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'Way Back When
By JEANNE
Japanese Soldiers Bring; Their Own Beer to Peiping.
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SUMMARIZES THE WORLD’S WEEK
® Western Newspaper Union.
Nominee Draws Rebuke
AX/ITH his customary exercise of
* ’ the dramatic, President Roose
velt nominated Senator Hugo L.
Black (Dem., Ala.) to fill the vacan
cy on the Supreme
court bench caused
by the retirement of
Justice Willis Van-
Devanter. Senator
Black had not even
been mentioned for
consideration previ
ously, and the ap
pointment was a
complete surprise to
his colleagues.
Senator Black For 20 years it has
been a custom,
when a senator is appointed to high
office, for his nomination to be com-
sidered in open executive session.
But when Senator Ashurst (Dem.,
Ariz.) proposed this in Senator
B 1 a c k’s nomination, objections
came forth immediately from Sen
ator Burke (Dem., Neb.) and Sena
tor Johnson (Rep., Calif.). They
asked that the nomination be re
ferred to the senate judiciary com
mittee for “careful consideration.”
This was viewed in the light of a
distinct rebuke for the nominee.
Senator Black has been a militant
leader in the fight for the Presi
dent’s wages and hours legislation.
As a justice he would have the op
portunity to pass upon measures
regulating public utility holding
companies, authorizing federal
loans and grants for publicly-owned
power plants, and fixing prices in
the soft-coal industry. He was, as
the chairman of the Black commit
tee to investigate lobbying, the cen
ter of a storm of public opinion
during the early months of 1036.
Black practiced law in Birming
ham after being graduated from the
University of Alabama in 1006. At
fifty-one, he is one of the younger
members of the senate.
Shells Pepper Great Wall
A LTHOUGH war was utill with
out benefit of official declara
tion, the army of the Chinese cen
tral government clashed with the
Japanese invaders for the first time.
The Eighty-ninth division, from the
provinces of Suiyuan and Shansi be
gan the attack at the Nankow pass
of the Great Wall, 30 miles north
west of Peiping, the Japanese said.
Through this pass the Japanese
have been able to move reinforce
ments from Manchukuo, its protec
torate, and the Chinese wanted to
gain control of it. They wiped out
a whole battalion of Japanese sol
diers in the opening battle.
The Japanese opened up immedi
ately afterward with heavy artillery
fire which the Chinese failed to re
turn. Indeed the latter were silently
retreating into positions they
thought more secure. As shells fell
in the city of Nankow, fires were
seen to arise from heavily populat
ed areas. The Chinese, how'ever,
were said to be well equipped with
trench mortars with which to de
fend the pass once they considered
their position satisfactory.
Japanese warned that all of their
forces in North China, some 40,000
fighting men, would be loosed upon
the Chinsee if they made any at
tempt to return to the old capital in
Peiping, now held by the invaders.
committee doesn’t know how to write
such a bill and make it stick, in
view of the Supreme court’s deci
sion on the AAA.
Now the Southern bloc has made
it clear that it will not push through
the President’s much-desired wages
and hours bill, as dictated by Wil
liam Green, president of the Ameri
can Federation of Labor, unless
southern farmers get their cotton
loans. Furthermore, the Southern
ers under the capitol dome are now
asking for loans as high as 15 cents
a pound, and in some cases even
18 cents. The South is not any too
well in accord with maximum hours
and minimum wages anyway.
The result of the whole affair is
a complete stalemate. Somebody
will have to give in; somebody prob
ably will, and there will be old-
fashioned “hoss - trading” on a
wholesale scale. For congress wants
to adjourn before the snow flies.
Southerners in the senate were
also worried when Senator Robert
F. Wagner of New York succeeded
in winning recognition to debate an
anti-lynching bill, the type of which
the South has been successful in
blocking since the Civil war. Some
were of the opinion that the bill, al
ready passed by the house, might
be defeated by filibuster (Senator
Bilbo of Mississippi threatened to
filibuster until Christmas) but more
believed that the Southern members
would consent to its passage to put
President Roosevelt “on the spot.”
