McCormick messenger. (McCormick, S.C.) 1902-current, August 27, 1936, Image 6
McCORMICK MESSENGER, McCORMICK, S. C., THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 1936
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★★★By VIRGINIA VALE★★★
Woes of French Hotelkeepers.
S ANTA MONICA, CALIF.—
As he gazes forth on a boule
vard full of rampaging Reds and
thinks about his empty bedrooms,
I’ll bet there isn’t a hotel keeper
in Paris who wouldn’t trade a
great gross of assorted French
communists, including all the
standardized grades, such as the
comparatively rare slick type, the
partly haired-over hybrid and the
common fur-bearing variety, for
just one old-fashioned easy-going
American visitor—the kind that
was too carefree to check up the
weekly bill.
• • •
Private Olympic Games.
/^RIGINALLY these Olympian
games were based upon the
ideal of strengthen
ing inter - racial
friendships through
competitive sport.
But when, in dis
patches from Ber-
lin'a fell ow
reads of disputed
decisions, ques
tioned reversals, al-
1 e g e d discrimina
tions against some
winning contestants
on account of color,
and the unnecessarily brutal pub
licity, or so it appeared at long
distance, that was given to'the dis
ciplining of an indiscreet woman
athlete; and then the threatened
withdrawals of aggrieved teams
from certain Latin countries, he
gets to thinking, the reader does,
that maybe it would be better if
each national group held its own
little private Olympian show on the
home grounds and barred out the
riffraff, meaning by that, all for
eigners.
Irvin S. Cobb
Uncle Sam's Alien Burdens
matter which party controls
congress, watch at the next
term for this: A campaign for legis
lation opening the doors to millions
of aliens now barred out under the
quota laws, which also would legal
ize the presence here of a great
mass of the foreign-born, some of
them criminals, some misfits and
malcontents, some avowed enemies
of our government, some paupers
on Federal relief, who already are
biding amongst us through whole
sale smuggling-in, through fraudu
lent immigration papers, through
carelessness—to use a gentle term
—on the part of public servants
charged with the duty of guarding
at the gate.
In the years before us, it will be
a sufficiently heavy burden to care
for such of our own worViy home-
folks, whether native or naturalized,
as otherwise would go destitute.
• * *
Cleverness of the Chinese.
/^\NCE, long ago, I, being a re-
^ porter, was detailed to accom
pany to police headquarters in New
York a Chinese prince who’d come
over to study our police methods.
We were in the Bertillon bureau,
presided over by the famous in
spector Faurot.
“Ah, yes,” said the courtly visi
tor in faultless English, “this same
system has been in vogue in my
land since time immemorial, ex
cept that we use fingerprinting in
addition to legal signatures and of
ficial seals, for further validating
important documents.”
“Don’t you also use it for record
ing habitual criminals?”
“I do not think so.”
“Well, then,” asked Faurot, “how
do you identify them?”
“Very simple,” said the prince
and smiled a gentle smile. “When
we catch a chronic offender we im
mediately cut off his head, and then
anyone may recognize him at a
glance.”
* • *
The Spanish Extravaganza.
A FELLOW picks up the paper
and reads in the news dis
patches from Spain that the Loyal
ists licked the Royalists, or vice-
versa; and the Leftists tied into
the Nationalists again—or maybe
they’re both the same.
Whereas the insurgents walloped
the radicals, but elsewhere the gov
ernment forces drove back the reb
els; and meanwhile the Reds or the
Centrists or somebody did some
thing unpleasant to the Republican
outfit, as opposed to the monar-
chial group; and at all points south
and west the anti-clericals and the
church, the Agrarian party, the
Fascists and the Communists, the
besiegers and the defenders, the
peasants and the townspeople, the
laboring classes and the aristocrats,
the land-owners and the tenants,
etc., etc., etc., were snarled into
various hard knots. So what?
If, after all, there are but two
main sides engaged — only I
wouldn’t know about that—the cor
respondents could confer a great
boon by just fiaming one set the
Hatfields and the other set the Mc
Coys. Or would you prefer calling
them the Callahans and the Mur
phys?
IRVIN S. COBB.
e—WNU Servlea.
Y OU may think that it would
be all too easy to break into
the movies if you were related to
a star. But—well, just see what
Florence Eldridge has to say
about it.
In private life she is Mrs. Fred-
ric March. In public life she had
been a well known actress on the
stage for some years before they
were married. When he decided on
movies instead of the stage, she
went along to Hollywood, because
being a good wife is more impor
tant to her than having a career of
her own.
Came the time when RKO was
casting “Mary of Scotland,” in
which Katherine Hepburn and
Fredric March are co-starred
(and a swell picture it is!). Miss
Eldridge wanted the role of Queen
Elizabeth.
