Evening Star Newspaper, March 4, 1923, Page 39

EDITORIAL SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE NATIONAL PROBLEMS SPECIAL ARTICLES Part 2—20 Pages CAPITOL NOT DESERTED WHEN CONGRESS IS IDLE Wheels of Big Legislative Establishment Keep Going Round, Despite Absence of the Lawmakers. KENNEDY. | adjourns— BY WILL HEN what? Most people, including the | of members of notion that when at the close of the of March ifig Cong that the doors | of the apitol are locked. the mem- | bers scatter winds and the wheels grinding out stop re- volving Congress majority have a fal day Fongres« ife zavel -iggislative . dismiss- s sine die. to the fou that legislation have been promptly at This notion h simply because those have stopped what really does happen pre d en- ertaining it ink about not to w ess stops the wrangle ambers being a con- the pate situation House course tinuing bos Mfierent there is of . the at the end Capitol Members Scatter Widely. scattering s and are today United stat home some days | that going country thought ress a is worth a bers of ted hese mer distr over this is humanly propor- is pos- stribu them body of citizenship nin ¥ 1o the approsimately i some members are go- 5 voyages Representative sailed a so0- who will go The immigration nned an inspection on propo nvesti by oa ommittees Hous i from the and nt Bu proposed o Veters party trip planned by to the West Indies party expects to make Alaska being arranged Weeks. enate, There fen ing Secretar Anothe the trip by Secret Quite a sizable is war Dr larg to on a hip 1 Some 1o Work Here. are committees which | right here on the ground. committee of the Senate | the street railway | National ¢ fiv Then ti will work A s cre al j forcing nt : committee is proposed | 1t both houses of Congress | ssification of the salaries of ali employes of the legis- lative branch of the government, whe were not covered in the Smoot or Sterling-Lehlbach reclassification bills, Of course, all legislative routine business falls with adjournment, and must be revived—de novo—in the new Congress. That is. each bill, no matt may have come to must start all} But therc | cleaning situation in with a vie , farec. A to repres n plannin r how n it is a great deal of after- up the outgoing preparing for the in- ng Congress. Most of the mem- hers have a clerk who stays in Wash- Ington to keep the member in touch with matters transpiring here of con- cern to his home district, and to car- ry on business for his constituents with government offices. ‘math on ‘ongress and Activity Below Decks. The House has been likened to an ocean liner, because there is a great deal of activity below the water line. § Those in first-class passage, that is, +hose on the floor of the House, lillle] realize the work of the stokers and crew in running the ship. All the various branches of work | “done for Congres: such as the fold- ing room, document rooms, station- ary rooms, disbursing offices and the sergeant-at-arms’ offices where the members receive their pay and mile- age and do more or less of a general banking business, remain open throughout the year, whether Con- gress Is in session or not. Advantage will be taken of the first epportunity since 1915 for a complete overhauling and renovation of the Loffices and corridors, although some of this work has been done during the brief recesses of Congress. This means general housecleaning, of car- pets, walls, desks, fillng cabinets, bookshelves and necessary repairs to furniture. The furniture repair shop has work already lajd out for it that in |has a pay roll of some 1,400 individ- expected Congress | jcontracts have to be as. for example. | ymany ) stationery, {for all kinds of small stores. jimpression that when the House ad- | crated and packed, and their old offices means a full summer schedule, adapt. ing certaln furniture to make it more available. The work of sending out publica- tions from the document room and folding room goes on all the time. The office of the clerk of the House is never closed—in fact, he is the House during this hiatus of Congress. He will be in constant correspondence | with members who are awhy. For the next two months inquiries will be pouring in as to what happened to this or that bill, and persons affected | by some law or another will seek advice and ask for copies. ! Prepare for New Members. Things have to be made ready the new members of Congress. Some ||.Hr will be preparing for their new duties, and that will result in many inquiries. In the interim for the clerk of the | | House, William Tyler Page, must cer- tify the compensation of all members- elect, there being no Speaker or com- mittees, except the committee on ac- !(uunts. which is the only continuous icommittee. The disbursing office of the House !uals, including clerks to members. To |those clerks who go home with the member to work in their districts ychecks are sent, and there is a large | mailing list Then in midsummer, eginning of the new just before the fiscal year, all made for sup- This includes laundry, tawels, carrying the mails and plies for the new year. things—ice, The post office of the House is a ihu:‘_v place when Congress is not in ,session. All mail that comes here wfor members—and there is a greatj jdeal of it—has to be readdressed to| the members’ homes, i ; Wheels Cannot Be Stopped. There is no appreciable cessation ot business except on the floor of the| {House. The old wheels keep turning laround and the stokers keep the Isteam up, to continue the similé of |the ship of state. It 1s an erroncous journs the wheels stop. This ought to be obvious to any one Who thinks what a big establishment the legis- lative branch of this government' is| and how it ramifies.’ Immediate after adjournment the clerks of some sixty committees dre required to turn in to the clerk l:ll the House all the papers of the com- | mittee in connection with legislation, for this Congress. These papers are | classified and placed in the archives| and made available for future Con- gresses. This is a task in itself, re- quiring three or four months' appli- cation. For the preservation of these papers large storerooms are required in the Capitol, in the House office building and in the Congressional Li- brary. 1In the Congressional Libfary there is a big collection of historic papers belonging to the House, the| clerk being authorized by law to! make su deposits. which are con-! sidered part of the files of the House | of Representatives. Another thing—members have binding privilege—that is, they are al- lowed to have one' copy of each docu- ment published during their terms bound. The document rooms are now crowded with documents to bs bound on the requisitions of members. All these must be checked up, and for six months they will be coming back from the government printing office and shipped out to the members. Two Months’ Moving Day. There is also a big job in removal at the House office building. The outgo- ing members have to be moved out, have to be prepared for the incoming new members. This necessitates a great deal of shifting of equipment. Moving day in the House office building lasts about two months. The office of the clerk of the House all during the recess will be besieged with letters and telegrams on matters the members forgot or on new questions that arise. The members know that from the clerk's office they will get service and a promut response, and this in itself encourages a great deal of correspondence. All of these operations while the House is not in session are more or less under the observation of the clerk of the House, who is very much like a stage manager or a master of ceremo- nies, taking care of all the details that enable the House to function smoothly. Railroad Earnings Almost Up 3 To Maximum of “Fair Retmn” BY HARDEN COLFAX. The chief railroads of the United States have advised the Interstate Commerce Commission that for the first time in years they are earning on the whole approximately all the profits allowed them as a fair return on investment under the transporta- tion law. Individual roads have sur- passed the allotment of 5% per cent fpon the value of their plants. Under the law the excess profits are split #hare and share alike with the gov- ernment. Some roads have failed to earn all the commission allows them as a fair feturn, but as a unit the country’s transportation system appears to have come within a few millions, pos- sibly less, of earning its maximum fair profit. Earnings thus far re- show an increase of 114 per gént over earnings for the same period “yyear ago. Record-breaking volume of traffic is responsible for the newly found prosperity. Under ,the law all class 1 roads must report to the commission every month. Reports covering January operations have been pouring in dur- ing the past few days from more than 150 roads operating upward of 89 per cent of the nation's main line, or a total of 209,092 miles. These roads re- port net earnings of '$55,353,654 in January, as against $25,890,932 In January, 1922. Should this ratio of increase be maintained by the 11 per cent of mileage yet to report, railroad earnings in January will have exceed- ed $61.000,000. To earn 5% per cent the transporta- tion system.should have a net income totaling about $61,750,000 for the month. “January’s operations, there- fore, have neited the roads-as & whole, accerding to their returns, upward of 6% per cent, which, in ftuslf, Is-arec~ he Swndiy Shar. WASHINGTON, D. C, BY N. 0. MESSENGER. WO years ago today Mr. Harding was inaugurated President of the United States and now finds himself half way through his first term of office. Whether he will be given a second term will depend upon the will of the American people, to be expressed at the polls in November, 1924. It is the prevailing belief among republican political- leaders that he will be renominated without a contest. Congress was assembled in extraordinary session April 11, 1921, and proceeded prompt- ly to enact legislation remedial of distress- ing economic condition then existent, the aftermath of the world war. For two years the Congress and the administration have been engaged in establishing the record, to be added to in the next twenty-onc months, upon which the republican party will go be- fore the people with a claim for a contin- vance in ‘power Judgmient upon the achievements of the administration and the work of Congress may naturally be expected to vary widely along partisan lines. It may truthfully be said that the Congress which goes-out of existence today has been subjected to an unusual degree of criticism, much of it, in the opinion of neutral observers, undeserved or exaggerated At onc stage. President Harding himseli came in for a share of adverse feeling, en- gendered by the failure of