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Show ujfe o ! UMnkd ahouL The Origin of Sitdowns. SANTA MONICA, CALIF. With the Barnum show: there once was an elderly lady elephant named Helen, j Now, Helen had wearied of j traipsing to and fro in the land. i Probably she figured she'd seen everything anyhow. So each fall, 1 when the season ended, she went P" P'fF? rejoicing back' f-i home to Bridgeport, J 1 Conn. f . - Nobody ever knew t. f the date of depar-ture depar-ture the next spring. I , There was no more $ : bustle about winter- ' i quarters on that ' ' "j morning than for : ' weeks past. L.-jM...j.,r-. But always, when S- Cobb the handlers entered en-tered the "bull barn" to lead forth the herd, they found Helen hunkered hun-kered down on her voluminous haunches, which, under that vast weight, spread out like cake batter on a hot griddle. She would be uttering shrill sobs of defiance. And neither prodding nor honeyed words could budge her. So they'd wrap chains around her and two of her mates would hitch on and drag her bodily, she still on her rubbery flanks, aboard a waiting wait-ing car. She'd quit weeping then and wipe her snout and accept what fate sent her. So please don't come telling me that the sit-down strike is a new notion or that somebody in Europe first thought it up. Thirty years ago I saw my lady elephant friend, Helen, Hel-en, putting on one, all by her four-ton four-ton self. Taxes and More Taxes. JUST when everybody is taking comfort from the yodelled promises prom-ises of that happy optimist. Chairman Chair-man Harrison of the senate finance committee, that the government will be able to get by for 1937 without with-out asking this congress to boost taxes, what happens? Why, in a most annoying way, Governor Eccles of the federal reserve re-serve board keeps proclaiming that, to make treasury receipts come anywhere near meeting treasury disbursements throughout the year, he's afraid it's going to be necessary neces-sary to raise the rates on incomes and profits higher than ever. And meanwhile state governors and civic authorities scream with agony at the bare prospect of any reductions in Uncle Sam's allotments allot-ments for local projects. A balanced budget would seem to be like Santa Claus, something everybody talks about but nobody ever expects to see. Self -Determination. FORMERLY the states jealously guarded their sovereign perquisites. per-quisites. Once but that was so long ago many have almost forgotten forgot-ten it they fought among themselves them-selves one of the bloodiest civil wars in history over the issue of states' rights. Now we see them complacently surrendering to federal bureaus those ancient privileges and maybe, may-be, after all, that's the proper thing to do, if in centralized authority lies the hope of preserving a republican form of government. Still, one wonders what Englishmen English-men would do under like circumstances, circum-stances, since Englishmen are fussy about their inheritance of self-determination. Perhaps the distinction distinc-tion is this: In democracies there exists the false theory that all men are born free and equal. So the Englishman insists on having his freedom, which is a concrete thing, and laughs at th3 idea of equality. Whereas, the American abandons his individual freedom provided he may cling to the fetish of equality. Yankee tweedledee and British tweedledum may be brothers under the skin, but they have different skin diseases. The Parole Racket. IT IS astonishing but seemingly true that, of five young gangsters gang-sters recently caught red-handed in a criminal operation, not a single one was a convict out on parole. Is there no way to bar rank amateurs from a profession calling for prior experience and proper background? And can it be that the various parole pa-role boards over the union are not turning loose qualified practitioners fast enough to keep up with the demand? de-mand? Maybe we need self-opening jails. Those sentimentalists who abhor the idea that a chronic offender be required to serve out his latest sentence sen-tence should take steps right away to correct this thing before it goes too far. Our parole system must be vindicated if it cos's the lives and property of ten times as many innocent citizens as at present. IRVIN S. COBB. WNU Service. |