“I was selected only after every
other candidate for the part had
been tested and rejected for one
reason or another,” says she. She
finally got it, of course, and turned
in an excellent performance.
—►—
Gertrude Michael was the target
for a lot of remonstrating when she
left Paramount;
there were people
vho said she’d find
that free - lancing
was a lot worse
than sticking with a
big company, even
though that com
pany didn’t seem to
be doing a great
deal for you. Some
of them predicted
that she’d be com
pletely out of pic
tures, first thing
she knew.
Whereupon she signed up with
RKO and now she’s headed straight
for the top—and the head shakers
aren’t saying much ^ anything.
—K— - —
That brand new motion picture
company, Grand National, has just
signed up a young man who looks
like big star material. His name
is Brilhart Chapman, and he’s a
dancer—has appeared in solo num
bers for the past four years with
the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Recently he has been dancing at a
night club in New York, and now
he’s off to Europe on a vacation,
before he starts work before the
camera.
—K—
Lily Pons is all set to begin pic
ture work again, although she has
said that she doesn’t care too much
about it. She spent her vacation
in Connecticut, its climax being the
arrival of her mother from France.
—¥—
John McCormack, the famous
Irish tenor, sang “Killamey” and
“Believe Me, If All Those En
dearing Young Charms” in England
the other day for 20th Century-
Fox’s “Wings of the Morning” —
and if you see the picture you’ll
see the famous singer in natural
color—it’s the first Technicolor pic
ture produced in England.
—X—
The football broadcasts are being
lined up, so that all of us who don’t
want to go to games, or can’t make
it, can sit at home this fall and
hear what’s happening on the grid
iron. An oil company is acting as
sponsor for the broadcasts of one
hundred major games, over thirty-
six stations on the coast. .Don Wil
son, whom you’ve heard doing an
other sort of announcements with
Jack Benny, will do some of the
announcing.
—X—
If you listen to the Music Hall of
the Air, on the radio, you probably
feel that you know
Ted Hammerstein;
he is the grandson
of the late Oscar
Hammerstein, one
of America’s most
illustrious
theatrical figures.
Ted tells this
story about himself.
He broke into the
theatrical business
by working for a
Broadway booking
agent.
This theatrical agent was one of
the important ones, and his waiting
room was usually filled with people
clamoring for work. Keeping them
from storming the inner office was
Hammerstein’s main duty. He did
his job as bouncer very effectively
—and some of the people he threw
out later made good—among them
Richard Dix, Chester Morris and
Ben Lyons!
ODDS AND ENDS . . . Her admirers
are declaring that Norma Shearer’s per
formance in "Romeo and Juliet’* makes
her the greatest American actress, bar
none, on stage or screen . . . Marlene
Dietrich says she’ll never return to Ger
many, not because of troubles with the
government, but because the German peo
ple don’t like her in pictures . . . Now
:t’s Donald Woods who has gone on strike
on the Warner Brothers lot ... Wonder
what is causing that epidemic . . . Bette
Davis must be glad that she walked out
?n "God’s Country and the Woman’’; the
company has been having a run of acci
dents on location.
gj Western Newspaper Union.
Richard Dix
Gertrude
Michael
“House of Slaughter 9 *
By FLOYD GIBBONS
Famous Headline Hunter
H ERE’S a terrifying tale if ever there was one—sent to me by
Mrs. Robert Scott of Forest Hills, N. Y. But let’s call her
Chubby, for that was her nickname when, as a little girl of twelve, this
adventure happened.
That was back in 1905—on the twenty-ninth of October. Chubby
was living on a farm near Pompton Lakes, N. J., with her mother, dad,
and two brothers, Drew and Garry. Drew was sixteen at the time, and
Garry was fourteen.
It was a Saturday, and mother and dad had left in the buggy
about 10 a. m. to drive to the nearest shopping center. The three
kids were left home alone. The boys were pretty big, and well
able to take care of themselves and their little sister—most of
the time. But the terrible thing that happened on that October
day found them not even able to take care of themselves.
The three kids spent the day uneventfully, doing their chores, and
playing about the yard. At six o’clock, when mother and dad still
hadn’t returned, Chubby cooked a meal and they all ate.
Wild Eyed Black Man Terrifies Unprotected Kids.
Then they sat in the parlor while Chubby read aloud from a volume
of Grimm’s Fairy Fables. It was as peaceful a scene as you could
imagine. Those three kids little dreamed that, even as they sat there,
a half-crazed old colored man lurked outside, peering through the
window at them.
About seven o’clock they heard footsteps on the porch and a
loud knock. Then, suddenly, the door burst open and a wild
eyed black man came stamping into the room. “He made a
hissing sound through his teeth,” says Mrs. Scott, “and panted
like a horse. With a quick movement he picked up a big wooden
bar we used to bolt the door, swung it high over his head and
cried, ‘Those I hate, I crush.’ ”
The three kids were terrified. They ran into the dining room, and
crawled—all three of them—under the massive table. But that was no
protection. The colored man followed them, reached in and dragged
out Garry. He wrapped his fingers around Garry’s neck, choked him
to insensibility, and then, picking up his unconscious form in his great
arms, carried him outdoors and threw him down the well.