efforts of the to settle the railway strike. minded politicians admit that since then administration Iai a tide of friendly sentiment is setting toward him in steadily increasing volume. ok Never has there been a President in the White Hceuse who came in closer contact with the people than President Harding dur- ing the two years of his term. He has met them personally by thousands and has veached them through his friendly and in- structive conferences with the newspaper correspondents twice a week. No exccutive ever maintained direct relations with the daily press of the country as Mr. Hard- ing has continuously done. It may be said that he has been animated not by a spirit of self-aggrandizement, but by a sincere desire to keep the press, as the adviser of the peo- ple, correctly informed upon affairs of state. It would be mnteresting to obtain the con- sensus of opinion of these writers, most of whom are neutral and fair-minded, in judg- ment of Mr. Harding’s character as chief executive. The writer ventures to say that the verdict would be that he is courageous, intensely patriotic. kindly, patient, indus- trious to the point of endangering his physi cal well being and notably efficient. There such SUNDAY MORNING, has been nothing spectacular in his adminis- tration of his high office. He has met with disappointments in the failure of the legislative branch to carry out some of his recommendations, and in acting adversely to his views on others, but he has never expressed resentment nor sought to coerce the national legislature. In making suggestions to Congress he has not gone beyond his own rights granted him by the Constitution of the United States. He has taken the position that Congress is justified by the charter given it by that same document, the Constitution, in express- ing its verdict, and he is willing to let the responsibility for the action rest where it belongs. * ok ok ok If the question should be asked. what are the outstanding achievements of the admin- istration of which President Harding is the head, the answer would cover two fields— political and economic. The word political should be used in an international sense. President Harding has kept the United States from becoming involved in the mael- strom of European politics and of overseas economiic disasters. He was justified in that by the charter given him by the American electorate in"the elections of 1920, for Ameri- can aloofness from European affairs was a leading issue in .that campaign. He has been criticized by an element of the people for doing so. has been charged with undue aloofness, but he has never wavered in car rying out the wishes of a majority of the voters of 1920. as he construes them to have been cxpressed at the polls. In c¢onsummating the four-power pact looking to the preservation of peacc in the Pacific, he removed the shadow of a possible war in the orient, which many thoughtful people realized as existing and which was constantly being darkened by the jingoists here and in another land. In bringing about the limitation of armaments conference, the fruits of which are not yet fully appreciable, he rendered a service to mankind which his tory is sure to put to his credit. In the existent crisis in Europe, occa sioned by the friction between France and Germany over reparations for the destruc- tion of property in the world war, President Harding has held to his consistent policy of non-interference, in the face of pressure brought to bear upon him by men of his own party and in heavy volume from his political opponents. He believes he is right, is confident that a majority of the people of the United States are with him, but in any event, has the courage to take full responsi- bility and accept the verdict of his country- men W ok ok ok President MARCH " 4, '1923. gathering of his friends that when he goes out of office he wants to have one justifiable cause for satisfaction—the record of having made good aj pointments -to public office. He regards the' wise selection of appointees as one of the most important features of the executive office, its power and its responsi- bility to the people. In particular is he solicitious for the make-up of the Supreme Court of the United States. In the appointment of Chief Justice Tait, of Justices Sutherland, Butler and Sanford, it is recognized by the bar of the court and the legal profession generally that the Presi- dent has lived up to his desire to select men of the highest character, ability and recti- tude, and that he may feel a well founded sense of gratification. s ok kK In the economic field effort, the most conspicuous action has been the saving of hundreds of miliions of dol lars to the taxpayers through the operations of the budget system and the curtailing of departmental cxpenses. The public at large may not fully appreciate this, for such vast sums are not readily wvisualized by the man in the street, but the President and hjs co workers in the administration know it. This policy of economy will have cumula- ive effect, and by the end of the President’s first term it is prophesied that it will bulk large and be better understood % %k ¥ Xk The public interest-bearing debt on March 1. 