OCR Text |
Show This Week V Arthur Brisbane $95,000,000 Not Enough We All Love Gold Cold Moon, Hot Sun Why Did Justina Die? Thirty-three of the biggest American cities have raised $95,000,000 lor the unemployed, which sounds big, and is generous. But the unemployment figures are bigger than $95,000,000. Assuming six millions to be idle, earning ordinarily only $3 a day each, that would mean eighteen million dollars dol-lars a day, and for the three severe winter months, a total of twelve hundred hun-dred and ninety-six million dollars, in diminished earnings and spendng power. Every respectablity loves the gold standard, passionately, thinks we should grapple it to our bosoms with hooks o steel, and loathes inflation. But what is inflation? We have in circulation now nine hundred million mil-lion dollars more currency than we had a year ago, and Federal Reserve credits outstanding are more than nine hundred millions above last year's figures. Hoarding is said to explain some of this. Men put moner into safe deposit de-posit boxes, thinking the world is coming com-ing to an end, and more money must be issued to let business go on. It is a matter of confidence. We are on the gold standard, and we have less than five thousand million dollars in gold. If all the savings bank depositors de-positors were to draw their money, to change it into gold at the same time, there wouldn't be enough gold to paj half, or one-quarter of them. We are on a gold basis only theoretically, but that satisfies us. Scientists of Carnegie Institute say the moon's surface is covered with pumice stone and lava from volcanoes tnat died long ago. A trip to tne moon would be dull, and travelers would" be glad to get back. The Institute has prepared diagrams dia-grams showing our little corner of space. In that corner our sun, a million mil-lion times as big as this earth, and all the planets whirling around it, are merely a dot, smaller than a pin head. The local group of which we are a part is made up of thirty or forty thousand million stars, and the whole thing is shaped like a cartwheel or the glass on a watch. Some hot, bright stars in our island universe, one among millions ot others, are so big that it would take light, traveling 186,000 miles a second, two thousand years to go from one side of the star to the other. Multiply Multi-ply 2,000 by 186,000, the result by the number of seconds in one year, and you will have in miles, the diameter of such a sun. Justina Uherek, only 14, lived with her widow mother beside the East River in New York and looked, often, i at the flowing water and the prison island from her bedroom window. What she thought, no one knows. What she wrote, before she turned on the gas and died, was this: "The waves ofhe ocean are full of love." Detectives said they "guessed the poor little girl just took a notion to i die," and waited until 10 o'clock at j night to break the news gently to her mother, who comes from work at that hour. Before she died, Justina put all her treasures on top of a trunk, where her mother would find them, a wrist watch, her only pair of high heeled slippers, a string of blue glass beads and an artificial flower. Why she died, nobody on this earth knows or ever will know, probably. The Savannah Board of Education demands a change in history books used by high schools that speak of Georgia's original settlers as "convicts and criminals." The demand is reasonable, reason-able, although some convicts did go to Georgia and other States. It should be remembered that in the old days many criminals were simply men energetic enough to protest violently vio-lently against horribly unjust conditions. condi-tions. Venice, once most powerful of the Italian States, was founded largely by criminals fleeings from the mainland to the protecting swamps. In spite of that start, as Voltaire points out, the oldest title of nobility in Europe, in his day, was Venetian. The French, while interested in Pacifist peace sobbing that goes on in the League of Nations, are also watching watch-ing Mr. Hitler and Germany. Along the French frontier, French soldiers in the long line of powerful forts, and civilians also provide themselves with gas masks. They are offered for sale in drug stores of "peaceful France" as silver cocktail shakers are offered in jewelry and department stores of "prohibition America." The best news comes from Ireland, telling of splendid development of public pub-lic schools in the Irish Free State. The number of pupils in the free schools is bigger than it ever has been. Teaching of Gaelic in the schools is falling off. Finding capable teachers Is difficult. Fewer children will be burdened with a language not adequate to the need of this day. Russia tells of big wheat crops. Tile most violent anti-Bolshevist will be glad to hear that Russian women and children will have enough to eat. (,1.931, by King Fsatures Syndicate, Inc.) |