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Show THE BI'LLETIX. BINGHAM ( ANYON. 1 TAH .- -J Is the 'Common Man' Fit to Rule? Population May Backslide To Low Intelligence Level By BAUKHAGE News Analyst and Commentator. WASHINGTON. -- When the Henry Wallace for president movement was launched in California it made a lot of Repub-licans happy just to think about it, although they never really believed that a third party was possible. (When I was in col-lege a friend of mine wrote an essay entitled: "Why a Third I 'arty Is Impossible in America." This was just before Teddy Roosevelt came out with his Bull Moosers in 1912). If Wallace wore to become president of the United States it Is unlikely that the "common man" whom he champions would have any more to say about running the country than he docs now. However, when Wallace says this is the century of the "common man," he isn't far wrong. The revolutions which have swept the world in the past decade cer-tainly would not have been possi- - ble II tney nua not had the sup-port of the peo-ple. This support was not necessar-ily the result of free choice, intel-lectual decision or popular vote. In fact, for the most part cer-tainly under Mus-solini, Franco, Hitler and Stalin it was the op-posite. Neverthe- - There are others, however, who while they may agree with Brown's postulation, question the methods now being used to develop these innate abilities. A very dim view of the situation is taken by Canon Bernard Iddings Bell, educator, pastor, author and consultant on education to the Epis-copal bishop of Chicago. He thinks Henry Wallace is cor-rect in his description of the cur-rent century but he says: "It does not follow because the common man has suddenly been lifted into control that he is thereby automatically made competent properly to exert control." He thinks Wallace's definition ought to be expanded. He says: "Ours is the century of the perpetually adolescent common man, of the common man un-skilled in the art of living. Un-taught in the wisdom of the race, he is incompetent either to rule or to be ruled." Need Education For Common Man The canon isn't snobbish. He Is not looking down his canonical nose at anybody. As a member of so-ciety he takes his share of the blame by saying that society has played the common man a low trick "for which those who control education are chiefly chargeable." Hell quotes the late Dr. William Bainey Harper's definition of an d man: A man who by the less, uiey ac Baukhage revoiulons of the upper classes. Even in the case of Great Brit-ain's very mild revolution, which was the result of popular vote and a free choice, the traditional po-litical and intellectual leaders were swept out of office. Americans are committed to the idea that the majority should rule and the theory al-ways has been that the people would be wise enough to select a person of sulllcient intelli-gence, experience and integrity to represent them at the Job of ruling. Of late, however, a number of persons approaching the problem from quite different angles, have expressed concern about the odui IS tion and training of the men avail-able for the responsibility ol car rying on the business of govern ment. I have been assured by here who have been familial with the personnel of congress over a number of years that we perhaps have as high type of men, mentally and morally, in congress today as we have ever had. In fact, 1 am told they are making excellent use of the greatly expanded sources of information on the issues they have to consider and are, therefore, bet-ter informed than any congress has ever been. Nevertheless, we hear from edu-cators, from economists and statis-ticians, all sorts of dire warnings. One that has recenUy stirred up the press considerably was by Guy Irving Burch, head of the popula-tion reference bureau. It seems Burch read a survey made in Eng-land by Sir Cyril Burt at the re-quest of the royal commission on population. As a result of his survey, Sir Cyril suggests that in 50 years the number of students of scholarship ability in Britain will be approxi-mately halved and the number of feeble-minde- almost doubled. This conclusion was based on psycho-logical tests and size of families in Britain. Nation of Dullards Seen in Future Burch has studied population sta-tistics for the United States from the standpoint of psychological tests, educational attainment, eco-nomic status and type of occupa-tion. He says: "We may reach the general conclusion that the lowest third of our people in each one of these four categories has families about twice as large as those of the highest third." And he concludes: "As a voting participant In helping to solve the many In-tricate problems of our complex civilization a dull and backward individual is almost as helpless as an idiot. In fact, be may be more dangerous to democrat-ic institutions because he is easily commanded by dema-gogues and dictators." This gives us quite a different pic-ture of the century of the "common man." Dr Francis Brown, staff associ-ate of the American Council on Education and the executive secre-tary of the President's commission, doesn't quarrel with Burch's figures but he says: "This population-intelligenc- e report does not give enough importance