last week, by the former Governor Pinchot who renewed his just and righteous war against the Public Service Commission of Penn- sylvania. During the closing period of his administration as Governor Mr. Pinchot tried to correct the faults and improve the methods of the Commission and, as he told. his audience in Harrisburg, it was the hardest fight he had made in the four years of his Governorship and resulted in the worst licking he ever got in his life, But he survived that defeat and is back on the firing line with a new supply of appropriate epithets and a strengthened purpose to win. “I believe there is hardly a town- ship, borough, town or city in this Commonwealth,” Mr. Pinchot declar- ed, “whose citizens have not been given gfraw deal by the Public Ser- vice mmission, I believe there is no other body under the government of Pennsylvania that has been so competely, so continuously and so notoriously controlled by the corpor- ations as the Pubic Service Commis- sion,” This is literally and shame- fully true, The body has been per- verted into a political machine which, like the tariffmongers in Con- gress, serves the purpose of collect- ing slush funds to control elections. Favors to corporate monopolies are exchanged for campaign contribu- tions, As a matter of fact the actions of the Pennsylvania Public Service Commission have been a scandal for years, Originally it was intended to be a non-partisan, or at least a bi- partisan body, but since the expira- tion of the term of the late John S. Rilling no Democrat has been ap- pointed and it has become a bitter partisan organization maintained for the benefit of monopoly. Instead of protecting the interests of the public against the encroachments of cor- porate rapacity it has become the instrument through which corporate crimes are legalized. In and denouncing the Public Service Commission Mr, Pinchot has per- ‘formed a distinct public service and earned the thanks of the people. = BELLEFONTE, PA.. JANUARY 31. 1930. The Five Power Naval Conference The London naval conference opened auspiciously in the Gallery of