The Bismarck Tribune Newspaper, October 7, 1936, Page 6

~ editorial, is in the hands of a great army of public employes. An Independent Newspaper f THE STATE'S OL.DEST NEWSPAPER : (Established 1873) State, City and Cuunty Officis) Newspaper Published daily except Sunday by The Bismarck [ribupe Company, Bis- . Marck, N, D. and entered at the postotiice a: Bismarck as sevund class Mrs, Stella 1. Mann President and Publisher ~ Kenneth W Sec'y Treas and Editor Vice pres. and Wen'l. Xanacer ‘Subscription Rates Payable in Advance Member of Audit Bureau of Circulation Member of The Associated ress The Associa.ed Pre of the news dispatc tt Rewspaper also the | news of sportaneous origin published herela. all tights of ‘republication of all other matter herein are also reserved Uneasy Debtors The famous war debts may be as dead as a salted herring, but it is beginning to look as if they have left some very lively ghosts to stalk about the chancelleries of Europe. It has been several years since all the European nations except Finland agreed that there was no sense in paying Uncle Sam what was due him. Since armies and navies are the only international collecting agencies that amount to anything, and since Uncle Sam obviously was not going to get that tough about it, welshing seemed perfectly safe. Uncle Sam would just have to take it—rather, not take it—and like it. 2 . There was one little thing the American congress could do, and it proceeded to do it with all speed. It passed the Johnson act, prohibiting American loans to any foreign governments which were in default on their war debts. But that looked very much like an empty gesture, at the time, because nobody was trying to borrow anything, anyway. With the passing of the years, however, the picture has changed a little. The world depression isn’t quite as bad as it was. Governments are getting into a spending mood once more. Furthermore, a new war seems to be in the cards, and all hands would like to be able to do a little more business with ‘the American banks, munitions makers, and raw material brokers. Both France and Italy, for instance, recently found it ad- visable to seek funds from abroad; and both nations found the American banks closed to them. Now it is reported that Great Britain is likewise interested in getting funds in this country for its vast rearmament cam- paign; but the Johnson act stands in Great Britain’s way also. As a result of all this, rumors are afloat to the effect that one or another of the foreign powers will presently be taking steps to reopen the war debt question. One report—quoted recently by the Business Conditions Weekly of the Alexander Hamilton Institute—suggests that England may devalue the 246,000,000 pounds’ sterling of gold now held by the Bank of England and offer the resulting profit, some $700,000,000, to America as a lump sum settlement of the British debt. It would seem odd to find the war debts on the front pages again, after we had kissed them goodby forever. But it is quite possible that is just what will happen. If it does happen, there must be at least a few Americans who will suspect that the war debts are worth more dead than alive. 5 Defaulted, the debts stand as a barrier against our getting financially and industrially entangled with a Europe which is on the verge of indulging in another world-shaking row. | Paid up—at a dime on the dollar, or some such rate—they would cease to be a barrier, and the way would be open once more for us to be a Good Time Charley for the world at large. Where Reform Is Needed They tell a story about the immigrant who was applying for citizenship papers and who was being tested as. to his knowl- edge of American government. He was asked, “If you wanted to be a postmaster, whom would you ask for the job?” The answer, of course, should have been “The president” — the idea being that the prospective citizen was supposed to know that the president appoints postmasters. But this immi- grant knew his way around a little better than that. His answer ‘was, “My district leader.” In that little story is the whole case for civil service re- form. The immigrant was technically wrong, but practically right. Government in America is a matter of favors, and the fmmigrant knew it. If you want to work for the government, it is far better to know the right man than to possess the right ayalifications. This, of course, is old stuff. Everybody knows it—even the immigrants who have been