Chubby Is Trapped in Her Place of Refuge.
Screaming with terror—hardly knowing what they were doing. Drew
and Chubby followed him out into the yard. There, the black man
grabbed Drew. And while Drew screamed, “Run, Chubby, or you’ll be
He Picked Up a Big Wooden Bar and Swung It Over His Head.
alone with him,” the man ripped off Drew’s suspenders and twisted
them around his neck. And little Chubby, too dazed to run, watched in
dumb agony while he choked Drew and dragged him off toward the
barn. As he vanished through the barn door, though, she came to her
senses, and ran back into the house.
Little Chubby knew a place in the house where she could
hide. There was a trap door in the kitchen, and it led to a dark
little cellar beneath the floor. She went through that door, bolted
it behind her, and crept softly down the stairs.
Then she reached up to swing herself atop a big beam over thr
coal bin, but she had forgotten about the great-claw-like rat trap her
dad had put there. Her reaching hand plunged into the trap. The
claws dug deep into her arm. Moaning with pain, she fell to the floor.
The trap< chained to the beam, tore her flesh, but she didn’t dare cry
out. She lay on the ground like a prisoner chained in a dungeon.
Drew’s Quick Wit Helps Save the Day.
Overhead, she could hear the colored man searching the house for
her. She could hear him walking in the parlor. He dropped something
that sounded like the fire tongs. Was he setting the house afire?
Would she be burned to death in her underground prison?
Meanwhile, Drew had fared little better. The black man
had dragged him into the barn, choked him half to death, and
then, wrapping the suspender around his neck, hung him bodily
on a harness peg. But Drew was still conscious and he kept
his head. Taking a jack-knife from his pocket he cut the
suspenders and let himself down.
Reeling and breathless, he staggered out into the yard and looked
down the well. Had Chubby been thrown down there, too? No! But
Garry called up to him. Garry was still alive! The cold water had re
vived him and he was clinging to a rock shelf to keep from drowning.
“I can’t stand it much longer,” he moaned. “Hold on,” said Drew,
“I’m going for help.”
Murderous Madman Is Returned to Asylum.
It was a terrifying scene that mother and dad returned to, half an
hour later. The house and yard were full of people. Garry had been
pulled from the well, nearly frozen and coming down with pneumonia.
Drew sat in a chair, dazed. Chubby was nowhere in sight. Her mother
ran through the house crying for her.
Chubby heard her. She cried out and kicked one foot against
the side of the coal bin. Then she heard the bolted trap-door
splinter as her dad attacked it with an axe. She was a pitiful
sight when they carried her out of that cellar and took the
trap from her arm. The arm was swollen to twice its natural
size—torn—scratched—lacerated.
Immediately after Drew had summoned help, a posse of men began
to comb the hiils in search for the old negro. They caught him a
day or so later, and sent him back to an institution from which he had
escaped after murdering a guard.
©—WNU Service.
Diet of Japanese Beetle
The Japanese beetle was intro
duced into the United States in lar
val form in earth around the roots
of a plant from Japan. The adult
beetle, which is about three-eighths
of an inch long and about the same
width, prefers to eat apples,
quinces, peaches, sweet cherries,
plums, grapes, blackberries, clo
ver and corn. When these are not
available, it attacks the foliage of
shade trees and ornamental shrubs.
The adult beetle is bright metallic
green in color, with coppery brown
wing covers. It flies easily and
has a voracious appetite. There is
only one generation each year, five-
sixths of the time being spent in
the soil as egg, larva or pupa.
Europeans Explored Ohio
Ohio was explored by Europeans
in the latter part of the Seventeenth
century. It was the pioneer state
of the old “Northwest Territory”—
which embraced also what is now
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wiscon
sin and the northeast corner of
Minnesota. It was the battleground
of the Indian tribes. The French
explorers tried hard to get a foot
hold in this rich territory. They
planted leaden plates at the
mouths of the rivers and sought to
back up these claims to sovereign
ty. John Bull later set himself up
as master of all this region, says
Pathfinder Magazine, and in 1774
the British parliament passed an
act annexing Ohio to Canada.
TheJllanlllho’O’ti*
Tales and
Traditions
from American
Political History
•v
FRANK E. HAGEN
AND
ELMO scon WATSON
THE BIG SHOW COSTS
COME presidential candidates are
wafted into office on a cloud of
smoke while the aspirations of oth
ers are dashed to oblivion by the
same breeze.
All of which is by way of saying
that the cigar-making industry is
due for a boom, now that a presi
dential election year is with us.
