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“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of Srevinan eonpopar== Community Tntisugon THE POST'S CIVIC PROGRAM YW | «
speech or of Press” — The Constitution of the United States. LA od te high Yeading 4 Dall d joey hy
: modern concrete way leading from Dallas and con-
The Dallas Post is a youthful, liberal, aggressive weekly, dedica- The Dallas Post necting with the Sullivan Trail at i. |
ted to the highest ideals of the journalistic tradition and concerned 4 2. A greater development of community consciousness among
primarily with the development of the rich rural-suburban area about Established 1889 residents of Dallas, Trucksville, Shavertown, and Fernbrook.
Dallas. It strives constantly to be more than a newspaper, a com- 3. Centralization of local fire protection.
munity institution. A Liberal, Independent Newspaper Published Every Friday 4. Sanitary sewage systems for local towns.
boston i Morning At The Dallas Post Plant, Lehman Avenue, 5. A centralized police force.
Subscription, $2.00 per Year, payable in advance. Subscrib- Dallas, Penna., By The Dallas Post, Inc. 6. A consolidated high school eventually, and better cooper
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new and o TESSes wi i : isi EL. yi ;
os oa th The womice of dumge; Agvenivny HOWARD W. RISLEY... ooviemesionn General Manager Z pon oo fiom local, schoo] ffates,
o i g BOWELL E. REES..... ui iii Managing Editor g 2 : g
JUST
POLITICS
By Fred M. Kiefer
“Quick, Watson, the needle!”
Will this become the alarming
cry every time * American Business
slumps?
During 1934 and 1935 a contin-
uous series of shots in the arm aver-
aged about 300 million dollars of
BORROWED money each month.
‘Early in 1938 the monthly shot
~ was stopped. Business, lacking stim-
~ ulation, went back to bed.
‘But now the shots are renewed.
~The August injection will be 175
million dollars. And according to
schedule the dose will be more than
300 million dollars a month during
1939. :
~ Business 1s already showing recov-
‘ery from the new shots. More exhil-
aration will be noticed as the monthly
‘dose increases.
But what happens when the shot
is reduced or stopped? Will business
take the “‘cure” or will it cry again
for the needle?
—0—
A friend of this writer, whom we
shall call Mr. B., had occasion not
many weeks ago to visit the editor of
a great southern paper, and, after
completing the' work that took him
there, began discussing the state of
‘the Union.
Upon the old gentleman’s (the ed-
itor was richly endowed in years)
complaining about business condi-
‘tions my friend asked him whom he
“had voted for in 1932.
~ “Suh! A'm a Democrat! Ah
suppo'ted th’ Democratic candidate,”
was the surprised reply.
~ “How did you find conditions
then?” inquired Mr. B.
~ “Why, for a while they were good,
then they begah to turn po’ly.”
~~ “And for whom did you vote for
President in 1936?”
Irritated, the Southern gentleman
_ rasped out, “A’m a Democrat, suh!
A’h suppo’ted the’ Democratic can-
didate.”
“Have conditions materially im-
proved?” continued Mr. B.
~ “No, suh! They have not, suh!
‘They are deplorable right now.”
“Well,” mused Mr. B., “There's
talk of Roosevelt running for a third
term. If he does who will you vote
for?”
~ “Dammit, suh! A’'m a Democrat!
A’h shall suppo’te the Democratic
candidate!” roared the Georgian.
~ “But let me tell you, young fella, if
~ you dam-Yankees up No’th don’t
stop suppo’tin’ the Democratic can-
didate, this country’s goin’ right sho’
to hell!”
>
|!
- THE LOW DOWN
from
HICKORY GROVE
A shoe salesman he is maybe
alright, viz, as a person. Most
of ’em are nice to their wife, I
reckon, and maybe go to church
or loan their lawnmower to ‘their
neighbor or do lots of things
which shows he is O. K.—or
fairly so.
~ But when it comes to giving
you a shoe that fits, a nice shoe
salesman, he is a demon. It is
the last thing in the world he
~ will ever do. He will even send
to the factory to get one that
will not fit. The more you say
you want one big enough, the
harder he tries to give you some-
thing else.