to the possibility of im-proving intelligence by education." In other words, if we broaden the base of our teaching we can regain a lot of the potential waste ma-terial that Burch has discovered. What the Burch report over-looks is this, says Dr. Brown, "human intelligence never has been developed to its fullest among the great masses of peo-ple. No way has been found accurately to measure the u-ltimate capabilities of the human mind." Canon Bernard Iddings Bell ". , . unskilled . . . untaught . . ." time he is 25 has a clear theory, formed in the light of human ex-perience down the ages, of what constitutes a satisfying life, a sig-nificant life, and who by the age of 30 has a moral philosophy consonant with racial experience." Bell thinks that what we do not do and what we ought to do to educate is, first, to give children a knowledge of the race's wisdom, imparting to them what they ought to know rather than teach them what they would like to study; sec-ond, to teach children how to read, write, listen to and speak the English language; third, they must be taught decent manners, the rights of others; fourth, they must learn that honest and craftsmanlike achievement is the only door to so-cial approval; fifth, teachers must "inspire reverence for the un-seen and impart some objective knowledge of what the various faiths about us are to do and teach." 1 wish that some smart statis-tician would try to figure out if the kind of education which would give a man a high income likewise makes him (it to run a country as complicated as ours in a world as complicated as ours. Nw Brand of Socialism coal economy, cmum 1 T NION Big Man " Hf 'ic" s and wage increases, seems U another bigger round bnd of sociaUsm ad-- to have some The survey howls vocatedbv the ates fLSers'Vbs and Living Stand- - in top headline: Hlh"c"Jshes It calls "The Way Out. ards Ten .t the J,,Coopcration." and The way mt T the owncrship of . business. Every cooperation means coop.ra .ve or(pullze con. . e musi member Is a part-own- er afford to wait . . . sumers ... we cannot cooperation is CO-- understand this. Con Now let's see. Let's operative ownership of a business, e . thtD that which advanced type or Moreover, it is a different, Br tain government imposed on the British unions have normal bought the business there jSg( one owns it. government ou ns case when the owersnip. This new AFL socialism is not automobi,eS( maybe. The unions start factories for shoes, pWJJJJ thp work , the this breaks its own "JJJo worU aIld prlce shoe, clothing or vat(,y own,,, purpose then, AFL would romp, te J'JJJin profitable. If AFL was derselliat them and making their the prhate owner jobs they successful, their members would lose have now. BACK IN CIVILIAN DeMf Reconverted to her tJi dor, the SS Queen mJ?W, ready to resume her IgJK plying between BtttK New York. The 81,2',s.uBl served as hospital andSe HOW BLUE YOUR EYES ARE . . . Anything can happen at a baby show, as witness this scene taken during judging at a Los Angeles competition. ld Leland Dexter, contestant for the bluest eyes, went to sleep in midst of excitement and had to be judged in his carriage. . . PHILLIPS TW Summer Vacation Trip A J lit I ' - Put a squirrel tail on the radiator cap, stick a pennant in your hat, and ho for the open road, the closed bridge and the detour that unravels your spine and puts gravel in your disposition! Through the great open spaces with tire jack, can opener, aspirin tablets and a will of iron. t We have annihilated distance and run the clippers over the wings of time. And what have we? More hamburgers, popcorn stands, hot fudge parlors and popsicle spots per capita! . . . And a civilization whose slogan is "Don't forget to change the oil and look at the bat-tery!" Hen Pease says that if the ancient prophets could get a peek at present day civilization they would start sing-i- ? "How are things in Sodom-Gomo- Congress Is to make an inquiry Into the high cost of living. This should raise it considerably. INCREDIBLE He gasped, he reeled And then fell flat . . Gromyko had said "I agree with that"!!! "Armies Close Trap." Headline. If only some of oar leaders would. . . . "Dewey is regarded in some quarters as the White Knight." News item. Just at present, a sort of silent night, as it were. HUGHES UNDER FIKlff Howard Hughes, west ..M trialist and long a fabuliB in the American scene sB the principals in a mdiW investigating committet'iB into the awarding: of l dollars in aircraft builiisW tracts during war. W' NEWS REVIEW British Economy Menaced; Traffic Fatalities Slashed Like a kaleidoscope in which several apparently unrelated chips of glass shift suddenly from a meaningless jumble of color into an understandable pattern, so at least some of the whirling segments of the world's intricate economy have be-gun dropping into place to form a coherent unit. For masses of Americans, to whom economics could be boiled down into a matter of "you either have it or don't have it," the international hysteria of monies, credits, loans, spend-ing, inflation at home and crises abroad began to take on some meaning. Within a matter of hours came a sudden spate of developments, starting in England and ending up on virtually every farm in America. Having no ostensible connection on the surface, each fresh turn of events was linked inexorably with preceding occurrences. To philosophers, as well as econo-- i mists, it was a perfect chain of causes and effects. This is how it began: i Eield Marshal Viscount Mont- - 1 . gomery, chief of the British im-perial general staff, suddenly was called home from a tour of the Far East. Montgomery returned to Great Britain to advise the government concerning drastic curtailment of the nation's military establishment, cost of which (3.6 billion dollars a year) could no longer be borne by the threadbare British economy. 