The DallasPost ESTABLISHED 1889 TELEPHONE DALLAS 300 "A LIBERAL, INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER > SER PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY MORNING SRE " “AT THE DALLAS PosT PLANT Ey LEHMAN AVENUE, DALLAS, PA. " BY THE DALLAS Post, Inc : Howarp RISLEY .. Gener Manager Howsii REEFS ... Ri wsiveenein Managing Editor TRUMAN STEWART w.oovionrssisisnsaiisnsssssnis sie = Mechanical Superintendent : . The Dallas Post is on sale at the local news stands. Subscription price by mail $2.00 payable in advance. Single copies five cents each. ° J ;Entereg as ecoRa-claga, matter hat the. Dakas Post Office. THE DALLAS POST Bu orctind fetid vias etigbas pews: paper, ‘edited ind’ operated by young men interested im the de- velopment of the great rural-sabuzban region of Luzerne County and in the ent of the highest ideals of journalism. THE POST 6 truly “more than a newspaper, it is a community institution.” Congress shall make no law ¢ © abridging the freedom of spect or of Press. —From the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, : Subscription, $2.00 Per Year (Payable in Advance), . Subscribers who send us changes of address are requested to include both new and old addresses when they submit their notice of change. ‘A THOUGHT FOR THIS WEEK There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life [s bound in shallows and in miseries. Julius Caesar—SHAKESPEARE The Love Of A Mother \ There could be no more tangible example of mother love than the sacrifice Mrs. Anthony Burnett of Harvey's Lake made last week in blindly offering her life to save that of her eight-year-old son. Nothing—even the twenty-foot drop into the pool where her boy was struggling—could have stopped Mrs. Burnett after she had heard the lad’s screams. A blind, driv- ing love sent her plunging into the water, ignoring complete- ly the possibility that she, too, was endangering her life. - No words can encompass the beauty of her sacrifice nor bring her back to the child who clung so desperately to her lifeless body when help came, but these words can, in very modest measure, serve as a reminder of the priceless heritage of bravery and devotion she gave her survivors. + The Cost To You—Sixty One Cents In a front page editorial last week anticipating Judge John S. Fine’s decision on the Dallas School Board budget case The Post asked “Who Will Be The Victor?” and con- cluded that there was no victory for anyone. ~ . In the light of a story appearing on Page 1 this week, estimating the total costs of the cases at $1,000, it appears that the entire affair was little more than a highly expen- sive fizzle for the taxpayers of Dallas Borough. True, those taxpayers will be billed for about $500 less than they would have under the 30-mill levy, a saving of just about sixty-one cents to each of the borough’s taxables. But on the other hand each taxpayer will have to contribute approximately the same amount to pay unexpected legal ex- penses which would not have been incurred had the suits never been started. ’ The real burden will fall upon the minority group of taxpayers which is responsible for the suits. Each of them must pay part of the district's burden and care besides for the expenses incurred by the plaintiffs. For them, it was an especially expensive defeat. The accomplishments are scarcely worth the expense, the unfavorable publicity, and the unquestionable damage to the school structure here. In two of the cases there was absolutely no change from the board’s judgment. In the third the petitioners failed to secure the three-mill reduc- tion they asked but did succeed in having the budget reduc- ed $525, about the same amount their suits cost the school board. : This is not a thing to forget. If there is any trace of credit due anyone in the entire affair it must go to the ma- jority directors of the board and, in the end, to Attorney B. B. Lewis, whose legal judgment was upheld by the courts. The responsibility for the mess lies with that embittered group of taxpayers which believed it could continue to dic- tate the policies of the school board. One thing may have been accomplished, more import- ant than any other. At last, by decision of this county’s court, the taxpayers know which group of directors was right, which was wrong. Let the taxpayers be guided by the three court decisions in the future. When several groups of Luzerne County taxpayers wanted to ask some questions about the “Golden Highway’ audit the court squashed the case on technical grounds. But when a group of Dallas taxpayers protested against the lo- cal school budget the court not only handed down an injunc- tion and took testimony but cut the budget one mill. The G. O. P. is taking no chances in this section. Dallas people were named as chairman and vice-chairman of the Sixth District. The first rally was held at Lehman, and last ‘Saturday 10,000 Republicans came to Fernbrook Park to whoop it up for Landon. Every Italian soldier who fought in Africa will get a sixteen-dollar bonus, Mussolini announces. Seems a little small beside the $250,000 soldiers in this neck of the woods got as their bonus. It’s lucky for Americans that the ten Negro members of the Olympic squad have no scruples against associating with the inferior Caucasian racers. WASHINGTON LETTER tis: esl that the decisive fac- tor in the General Election of 1936 - will be a man who was unknown to millions of Americans up to a month ‘or two ago, and who was known to millions of others only be- cause his name appeared ena Con- gressional bill which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States. That