They explained that if he did not
sign it he would lose the negro vote
so essential to the third term that
is being whispered about, and that
if he did sign it the Democratic
South would drop him like a hot
potato.
South Demands Crop Loans
f~'ONGRESS regarded adjourn
ment as possibly farther off
than ever as the wage-hour bill got
all tangled up with surplus agricul
tural control and cotton loans in
what looked like a hopeless mess.
With the Department of Agricul
ture estimating a 15,500,000-bale cot
ton crop, about 3,000,000 bales more
than can be consumed, Southern
representatives and senators were
demanding surplus crop loans. The
Commodity Credit corporation has
authority to make such loans.
In a press conference, President
Roosevelt indicated that he had no
intention of permitting a 10-cent cot
ton loan until congress passed the
agricultural control program and
ever-normal granary bill which Sec
retary of Agriculture Wallace says
is necessary before the new session
in January. Trouble is the house
Senate O.K.’s Court Reform
A LL that was left of the admin-
istration’s sweeping court re
form proposals passed the senate in
an hour without a record vote. This
was the procedural reform bill for
the lower federal courts. It was in
the nature of a substitute for the
Sumners bill in the house of repre
sentatives, and went back to the
house for what was expected to be
a peaceable conference.
The bill, as summarized by Sen.
Warren R. Austin (Rep., Vt.), who
wrote most of it, included;
Provision making it the duty of
the District court, in any constitu
tional suit between private citizens,
to notify the Department of Justice
that upon a showing by the attorney
general that the United States had
a probable interest the government
would be made a party to the suit.
Permission for the senior circuit
judge to reassign district judges
within that circuit for the purpose
of clearing congested dockets. (If
necessary, a judge may be trans
ferred from one circuit to another.)
Permission for direct appeal to
the Supreme court, if 30-day notice
is given, from any decision of a
District court against the constitu
tionality of an act.
Requirement that all suits for in
junction against the operation of
federal statutes to be heard by a
three-judge court, including at least
one circuit court of appeals judge.
Shanghai Smells Smoke
A JAPANESE officer and a sea-
man tried to enter the Shang
hai airport, now under Chinese mili
tary control, in a high speed auto
mobile. Chinese guards, after try
ing to halt them, shot and killed
them. The Japanese claimed the
road on which the men were travel
ing was part of the international set
tlement, and threatened the sever
est reprisals unless the Chinese
made satisfactory explanation.
The incident bid fair to touch off
a terrible conflict on the scene of
the war of 1932. When Japanese
warships threatened the Shanghai
wharves, Chinese national troops be
gan pouring into the city from ev
ery direction. Simultaneously came
reports that two boatloads of Nip
ponese soldiers were headed to aug
ment the garrison in Shanghai, and
that the sudden ingress of Chinese
troops had virtually blocked off the
entire city, isolating thousands of
foreigners from the outside world.
Advertising’s Value.
V7"ERNALIS, CALIF.—On the
* train a charming young
woman said: “I always read
the advertisements whether I
want to buy anything or not. Do
you think I’m crazy?”
I told her she was the smartest
young woman I knew. If I were
asked to describe
the race in any by
gone period since
printer’s ink came
into common use,
I’d turn to the ad
vertising in the pa
pers and periodicals
of that particular
age. For then I’d
know what people
wore and what they
ate and what their
sports were and
their follies and
their tastes and their habits;
what they did when they were
healthy and what they took when
they were sick and of what they
died and how they were buried and
where they expected to go after they
left here—in short, I’d get a pic
ture of humanity as it was and not
as some prejudiced historian, writ
ing then or later, would have me
believe it conceivably might have
been.
I’d rather be able to decipher the
want ad on the back side of a Chal
dean brick than the king’s edict on
the front—that is, if I craved to get
an authentic glimpse at ancient
Chaldea.
FABLE* WAS ONCE A B JOK
KEEPER
Irvin S. Cobb
know
Running a Hotel.