If you have big feet and know
it and don’t care, and you like to
walk and not hobble or take off
~ your shoe as you get home—Ilike
you wife maybe does, some-
times—you will not like shoe
salesmen,
~~ And a salesman who says,
* “that makes your foot look trim,”
there should be an open season
on him. And the Govt., it bun-
gles around and experiments
with everything like farming,
and the weather, and etc.—and
then it goes to work and over-
looks shoe salesmen.
AS FOR US, WE'LL RIDE
When Norman Johnstone, secretary of Wyoming Val-
ley Motor Club, said that it would take ten years for WPA
to construct the White Haven-Mt. Top road, he meant no
slur at WPA. Norman, practical Scotsman, knew, what
everybody knows, that ten years would be a short time for
any group of men, working eight hours a day, cracking
stones and filling ditches by hand, to construct eleven and
seven-tenths miles of medern highway.
The secretary of the Motor Club knows, what a lot of
us have suspected for a long time and what a lot more of
us have failed to recognize; that the modern world is too
far advanced to go back to primitive hand methods of con-
struction when it wants something done quickly and well.
Unemployment is one problem. Getting work done is
another. There is no honest reason why either problem
should be solved at the expense of the other. Only the most
unobserving would say that crude, primitive, back-break-
ing, hand labor can accomplish as quickly, or as well, work
that can be done by modern machines and construction
methods. Only the most partisan would say that WPA
accomplishes one-tenth of what it could accomplish under
proper supervision and direction.
There is just as much wrong with a system that pays
men to loaf when there is work to be done as there is with
a system that permits men to become unemployed. Recog-
nizing only one aspect of the problem won’t solve the other.
No nation yet has been able to support either a parasite
rich or a parasite poor. Failure of idealistic communities
and the early settlements of Virginia prove the one; the
French Revolution proves the other.
This nation has need for modern roads, more schools,
public buildings, sewage plants, water works and electric
lines. We cannot wait to get them by methods that were
antiquated generations ago. We have progressed too far
along the way to go back to ancient crack-pot theories that
never did work and never will work. Steps forward are
not made by taking two steps backward.
What this nation needs is work for the unemployed at
wages worthy of their hire; not a dole. What it needs is
actual production not pretended production. What this
nation demands is a system of efficient administration, free
from politics and political ambition, that will make pro-
ducers out of the unemployed, that will take care of the old,
‘the blind and the afflicted. It has no need or no place for
a system that makes loafers and sloths out of strong, cap-
able men willing to work.
If any one believes that this nation can continue to
progress by casting aside the lessons of experience; by be-
lieving that obsolete methods can supplant modern scien-
tific methods and achievement; that the dole and pretended
‘smaller residents in summer.
- EDITORIALS
production can take the place of actual production, then let
that man go to work tomorrow on WPA but let him walk
to work rather than ride in a WPA truck.
PASS THE MELON, BUT TAKE THE WHEATIES
We feel pretty pessimistic about the cantaloupe busi-
ness this morning. For the third successive day we’ve tried
one for breakfast. Each day sees the same results: one
spoonful eaten and the rest; relegated to the garbage. We
hate to get stuck on poor fruit that way, but that isn’t what
is bothering us. We wonder just how long the canteloupe
growers are going to have a market for their product if
they continue flooding it with unripe, indigestible fruit, or
is it a vegetable? ks
We're serious. We think the growers are going to suf-
fer from their greed in the long run. With millions of peo-
ple getting stuck every season on poor cantaloupes there is
only one answer. They are not going to continue getting
stuck. That means they are not going to buy cantaloupes.
They are going to get out of the habit of calling for melon
and coffee at breakfast. Seems to us the growers could do
something about this just as the orange growers of Florida
and California have done. They could, for instance, set up
some sort of Will Hayes or Kenesaw Mountain Landis of
the cantaloupe industry to whom we could write, and who
in turn could land on any grower who sends out unripe, im-
ature cantaloupes to impudently sneer at us at the break-
fast: table.
A TREE THAT MAY IN SUMMER WEAR
A NEST OF ROBINS IN ITS HAIR
Shade and a swimming hole are foremost in the minds
of small boys right now. Lucky the boy who knows the
spot where a fine old tree bends over a deep hole in some
mountain stream. There nature has perfected her own air
conditioning.
But ideal swimming holes aren’t usually found along
village streets. Modern artificially built pools are frequently
short on shade. The next best thing for a boy whose mother
won’; let him get off to the old pool a mile away, and whose
home town affords no artificial pool, is a big sprawling
tree in his own front yard and other great trees up and
down both sides of the village streets.
Dallas has been for long short-sighted on what the
planting of shade trees along its streets would mean to its
It has been shortsighted on
the beauty and attractiveness that trees would add. There
is at present no well-laid plan for planting trees along every
street in the borough. Yet, there is no other single thing
that this community could do, and at less expense, to give
it beauty, character and dignity than to make it remember-
ed always by the boys and girls who once played in the
shade of its trees.
=
It seems to me Mr. LaBeaume now
I don’t wonder that the jobless out
in my old home town are enraged
at the purchase of a thirteen inch
bronze cat which cost the tax sup-
ported Art Museum of St. Louis the
rather large sum of $14,400.
—0—
“Neither the authenticity nor the
artistic merit of the cat is at issue,”
reported the Associated Press. “It’s
the $14,400 price tag which has
stirred up the rumpus among union-
\
I=
MATTHEWS
has a pretty concrete example to pre-
sent to the Noonday Club as a rea-
son for his supporting the more lib-
eral policies of the President. The
issue in St. Louis is not merely the
purchase of a $14,400 Egyptian cat
when people are out of work and
starving, it's a question of how long
can art museums, and other such
by products of our civilization, stand
in the face of masses growling for
RIVES
relief of their primitive needs.
ists, persons on relief, women’s clubs,
"
— et
the .city administration, and the art
museum. Many have attacked the
museum’s purchase of the Egyptian
figure, said to date back to the fifth
century, B. C. at a time ‘when the
city’s relief needs are in desperate
plight.’
—_—
“Striking union building workers,
who have picketed the City Hall here
for several weeks, changed their
signs recently to read: "$14,400 for a
useless bronze cat—nothing for la
bor.” Some persons even have rec
ommended repeal of the law support-
ing the art museum by taxation.
Chief defender of the animal is the
museum's board of control, which has
termed its purchase one of ‘the great-
est sculptural triumphs of all time’
and ‘the most important object of its
kind in America.”
—_—
If you think the latter phrases
sound like another way of saying
“Tet ‘em eat cake,” then you're
branding Mr. Louis LaBeaume, head
of the Art Museum, as a Marie An-
toinette. I happen to know he is
far from being a Bourbon, although
as one of St. Louis’ most successful
architects, he is entitled to sit among
them in such Bourbon haunts as St.
Louis has to offer: the St. Louis
Country Club, snobbishly known as
The Country Club, and the Noon-
day Club, which serves lunches to
the masters of capitalism (or the
means of production) in the city that
Mr. Adolphus Busch.once said was
“right alongside my brewery.”
—0—
During the last election campaign,
to my knowledge, there were only
three members of the latter club who
could eat their lunches without get
ting into apoplectic fits at the men-
tion of Roosevelt’s name. They were
my father, a small manufacturer of
electrical specialities, a man I am
proud to call cousin, named J. Lion-
berger Davis, president of a St. Louis
bank, and Mr. Louis LaBeaume.
rn
I fear all three are regarded as
radicals by their fellow club mem-
bers, but in any other court of opin-
ion, they would be typed as enlighten-
ed capitalists or liberals.
- GIDDY-
APP!!
20Y/!
WERE GOIN’
ARE YOU SURE
YOUR COMPASS
1S SET RIGHT?
Cutting off funds for an art mu-
seum to divert them to the aid of the
needy is only one step in the path
that other nations have already taken
in the name of this or that ism. A
university, in many respects, is quite
as much of a luxury as an art mu-
seum, and so are cathedrals, church-
es, temples, theatres and symphony
orchestras.
——
In fact, all that makes life beauti-
ful for a small percentage of us, who
like to think of ourselves as mem-
bers of the upper ten percent, can
easily be branded as extravagant lux:
uries by men with idle hands and
hungry guts. The ruin of Spanish
art in our own time is merely an ex-
ample of what has happened many
times before in the history of man’s
striving to create a society that can
live at peace within itself.
rs
I imagine that Mr. LaBeaume, who
has long carried the flag of liberalism
in St. Louis right into the camp of
St. Louis’ tories, must wonder, at
times, at the sanity of his fellowmen.
By one group he’s considered a rad-
ical, a class Judas, by the other, a
Marie Antoinette, for spending pub-
lic funds on a bronze cat you can't
eat. I hope he allows himself an in-
ward Cheshire smile, and that he'll
go on bravely defending the policies
of liberalism in the Noonday Club
and art for our soul’s sake before
the picket lines. There should b&
room for art and bread and work in
any well managed country, and it’s
up to men like Mr. LeBeaume, who
have the brains, to sell that gospel
both to the dummies who have, and
the dummies who have not.
you really like to know what
( thought about? Did he think he was
CITY
SYMPHONY
By Edna Blez
LI
Keeping a diary might prove a
dangerous pastime but I am firmly
convinced it is a good habit.
Wouldnt you be glad if someone in
your family had kept a diary so you
would know something about your
forefathers, and not have to depend
on hearsay, or the pictures in the
family album? If some of your an-
cestors had kept a diary they would
be real flesh and blood to you today
land not just epitaphs on tombstones.
There is nothing more interesting
that the everyday account of a man's
life, no matter what his station in life
might be.
The most interesting history of
early Philadelphia I ever read was the
diary of Nancy Shippen. Not the fa-
mous Peggy, but her cousin, who liv-
ed at Fourth and Locust when Chest-
nut Street was a dirt road, and
George Washington was a frequent
visitor in her father’s house, during
the stirring days of the Revolution.
It is merely an everyday account of
a young girl's life and yet it tells
more about early Philadelphia than
any history book I might mention.
History can be very dull "but not
when it is written in diary form.
Just recently a diary was discov-
ered in the house of an obscure post
master in a small town in Kansas, It
was written in a German dialect
which no one could decipher, until
it fell into the hands of some pro-
fessors at the local university. When
the diary was translated it was an
account of a soldier who had been
thru the war with Napoleon. There
were vivid accounts of battles and of
personal contact with the little corp-
oral. More exciting than fiction!
Here was the history in the making,
more compelling than the greatest
novel -and yet it was written by a
humble soldier who little suspected it
would be eagerly read in 1938.
Somewhere I read a diary which
was written forty years ago by a
young emigrant girl who was a ser-
vant in a boarding house. She was
almost illiterate and yet her diary
glowed with joy of living. She wrote
about a new dress, a new beau, a trip
she took, her life in the new world.
A. poor emigrant girl alone in a
strange country, and yet she found
comfort in jotting down in her own
crude way the story of "her own life,
and we read it forty years later and
have a vivid picture of an obscure
woman who comes alive because she
kept a diary.
I have yet to read a published di-
ary which has proven dull reading.
The chronicle of anyones life can
never prove uninteresting. It is amaz-
ing what a story a diary can tell;
many times it proves more interest-
ing than the best current novel.
Do you ever stop to think what
your great grandfather might have
been doing at your age. Wouldn't
he
”>
AZ.
A
living a fast age? Were things mov-
ing too quickly to satisfy his simple
tastes? Did he travel much? What
did he do when he had time to do
as he pleased? What were his pas-
times? He certainly didn't play golf?
What did he do on Saturday after-
noons off? If he had only kept a
diary, that great grandfather of
yours might have been flesh and
blood instead of just a member of
your family forgotten years and years
ago!
A THOUGHT
FOR THIS WEEK
A weapon that comes down as still
As snowflakes. fall upon the sod;
But executes a freeman’s will,
As lightning does the will of God;
And from its force, nor doors nor
locks
Can shield you; 'tis the ballot-box. ad
PierPONT—A Word From A
Petitioner.
Bernard Shaw