Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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McCORMTCK MESSENGER. McCORMICK. S. C.. THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 1937 Irvin S. Cobb '■n M about Summer Influenza. S ANTA MONICA, CALIF.—In this favored land we are now starting to celebrate the custom ary seasonal rite of having our summer influenza. Summer influenza is distinguished from winter influenza by the fact that the former does not set in until Sep tember, thereby ^providing intervals for spring and fall ^to slip in between. The symptoms re main practically the same. The eyes wa ter copiously, but the nose runs sec ond. The head stops up thoroughly, thus providing proof of the faUacy of the old adage—all sinus fail in dry weather. The patient barks like a trained seal, but the difference here is that the seal stops barking if you toss him a hunk of raw fish. One could go on at length, but it’s difficult to continue a writing job when you’re using a nasal in- halent to punctuate with and have a taste in your mouth like moth balls smothered in creosote dress ing. • • • The Art of Cussing. M Y OLD chum Burgess Johnson, once an editor but now a col lege professor, tells a credulous bunch of advertising men that Mark Twain was the champion all-time all-American cusser—could cuss five solid minutes without repeating him self. Pardon me, Burgess, but Mark Twain never did any such thing. Once I heard him at his out-cussing- est best—denouncing a publisher who had offended him. He swore for five minutes all right, but over and over again he used the same few familiar oaths which the Eng lish-speaking race always have used. He didn’t introduce a new or an original one. I studied the art of cussing, both by note and by ear, under such gift ed masters of profanity as southern steamboat mates, New York news paper men, London cab drivers, western mule whackers and north woods timber choppers. With my hand on my heart I solemnly affirm that not one of these alleged experts ever employed any save the dependable age-seasoned standbys, to wit, seven adjectives, two strong nouns, one ultrastrong noun and one compound phrase—the commonest of all. • • • Romance for King Zog. C'OR about the fifth time comes a " plaintive plea from Albania, one of those remote little border countries of eastern Europe where every now and then peace threatens to break out. They have a king over there. At least they had a king at the time of going to press with this dispatch. His name is King Zog. This is neith er a typographical error nor a vaudeville gag. The name positively is Zog, and radio comedians may make the most of it. For many months he has been paging the world for a wife. The qualifications call for the lady to have $5,000,000. His majesty would also like for her to turn Moham medan, but the main requirement is that $5,000,000 bank roll. • • • California’s Coastline. W HILE it’s quite a roomy coast line, California has at present only one coastline. This is a source of mortification to patriotic native sons, Florida having two such, one on either side, besides a dampish area in the middle known as the Everglades. Still, in a way, California’s silvery strand continues to excel. Within easy speeding distance we have at least one beach resort where, when Palm Springs folds up on account of the haat, many of our artistic colony go to relax. So wholeheart edly do some go in for this that oft en you may stand off a quarter of a mile and hear them relaxing. Occasionally a relaxationist re laxes so completely that it takes weeks for him to get over it. His friends leave him at the seaside only to gather at the bedside. • • • The Changing World. I T WAS Susan B. Anthony who dedicated her life to the cause of emancipation for her sex. But it was her grandniece who lately at tained the headlines by suggesting that, with the addition of a buckle here and a ribbon there, a nightie would make a suitable evening gown for almost any occasion. Thus do we see how from one gen eration on to another is handed down the flame of genius and serv ice to womankind. But, although the inspired sugges tion is already weeks old, there still are no signs that it is finding ad vocates among the queen bees of the cultural hive. Maybe the rea son is that a belle of the Hollywood artistic group would feel so osten tatiously overdressed if she wore a full-fashioned nightie to a social function. IRVIN S. COBB. •—WNU Sm-vic* Neu>H Review of Current Events LABOR ’DIGS IN' FOR BATTLE Nine Shot as Violence Continues • • • Coal Strikers Aid Steel Pickets ... Bilbao's End Nears . •. Hopkins Checked Monroe (Mich.) Women Defended Their Husbands’ Right to Strike. ^Z&dMrtuul U/. J^LcJoaJul r M SUMMARIZES THE WORLD’S WEEK © Western Newspaper Union. Governor Murphy '\7’ IOLENCE and threats con- ’ tinued to break forth on the strike front as the battle between certain industries, particular ly steel, and John L. Lewis’ Committee for Industrial Organ ization became more and more tense. Nine men were shot and wounded at An derson, Ind., as Ho mer Martin, presi dent of the United Automobile Workers of America, a C. I. O. affiliate, stopped in the city to ad dress a mass meet ing. The wounded men, non-mem bers of the union, claimed a mem ber had opened fire upon them with a shotgun from a window in Union hall after an exchange of insults. Union members charged attempts had been made to injure the am plifying apparatus which was to carry Martin’s words to the throng. Martin was en route to Monroe, Mich., where 200 World war vet erans had been deputized to pre vent picketing of the Newton steel plant, controlled by Republic Steel, whose plants have borne the brunt of the C. I. O. campaigns in the last few weeks. The vigilantes, armed with shot-guns, rifles, revolvers and machine guns, were determined that the local Steel Workers Organizing Committee was not going to make good its threat to close the Newton plant with a mob of thousands of C. I. O. picketers from Detroit. The Monroe deputies broke up a picket line and re-opened the plant to loyal employes; after that the local C. I. O. union made arrange ments to import pickets from out side the city. Despite the impending trouble a battalion of Michigan na tional guardsmen, ordered to the scene by Gov. Frank Murphy, dis banded, leaving the task of main taining the peace to the regular police force and deputies. At the South Chicago plants of Youngstown and Inland 4,000 pick ets were massed by C. I. O. leaders who anticipated that attempts would be made by independent unions to break through the lines keeping the plants closed. At Youngstown, Ohio, the city council thought it detected storm clouds of new strike violence and voted to allow Mayor Lionel Evans to hire and equip what addi tional emergency police he thought would be necessary. Labor unions in sympathy with C. I. O. threatened to retaliate by declaring a city wide “labor holiday” or general strike. Unions in Canton, Ohio, did likewise. —*— CIO Starts at Bottom JOHN L. LEWIS aimed another ^ blow at steel through the United Mine Workers, of which he is pres ident. Workers in the captive mines (mines operated by an individual steel concern which is the sole user of the coal brought to the surface) in Pennsylvania walked out of the shafts and joined the steel picket lines. The purpose was to cripple further the steel plants now shut down or operating under difficulties while picketed; the immediate ob jective was the closing of the Cam bria plant at Bethlehem Steel. The effectiveness of the walkout was a matter for dispute; plant officials claimed all departments were in operation. •—— Court Plan Walloped T'HE senate judiciary committee A made short work of President Roosevelt’s Supreme court packing plan. Its report, in summary: “We recommend the rejection of this bill as a needless, futile, and ut terly dangerous abandonment of constitutional principle. “It was presented to the congress in a most intricate form and for reasons that obscured its real pur pose. “It would not banish age from the bench nor abolish divided de cisions. “It would not affect the power of any court to hold laws unconstitu tional, nor withdraw from any judge the authority to issue injunctions. “It would not reduce the expense of litigation nor speed the decision of cases. “It is a proposal without prece dent and without justification. “It would subjugate the courts to the will of congress and the Presi dent and thereby destroy the inde pendence of the judiciary, the only certain shield of individual rights. “It contains the germ of a system of centralized administration of law that would enable an executive so minded to send his judges into ev ery judicial district in the land to sit in judgment on controversies be tween government and citizerre. “It points the way to the evasion of the Constitution and establishes the method whereby the people may be deprived of their right to pass upon all amendments of the funda mental law. “It stands now before the coun try, acknowledged by its proponents as a plan to force judicial interpre tation of the Constitution, a pro posal that violates every sacred tra dition of American democracy. “Under the form of the Constitu tion it seeks to do that which is un constitutional. “Its ultimate operation would be to make this government one of men rather than one of law, and its prac tical operation would be to make the Constitution what the executive or legislative branches of the gov ernment choose to say it is—an in terpretation to be changed with each change of administration. “It is a measure which should be so emphatically rejected that its parallel will never again be pre sented to the free representatives of the free people of America.” Harry Loses I st Round JYESPITE the pleas of Harry L. Hopkins, works progress ad ministrator, the full senate appro priation committee approved the Byrnes amendment to the relief bill, 13 to 10. The amend ment to the $1,500,- 000,000 bill requires local governments to pay at least 40 per cent of the cost of all WPA projects, or else sign a kind of civic “pauper’s oath.” The South Carolina senator’s amendment was Hopkins seen as further evi dence of the break between the ad ministration and the conservative Democrats The South, especially, has been voicing its insistence upon states’ rights as opposed to all- powerful central government as ad vocated by the New Deal, and the relief bill amendment was seen as a case in point. Hopkins had argued that compelling states to contribute 40 per cent of the cost of WPA proj ects would virtually eliminate such federal projects in the South. It was believed that this may be what the southern senators want; they claim that the payment of $12 a week to negroes cut down their labor pool and they want to get the negro workers back into the cotton fields. —*— Capital on the Move Hr HE Spanish loyalist government, after another terrific bombing of the city by Insurgent airplanes of the German Junkers and Heinkel types, decided to move the capital from Bilbao to Santander, but to defend Bilbao to the death. The Basque battalions reorganized for a last ditch stand to protect the broken “iron ring” of the city’s defenses from the forces of General Francisco Franco. The latter, it was admitted, already had penetrated the first line of fortifications near Fica and Larrabezua, five miles to the east. Several persons were killed and many houses destroyed by the rebel bombs and machine guns. Meanwhile the loyalists were claim ing important advances along the Cordoba front. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA* WHO'S NEWS THIS WEEK... By Lemuel F. Parien mfvfmfffmvfmmm New Income Tax Ferret. \\Z ASHINGTON.—The more fer- W vid New-Dealers took it pretty hard when Prof. Roswell Foster Ma- gill became special assistant to the secretary of the treasury, to ex plore tax-dodging and point out the dodgers. He was known as a conservative, /and he is a son of the distinguished Hugh Stewart Magill of Chicago, who, as president of the American Federation of Investors, is bracket ed more with the haves than the have - nots. The treat-em-rough crowd here wanted Harold Groves of the University of Wisconsin for the tax job. Economic royalists are Mr. Groves’ favorite clay targets. Secretary Morgenthau insisted on bringing in Professor Magill, as an authority on federal taxation, and as a man who ought to be able to uncover hide-outs and get-aways in the income tax maze. The Magill report on tax evasion spurs a drive for a general overhauling and tight ening of the income tax law. Presi dent Roosevelt, in his last press conference, made it clear that the swing on big-income tax-dodgers was entirely premeditated and that a congressional investigation would follow. This writer gathered, at the conference, that action would be im mediate and overt, possibly start ing with the President’s return from Hyde Park. Hold-outs on the Magill appoint ment are cheering the Columbia professor today. There is no indica tion that he pulled his punch in his fact-finding inquiry and the Presi dent seemed to think he had enough ammunition to sink one or all of those $100,000 yachts, allegedly used for tax write-offs. Professor Magill might be one of those “six men with a pas&ion for anonymity” for which the President yearned when he was telling about the Brownlow report. Naturally a tax expert isn’t garlanded or spot lighted like the top-bracket politi cians here, and that is all right with Professor Magill who has been busier than a gopher burrowing through the treasury tax under ground the last few months. He is surprisingly human for one S>f his profession, with nothing des iccated or actuarial about him, and has made a pleasant field day out of his tax evasion study. Professor Magill is forty - two years old, a native of Auburn, HI. He was graduated from Dartmouth and from the University of Chicago, as a Doctor of Jurisprudence. He was a captain in the World war and began the practice of law in Chicago in 1920. He was on the University of Chi cago faculty from 1921 to 1923 and has been with Columbia since 1924. He was adviser to the tax com mission of Porto Rico in 1928 and is the author of several impressive, and to the layman quite bewilder ing, books on federal taxation. Conservatives on the Supreme court turn liberal. Certain congress men talk like sockless Jerry Simp son and work like the Common wealth Edison. The conservative Professor Magill gets a big hand on the left. Past performance doesn’t seem to be the guide and indicator it used to be, here in the capital. • • • Social Security Advances. JT’S “Anchors Aweigh” for the so- * cial security board, as the Su preme court hands it its clearance papers. Arthur J. Altmeyer, in the chart room, had the course already mapped. Plans for immediate wide extension of the scope and activi ties of the board, in six fields, are Announced. This extension will bring several additional million persons under the act. Mr. Altmeyer has burrowed in dry statistics for years, coming to the surface as director of novel govern mental financial operations probably unprecedented in history. He is a native of De Pere, Wis., the son of Dutch parents, an alumnus of Wisconsin university, a former sta tistician of the Wisconsin tax com mission and chief statistician of the Wisconsin industrial commission. In 1933, he was made chief of the labor branch of the compliance di vision of the NRA, and later was appointed second assistant secretary of labor. He is the author of several books on subjects in the field of labor law and governmental ac counting. © Consolidated News Features. WNU Service. Rhodes Wasted His Time In the latter part of the Nine teenth century, during the imperial istic scramble for African territory, England was accused of having as pirations for a railroad from the cape to Cairo, through all-British territory. Today, that railroad is still incomplete and probably never will be completed. The obstacles now, however, are not political as they once were. Instead, they are economic, for the locomotive has to compete with the airplane and the motor car. Thus ends Cecil Rhodes’ dream on which he lavished so much time and intrigue. Defeated in his own time by the political dif ficulties of the project, he would, if he were alive today, find that he had wasted his time and that in vention rather than intrigue had solved the problem. « 99 The Jungle Terror By FLOYD GIBBONS F RANK KIN! of Brooklyn, N. Y., says that all the adventures that ever happened to him came while he was a soldier down in the Canal Zone. Back in 1924, Frank was a corporal in the One Hundred Ninety-Second company, C. A. C., stationed at Fort Sherman. And on January 15 of that same year, he had the ex perience that frightened him more than anything else he ever faced in his life. It wasn’t the fright alone—it was the sheer horror that went with it. Such a horror as only the dank, steaming, crawling jungle could produce. A party of five soldiers set out from the barracks one Sunday afternoon, and Frank was among them. It was a sort of hunting and exploring trip. “We were out for anything we could shoot,” Frank says, “but our real ambition was to find a primitive tribe of Indians who were said to live in that section of the Canal Zone. Chopped a Way Through the Jungle. “We were not allowed to take our rifles. That is against army regu lations. But we borrowed a few shotguns and each of us had a bolo to cut our way through the jungle undergrowth. For the first five miles our route lay on a beaten track along the ocean side, but from there on we were in virgin territory. There our bolos came into play and we had to hack our way through brush and growths that were, in spots, almost impassable.” They pushed on through that jungle, but not very far. It was hard work and it took most of the glamor out of the expedition. They grew weary and stopped for a rest. Frank climbed a coconut tree, cut down a half dozen of the nuts and they drank the juice to quench their thirst. Then they decided to call it a day and start back for the fort. The sun was beginning to sink in the sky now, and it would never do to be caught in the jungle overnight. They began moving fast, but that hot, tropic sun seemed to be moving faster than they were. In order to get out before darkness trapped them they tried a short cut through a low, swampy region that led in almost a straight line to the fort. Big Snake Coiled About Frank. Frank was a little ahead of the rest of