I’VE just been a guest at one of the
A best small-town hotels in Amer
ica. I should know about good ho
tels because, in bygone days, I
stopped at all the bad ones.
The worst was one back East—
built over a jungle of side tracks.
I wrote a piece about that hotel.
It had hot and cold running cock
roaches on every floor and all-night
switch-engine service; the room
towels only needed buttons on them
to be peekaboo waists, but the roller
towel in the public washroom had,
through the years, so solidified that
if the house burned down it surely
would have been left standing. The
cook labored under the delusion that
a fly was something to cook with.
Everybody who’d ever registered
there recognized the establishment.
So the citizens raised funds and
tore down their old hotel, thereby
making homeless wanderers of half
a million resident bedbugs; and
they put up a fine new hotel which
paid a profit, whereas the old one
had been losing money ever since
the fall of Richmond.
A good hotel is the best adver
tisement any town can have, but a
bad one is just the same as an extra
pesthouse where the patients have
to pay.
Poor Lo’s Knowledge,
Q^OMETIMES I wonder whether
we, the perfected flower of oiv-
ilization—and if you don’t believe
we are, just ask us—can really be
as smart as we let on.
Lately, out on the high seas, I
met an educated Hopi, who said to
me:
“White people get wrong and stay
wrong when right before their eyes
is proof to show how wrong they
are. For instance, take your de
lusion that there are only four
direction points—an error which
you’ve persisted in ever since you
invented the compass, a thing our
people never needed. Every Indian
knows better than that.”
“Well then,” I said, “how many
are there, since you know so
much?”
“Seven,” he said, “seven in all.”
“Name ’em,” I demanded.
“With pleasure,” he said. “Here
they are: north, east, south, west,
up, down and here.”
Of course, ‘there’s a catch in it
somewhere, but, to date, I haven’t
figured it out.
By FLOYD GIBBONS
Famous Headline Hunter
H ERE’S a yarn from Emil Berg of Brooklyn, N. Y.—the story
of how, in November, 1927, he faced one of the most terrible
fates any man can imagine. You know, in Russia the worst sen
tence a man can be given is a stretch in the horrible salt mines
of Siberia.
Most prisoners in the salt mines die from the hardships. Those who
do return come back gaunt and wasted—mere shadows of the men they
were when they went in. But down in Mexico they have salt-mine
prisons which, I’m told, are even worse than the ones in Siberia. They
say that no gaunt and wasted men return from those mines. In fact
they say that the men who go down in them never came back at all.
And that’s where they were going to send Emil Berg!
It happened while Emil was in the army down on the border. He
was stationed in Laredo, Texas, with the “Fourth Field” and he says the
boys used to go across the river to get a drink of Mexican beer now
and then, because in those days we had prohibition in the states, and
beer was harder to get this side of the border.
Emil Laid Out a Bad Mexican.
On the night of November 1, Emil was in Nuevo Laredo, over on the
Mexican side, having a drink or two. About eight o’clock he started for
camp again, but on his way to the international bridge across the Rio
Grande an ominous looking individual stepped out of the bushes at a de
serted spot and asked Emil what his name was.
Emil had been doing some boxing in the Fort McIntosh bowl
and was pretty well known in Laredo. At first he thought that
this fellow had recognized him and—well—just wanted to talk.
But suddenly the Mexican reached for his hip and Emil found
himself looking into the business end of a forty-five.
He started to put up his hands, but the Mexican chose that moment
to turn his head and take a quick glance down the street. It only took
a second, but Emil saw his chance. He put his whole hundred and fifty-
eight pounds behind a well-timed haymaker. It caught the Mexican on
the chin and he slumped to the ground. Emil bent down and picked
up his gun, tossed it into the bushes and continued on his way.
He walked on toward the international bridge, strolling along in a
leisurely fashion—taking his time about it. But when he got there he
wished he had hurried. For there was his friend the Mexican, who had
taken a short cut and beaten him to the bridge, talking to the Mexican
MOT everyone can be an individ-
ualist ana blaze his own trail
fa , me - Some ol u s are better fit-
ted for falling into line as part of
an organization. James A. Farley’s
rise in politics is an example of
the rewards which may come to the
good lieutenant.