1921, was $23977,450,522. .On January 31, 1923, it was his makes a reduction in the public terest-bearing debt during the Harding a ministration of $1,246,288,148. These figures are cloquent in their show- ing of highly effective administration. They should concern every man, for each dollar of interest the government pays out upon its public debt must be raised by taxes upon the people of administrative n ok The Congress is part of the woof and web oi the republican administration’s two years of power. When the Sixty-seventh Congress expires today noon, by Constitutional limitation, it is natural to expect that the opposition party will hold it up to adverse criticism in the most partisan terms that can be framed, to be re-echoed in a few months in the preliminary skirmishes of the ap- proaching national campaign. The leaders of the majority party and the members of the administration will, for their part, defend the Congress and set forth its enactments, leaving the public to judge between the-accusers and the Congress. It is a matter of record for fair-minded men to study before they jump to conclusio and verdict. at the | ¢ ord, and if maintained throughout the year would result in an increase over last year's profits of more than 35 per cent. The good showing in January is {made in the face of greatly increased expenditures for maintenance and re- pairs of equipment. Had such expéndi- tures been at the average rate the st year. the net income dly would have surpassed r cent set the commi the limit of profit year average maintenance rate, however, was low, due to the shopmen’s strike, and the higher January expendi- tures are due to the intensive drive to put equipment In good order with- in the quickest possible time. Some of the individual earnings show remarkable gains. The Atlantic Coast Line, for instance, reported profits of $1,920,391, as compared with $843,474 in January, 1922; the Pitts- burgh and Lake Erie, $1,283.758, as compared with a deficft of $269.961; the Big Four, §1 . as compared th § the Seaboard Air Lin L compared with $212,78! the Burlingto $2.88. , as com- pared with $1,152,055; the Rock Is- land $517.675, compared with a deficit of $132,605; the Santa Fe, $3,- 964,563, as compared with $888,164; the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul, $1,824,419, as compared with a deficit of $466,787, and the Southern railway, $2,196,430, as compared with $736,196. The Great Northern showed earn- ings of $917,208, as compared with a deflcit in January, 1922, of $259,144; the Chicago Northwestern, earnings of $756,961, as compared with a deficit of $151,304; the Rutland, earnings of $30,535 as compared with a deficit of $29,237, and even the West Jersey and Seashore, whose rush season comes in summer, when vacationists seek the beaches, came out with a profit of $11,213, against a loss of $141,846, in January a year ago. The Chesapeake and Ohio celebrated its passage un- der new management with an in- crease of more than one-third in profits, reporting $1,374,520 net in- come, as compared with $1,028,154 in January, 1922. In hanging up a new record of post- war profits under private control the carriers were put to their utmost to haul the traffic offered them, barely managing to do so. Almost everything the railroads haul, with the exception of farm products, of course, continued on the way to higher production levels during the week just closed. un- the by ion Last Debt Commission to Meet A meeting of the American Debt Commission has been called for Tues- day morning at 11 o'clock. Just what subjects will be consid- ered were not revealed, but it is understood that the commission will take up the matter of Finnish debt, preliminary discussion of 'which has been opened by Secretary Mellon and Minister Astrom from Finland. The Finnish debt princlpal stands at 8,281,000, with interest at $1,012,000. This debt was contracted as & relief mu.h the Americam Rallet after the war, Z Harding not long ago told a “AS1I SEE IT.” Note.—In publishing this ar- ticle by the brilliant editor of the Emporia Gazette, The Star does not necessarily indorse the views he expresses. But Mr. White brings to the discussion of current events a fertile mind and an entertaining style, and a_discriminating public will place its own valuation upon the opinions he advances. HE present President of the United States would have a better place in history if only the people of his country could think of him as “Warren.” For at the bottom he is a man of a coun- try town where people are known by their first names. Tt was only in chill derision that the country spoke the name of “Woodrow” when they referred to their President. “Bill was clearly the privilege of President Taft's intimates, just as “Teddy” was the word used by those who never knew their man when Roosevelt was in the White House. McKinley was always McKinley, a statue in a park. Even Hanna in his moments of friend- ship got no nearer to the public man than “William”; no one ever ventured a “Will” or a “Bill” on him. And as for Stephenh Grover Cleveland—toward the public he turned a stone face, however warm and human his heart. No one Grovered him. As soon ,would the ancient Jews of Moses’ time give a diminutive to Jehovah. * koK K But Warren Gamaliel Harding Is peculiarly Warrenesque. It the people in considering him would just think of him as one of their own kind, a man of the people, the dear, common dub Americinus, who is mixed up In his home affairs; a joiner—Elk, Mason, Rotarian, Chamber of Commerce booster, mem- ber of the Ad Club, the Retallers’ Association, director