T
S POS1 DALLAS, PA. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12,
937"
arily with the development
Dallas.
munity institution.
Subscription, $2.00 per
ers who send us changes
tising rates on request.
“Congress shall make mo law. . .abridging the freedom of
speech or of Press’—The Constitution of the United States.
The Dallas Post is a youthful, liberal, aggressive weekly, dedicated
to the highest ideals of the journalistic tradition and concerned prim-
It strives constantly to be more than a newspaper, a com- :
A LIBERAL, INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER PUBLISHED EVERY
FripAY MORNING AT THE DALLAS PosT PLANT, LEHMAN
. AVENUE, DALLAS, PA, 8Y THE DaLLas Post, INC.
both new and old addresses with the notice of change. Adver-
of the rich rural-suburban area about
Year, payable in advance. Subscrib-
of address are requested to include
HowArRp W. RISLEY
HOWELL E. REES .........ccovturcsssiasivsrivens Filiirenchruets Managing Editor
More Than A Newspaper, A Community Institution
The Dallas Post
Established 1889
General Manager
2
« THE POST'S CIVIC
4. Sanitary sewage disposal systems
5. A centralized police force.
between those that now exist
8. Construction of more sidev-alks.
1. A modern concrete highway leading from Dallas and connect-
ing with the Sullivan Trail at Tunkhannock.
2. A greater development of community consciousness among
residents of Dallas, Trucksville, Shavertown and Fernbrook.
3. Centralization of local police protection.
6. A consolidated high school eventually, and better co-operation
7. Complete elimination of politics from local school affairs.
PROGRAM
for local towns.
WASHINGTON
PARADE
RAY JOHNSON
! ? and
WALTER PIERCE
‘Washington, D. C., November 11
(Special to The Post)—On the
night of election day in the year
1929 the Sachems and Braves of the
Society of Tammany gathered in the
great wigwam in New Yerk City to
celebrate their greatest victory in the
one hundred and forty three years
in which they had been a factor in
Their candidate to succeed himself
as Mayor was James J. Walker, per-
sonally popular with the voters, a fre-
~ quenter of night life, and a general
good fellow.
He had first been elected four
years before over a Republican
~ “dummy” candidate. But the elec
~ tion of 1929 had been no set-up.
~ The opposing candidate was nom-
inally a Republican, who had served
as Congressman under that label, al-
ough he was looked upon as a very
desirable radical by even the most
~ liberal of the G. O. P. leaders.
His parents were Italian born; his
father had been a bandmaster in the
United States Army and the boy had
been raised at Army posts in the
=West. He had been a flier in the
~ World War. His name was Fiorella
Henrico LaGuardia.
In the election of 1929 Walker
beat him by half a million votes.
* * =
The victory was overwhelming but
Tammany had been forced to its
greatest effort in order to roll up the
- votes. That night they knew they
were celebrating a great victory but
they did not even guess that it was
to be their last.
© 1929 had been an eventful year.
Herbert Hoover was president. Pros
‘perity reached ridiculous heights. Al
De had been sentenced to a year
prison and Colonel Lindbergh had
been married. The Graf Zeppelin
had flown around the world and an
Ex Secretary of the Interior had been
convicted of accepting a bribe of a!
hundred thousand dollars. And, late
in October, the bottom had myster-
iously fallen out of the stock market. |
* % 0%
i
The Great Depression had begun. :
And it was the depression which was |
to end Tammany's rule in New York
City.
The Wigwam had built its power-
ful voting machine on the principle
will take care of you"—and it had
tithes were never as bad as else
where.
With the Depression Tammany’s
revenues were cut. There was less
left “to take care of the boys” and
the boys needed more care than ever
before. But Tammany, like hund-
reds of thousands of others, thought
ner.
The Sachems sat tight, with their
gyes closed and their fingers crossed
in the dizzy whirl of New Deal,
_ Home Relief, WPA, the rise of la
bor unions, the wave of independent
voting.
"i
And when they girded themselves
for the ’37 campaign and went forth
to do battle with the political toma-
hawks and bows and arrows which
had been so effective in the old days
they were just as successful as the
Ethiopians against Mussilini’s tanks.
‘For the first time, no Tammany
man holds a major office in New
York City.
The Wigwam had changed from a
political power to a legend in history
books of the schoolboy.
CALLING AN EDITOR'S BLUFF
Our alert and progressive contemporary, Editor
B. M. Van Dyke of The Wyoming Democrat was
elected to Tunkhannock Council last week, and the
rest of us editors may accept that as a warning.