2 In London, Labor government . officials, no longer able to stave off a frank admission, told the world that England's plight was desperate, that the tight little isle was on the sharp brink of ruin. Prime Minister Clement Attlee, as-sailed with charges of "bungling" and "failure to act," nevertheless was given a vote of confidence when he sketched out a plan which would have British miners work an extra hour each day to Increase England's coal production, key pillar in its economic structure. The British crisis was born out of four factors: Shortage of Amer-ican dollars (the U. S. loan will have been used up by Christmas); shortage of coal (not enough to per-mit industries to operate and re-build stockpiles); shortage of man-power, and inflation. 1 Morally weakened under the 3. threat of domestic political and economic crises, the London stock market broke swiftly, as sharp sell-ing hit all sections. And, although U. S. state depart-ment observers scoffed at the idea that developments in England had produced a reaction over here, it appeared to be something more than coincidence that: Shortly after London stocks 4. broke, wheat prices on the Chi-cago board of trade showed losses of nine to nine and one-four- th cents a bushel, while corn and oats dropped off from three to lour cents. Industrial stocks also receded some-what on the New York stock ex-change. At the same time, it became ap-parent that the U. S. government, faced with high prices of grain and food and continued shortages abroad, would issue a call for an-other big wheat crop this year in-stead of reducing wheat production goals as was planned previously. As the picture began to take shape, the dominating motif ap-peared to be economic insecurity. WALTER SUE AD A Warning Boom and Bust HENDERSON, former price administrator, has told the LEON steering committee in the senate that the present governmental policy is heading toward a wild boom and then a bust. He declared the price structure is shot through with distortion and unbalances and that prices, just as in 1920, have been allowed to get out of hand, that profits of business and industry are swollen and that wages have not kept pace with the rise in prices. Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio, chairman of the GOP committee, took the opposite view. He said there is bo evidence today that prices are out of line with wages and he declared that factory workers today can buy 20 per cent more with their pay than they could eight years ago. Chances are that there isn't a housewife in the country who will agree with Senator Taft on that statement. Senator Taft even asserted that he believed higher rents would help purchasing power because the landlords would make some repairs. On one thing Taft and Henderson agree namely, that luxury taxes should be investigated. HELLO, MA . . . ScrenB Retty Grable iher husbaniB ry James) introduces herllH old girl, Jessica James. camera for the first tM blonde actress and her bill er husband have another S ter, Vicki, now three. K DEATH ROAD: Safety Report Compared with 1946, death is tak-ing a back seat on the nation's high-ways this year, the semi-annu- re-port of the National Safety council has shown. For the first six months of 1947 the cross-countr- y death toll stood at 14,480. That figure is 9 per cent below the 15.890 fatalities recorded for the same period last year. At the same time, travel was 11 per cent heavier this year. According to the safety council's report, 2,490 lives were lost during June, which represents a 5 per cent increase over the June, 1946, rec-ord. In view of the increased traffic, however, it was a marked improve-ment. Even the larger cities in the na-tion were decreasing their traffic fatalities. New York whittled its deaths by 15 per cent and Los An-geles by 16 per cent. Jacksonville, Fla., was tops on the record book with a 69 per cent decrease from 1946. Indication was that cities were becoming more traffic conscious. WALTER W1JSCHELL Cast of Characters in the Bio; Town The producer who lunches daily with his two . . . China-town's citizens idling away a Sun-day afternoon sipping rice wine and playing fan-ta- . . . Comely gypsy maidens near Tompkins Square garbed in colorful native costumes. ... The hot sweet potato vendors on Mulberry Square. . . . Union Square's open-ai- r forums where anyone can join the verbal free-for-al- l. Shady lawyers hanging around courts, hoping to pick up homicide cases. They're called "thousand dollar men." A thouz is the established fee for an attorney allotted by the court to defend an accused murderer. A community of families who live on barges anchored in East river. Some