of the County Fair, of the Country Club, of the Provident Association, of the Red Cross, chairman of the Community Chest Drive, delegate to the state con- vention of most anything, and all- round town boomer—in short, “War- ren.” The President in the White House 1s having a sad time getting himself across to the people who ha yanked him onto & pedestal, coated him with a plating of austeritybecause he has vast power. If they only would think of him as Warren. They should not use Warren in terms of mushy affection, nor in terms of intimate preferment, but as the town hustler who goes along Wwith the fellows, one of “the group that does things” who has to be counted in anything that is done about the community. The country in thinking “Warren” ghould not oonoeive a hoss, nor a super- man, but possibly “Old Warren” or in terms of paming dispgwement as o By William Allen White. “that damned old Warren Harding.” The “Warren” deeply essential. Lacking it. America can't realize nor utilize at his best its President * %k % ok He has brought Marion, Ohio, to the ‘White House: & thousand times this has been written; yet the people re- fuse to accept it. They can’t belleve in men, 80 grounded are they in their bellef in the high gods of the Wash- ington Olympus. He Is acting as President as the editor of the leading newspaper in Marlon county. Ohio, acts when he functions publicly. He gets the sense of the leading men of the village, accepts the dictum of those who are willing to put their energy and influence into a project and then lines up with the drive, does his part, expands his front as one who by his editorial position is the bugler of the squad, takes the praise or blame or indifference casu- ally and so gets the job done, along with the “gang” or “bunch” or “crowd” committes. That is exactly what {s happening at the White Hous The responsibllity for the destinles of 200,000,000 people, white and black and brown, here and in the islands of the sea, does not puff up the Presi- dent, nor break the amiable quality of his contact with life. If it could be sald President Wilson had his chief trouble in working with men, it is also true that President Harding's vice is his addiction to teamwork. He always is working in traces, never in shafts! He could not do anything alone. Falling out of a balloon he would take a friend along for com- pany and to consult on the way down. or he would be most miserable about it! He seems to feel that he is the honorary chairman of a lot of differ- ent committees in government; in forelgn affairs working with Hughes, who is executive secretary; sena- torfal affairs along with Lodge, Wat- son and Lenroot: fiscal affairs asso- ciated with Mellon; agricultural in- terests consulting with Wallace and Capper, and so on down the list of exe@utive functions and responsibiii- ties. Always he goes hand in hand with some beloved playmate. . HEES It is not because he does not know ‘how to work that he demands fellow- ship in his work. Partly it is a tem- peramental desire for the society of his kind, & congenital country town horror ot loneliness, and partly’ the President's training as a country politician. And there is his strength. He . knows the game of American politics as few of the men know it. And he knows full well that a lot of republicans of a high caste are trying to euchre him out of the republican ‘presidentisl nomination mext yeart They don't fool him for a moment when they bring their gloom buckets [that uniform government standards|coal shortages that ha; over to the White House and try to |for use throughout the country would |fering. paint the horizon black for next year's [be a far better method of getting at|condition may not be remedied, | election. The President may not be | auoted. But a man from Marion, Ohio, CURE FOR Necessity BY G. GOLLD LINCOLN. OAL i5 to be a burning issue the next session of Con- { gress. And that is no joke. { The suffering that some of the people have endured this winter las a result of the coal shortage; the | enormous prices which' they have had to pay—prices much in excess of the high-water mark reached during the war—wlll force the coal question to lthe front, and, the legislators who are hoping for action say, will bring results 5 { ©f course, it has been said that the ills of the coal industry-—or of any jother industry, for that matter—can- inot be cured by legislation. But that lis an argument usually put forward | by opponents of any reform. There !are pessimists, however, even among i the senators and representatives who are anxious to do something to re- tlieve the fuel situation and to pre- {vent these constantly recurring short- lages of coal and the suffering they ibring in thelr wake, who point out | that the coal industry has been too | strongly tntrenched: that all efforts { made for the last four or five vears, and in still earlier vears, have been | unavailing because of the influence tof the coal operators and the | carrying railroads. To Wait on Report. at Admittedly there will be no attempt yat legi all probability— { until the United States Coal Commis- { sion makes its report and recommen- | dations. But this report will be made {in plenty of time for consideration at the next regular session of Con- gress, It Is said. Undoubtedly the Iums of the commission will carry much weight. | There are three things relating to {coal that the consum