man is Congressman ‘Wil- liam Lemke of North Dakota, Presi- dential nominee of the newly-form- ed Union Party. Principal plank in his platform is currency inflation, and he has the support of Father Coughlin of Share-the-Wealth fame. Furthermore, he has entered into "an agreement with Dr. Townsend, and will have the official support of the old-age-pension movement. No one—aside from a few zealots —believes that Lemke can be elect- ed. Few believe that he can attain a majority in even one state. But he can be of tremendous importance in determining the Roosevelt-Landon race. Before going farther into that, it is well to present a brief history of the third party movement in American politics. There are always third parties, of course, and fourth and fifth parties as well. Best examples are the So- cialist and Communist parties, which put a ticket into the field each year. But these parties do not affect either of the major parties—they have a certain established following, and their total vote varies but little from election to election. They do not at- tract voters in any number from the Democratic or Republican parties. The important third parties are those which are brought into being by some problem or condition of the moment and which, though they may live only for one election, pres- ent an appeal to a certain propor- tion of the voters of the major par- ties. It is in this classification that Lemke’s new party belongs. Several times in the history of the Republic, such a third party has de- termined the election. Most notable example of that was the ‘election of 1860, when Lincoln and Douglas contended for the Presidency. Two other parties were also in the field. Lincoln received only 40 per cent of the vote, yet was elected. Had all of Lincoln’s opposition gone to Douglas, the latter would have won easily. Another notable example oc- curred in 1884, when Blaine was the Republican nominee, running against Democrat Cleveland. Deci- sive state was New York. Cleveland carried it by the astonishingly small majority of 1100 votes, and so was elected to the highest office in the land. The Prohibition candidate in New York received the record total of 25,000 votes that year. Had ten per cent of those votes gone to Blaine, he would have won. Most successful third party was that led by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, which ran second to the Dem- ocratic party headed by Wilson. In that year, the Republican candidate Taft, took the worst lacing ever re- ceived by a major candidate. Most recent example of an impor- tant third party was the Progressive Party, which had the elder Senator LaFollette for its candidate. This party carried but one state, Wiscon- sin, but received a good-sized vote in almost every state. It was not a decisive factor in the election, how- ever, for the reason that Coolidge went into the Presidency by a tre- mendous electoral majority; his op- ponent, John W. Davis, carrying only the traditionally Democratic Solid South. To return to the present, Candi- date Lemke has a strong following in a number of what may be ex- tremely important states — states which are more or less in the “doubtful”, class, and which might be able to swing the battle in favor of either Roosevelt or These are the Northwest states—the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming, and, to drop south a bit, Ohio, etc. Under the American elective sys- tem, the candidate who attdins a majority in a state receives all its electoral vote, even though his ma- jority consists of but one voce. Thus, in a close state, a few thousand votes cast for Lemke could very easily take that state away from one major candidate, swing it to the other. Bedouins, of the spirit, au © First they were here, then tney were Landon. Rives ‘Muthews Wherein Continues ‘The Saga Of Grandfather Matthews And Confesses To His Own ‘Fall From Grace. : Mr. Matthews The largest did youth, was my Grandfather Mat- thews. My own parents were feast. there. I never knew exactly where they were, and I don’t, to this day. -My Father, in fact, was, and is, a travelling salesman. —0— But I always knew where Grand- father was. You could count on him. He was like the moon and stars he liked to watch at nights before locking up and going to bed. He was predictable. Relatively, he was as ageless. When I was born on March 17, 1907, Grandfather Matthews was 79. I was twenty-three when he gave up the habit of 102 years and surprised us all by dying. Now if ever there was anyone who could be described as a “creature of habits,” it was Grandfather. fy By the time I was old enough to visit him, Grandfather's habits had become long established rites. They were performed, by those of us ob- liged to assist, with the gentle hu- moring held due an old person who is set in his ways, or with sullen obedience by those of us who re- garded Grandfather’s habits as in- evitable, but ever-recurrent, an- noyances. —— There was, for instance, the rite of the Nine O'clock Whistle. Noth- ing was ever allowed to interfere with that. Time, you see, had be- come very important to Grand- father. In his nineties, it measured off the hours, days, weeks, months and years between him and his goal; to live to be a hundred. Louis XVI’s preoccupation with clocks was nothing to the attention Grandfather lavished on the three clocks he owned. One was in the dining room, another was in the living room, the third was in his bedroom. —~—0— It was a maiter of great pride with Grandfather that most of the time they struck the hours within split seconds of each other. If they didn’t, Grandfather