As far back as 1888 when Harrison
was elected the astounding num
ber of 100,000,000 more cigars were
manufactured than the preceding
year. By 1920 and its increased
population the boost in cigar mak
ing for the presidential year came
to the tidy total of $20,000,000 above
that of 1919.
The astonishing thing about the
big, countrywide show of an elec->
tion is that the Havana filler the
politician stuffs into ycur mouth is
merely an item in the whole cam
paign and election costs. The lat
ter, it has been estimated by com
petent and conservative observers,
reaches $40,000,000.
In addition to that huge sum there
are other millions impossible to
compute.
Out of all this spending it is
perhaps fortunate for the Ameri
can public that usually more good
than merely the choosing of a Pres
ident is the result.
For one thing, hundreds of thou
sands of persons are employed—
not the least of them being news->
paper workers who figure briefly
but actively in compiling election
returns.
In Chicago, for example, the busi
ness of collecting returns is in
the hands of the police. An offi
cer visits each precinct, obtains
two results of the vote. One of
these he speeds to the bdard of
election commissioners, the other
to the City News Bureau which has
moved bodily into Chicago’s coun
cil chambers for the evening.
Rents are paid out for organiza
tion quarters, down to the smallest
precinct; spellbinders are em
ployed, with all expenses paid;
bands are hired; banquets are
spread . . . and the politicians
pass out cigars.
Did we say $40,000,000 expense?
Well, it’s a conservative estimate,
anyway.
CROPS AND ELECTIONS
IF THE Democratic party is dubi-
* ous about the 1936 election it
may be because of the drought.
History of our political cam
paigns indicates that the size of
crops has an important bearing on
national elections. In other words,
if there be a scarcity of farm prod
ucts, the party in power is turned
out of office.
None can say that this is an in
fallible rule, yet there are notable
periods and events which tend to
prove its truth. A seven years’
drought, for example, starting ini
1833, is the first widespread de
struction of crops of which there
is record. At the end of it, Martin
Van Buren was voted out of office
and the Whigs came in with e. great
show of strength.
A second drought occurred short
ly before the Civil war, but the
latter event dominated, of course,
every trend of political develop
ment for that period. In 1874 there
was a large Republican majority
in the lower branch of congress
. . . but there had been drought
years immediately preceding, and
Democratic congressmen were
elected in droves.
Beginning in 1887, ten years
showed a deficiency of rainfall and
crops naturally suffered. It was
during this period, perhaps more
than in any other, that the Ameri
can voter practiced assiduously his
right to vote parties in and out of
power.
Conditions may be changed today.
The Democratic party, which hap
pens to be in the saddle, has sur
vived one of the country’s worst
crop years, 1934. There are politi-
>cal observers who assert that we
are too much an industrial nation
today for Old Man Weather to lay
such a heavy hand on political for
tunes.
Only time will tell if this estimate
of the situation is correct. When
this is written, however, indications
point clearly that burning, dry
winds have destroyed a large part
of the spring wheat crop in the
Dakotas and Montana.
Industrial nation or not, it is at
least an even bet that when the
campaign warms up particular at
tention will be paid to those three
states by Messrs. Hamilton and
Parley—not to mention Congress
man Lemke, who hails from that
area himself.
<£> Western Newspaper Union.
Occupants of the Mayflower
The occupations of the Mayflower
passengers included the following:
Merchant, steward-servant, servant-
man, servant-boy, ladies’ maid,
bound-boy, printer and publisher,
physician, jailer, tradesman, wool
carder, farmer, lay reader, silk
worker, husbandman, carpenter,
cooper, seaman. Some were at
some time teachers, accountants,
linquists, writers, etc. Some had
'ormerly practiced handicrafts.
Portrait of Kittens
Done in Stitchery
Pattern No. 5604
How can you resist this appeal
ing pair of kittens? Their “por
trait” on a pillow top or picture
will add charm to your home
aside from your pleasure in mak
ing it. And how effective it is,
worked quickly in colorful floss,
the crosses an easy 8 to the inch.
Since the motif requires but the
merest outline, you’re finished be
fore you know it!
In pattern 5604 you will find a
transfer pattern of these kittens
13V4 by 14 inches; a color chart
and key, material requirements;
illustrations of all stitches r eeded.
To obtain this pattern send 15
cents in stamps or coins (coins
preferred) to The Sewing Circle
Household Arts Dept., 259 W.
Fourteenth St., New York, N. Y.
Write plainly pattern number,
your name and address.
#>SMILESi&
Follow Up
“He barked his shin on a
chair.”
“Then what?”
“Then he howled.”
Heavy to Sink It
“Money is round and made to
roll,” said a spendthrift to the
miser.
“That’s your way of looking at
it,” replied the latter. “I say that
money is fiat and made to pile
up.”
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