public !vitally interested in to First, | that there shall be a suflicient supply lof coal; second, that the price of coa {shall be reasonable; third, that the coal shall be codl that can be used as fuel and mnot filled with impurities which make it of little fuel value. The public has suffered this winter from a shortage of coal, the high prices and the poor quality of coal sold at large prices. Standards Grades. One of these matters, it is said. at least cap be dealt with by legisla- |tion—the quality of coal sold. A se- is {rious attempt will be made to estab-| {lish reasonable standards and grades fof coal by federal legislation for coal |entering into interstate commerce lana coal sold in the District of lumbiz. In some of the states where coal, particularly anthracite, is used in large quantities standards will be sought this year through the state legislatures. But it is pointed out the evil of impure coal Senator Walsh of Massachusetts 1s NEXT CONGRESS TO SEEK coal- | COAL ABUSES !Nalio;ml Lawmakers Aroused by Short- .age and Excessive Prices to of Action. hone coal and slate results were given by its report The following the bureau 1n Coal Rone Slate per 12 ® 12 10 it 15 10 10 Might Fix Coal Prices. There is no doubt that this matte: of pure coal is going to be agitated |strongly and that every effort will {be made to put through the proposed legislation. How the other factors in the coal situation are going to b |tackled through legislation still re- |mains to be seen. Some senators are of the opinion—and they are not rad cals—that eventually coal prices wil be fixed by the government, and some even go so far as to say that eventu- ally government operation of the coal mines is going to be the solution of the troubles. The fact that the next session Congress will be followed by a n: tional election brings the clement of politics into the situation. If the ad- ministration wishes to be popular |there scems little doubt that it Wil get behind efforts of Congress to {see that the people have plenty of good coal at reasonable rates. 1n fact, it may be expected that the ad- ministration will take the lead in this matter. There is no doubt, it is sald here, that the administration ha been scriously criticized, particular! in New England and other northern states, where the coal shortage has been felt particularly, becauss of the shortage. Dolng a Thorough Job. The United States Coal Commission headed by John Hays Hammond, doing a very thorough job in fts m- vestigation. In January it submitted its first report to Congress, discuss- ing the situation, but without recon mending legislation. Congress has now provided the commission With $400,000 more to carry on its investi- gation. The commission called at- tention to the vastness of the sub- ject in its first report, estimating that the capital invested is $2,330,~ 000,000, of which $430.000,000 is in- vested in the anthracite region, the remainder being invested in the | bituminous fields. Furthermore, the |coal Industry, point of numbers employed in any single industry, the [report pointed out. stands next to transportation and agriculture The United States has rich coal de posits, greater than those of any other country, yet notwithstanding this fact there have been frequent ve caused sut- It seems incredible that this no in matter what the conditions that now surround the industry. There is coal | who shall be nameless. a man in a|the author of a “pure coal” bill—in|here and it should be possible to get | rather exactly fitting dark suit just | pressed, a man biting rather casu: | a long. thin black cigar unlighte { man lounging lazily in a swivel chair o ting with one leg crossed, under his chair pivot, lounging easily, drawling | in a half-Yankee, half-southern fash- fon, gazing out of the window at the lawn, brown under the winter's frost, he can look what he thinks at least! He was meditative, mellow, happy. And he talked politics as one distn- terested, as one who could consider it as dispassionately yot quite as intel- ligently as last week’s poker. They are not fooling him, these politictans, who are trying to sidetrack him. One who listens in while his reflective moods are passing would say his at- titude about the nomination might be something like this: I don't know whether in troubled &nd tumultuous times any one can be elected on a sane plat- form. I do know that we have done in a qulet way some good things. They have not been advertised, but they make a good record. Maybe the country knows. it, maybe not. Maybe It will not know next year. But If any one is elected on the record of this administration, it will be the man who made the record He had no remote notion of letting the big city slickers talk him out of his advantage. Not that he cares much for.it. He has had his full of glory. He is not passionately inter- ested in curing a sick world. But, after all, the rules of tie game are what they are and under the rules of the game he is entitled to a nomination twice if he wants and if it means a second election he cer- talnly wants it. That is his mood, even if these are not at all his words. * % Kok And all the time he is in the midst of the great affairs of the world, more or less vicariously, through his secretaries and chief clerks and officlal representatives, his heart is in Marion, Ohlo. He is always thinking about the Marion Star. It made over $50,000 last year —not more than the average good American daily in a county of 30,000. Its 12,000 circulation is restricted to Marion county. As President of the United States, his paper might as well have 100,000, but he would hold 90,000 at a dead loss. For the Marion advertisers would not benefit from subscribers ‘scattered all over the .earth, and unless ‘the advertisers would pay a higher rate for adver- tising than they pay; the ellitor of the Marion Star would have to pay the loss between the price-of sub- scription -and the paper—a loss that would wipe out his profit in six months. The.. President- is . prouder: of. the Marion Star than of anything else in the | the cost to produce) | fact. of two such bills. {offered proposed to have the Depart- nent of Commerce fix the standards. The second he offered authorizes the at a big mahogany desk, a man sit- | pyreau of mines to tackle the job of this country establishing these standards | Favored by Mines Bureau. | This second bill followed a report to the Senate by the bureau of mines in reply to & Senate resolution offer- ed by Mr. Walsh asking whether the bureau belleved it would be advis- able to establish standard grades of coal. The bureau said that it did favor such legislation and pointed out that there have been very many com- plaints received by it this winter that coal, particularly anthracite, has been unfit for use as supplied to the con- sumers. The bureau made investisa- {tions of the coal sold here in Wasn- ington, and in two especially aggra- jvated cases the bureau, at the re- lquest of the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, analyzed coal deltvered to consumers and found that the anthracite coal in question was running 30.5 per cent and in the other 37.4 per cent ash content. Further, the bureau examined sam- ples of anthracite coal taken from a |number of coal vards here. These samples were not analyzed, but were divided into three parts—clean coal, Pioneering days do not all hark back to the Pilgrims in their $ail- boats, or to the “westward-ho™ treck- ers, with thelr caravans and prairie wagons, or to the days when the rail- road tracks began to extend beyond the frontier town of Chicago. Rela- tively young and alert men of today have been just as truly pioncers, as witness: 2 In 1904, one of the growing motor car manufacturers in Detroit decided to enter the motor truck business, In order to -demonstrate to his own sat- isfaction the strength or weakness of the .truck’ this company proposed to make, the manager called one of his young engineers into the factory, pointed to one of the first half dozen trucks which® had been assembled, and directed him to take it to New York clty over the highways. This young engineer was instructed to make daily reports as to his ex- periences with the mew_truck, and once arrived in New York—if it chould hold together until he got there—he was to endeavor to sell a few of them to the New York mer- chants. Roads in those days were not made as smooth as they are today through the expenditure of many millions In federal aid. The trip from Detroft to The grst he| it to the consumers. More than once {the charge been made that the | industry en manipulated so lto add to the list of millionaires rather than to care t« {the needs of the public. with to the capital in a tair land just return { vested. Public Pays for Quarrels. The controversies between the coal operators and miners have been fruit ful sources of coal shortages and subsequent Increased prices of ocoal. One of the great features of the work of the present coal commission is to bring out the facts Which will be of benefit in reaching wase agree- [ ments. Largely through the efforts |of the commisston the operators and !the miners in the bituminous neid have been prevailed upon to renew their existing agreement until the spring of 1924, when the facts found by the commission will be at hand to be used in reaching further agree- ments. In the anthracits fleld the wae agreements expire in August of this year. The coal commission is to make & report on the anthracite in- dustry July 1, with the idea that it will be used in a mew/ wage agree- ment between the anthracite opera- tors and miners Pioneered With Early Motor Trucks, Now Is Pioneering in the Air Lanes New York by truck took more than two weeks. The daily reports to the manager of the manufacturing plant chronicled every ailment known to motor cars. One day's report in- cluded an expense account of $30 for hire of teams to pull the truck out of 2 mudhole. The first few weeks of display of this cross-country truck in New York resulted in several orders. One in particular was for a truck especially adapted to department store uses This proved to be the foundation for a fleet of several score trucks for that ono establishment. This young man who in 1904 took to New York, out of the west, the then new method of transportation, is now at the helm of the most mod- ern of all transportation—the air mail. He is Col. Paul Henderson, sec~ ond assistant postmaster general. He could today go from Detroit to New York in one of his mail ships in five hours, which is something of a contrast to his more than twelve-day Journey in 1904 ‘ He is demonstrating to Congress the futuro ‘of mail airships, just as he demonstrated to the New York mer chants the advantages of motor truck transportation less than twenty Years ago