The Russian Puzzle.
NDER the present beneficent
regime, no prominent figure in
Russia’s government, whether mil
itary or civil, is pestered by the
cankering fear which besets an offi
cial in some less favored land,
namely, that he’ll wear out in har
ness and wither in obscurity.
All General So-and-Soski or Com
missar Whatyoumaycallovitch has
to do is let suspicion get about that
he’s not in entire accord with ad
ministration policies and promptly
he commits suicide—by request; or
is invited out to be shot at sunrise.
To be sure, the notion isn’t new.
The late Emperor Nero had numer
ous well-wishers, including family
relatives, that he felt he could spare
and he just up and spared them.
And, in our own time, A1 Capone
built quite an organization for tak
ing care of such associates as
seemed lacking in the faith. ’Twas
a great boon to the floral design
business, too, while it lasted.
But in Russia where they really
do things—there no job-holder need
ever worry about old age. Brer
Stalin’s boys will attend to all nec
essary details, except the one, for
merly so popular in Chicago, of
sending flowers to the funeral.
IRVIN S. COBB.
©—WNU Service.
It caught the Mexican on the chin and he slumped.
soldiers guarding the Mexican end of the span. They grabbed Emil.
Emil yelled for the American sentry on the Texas side, but the sentry
didn’t hear him. The soldiers hustled him off to the local jail and
threw him into a cell.
Sentenced to the Salt Mines.
The next morning they hailed Emil into court, and there he learned
that his Mexican friend was accusing him of hitting him for no reason
whatever. What made matters worse was that Emil had broken the
Mexican’s jaw with his haymaker. He told his side of the story, but the
Mexicans refused to believe it because they couldn’t find the gun where
Emil said he had tossed it.
They took him back to his cell and tried to make him sign some
papers written in Spanish, which Emil couldn’t read. For three days
they urged and coaxed and threatened him to get him to sign those
papers. They refused to let him communicate with his officers at Fort
McIntosh, but Emil had one consolation. Soldiers in the United States
army don’t go across the border and just disappear without anything
being done about it. They’d be looking for him by this time—and maybe
they’d find him.
Emil was right. On the third day the American consul came to see
him. Then Emil got the shock of his life. The consul told him he had
been tried and sentenced to two years in the salt mines inland—the
mines from which, people said, you never came back alive!
The consul had obtained a writ which would prevent the Mex
icans taking Emil out of Laredo for a while, but he wasn’t sure
even then that he could save Emil from the mines. They put
Emil back in the cell—and then began a period of waiting.
Tough Days in the Prison Cell.
Day after day went by. The uncertainty was driving Emil half
crazy, but the prison itself was even worse. “There were ten of us in
the cell I was in,” he says, “and we were never let out for exercise, for
we were considered dangerous. There were no beds. We slept on the
floor. I didn’t even have a blanket, but I shared my cigarettes with
the Mexican prisoners and they shared their rags and blankets with me.
I was getting along fine with those fellows until one night a new arrival
was thrown into our dungeon.
“This newcomer was all hopped up with marihuana, and he lost no
time in telling us in broken English that he hated all gringoes in general
and gringo soldiers in particular. So that night I had to sleep in a sit
ting position with my back to the wall to make sure I’d be alive the
next day.
“One day there was some shooting outside the prison wall and I saw
the guards carry in a colored man. They took me out to talk to him as
none of the guards spoke English. He had been serving a ten-day sen
tence for having imbibed too much tequila, and on his third day, while
working in a prison gang in the street, he had made a break for the
river. But one of the guards brought him down with a rifle bullet. He
died as I was talking to him.”
A few minutes later the American consul came rushing in to see if
Emil was all right. He had heard that someone had been shot. But that
was the end of Emil’s troubles, and a couple of days later he was re
leased. The consul took him home, gave him a big feed to sort of make up
for the short jail rations he had been on, and drove him back to the post.
And that time no one tried to high-jack them on their way across the
international bridge.