Once upon a time an editor could sit at his type-
writer and tell other people what to do without
any danger of being called upon to do any of the
work himself. Things have come to a pretty pass
when people expect editors to do the work as well
as the criticizing.
Seriously, however, both Editor Van Dyke and
Tunkhannock are to be congratulated, Mr. Van
Dyke for a splendid victory and Tunkhannock for
electing to its council a gentleman who will unques-
tionably perform his duties with the same keenness
and fairness with which he conducts his paper.
IGNORANCE IS BLISS—SOMETIMES
When the housewife of any one of a number of
states walks into a grocery store to buy food for her
family she is obliged to pay a direct state sales tax
on virtually everything she purchases. The tax
ranges generally from a penny upward, depending
on the size of the purchase. As a result of this
form of taxation, the people of those states are, to
some extent at least, tax conscious.
Saturday afternoons when Mis. Consumer is
stocking up on groceries for the week ahead, one
may often observe her haggling with a weary clerk
over an error of a paltry ‘penny in the sales tax.
She is paying a direct tax, knows it and resents it
because it, forces her to pay a premium on the ne
cessities of life. But, ironically, she is serenely
oblivious to the fact that the sales tax represents
only a small fraction of the total tax which she
pays on all of life’s necessities, as well as on lux-
Uries. +
For example, taking the nation as a whole, invis-
ible but traceable taxes are 6.4 per cent of the re-
tail price of bread; 8.14 per cent of the price of
beef, and 18.3 per cent of the price of sugar. Mrs.
Consumer does not realize this unpleasant fact.
EDITORIALS
Likewise, she probably does not realize that, if her
husband is an average $18-a-week laborer or clerk
who owns no property, they pay $16 annually in
these hidden taxes—Federal, state and local. If
she and the majority of consumers did realize it, the
Federal debt would not now be in the neighborhood
of $37,000,000,000.
THE WOMEN, GOD BLESS 'EM
~ The various women’s auxiliaries of civic organi-
zations serve so quietly that ‘the credit which be-
longs to them frequeatly goes by mistake to their
parent organization.
In Dallas the auxiliary of Henry M. Laing Fire
Co. is a typical example of a group of unselfish, big-
hearted ladies who are always ready to serve and
whose work is sometimes overshadowed by the more
publicized and more colorful service of the fire com-
pany itself.
~ We stopped in on election day to eat lunch in
the fire house, where a group of women were busy
raising money by filling hungry voteds. There was
such a good spirit about the women who were de-
voting their day to the fire company’s interests that
we decided to give them this public salute. The
sandwiches were good and the unselfish spirit was
excellent.
NEWSPAPERS VS. RADIOS
The Newspaper Guild strike in Wilkes-Barre
gave people an opportunity to try the radio as a
medium for the dissemination of news.
The radio did well, but the void left by the
absence of a morning paper was there, nonetheless.
People were happy to get their newspaper again,
even though they were grateful for radio’s fine
effort at pinch-hitting.
One great fault of radio as a news-reporting
agency made itself very apparent. We'll say you
were anxious for news of the Sino-Japanese war.
Ordinarily, you would arise leisurely, walk to the
porch, pick up the paper, and there you were. If
you overslept an hour, the news was still there.
If you had to leave before the paper arrived you
could still buy one in town. But, with radio you
found the irritating necessity for being at a certain
spot at a certain time or you missed the 100-word
announcement completely.
Suppose you had a friend running for office in
Kingston Township. You are anxious to know
how he made out but you care not a rap for who
became tax collector in Sugar Notch or councilman
in Plains Township. With a newspaper you mere-
ly glance through the paper to find the headline
you want. With radio you are forced to sit through
hours of monotonous, strange names and figures,
waiting for the short announcement which. sooner
or later, will give you the information you want.
And, usually, the brief, 100-word flash merely
whets your appetite for more details, for interviews,
for pictures, for complete newspaper coverage of
the event.
It was a good test and a fair test, and its results
make newspapermen feel that their profession is
still a needed one, despite the splendid service radio
performs.
There is still no substitute for a newspaper.
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
Two of the world’s foremost proponents of col
lective bargaining are John L. Lewis and William
Green. For years they have talked about the merits
of collective bargaining. They have frequently ex-
pressed vociferous amazement that anybody who
would agree to sit and talk—bargain collectively—
could not reach an agreement.