here only a few years. But we are rapidly getting to the point—if, indeed, we haven't got ’way past it—where this time-honored system is simply too ‘expensive to be put up with any longer. : We seem to be fated to live in a society which entrusts more and more of its jobs to the government—city, state, or federal. It is infinitely more important than it was a genera- tion ago to have these jobs filled on the basis of merit. They, touch: our lives so much more closely than they used to. It is so much more necessary to get competent work out of the job holders. ays Scribner's Magazine pointed out editorially the other day that the annual American tax bill now stands at $7,000,000,000, with small prospect, that it will ever fall very much below that The spending of this enormous sum, according to the Isn’t it, therefore, absolutely essential that young men and women of the highest type be trained for public service, to con- .| Cause polls fail to agree. ‘ ~ ind Scenes The Campaign By RODNEY DUTCHER (Tribune Washington ‘New York, Oct. 7.—Private polls and straw votes are the best avail, able forecasters of election results, but this year members of both parties are finding comfort in them. That's be- it) Out through the states Republican politieal workers are steamed up by substantial early returns from the Literary Digest poll which gives Lan- don a 3 to 2 lead over Roosevelt. Many Democratic politicians are cor- tespondingly depressed. When they come in to campaign headquarters, however, the smaller try are told in each case to keep their shirts on. Leaders who study the bolls closely, and constantly check them with their own polls and other information, are not too deeply im- pressed. : If the Literary Digest results are reasonably accurate as a forecast, this poll will have demonstrated its merit over all the others, but for various reasons the leaders in both parties are convinced that it isn’t forecasting accurately, as it sometimes has in the past * oe * G. O. P. Cheered by: Poll Some Republican strategists who admit that Roosevelt may have.a slight edge on Landon at this time insist that the poll is the finest type of propaganda for them and will inevit- ably have the effect of winning for Landon a major proportion of the vote now believed “on the fence.” The people, they say, believe in it more than the politicians do, Democratic computers admit that may be true—but only in a small and inconsequential way, they say. Emil Hurja, their famous prophet, has told them that a poll wherein tizens are circularized by mail, and ere’s only a maximum return of 15 or 20 per cent of ballots, is not as ac- curate i a smaller poll which gets returns from a much larger r= tion of voters in a limited nea His theory is that the first to reply TuT Tut! THAT'S EASILY ADUUSTED= JUST GIVE MEA PARTNERSHIP IN YOUR BUSINESS AND _ WE'LL SETTLE THE MATTER PEACEABLY THE BISMARCK TRIBUNE, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1938 Cee © 1936, NEA in such polls are those who have a grouch and that no one can depend on a poll where the big majority of Den resurtiers is an unknown quan- Ye Looking at the Campaign *** Discrepancy Is Cited Further, it is declared, there's a huge discrepancy in the numbers of Republicans and Democrats return- ing poll ballots, The recent Digest release showed about 247,000 of. the 1932 Hoover voters reporting and 201,- 000 of the 1932 Roosevelt voters. The Democrats had a big majority ot 1932 voters and it is argued that a Poll, to be accurate, should now show similar proportions among those who make up its “electorate.” And of course there’s the familiar assertion that the Digest canvass, by taking names from telephone books and automobile registries, ignores mil- Hehe feared citizens, jeve: jess, it will be recalled that this poll predic! velt victory 4m 1932 and predictéd Roosevelt would carry 41 states and possibly 46, Roosevelt actually won 42 states and the Digest was wrong by states only in giving him Pennsylvania and Dela- ware and in giving Hoover Massachus- etts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. esses F.'R. Leads in Maryland The most scientific poll this year is said to be that of the Baltimore Sun, which undertakes to cover every registered voter in Maryland, and lately has been recording a 63 per cent vote for Roosevelt. Maryland has voted consistently for. winners in national elections and an accurate poll there would be a truer (Copyright, 1936, by David Lawrence) Enroute through Missouri, Oct. 7.— Everywhere there is an intense inter- est in the various polls being taken. paign. I have been in 25 states and almost every day somebody asks me what value to place upon the polls of the Literary Digest or Dr. Gallup or the Baltimore Sun canvass, as the case may be. Likewise, I hear the reaction of po- litical leaders who ought to -know their own states and, in all frankness, ft must be stated that I have heard criticism of the polls from both Dem- ocrats and Republicans even on occa- sions when the polls gave their par- ticular side an advantage. a There is, of course, nothing mys- terious about polls. I have confidence in the integrity and fairness of con- duct of every one of the major polls being taken, and yet I would not be surprised to find them far afield of the natural result when we read the final returns on November 4. I do not necessarily expect them to be wrong, but I think I can prove why they could be wrong. p In the first place, the basic prin- ciple in sampling, which has cost di- rect-by-mail campaigns literally hun- dreds of millions of dollars to dis- skilled to elicit frank answers, I would say that any survey based on 100,000 or 150,000 runs the risk of ignoring | geographical rather than class qual- They have served to stimulate, what | ity. Indeed, it is not enough to know -!what persons in different classes of EE ae eee prieee CAmS iiheome think about candidates but what people think in certain sections | of certain pivotal states. leaders who have confided in me have pointed to inaccuracies, as they see it, in both the Digest and the Gallup polls. And, personally, I give much weight to the judgment of experienced political leaders. I say this because I have found their collective judgment off the record to be fairly accurate over a period of years. that they know the political factors in their own states, somethng that the polls cannot possibly encompass and which they do not profess to in- clude. State after state might show a majority on & mailed ballot or on a substantial number of personal inter- i views’ and yet cast electoral vote | in the opposite direction just because the preponderant vote in certain coun- ties underwent a shift. in showing the changes and shifts of persons who voted one way last time and are planning to change this time. That's a significant trend and, barometer normally than a Maine September election. Recent polls in Ohio have pepped of the Scripps-Howard Newspapers, which Hurja insists has a high degree of accuracy and intelligent operation, has been giving Roosevelt a higher percentage than he had in the 1932 election. Early reports in polls by the Cin- cinnati Enquirer and the Columbus Dispatch’ also give Roosevelt leads. xe ek Close in ‘Hlinois ; The Illinois State Journal at Spring- field and the Chicago Tribune, on the other hand, show Landon with a small lead in polls of the Illinois downstate area. But the lead is so narrow in normally heavy Republican territory that G. O. P. leaders are not get- ting any great thrill out of it. The Publishers’ Adtocaster Service, polling through country newspapers, has shown a large Landon lead on 68,000 ballots. The American Institute of Public Opinion is giving Roosevelt 292 elec- toral votes and Landon 239. It will be worth while also to watch development of the Hearst poll and the vote to be taken in New York state by the New York Daily News. With polls differing as widely in their forecasts as some do iow, it’s probable that some agencies will get ® high reputation for accuracy and others, the reverse. It will be much easier to judge relative accuracy after election, (Copyright, 1936, NEA Service, : Inc.) A BIT OF HUMOR NOW AND THEN {Ss RELISHED BY THE BEST OF MEN To train them, of course, isn’t enough. Pubic service.must “be made attractive to them—not by higher pay, but by integ- Pity, freedom from the spoils system, emphasis on efficient per- _ The young man who takes.a government job must have the ‘pame assurance that he can hold it as long as he does his work ’ that he would have if he took a job in a bank, on a or in a newspaper shop. i to me. up the Democrats considerably. That |{D6, cover and be guided by, is that the smaller the test, numerically speak- , the greater the chance of error and that the wider the list used, the less chance there is of gauging the quality thereof. I do not think that 100,000 or 150,- 000 personal interviews or ballots con- stitute a sufficiently large group to test out 45,000,000 voters, and that's about the number. who may vote in this election. For this reason, I would say that Dr. Gallup’s poll may be right but it may prove very wide of the mark simply on the basis of the small number canvassed. This is also, in my opinion, a crit- icism of the Literary Digest poll at this stage of the game. If the Digest should receive, out of its 10,000,000 ballots mailed, replies or votes from 2,250,000 people, that would be a very satisfactory percentage and a clear- cut sample. By the end of October, if this number should be received, or anything near it, I would be prepared to accept the Digest poll as indicative of the popular vote. As for the electoral vote, all polls start with a handicap factor over which they have no control, namely that a president of the United States has been elected with less than a ma- jority of the popular vote. In some instances the-margin of the winnin; on the electoral vote. Thus, in 1908, Mr. Taft had only about 51 per cent of the total vote cast, but he had 321 electoral votes to Mr. Bryan’s 162, and to this day most people have for- gotten that less than 600,000 votes out of 14,887,133 was Mr. Taft's actual majority. . This brings up s point on which the statistical side of a poll may fall down, even though conducted with almost scientific accuracy so far as ar. actual sampling by numbers is con- cerned. I know that Dr. Gallup's poll i given a good deal of weight through- out the ‘country because he has tempted to overcome one of the ficulties of polling by mail, namely, if sampjed numerically . on a enough scale, is a very strong indi- cator of the possible result in ration as a whole. candidate has been very slight on the: ‘ popular vote side and yet a landslide | thet certain classes of persons are |: supposed not to answer circular mail. |’ “David Lawrence That's one reason why political One reason for this, of course, is What the polls are valuable for is large the i went to every voter in Maryland, thus taking into accgqunt section variations within a state. I believe the Baltimore Sun adopted every safeguard possible to see that ballots could not be coun- terfeited or tampered with. Yet there is something strange about a mailed tesult which brings in 50 per cent re- plies. That is altogether too much, based on any statistical experience People just do not respond to mailed circulars on @ 50 per cent basis un- leas there's something given away or offered free in the letters in to any large mailing of # question- naire. The highest I have ever heard of is around 25 to 30 per cent. The Literary Digest has had big mailings and has polled large numbers of regis- tered voters in other election years with no such result as 50 per cent in Maryland or anywhere else. The Di- gest gets an average return of 21 to 23 per cent. How then to account for it? It is possible that the Democratic organiza- tion in ‘yland, which has a pre- cinct set-up that is very effective, sent jword to the precinct captains to be sure and get out the vote for the Sun poll. It would be excellent strat- egy psychologically. No matter what the explanation of the unusual re- sponse, however, I believe the Balti- more Sun poll does indicate a Roose- velt victory in Maryland, but I will not be surprised if the majority is far less than the recent poll would seem to indicate. While the Digest poll shows a substantial trend to Roose- But what about the Baltimore Sun velt in Maryland, it is not anywhere poll? Here is an instance of a very|as big as the Baltimore Sun can- large and intensive mailing which | vass. | Track Star aad “HORIZONTAL Answer to Previous Puzzle 15 She is —— by 1 Fleet-footed PTH! 1 INTE AIS IB AIRINIUIM| birth, maiden. (an IN} IPIONA 17 Sleigh. 12 To hanker D} 18 Sdutheast. after. 13 Barley spikelet © 14Genus of palms, 16 Hastened. ISIE VIE || 17Slips sideways JPM] | IF IE! 19 Microbe. OIF MEL IAID} 20 Onager. [DIAIM} 21 Stripped blubber. 23 To perish. 42 Above. 24 Mountain. 44 Worthless 25 Beer. persons. 49 Road. a8 Type stancare 50 Spruce. 28 Mister. 29 Gratified. 30Blue grass. 52 To relinquish. 53 Signal system. 55 Decreases, 32 Blockhead. 57 Sheltered 34 Almonds. Place. 36 Fish eggs. 58 Devoured. 37 North 59 She took part Amer! in the —— games. 60 She is a —— ansposed. 41 Form of “a, (pl.). URI [a3 Bane ome 21 To beguile, LIA [Rj 22 Leaves. 25 Audibly. 27 Engine. 29 Cotton machine. 31 Devoured. 35 Winter precipitation, 38 Pertaining to the ear. 1 To heave. 41 Snake. 2 Nights before. 43 Abounding in 3 Guided. . 4 And. 5 Final cause. 6 Twofold. 7 Finishes. 46 Cravat, 47 Always. 48 Musical note. 8 Laughter 49 Routine study. sound, » 50 One and one. 9 Unit of work. 51 Diamond. 10 To require, . 53 Food container 11 Curtain fabrie:‘54 Being. 12. She is world 56 Spain. 58 Half an em, Your Personal Health qf By William Brady, M. D. . Brady will anawer questions pertaining to health by aes diagnosis. Write 1 and in ink, Ag Brady in care of The Tribune. must be ai stamped, self-addressed envelope. not dis- ese Dr. by 8 26 SHOTGUN SERVES A PURPOSE : A favorite dogma of individuals or groups who would set up as cel= sarc aes ee Ne ed te : mice corbnanes Ge ieee remedies implies that no illness. or ‘one factor. Such @ theory medicine, if it only worked out satis- follow rules; she makes ‘em. association proclaimed ures or combinations of left—a ‘current is- common sense tegen! ate Stamina rab As a matter of it ay that while E ficlencles are quite common, whether recognized or not, the physical or functional impairments due to ‘vitamin deficiencies are seldom or never attributable to lack of a single vitamin but practically always indicate short- ages of two or more vitamins. And this is natural enough, for it is rare to find single vitamins in nature—invariably vitamins occur in combination of two or more. For examples: bananas contain A, B, C and G; egg yolk contains A, B, G and D; wheat contains B, G and E; tomato or tomato juice, raw or factory canned, contains A, B, C and G.’ In fact the specious objec- tion against “shotgun” vil combinations {s itself unscientific—the self- constituted authorities who this objection Know little about vitamins. One of the characteristic signs of rickets (which is due to lack of vitamin D) is pot-belly, costiveness, tympanites (distension by gas) and flabby muscle tone in the intestine. In my opinion a moderate shortage of vitamin D in adults is 2 common factor of these or similar symptons, although we know vitamin B and vitamin G deficiencies are important factors of impaired di- gestion. From purely clinical observations and the spontaneous reports of {many human guinea pigs, it seems well established that an adequately in- creased intake of B, G and D daily may be what most victims of these symp- toms need to correct their trouble. At any rate I am satisfied an increased hintake of B, G and D, as in irradiated yeast—not the kind of yeast used for baking, but dried brewer's yeast which has been subjected to ultra-violet rays of a certain Jimited wave-length to impart vitamin D—restores intes- tinal vigor in these cases, and I use the term physiologically, not as minced slang. ‘A point about yeast which should be better known: Yeast that is suitable for use in baking is comparatively poor in vitamins and causes col fermentation in stomach. Yeast suitable for medicinal use is pasteurized, will not ferment food, and is comparatively rich in vitamins. QUESTIONS AND ANSWEES Dry Eyes If tear glands cease to function properly and eyes are constantly irri- tated with dry friction, what kind of drops should be used in eyes? Will any special diet relieve this condition? . . . (Miss L. J.) Answer—I, know of no drops. Sometimes such dry eyes or lack of tear secretion is due to deficiency of vitamin A. .Booklet “Bullding Vitality” gives food sources of vitamins. Copy for ten cents and stamped addressed en- velope. Richest natural source Vitamin A fish liver oil. Richest food sources are escarole (chicory greens), endives, spinach both raw and canned, liver, cheese, butter, tomato or tomato juice fresh or factory canned. Please advise if it is true that the use of antiseptics increases liability to infantile paralysis. Is the picric acid spray that is being used considered an antiseptic? . . . (8. E. B.) i Answer—There is no evidence that any such spray or gargle prevents infantile paralysis, Personally, I'd prefer to rely on the natural nose and throat secretions and avoidance of close association or contact with persons having alleged “cold” or sore throat. (Copyright, 1936, John F. Dille Co.) 2 SIDEGLANCES - - By George Clark “Well, gentlemen, 1 hope you changed your minds and took my advice on the stock market yesterda: By William Ferguson -THis Curious WorLD | ad Nudist “Here comes the parade. Where's “Gosdoens, can’ we afford s fh tet” ‘the PLT ee a eet el ol ES wea aM