©—WNU Service.
Farley was born in 1889 in Grassy
Point, N. Y„ a small village on the
Hudson river. There were five chil
dren, and the father was a saloon
keeper. When Jim Farley was ten
years old, his father died and
mother started
loon
his
combination sa-
grocery store. The boy
often tended bar or worked as gro
cery clerk on the other side of the
store. Through these jobs he
learned to meet the public, be
friendly with strangers and show
sympathy for their problems. He
attended the Stony Point high school
and the Packard commercial school
in New York. Graduating in 1906,
he was employed as a bookkeeper:
Jim was always interested in poli
tics; and, before he was old enough
to vote, he called house-to-house,
getting out the Democratic vote ii
Stony Point.
His first political job was as town
clerk of Stony Point. He was cour
teous to all, jolly, a hale-fellow-well-
met sort of man who had a pat on
the back for everyone. Through Al
fred E. Smith, whom he helped elect
governor of New York, and Frank
lin D. Roosevelt, for whom e was
faithful lieutenant in the President
ial campaign, Farley forgeo stead
ily ahead. He won the top political
plum in the United States, post
master general.
POET WAS ONCE A LAWYER
D EAD this story of the conven-
tional lawyer who became one
of our most famous poets. Not a
dreaming, unsuccessful lawyer, but
man with a profitable and impor
tant law practice, important enough
to associate with Clarence Darrow
at one time A busy man of com
merce who became a writer of
songs and poems, sonnets, essays
and drama!
Edgar Lee Masters was born in
the little town of Garnett, Kan., in
1868. His father was a descendant
of old Virginia stock; his mother,
the daughter of a Methodist minister
and descendant o- Israel Putnam of
American Revolutionary fame. Th«
family moved to Petersburg, 111.,
and later to Lewistown, where Ed
gar was raised in the typically re
spectable atmosphere of small town
America.
He did newspaper work for the
local weekly, learned the printing
trade, and studied law under (lis
father, who was one of the leading
lawyers in the state. In 1891 Ed-
Notary Public’s Oath
A notary public is a public of
ficer who takes acknowledgement
of, or otherwise attests or certifies,
deeds and other writings, or copies
of them, usually under his official
seal, to make them authentic, and
takes affidavits, depositions, and pro
tests of negotiable paper. In the
United States appointments are
made by the governors of the states.
The oath is as follows: “I do sol
emnly swear that I will support the
Constitution of the United States
and the constitution of the state of
(name of state) and that I will faith
fully and impartially discharge the
duty of notary public for (name of
county), according to the best of my
■kill and ability; so help me God.”
Voice Reveals Character
An indication of character which
concerns the face is the voice, which
can tell you quite a lot about a per
son. Weak colorless voices, accord
ing to a writer in Pearson’s Lon
don Weekly, belong to weak color
less people. Harsh voice, harsh,
gross nature. High pitched, uncon
vincing, emotional. Musical, diplo
matic, refined. Deep voice, power
ful, courageous, forceful. Here, of
course, one must not overlook the
difference in male and female
voices. For instance, the woman
with a low-modulated voice, without
it being harsh, is usually deeply
emotional though she may not show
it to outsiders. She is refined, “true
blue”—a thoroughbred.
gar Lee Masters was admitted to
the bar and practiced in partnership
with his father. The following year
ht opened his own office ir Chicago
where he was a highly successful
lawyer until 1920.
But even in high school, Edgar
Lee Masters was interested in writ
ing and he never forgot his am
bitions. He contributed to the Wa-
verly Magazine of Boston and the
Saturday Evening Call of Peoria; he
wrote poems for a Chicago news
paper. His first oook, published in
1898, while he was struggling to es
tablish a practice in Chicago, was
called simply “A Book of Verses.”
“Songs and Sonnets” followed, but
none of them attracted much at
tention until his “Spoon River An
thology” was published in 1915.
Those of you who lament your
unexciting lives and yearn for op
portunity, look at his dual person
ality, the poet who has won such
high awards in the realms of lit
erature.
©—WNU Service.
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