Now the A. F. of L. and the C. I. O. are bar-
gaining collectively with each other. It is a strange
test of the theories both unions have advocated so
fiercely. So far the only thing that has prevented
a walk out—a “strike” by both bargaining parties—
has been that neither wants to be saddled with the
blame for breaking up the “peace” meeting.
We shall see now how those masters of collective
bargaining, John L. Lewis and William Green, ap-
ply their own theories in reaching an agreement.
The editors of Fortune have asked
their subscribers to help them solve
“The Servant Problem.” Fortune
recently made a survey and found
that “half the prosperous homes in
America arg without servants, and
that no less than 85% of the upper
middle class homes are without so
much as a full-time maid.” Fortune
then goes on to say: “It is incon-
ceivable that all these families wish
to live without service. Fortune
wants to find out why they do so,
RIVES
MATTHEWS
going out less,’ or not belonging to
a country club. Tt *would merely
mean going over her list of outside-
the-home luxuries and sacrificing
them for service within the home.
® x =
This would mean, of course, paying
wages that would ‘attract servants
plus giving them the consideration
people who are servants rarely get
today. You can’t expect to treat any
graduate of an American public
school like a serf for serf wages. But
and what, if anything, they are do-
that’s just what a lot of housewives
prosperity was just around the cor |
ing about it.”
* -
Fortune submits a questionnaire
and asks its subscribers to answer
such questions as these: “If you have
no full-time servant, what factor (or
factors) has prevented you?” "Do
‘you know, first-hand, of any servant
‘voluntarily leaving employment to go
‘on relief?” “What changes (if any)
have you observed in the calibre or
attitude of modern servants, dating
approximately from when?” “How
many servants did your parents em-
ploy when you were a child?”
s 8 @
These are all leading questions, and
I can guess at some of the answers
most of Fortune's following will
‘write down for them, but to my mind,
Fortune's last question (quoted
“Take care of the boys and the boys above) is the most leading, and should
‘bring forth the most significant re-
succeeded in a city where the rev: (plies, should Fortune be able to in-
nue was constantly increasing and |
It's my guess most
{people will admit that their parents
{employed more servants than they do
today. Si
i
Most of the housewives 1 know
‘now complain about how difficult it
lis to find a maid or general house-
‘worker or “pot wrassler” (of which
‘more later) either frankly admit they
can't afford to employ them, or com-
plain that girls and women who
would make good servants would
rather be on relief or work for small-
er wages in factories, offices and de-
partment stores.
« & @
I've never yet met a modern house
wife who is ready to admit that to-
day's dearth of good servants can be
directly traced to today's dearth of
good housewives. s
‘terpret them.
118
»
Our parents employed more ser
vants simply because they had a dif
ferent set of standards and values
than we have. Our parents believed
in spending their money on their
homes, in making them as comfort
able as possible. Generally they were
large, roomy affairs that demanded
the presence of servants. In those
days a woman had a full time job
running her home, and because she
“gave it all of her attention, she had
to be a good manager. She had to
think about working conditions and
labor relations, and generally she was
enough of an expert in this field for
a modern corporation to employ right
now to answer the criticism of a
John L. Lewis. }
$ & 3
The modern housewife is not at all
like her mother. Her budget doesn’t
allow for much outlay in servants’
wages. Much of it goes for living ex
penses outside her home. She must
have a car. She and her husband
must belong to a country club. They
must go outside their homes for fun
several nights a week: to the movies,
night clubs or dinner dances at some
hotel.
Today the hostess who does
is rare. The home has become a place
much entertaining in her own home
where most people eat and sleep and
listen to the radio when nothing more
exciting offers outside it. And the
home has shrunk in size. It's become
an apartment with all sorts of electri
cal gadgets and hardly any closet
space. The housewifely arts no long
er need be practiced, and in most
cases can't be. Just imagine, if you
can, any woman putting up jelly in
a tower apartment of the Waldorf-
Astoria, where the “kitchens” bounce
out of the wall.
® & &
One of the answers, then, is that
today’s housewife doesn’t care enough
about their home. Otherwise she'd
have as many servants as she needed
to run it. Maybe this would mean
PUNT!
=e
I know do, and that's why young
girls who would make good servants
would rather work for smaller wages
in factories or offices or department
stores. where they are given the illu-
sion of being human beings and free
agents. Actually, of course, many of
them would be better off working as
. servants, but they don't think so.