would go into a minor fury, which was terrible enough if you'd never seen him in a major rage, one of those wild frenzies of a twarted will which evoked the worse curse-word I ever heard him use: “By George!” For days, Grandfather would be unhappy and puzzled by his clocks. And then it was the rite of the Nine O'Clock Whistle would have even more meaning to him, and to us. —o— No matter who was talking, no matter how interesting the conver- sation, instinctively, at about five minutes to nine, Grandfather would command everyone to listen for the Nine O’Clock Whistle. influence ‘in my ‘chaotic childhood; boyhood, and A terrible stillness would descend upon us. All you could hear would be Grandfather's measured breath- ing, and the three clocks, tick-tock- ing, tick-tocking. —C— After what would seem hours, suddenly, if all was well, you'd hear a faint wail which would increase, in the space of half a minute, to an all-invading howl. Then it would die off again. It sounded like a sick cow but it was the Nine O’clock Whistle which started mothers all over St. Louis to calling their = children to bed. a For Grandfather, it served as a daily check on his precious clocks. If we assured him that all three of them had struck precisely at nine, he could go to bed in peace. Other- wise, he was good for another half hour of tinkering and fussing and demanding that I run back and forth between them to see if all three read on the minute. —— Time was nothing in my young life. Grandfather's passion was merely a meaningless nuisance which kept me away from my books, or the head phones of my crystal radio set. But I shall never forget the night, anxious to have him get off to bed, that I lied to him about the clocks. I shall always remember how he bellowed when the clock in his bedroom gave me away by striking nine a good fifteen minutes after the whistle blew, and caught Grand- father in his long wool undies. i was an occasion for several ° Georges.” or] “u . gl ’ If it had been the dining room clock, or even the living room clock all would have been well. He couldn’t have heard them. But for the clock with which he slept to be fifteen minutes late, and thus false- ly keeping him a qaurter of an hour away from the century mark—why, it destroyed his faith in human be- ings and in the cold science of chronometers! What had happened, I learned later, was that Emma, the house- maid, had jolted the clock while dusting, that, without her noticing, it had stopped while she was clean- ing Grandfather's room. Later, when she discovered what she had done, she had become panic strick- en lest Grandfather, who was in the next room, should catch her red. handed. So she had hastily given the clock another jolt and had started it going again without real- izing it had lost a precious quarter of an hour. —0— Emma always said Grandfather could hear things just when you didn’t want him to hear the most, even though at other times you had to shout to make yourself heard. I guess Emma never forgot the time Grandfather almost killed her. It was in the days When Emma was “keeping company”, sneaking in during the scandalous hours which set in after the Nine O'Clock Whistle loudly proclaimed respect- able people like Grandfather were going to bed. Emma, so the story goes, forgot to tell anyone she would be out late that night, —0— She also forgot to make a noise . when she came in. Grandfather said that people who couldnt get to bed at a decent hour, who had to be out late at night, shouldn't tiptoe around when they came in. They should make all the noise they would make ordinarily, else Grand- father would think they were burg- lars. When poor Emma tiptoed in that night and made for the stairs near the door to Grandfather's room, Grandfather was ready for the bur- glar he thought she was. He held in both hands the Japanese harikar sword Uncle Orville, who had been a rear Admiral, had brought back from the Orient. Bala —O— Atay Emma told me she would never forget the sound of that murderous blade as it cut through the dark, just missing her, but neaiy split- ting into halves the polishea fewel post at the foot of the stairs which led upward to bed and safety from a white bearded old gentleman in an old fashioned nightshirt. As for me, the delinquency of his bedroom clock made me a suspi- cious character for weeks after- wards. Although he didn’t come right out and say it, I felt that Grandfather secretly harboured the thought I might have criminal ten~ dencies. —C— You should have heard the lec- tures I got on the subject of how a man’s word should be as good as his bond, a comparison Grand- father particularly favored, since he had spent much of hisJife as a banker. Banking, he aval insist- ed, was a calling in which character was a man’s chief asset, in which honesty was his only real capital. Grandfather liked to mention the huge sums he had borrowed from time to time, simply on his name. I think he would be terribly shocked by today’s loan requirements. To Grandfather the only collateral worth having was a set of good habits with a Nine O'Clock Whistle to tell you whether your clocks were on time. —0— I don’t think the suspicion ever crossed his mind that sometimes the: Nine O’Clock Whistle was wrong, or that someone couldn’t pull it down a few minutes early, or a few minutes late. Integrity, with Grandfather, was like his habits. All of them endured, for 102 years. MADE S POLICE # FORCE .:3 NEWS ITEMS 7 STUCK UP SINCE HE). == WAS MADE CHIEF 2 A SALARY OF Sard Semmes mm PA A Md ~~ rn od bd A. rh MO Ad A rn I
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers