: M$? SStattjjigaii ar? Jbi%?it l?el>lish^a Wednesday and Saturday _ ? ?BY? ?OSEEbaEJT- PUBLISHING COMPANY SUMTER, S. O. Terms: 81.50 per annum?in advance. Advertisements. One Square first insertion .. ..$1.0< Every subsequent insertion.S<> Contracts for three months, 01 longer will be made at reduced rates. AB coiamunications which sub (?erve'-^rivate interests will be charged for as advertisements. * ObStuaiies and tributes of respect will be charged for. m The'Sumter Watchman was found *J in 1S50 and the True Southron in The Watchman and Soutiron .now has the combined circulation and influence of both of the old papers. *nd is manifestly the best advertisin; Medium in Sumter. OOI>IFICATIOX OF CHILD IAWS. -In seventeen States of, the Union commissions are preparing to codify their child welfare laws. It is hoped that the laws may be unified and hax* -., monized, making it possible to en ? ^ force them and paving the way for the passing of additional laws pro tecting the child. This is only a step, but it is taken Vm the right direction. There are siilJ too many States that are doing prac '?tically nothing to conserve health and education for the child. And in the! States where such welfare laws have passed, they are frequently con ing and contradictory. T2*ey have been passed at different times with r.o attention to uniformity or co-ordin.i ;- tion. .The Kentucky laws are an exam ple of such confusion. That State has one law providing that all normal children between and including the ages of 7 and, 12 shall attend --school regularly throughout the school term unless taught at home. There is another law forbidding the employ ment of children under 14 years of age. The 13-year-old child, therefore, . is left unguarded. He cannot work, but he need not attend school. So far as the State is concerned, appar ently, he is free to run the streets. The Texas laws are in a similar muddle. There is a mother's pen sion law. supposed to enable children of needy parents to remain in school up to the age of/15. But the labor law issues working papers at 14, thus thwarting the honest working of the pension law. In New York State a boy may become an itinerant booi black at any age, though he cannot be an established bootblack under 14. { He may peddle papers at 12, but canj peddle no other line under 1$. While the very laws designed to protect the child are so at variance it is little wonder that. the selfish and grasping employer should exploit childhood to the lin.it. Uniform and enlightened State laws will help to] clarify public understanding of the situation a.nd its needs. Enlightened public opinion will hasten the day of uniform interstate or national laws^ }.???., .... . v . THE "DRY MY'STERY." Is there any more remarkable episode in American history than the sudden sweep of national prohibi tion? The New York Tribune, comment ing on the ratification of the feder al amendment with such celerity and \ unanimity, finds it a plumbless mys tery. There was nothing "n contem porary politics or life, The Tribune holds, to explain any such action. "It Is as if a sailing ship on a wind less ocean were sweeping ahead, pro pelled by some invisible force." There was, indeed, not much visible and indisputable evidence that this movement was near so great a climax, j ?Everybody recognized that prohibi bition sentiment had grown rapidly during the war, and several states had joined the dry column. Still, some States had refused last year to step inco line. Among the latter was California, whose legislature has now committed it to prohibition within a few months of the popular repudia tion. Economic considerations seem to have had little effect. Great indus trial communities, hitherto regarded as naturally and permanently in fa vor of the liquor traffic, have turned against it. States with big cities have yielded about as completely as States with small urban populations. Self interest failed to interfere. "Whiskey States" like Kentucky, beer-manu facturing States like Ohio and Wis consin and Missouri, wine-growing States like California, have voted dry along with the rest. Racial tradition and preference seem to have exerted just as little re straining power. "German" cities like Milwaukee and Cincinnati and St. Douis, and cities like Boston and Chi cago with large mixed foreign popu lations accustomed to moderate drink ing, have gone the way of more typically American communities. How explain it'.' The Tribune, even while calling it a mystery, suggests the answer. "Perhaps our legislators are right, and there is a strong, un seen, popular current to account for the "phenomenon." There is. It is a current so strong that even State legislators, unsifted as they often arc in accurate reading of their constituents" minds, have caught this magnetic appeal from the general public mind?an appeal just as definite and strong, though intan gible, as that in fay>r of a peace league of nations?and have been un able to resist it. May there be a similar '?mystery" at Versailles! jWHAT OPEN DIPLOMACY MEANS. There seems to have been consider able misunderstanding as to the na ture of the "open diplomacy" expect ed at Versailles by all Americans. Some of the newspaper correspond ents have been pained to discover that they were not admitted freely to the daily sessions and allowed to re-, pert the deliberations in full. It de velops that nothing of the sort was j ever contemplated by any of the statesmen concerned, and that indeed a policy of unrestricted publicity would be dangerous and possibly dis astrous. It is something like the executive sessions of the United States senate or house of representatives, as compar ed with the usual open sessions. The press is not admitted, but the results of the proceedings, when in proper] shape, are given to the press. There j is to be a diplomatic communique j every day, like thi army communique that gave the official news while fight- j ing was in progress. 11 This method, restricted as it is, rep. < resents a gain over previous peace j conferences. The public will be j ' taken into the diplomats' confidence i. more than ever before. News will beh held up only as long as its publication [ ? would serve to make trouble and in-11 terfere with the success of delicate measures. Thus there may not be so much publicity from day to day as the newspapers and the public would like. U But asurance is given that there will j j be no possibility of betrayal, because j > nothing final will be done without j1, luly informing the public. j c There will be no '"secret treaties," |i made and filed away in government j t archives without public knowledge. | ' A.nd this, experts say, is the real meaning of the phrase, "no secret diplomacy." The diplomacy of the big conference will be "open" because it will all be placed on public record and submitted to public approval be fore the nations concerned are final ly committed to it. GERMAN POLITICS. ; For t;he benefit of reader" who may be interested in German poli ties, here is a resume of the political parties now r.tcive in Germany, as compiled ar.d explained b;- the Lon don Times. Theie are eight of them, all of whom recently put up candi dates for the national assembly. They are listed as follows: The Majority Socialists, headed by Ebert and Scheidemann. The Independent Socialists, headed by Haase, Ledebour and Barth. The Spartacus group, followers of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. The German Democratic Party, represented by Stresemann, mainly National Liberals. The German National People's j1 Party, wtih Von Kardoff, largely Con- j. servatives. The National Democrats, consisting of bourgeois Republicans. The Free-German People's party, a survival of the old Center Party. Of all these parties the first named j is npw dominant. The Spartacides or Spartacans, though numerically small, have sought to rule by terrorism, and nearly succeeded so far as Berlin is concerned. Now they seem under control. These two are- moderately intelli gible in their policies and leadership. The rest, even as described by The Times, seem to constitute a dim. chao tic shadow-land of politics, with sub divisions of membership and shades of opinion and influence that mean nothing to an outsider. The Germans have always com plained that Americans do not under- j stand them. Assuredly we do not un derstand trjeir political system, ac j customed as we arc to only two par j ties of definite antecedents and prhf i ciples. Cotton Market LOCAL. .. 1 _i P. G. BOWMAN. Cotton Buyer. ; -Corrected Daily at 12 o'clock Noon), j I Good Middling 22 3-4. Strict .Middling 22 1-2. ; Middling 22. Strict Low Middling 20. Nf;w VORK COTTON MARKET; j Yes'td'ys j open High Low Clos*.- Close! . :.',-h . .23150 23.56 21.57 21.57 23.52 j .May . . 22t30 22.:;o 20.4$ 20.48 22.:;l j Julv . . 2T.40 21.4M 1!).72 H*.72 21.35 i London. Jan. 22.? Russian minister 'of War Trotzky has ordered Zinovic [iho Bolshevik governor of Petrograd ? to surrender that city without a fight j if attacked by the northern Russian I force. Two Great Railway Projects. Youth's Companion. We have heard much a!" late years about the L" rlin-to-Bagdad railway. It is a trad" route that is still of great importance, although the situation of its northern terminus and the char acter of its political control are not likely to remain whore the ambition of William il placed them. With the coming of peace, the economic renais sance of France and the cementing of cordial friendship between t". n Latin and the Slav allies, two other lines of WDrld trade are planned, one to run eastward and the other south ward from the heart of France. One of the roads finds its Atlantic. terminal at Bordeaux, and runs byj way of Lyons, Mont Cenis, Turin, Mi lian. Venice, Trieste, Agram, Belgrade and Bucharest to Odessa. That rail way is expected to tie France and Italy commercially to Serbia, Rou mania and southern *" jssia; it will give the Southern Slavs, heretofore shut off from any contact, with the1 world except by way of Austria and j Germany, and consequently in eco nomic servitude to those countries, di rect access not only to the Adriatic Sea but to the Atlantic Ocean; and it will bring the wheat fields of the Ukraine into close commercial ccn-j Lact with the industrial region ofl northern Italy and the markets off France. It will add enormously to the ! economic well-being of both the Wes tern and the Eastern nations; it will strengthen the independet political life of the new Jugo-Slav state and keep *t in continual friendly contact with the Western allies who have helped it to win that independence. The road will also connect at Belgrade ,vith the road to Constantinople and Bagdad, and will offer an alterna ive outlet to the commerce that jomes up thither from the Orient. Such a railway system needs to be >rganized and standardized rather ban built; for the whele distance is tlready covered with existing rail ways, except for one section down the Danube from Belgrade to Turnu-Se ?erin and another between Bucharest ir_d Reni. The other project is a more re narkable one. It is nothing less than l read from Paris by way of Bor [eaux, Madrid and Gibraltar to Mo oeco, the west coast of Africa and he port of Dakar in Senegal. The dan includes a tunnel under the 'trait of Gibraltar, which is more han 2.500 feet deep. By means of iranch lines the new route would p?n'a commercially promising coun ry along the west coast; it could tap ho resources of the Sudan and the "cngo. and even connect with the reposed Cape-to-Cairo railway of the Jritish; and at Dakar it would end at he point in the Old World nearest o the New World; for Cape Verde, ehind which lies the harbor of Da ar. :s only 1,700 miles from Per lambuc? iii Brazil. A rail line to a point within three lays' sail of Rrazil would greatly] lUickcn commercial relaticns be-j< ween Western Europe and South h America. Paris would be only sev-.i? >n days from Rio do Janeiro, only!" ught from Buenos Aires and onlyj en from Santiago. Chile. Now it is * wice as far from all those places. Vken the Channel tunnel is built, jondon will be almost as near South Lmerica as Paris is, and a man coulc* ro from either capital to Rio de 'anoiro in half the time he would ake in journeying thither from New Lork. Apart from the tunnel under he Strait of Gibraltar, which would re a tremendous undertaking, the pro ect offers no especial engineering lifSculty, and it promises results inlj ?ncouraging the commercial growth j ;f Africa and South America that j vould be well worth all it would cost.} n Africa it would pass ail the way! hrough territory now under the own ership or protect ion of France, and it vould perhaos cause to arise on the listant shores of Senega] one of the ?reat commercial cities of the vorld. It is intersting to observe also that t would tend to draw ?nore closely he bonds that unite Latin America vith Latin Europe, and .to establish j i belt of Latin political and commer rial ascendancy stretching southwest-jj vard from Europe much more firmly bunded and much more likely to en lure than the artificial structure of Teutonic military and economic pow sr that William II labored to erect n the lands that lie to the southeast vard. _._? ! i i Quarantine restrictions were impos-ij ?d Wednesday on Be rkeley and New- j >erry counties by the State board of jj icalth on the recommendation of lo-jj ?al authorities. * t Vi ?# i *: *f 7 i ?s" We Grind Lenses, examine the 7 i ?> k* I eyes scientifically and tit eye- * glasses perfectly. Let. ua work * i vi for you We have all prescrlptions ??. on file. Broken lenses replac ed promptly. Graduate Opto- 4? ?r? metrist and Optician in charife ?|i 4? 4 I W. A. Thompson,! f 2 T JTEWKIjE Jtr OPTOMETRIST. % > * ^>