0% ®
America is the land of opportunity.
And that particular myth dies hard.
Maybe it’s a good thing, politically,
for the peace of the country. In any
event, the average girl leaving school,
thinks she’s got more of a chance to
rise as a wage eamer or to achieve
success as an individual (marriage)
by going to work in the emporia, say,
of the Countess Barbara Hutton Mdi-
vani Haugwitz-Reventlow. Who can
tell? Maybe some rich guy will stop
at her counter and fall in love with
her. It happens in the movies all
the time. But how many movies have
you seen in which attractive cham-
bermaids marry chauffeurs or but:
lers? And what have the movies done
to enoble the profession of butling?
Who wants to marry a silly old but
ler? Well, there you are. And then
the brothers of these girls who can't
master a typewriter and so hire out
as servants, make things even worse
by calling them “pot wrasslers.”
LJ ® *
The servant of today has no social
status. She is looked down upon
by her own class and ordered about
like a two-year-old by her employ-
ers. No wonder there are so few
servants today.
* * *
If, as Portune implies, there are
housewives who are bitterly com-
plaining about the servant problem,
then Fortune could do them a service
by suggesting a union of housewives,
set up not as a bargaining agency,
not as an employers’ trust to beat
down servants’ wages, but rather as
a self-policing group to make house
wives good housewives, and to give
houseworkers self-respect and a so
cial status beyond questioning by the
movies and the young man of today
who so scornfully look down upon
them as “‘pot wrasslers.”
SRE
BROADWAY
LIMITED
W. A.
New York, N. Y., November 11
(Special to The Post)— Broadway,
which runs full blast twenty-four
hours a day, draws its biggest crowds
not at night but on Saturday after
noons. RE
From the shopping district in the
thirties to the hotels of the fifties the
sidewalks are jammed from building
line to curb with stenographers from
Washington Heights, shipping clerks
from Queens, salesmen from Brook-
lyn, folk who seldom get to see the
stem when the lights are on and who
have come to stroll and stare after
their week's work, with all the excit-
ed eagerness of tourists from a thou-
sand miles away. rg
For most New Yorkers see but lit-
tle of their city, the places where
they work and the places where they
live. And they live in little com-
munities in the big city, miniature
villages and towns and cities, each
with its own miniature Main Street,
its movie, its department store and
tion half a dozen blocks away is an
unknown wilderness. :
—_—— :
The dwellers in Greenwich Village
talk of the wilds of the Bronx and
to the Bronxites Canarsie, on the out
skirts of Brooklyn, is just an Indian
name.
Even the regulars of Broadway
night life form a group so small that
in a month of nights you know them
all by sight.
——
Gayest of the night spots at the
present is the Cubanish LaConge, at
which place the dance teams and the
radio stars put on an impromptu
show in the dawning.
——
For informal elegence the lounge
restaurant of the Waldorf, with
Xavier Cugat's amazing caricatures
of Rudy Vallee and Wayne King
and Guy Lombardo and a hundred
others on the walls.
en
A hit with sophisticates only is
Theatre Guild's “Amphitryon 38”, a
ribald and racy comedy of the old
Greek gods behaving human, with
Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt as
the humanizers.
——
....as an aside to you kids whe
write me you want to come to New
York to act: There are four thousand
actors here now, and another four
thousand like yourselves trying te
break in. And every season about
one in four may, by a lucky break, .
get work for maybe twenty weeks.
But don’t let me discourage you,
because if you've got the stuff to lick
the other eight thousand, come on in,
the water's fine.
ip :
Personal nomination for the “Is
My -Face-Red” department: That
highly technical football rating sys-
tem that went wrong on fifteen of
the twenty-five biggest games the
other Saturday. 3
——
Our Vote Por Something New-—
and Nice: In England the Duchess
of Westminster lets you call
“Mrs. McGuire” so as to save getting
tangled up in “Your Grace's” ard
sich-like foolishness.
pa
Latest Broadwaywardness: Hiring
“Booers” to go to the movies and
boo the big shots you don't like in
the newsreels.
They tried it on Mayor LaGuar-
dia, only the thing backfired and he
won!
—r—
As soon as the New York City
vote was counted on election day a
group of G. O. P. biggies ed
promising LaGuardia the vice presi
dency to keep him from swinging
his following to a new Farmer-Labor
Party next election, but the Midwes-
terner who expects to be the Repub-
lican nominee for President turned
thumbs down.
markets and eating places. The sec
her