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Show , This Week by Arthur Brisbane Beef, Wages, Jobs. We Plan a Seadrome. Why Force Solitary Drinking? Crime Does Not Pay. Miss Perkins, Secretary of Labor, provides the cheerful news that S5,-000 S5,-000 workers were added to the Nation's Na-tion's payrolls during the last month, and weekly wages increased increas-ed $5,000,000. Since March, according to Miss Perkins, more than 2,500,000 workers work-ers hnve found employment, while payrolls in October were 170,000.000 above the March figure. The President proposes to Increase In-crease the number of Jobs by 4,-000,000. 4,-000,000. Four hundred million dollars dol-lars has been set aside for that purpose. And Harry L. Hopkins, relief administrator, has given $500,000 to the Federal Surplus Relief Re-lief Corporation "to buy low grade Texas cattle at a mlnimua price of $1.75 per hundred pounds." The beet will be processed and distributed to the needy; $1.75 a hundred pounds, less than 2 cents a pound, is cheap meat; "Properly cooked it is as nourishing nourish-ing as the most expensive. No one can say the Government Is not trying." try-ing." Uncle Sam, who seems to be as rich just now as some of his nephews neph-ews are poor, is considering the expenditure of a million and a half to build a seadrome, landing and fueling station for airplanes, 500 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean. It will be a baby seadrome, one-quarter as big as was at first proposed. If It works, flyers finding it and landing successfully as doubtless they will, a bigger seadrome will be built. Perhaps a series of thorn all across the ocean, allowing planes to hop from one to the other, like Eliza crossing on the cakes of ice. Very likely, by the time the first big seadrome is finished, airplanes will consider a non-stop flight over the Atlantic a triviality. There will be a seadrome for sale cheap. It Is less than twenty-three years since Lord Northc'iffe paid a reward re-ward of $50,000 to the first man that would fly across the English Channel. A Frenchman won It. In those days they might have suggested sug-gested a mid-channel "seadrome" Germany keeps a refueling ship In the southern Atlantic, to supply gas to German transatlantic planes. It works well. Solemn law makers, arranging the distribution of "hard liquor" after prohibition, object to "drinking "drink-ing on the premises," that is to say, where the liquor is sold. Laws will be passed compelling the would-be drinker to buy an entire en-tire bottle and take it home. The women of New Zealand know something some-thing about that. They closed public pub-lic drinking places, the man brought home his bottle or two bottles, put them under a pillow and drank un til they were gone, or he was "out." Then the women of New Zealand voted the home bottles out, and the rublic drinking places in again. The worst drinker, surely on the road to ruin, is the "solitary drinker," and It seems foolish to pass laws that Inevitably would iu-crcaso iu-crcaso his numbers. Crime does not pay. Two young men in California kidnaped a youth, 22-years-old. and confess that they murdered him. After the murder, seeking to extort $40,000. they telephoned tele-phoned the parents "the easiest thing would be to kill your son, with little danger to us." They did kill him, but not with "littlo danger." dan-ger." Both are in jail, soou to learn from California justice, how dangerous their kidnaping was. Tha..ks to tho Department of Jus'lcu and Secret Service, which cannot bo too highly praised, kidnaping kid-naping has beconio a dangerous In dustry. "Why." asks a reader, "do you seem to approvo capital punishment punish-ment for kidnapers, after opposing capital punishment for years?" Answer: Because murder of the usual kind Is not discouraged by capital punishment: on the contrary con-trary when Government sets the example of killing, tho degraded criminal follows the example. Kidnaping Is not murder of the old kind. It Is a new Industry, In which criminal Industrialists like other business men run so much risk with hope of so much profit The greater the rlsk.vtho losj attractive at-tractive tho possible profit. The hangman and technicians In charge of the electric chair malic the risk too great. Capllal punishment docs not ills courage ordinary murder based on hatred, revenge, jealousy, etc. Hut capital punishment docs ills courage the kidnaping Industry and to do that Is desirable. The nioro you hear and read about money, tho firmer grows your conviction that nobody knows anything about It. from I ho South Sea Inlander who considers cowry shells Ihe only good money, to Hie capitalist who wanls "gold only' i and on lo the man In debt, who j yells for greenbacks, more and I cheaper dollars, and plenty of them. IVi;l, D, Kill I'ralmn Sii,.li,ii, Ini.) |