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Show Prevailing Opinions ' Comment of th American Pr Radicals Thriv on Supprauion If a bill pending In th Massachusetts Massa-chusetts legislature Is passed, public pub-lic and private libraries of that state will be prohibited from circulating cir-culating books of Upton Sinclair. The action is in ths beat Bay Stat tradition, which results periodically periodi-cally In attacks of jitters for fear that some literary work or other is going to corrupt the manners or morals of a presumably susceptible suscep-tible populace. Upton Sinclair has been around for a long time. In his career of muckracking he haa "exposed" just about everything, ranging from politics, journalism, education, educa-tion, capitalism, to th Chicago stockyards. Th net result is that ha has upset no applecarts, overthrown over-thrown no established institutions. institu-tions. Tha way to oppose social "reformers" "re-formers" of the Upton Sinclair brand is either to ignore them or expos the fallacies of their reasoning. rea-soning. They thrive on suppression, suppres-sion, for when anything is suppressed sup-pressed th public Immediately is inclined to suspect th motives of the suppressor and to ask embarrassing em-barrassing questions, th first of which is "How coma?" Th Upton Up-ton Sindairs serve a useful purpose pur-pose In any democracy. They keep th majority on their toea by their criticism, whether it is valid or not and ar always a vigorous reminder re-minder that free speech is an inherent in-herent right When they ar summarily sum-marily sat upon or gagged the first sUp haa ba taken toward th sort of thing that baa mad democracy a rarity la Europe. Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. Edmund Randolph .' Edmund Randolph, whom Mr. Rooaevalt quoted in his message, waa a member of tha continental congress, governor of Virginia, attorney at-torney general, and secretary of stat of th United State. He la leea well remembered than he da-serves. da-serves. He waa th victim of long Injustice. His accounts as a special envoy to England were questioned. ques-tioned. Not till 7 years after his ' death was th carelessness of th ' treasury department In keeping those accounts on ths books after they were settled disclosed. Hs is on of th men whose urgency induced in-duced General Washington to go to th Annapolis convention. In that convention hs presented th Virginia plan, whose suggestions sugges-tions were so largely adopted. He opposed a unitary executive. He wanted an executive of three men. He proposed that the national judiciary ju-diciary should have the power to Invalidate a stat law not merely for unconstitutionality, but for its Injustice to any individual In th tat Injured or oppressed. At this tim it is .curious to aotic that among his objections to the con- ' stltutlon waa Its failure to make a clear dividing line between th powers of the states and ths federal fed-eral government and between the powers of th stat and federal courts. In spits of his opposition to some parts of th constitution, in th Virginia convention of 178S he favored fa-vored ratification. A great Virginian, Vir-ginian, to whom fat has been a little unkind. In part perhaps, because be-cause there have been so many great' Virginians. New York Times. 'Nd for Mchinry' A recent appeal went from Racine Ra-cine to Governor La Follette of Wisconsin, .to "do something" kbout a strike in a large Industrial plant Wisconsin's governor Is a progressive who stands with labor. He replied: "There ts ao.latanaedlary step th governor may take between doing nothing and using ths militia. mili-tia. We need some machinery to minimis Industrial disputes." That "need for machinery" to settle strikes Is thus expressed by on more official and one who cannot be accused of "fascist" leanings. The country has such machinery when it comes to rail disputes and so fsr it has worked. Oakland Tribune. . ' A Tradition Crumble Long used as an example by which to measure tha inadequacy of our judicial and penal systems, the British model seems to be falling down In spots. The centralization of police authority au-thority in Great Britain, commonly com-monly accepted by American readers read-ers of Scotland. Yard tales as existent ex-istent turns out through the medium me-dium of negotiations, that failed by the way, to bring police under a more compact organization, to be nonexistent Under a multiplicity multi-plicity of local police organizations, organiza-tions, th Scotland Yard man is even mora of a guest at will .of th local constabulary than is a "G" man in America. And now th inmates of an Ontario On-tario penitentiary bv entertained enter-tained us with a prison riot up to th highest standards of our own undisciplined felon colonies. Ar our models breaking down or has th superiority been just a tradition? Or can it be that th world over rriminala ar bad men? San Francisco Chronicle. Th Btt Non Too Good The civil service assembly of the United States and Canada has mad a check of th total costs f government of soma representative represent-ative cities. The average expenditure expendi-ture tor employ service in these cities was about 62 per cent of tha entire annual budget In some of th most important department th proportion is larger. In th public schools 87 per cent of the annual appropriation appropria-tion is for salaries. la departments of public health, public safety, public works and finance, money spent for employe services is bout 80 per cent of th total. Good business sens would Indicate In-dicate that systems should be used to get th vary best services for the money. Certainly this cannot be accomplished by turning turn-ing out a large percentage of personnel per-sonnel because of change of administration. ad-ministration. Detroit News. |