rent extra cabins to boarders. . . . The depressing migration of derelicts to Bowery fleabags every evening. They seldom speak to each other. Miserable humans in night court the worst possible advert for the hu-man race. . , . Prisoners delivered to police headquarters via a back door and whisked into hidden elevators. . . . Cocky prisoners in the police lineup who crack iokes in hope of creating "a favorable atmosphere." Gents who carry gum - tipped poles to pluck coins dropped in cel-lars. The city's version of a beach-comber. . Trafficops refereeing the midtown traffic tussle. mi in Miiiwii DEFENSE SECKBWW Forrestal, W James V. tarv of defense under W tional security act, haiW' tion of armed services I most decisive and j In formation of the rep INDONESIA: U.N. Looks It was a matter of regret, the Dutch government said, that the matter of the Dutch - Indonesian fracas was being brought before the United Nations security council. To a few million other observers, it was not so much a matter of regret as it was a surprise. U. N., it seemed, was even then overdue in its action. Australia and India laid the prob-lem before the council, where it immediately began to vie with the Balkan issue for priority of debate. Although the Australian and In-dian delegations told the council that the strife between Dutch and Indonesian forces threatened world peace, a Dutch spokesman in Wash-ington said U. N. had no juris-diction. Netherlands authorities insist on terming the struggle a Dutch "po-lice action," designed to control re-bellious Indonesians who hate to wait until 1949 to attain their inde-pendence as a sovereign state. The Indonesians, however, say that the Dutch are waging a colonial war and that it looks like imperialism to them. DREW PEARSON Marshall Exposes Russia's Game SECRETARY of Sta e Marshal gloomily disclosed to the house foreign committee that a Soviet fifth column, composed mostly of Q. mans. Is working "night and day" to create chaos in Germany At an meeting, Marshall, in effect, declared: "The Russian game is to keep Germany in chaos, realizing that desperate, broken, hungry peopie are easy prey for Commu nism and will turn to Russia for aid." He emphasized that European recovery is impossible without up German production, and assured the tho ki sleppfua unanimous opinion of the "best minds avauaW "Xn Z of European economy ny was hub ,n 7 be bed out suddenly J&Z sprea!d.er,nany beCmCS 3 C"Cer" h" warncd' "th thing will The secretary of state ficient without again threatening Iih LGermanv " be made sell"Suf-le-was to convince FrTnc n tTVf' that lhe Prob-recove- ,n Europe hinged e e VjtTlV"? inasmuch as France fears any ItIm , Germany-wa- r potential. This worry is ESStoK C'P Germany' he said. Communist propaganda. FARMERS BENEFIT AAA To Resume Soil Program WASHINGTON Extensive oper- - ations of the AAA soil conservation program were ordered resumed by the department of agriculture after congress finally approved a 255 mil-lion dollar admiuistrative fund for the setup. Administrative expenses are in addition to the 265 million dollars which will go directly for payment! to farmers participating in g practices. Inaugurated in early days of the New Year, the AAA program offers cash and materials, principally lime and fertilizers, to farmers for carrying out approved soil and water conservation practices. Local details of the program are carried out by more than 100,000 farmer committeemen. The program was halted in May when the house voted to appropri-ate only 165 million dollars for the setup this year and to end it alto-gether next year. The AAA had worked out a 300 million dollar pro-gram and President Truman had recommended that amount in his budget to congress. Although the 255 million finally voted by congress is lower than the sum asked, the soil program is be-ing resumed on the same basis as originally planned. The appropria-tion for administrative expenses is about 18 per cent less than last year. Bulk of the reduction in per-sonnel and other expenses will be absorbed in Washington and state offices, allowing local AAA offices to retain most of their present staff. A farmer may sign up for any number of approved projects, but he is promised only a certain amount of money with the provision that he will get additional payments if any funds remain after all farm-ers have been paid their minimum guarantees. The program will be cut drastic-ally next year. At insistence of the senate, however, the house agreed to go along with an appropriation ol 150 million dollars for 1948. ACCUSED ' T dfiiif1 Harold Hirshberg martialed at the yard in Brooklyn mistreating ",10 oners of war aW oner in a Japanese r WRIGHT MTTERSON Russia Thwarts United N A MISTAKE was made in the San Francisco conference when the United Nations was or-ganized. Russia should not have been appeased by giving her a veto power. She should have been d to walk out then, and not later be in a position to block action. United Nations, to be effee-tive. must be something more than a bating society. Its constitution 8 rather cutersome method of correcting that mistake SWT t0 niake such a chanse is probably will quit if it made, but It is better that she Qu't now than to wait until Com- munism dominates all the world. |