them, for he knew this par ticular jungle route better than they did. He was keeping his eye open for familiar landmarks and had just spotted one—a peculiarly-shaped mass of ferns on the bank of a small creek. He had just leaped across the creek when something hit him. A soft, wriggling mass settled down over his shoulders. And Frank looked up and almost fainted when he saw the sinuous form of a huge snake coiling itself around him. Frank has seen snakes like that in the movies since, but those rep tiles didn’t act like his did. The snakes in the picture wrapped them selves completely around an animal, but Frank’s snake kept his tail coiled around the limb of a tree while he encircled Frank with the The Huge Snake Coiled Itself Around Him. rest of his body. The natives told him afterward that in that way they could squeeze a lot harder, since the limb afforded them a good fulcrum. But all that Frank found out afterward. At the time it hap pened he wasn’t thinking about movie snakes, or fulcrums, or anything else but the huge reptile that was wrapping itself around him. “It wasn’t the squeezing it was giving me so much as the sheer hor ror of having that huge, slimy thing so close to me,” he says. “Even before the squeezing began I was practically stiff with fright and ready to pass out from revulsion. Everything went black for a moment. When the blackness passed, my hands had instinctively dropped the bolo I was carrying and clasped themselves around the reptile. The snake was so repulsive that I had to shut my eyes, but I struggled fiercely as it began to tighten its coils. The Reptile Bit Him, Too. “I felt something hot pierce my arm and knew that the head of the reptile had fastened itself on me. A boa constrictor can bite quite painfully as well as squeeze. 1 never knew it before, but I learned it then. With that bite I lost all my reason. I began struggling like a madman, and suddenly I found my voice and started to yell.” Meanwhile, the reptile had kept its hold on Frank and slowly but surely was squeezing every bit of breath out of his body. He didn’t yell more than once or twice before the snake had flattened his lungs so that yelling was impossible. “I was considered a pretty strong man about camp,” he says, “but this snake was just too much for any thing on two feet. “I was about all in when I saw the first of my comrades break through the jungle foliage and come toward me at a dead run. After that I remember only dimly what took place. I remember them hacking at that snake with their bolos and even shooting at it, but still it wouldn’t let go. It hung on until they had literally cut it to pieces. Finally it gave its last quiver and they untangled me from its folds. But by that time I was out cold, and they had to work over me for more than ar hour before I was conscious of anything or anybody.” Even when they did bring him to, Frank could hardly walk. And only part of that was due to the squeezing he had taken from that monster reptile. The rest of it was just plain weakness from the shock of his hideous experience. The boys measured that snake before they left the spot, and it was nineteen feet long and almost four inches in diameter. They told Frank around camp that a reptile of that breed and size was quite capable of killing a horse, and Frank isn’t at all unwilling to believe them. “My whole body was sore for more than two weeks, just from the little dose I got,” he says, “and I don’t think a horse would have felt much better after the same sort of treatment.” ©—WNU Service. Names of Things We Eat The names of the things we eat have curious derivations. The hum ble vegetable, parsley, for instance, traveled from Greek to Latin, from Latin to Saxon, and from thence to its present form. It actually has the same origin as the name Peter (a rock), for it grew among the rocks of ancient Rome. Potato is from the Spanish patata, which, in turn, says Pearson’s London Week ly Magazine, came from the Hay- tian batata, a sweet-tasting type of yam. The word sweet goes back to the Sanscrit svad—to taste; and sugar has also come to us from the same ancient language, via Per sian, Arabic, Spanish and French. The Sanscrit for sugar was car- kara, which first meant “grains of sand.” Eye Infections The form of eye infection most frequently encountered is known as conjunctivitis. This is an inflam mation of the conjunctiva, the cov ering which lines the eyelids and runs onto the eyeball. This type of infection is caused by micro-organ isms. Another infection set up by germs is known as pink eye. Germ born infections are transmitted by the hands, soiled towels, or other wise.