Evening Star Newspaper, June 22, 1930, Page 78

b /. 2y — THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JUNE 22, 1930. Omrz'loing It For The Kiddies VER since the beginning of the year the problem of the unemployed has been worrying our best minds. Real- izing that the country is passing through a period of economic de- pression, humanitarians and philanthropic or- ganizations have been working overtime in an effort to relieve suffering among the jobless. And now, just as the status is returning to quo, a setback occurs. The juvenile unemployment problem rears its tousled head. For school is out and the children are at home again, disorganizing the lares and pen- ates. It is very jolly for about two weeks, but after that a period of domestic depression sets in. We are all familiar with the sad spectable of a hungry, jobless man sitting on a park bench, with nothing to do because he is “too old at 60,” but sadder still is the spectacle of a hungry, jobless boy kicking his heels against the porch railing, with nothing to do because he is “too young at six.” Bread lines, benefits and “give a job till June” campaigns do little to improve the juve- nile unemployment situation. The dole system does not work; whatever the dole—a nickel, a bedtime story or a slice of bread and brown sugar—it merely evokes an insistent clamor for more. Harassed mothers find themselves listen- ing unconsciously for the welcome sound of the school bell; then, with a sinking of the heart, they remember that there will be no school bells until September. In East Teabone parents look to Mrs. Challis for a solution of their difficulties. Mrs. Challis can always be counted on to provide the jobless Juniors and Betty Janes with an outlet for their surplus energy and their elders with an opportunity for a few afternoon naps. Though her enterprises are not always suc- cessful, at least they take up a lot of time. One Summer she organized a swat-the-fly cam- paign, with the East Teaborie Chamber of Com- merce as her financial backer. Children were paid & penny a dozen for swatted flies, and it was predicted that within a month East Tea- bone would be entirely free from the little pests (the fiies, that is). BU’I‘ complications developed. The supply of dead flies soon exceeded the demand. Boys and girls stormed the Chamber of Commerce in droves all day long bearing squashed offerings. No one would have believed that there had been so many flies in the world since the plagues of Egypt. The young ladies who had volunteered to assist in the tabulation of mor- tality statistics threw up their carefully gloved hands in despair. The finance committee, after listening to the treasurer’s report, reduced the bounty to half a cent a dozen. But still the flies poured in. The principal collector of this bounty was one “Buddy” Gilkerhaut. Where others dealt in hundreds he dealt in thousands. At the end of three weeks the fly fund was exhausted, but not Buddy. Mrs. Challis took him aside and questioned him. “Do you realize that you have brought in more fiies than all the other boys together?” she said. “Now that is very praiseworthy, Buddy, and I'm sure we all appreciate your efforts to make East Teabone & cleaner, sweeter place to live in. But, tell me—how do you do it?” At first Buddy was reticent, but after a lengthy grilling he broke down and confessed. “We got a bunch of dead fish out in the alley,” he explained briefly. That was the end of the swat-the-fly campaign. Another Summer Mrs. Challis organized an anti-dandelion crusade. It was part of her city beautiful program. Through the gen- erosity of Mr. Squattulucci, the proprietor of an unaccountably prosperous coal and jce business, she was enabled to pay the boys and girls 25 cents a bushel for freshly dug dande- lions. Mr. Squattalucci’'s motives were, he assured her, purely altruistic; he wanted to see the lawns of his fair city unblemished by noxious weeds. ‘The children set to work with more vigor than judgment. It was with something of a shock that Mrs. Challis recognized her own coreopsis and Mrs. Proctor’s choice yellow tulips among the dandelion greens which were brought to Mr. Squattulucci. But the real shock came a few weeks later, when Mr. Squattulucci was arrested for selling dandelion wine. There was quite a fuss about it, and Mrs. Challis was obliged to resign from the local chapter of the W. C. T. U. Last Summer Mrs. Challis produced a pag- eant of progress which kept the youngsters busy well into the dog days. Its ostensible pur- pose was to celebrate the 165th anniversary of the purchase of East Teabone from the Indians in 1764, when Col. Tristram Teabone had brought the entire tract from Chief Reced- ing Chin for a keg of rum. In fact, the pageant itself was staged upon the very spot where this important transaction had taken place—a corner of a cow-pasture which now belongs to a gentleman farmer by the name of Smitch. E Pageant of Progress opened with & rhymed prologue recited by Mrs. Challis, who was dressed to represent seven out of a possible nine muses. She wore long Grecian robes which were designed to give an effect of slenderness—but not to Mrs. Challis; she was a living demonstration of the Einstein theory that space is curved. The prologue touched lightly upon most of the important evenis in history from the Palsolithic period to the dawn of the eighteenth century. Then, circa 1700 A. D., Mrs. Challis retreated behind a clump of elder bushes and the actual pageant began. Chief Receding Chin and a troupe of his Indian braves entered and sat down in a circle in the center of the cow pasture. (The braves were members of grade 4B, wrapped in blankets and decorated with war paint.) They were followed by Col. Tristram Teabone and a squad of British soldiers carrying a keg of root beer. A blank verse dialogue between the colonel and the chief ensued; it was more blank than verse, owing to the fact that the chief kept forgetting his lines. The colonel gave the keg to the chief, receiving in return a birchbark deed for the land. Then the Indians all drank root beer from sanitary paper cups and said “Ugh!”—which was putting it mildly. ‘When this ceremony was finished they took off their blankets. On the inside of each blanket was a large white letter, and the In- dians were supposed to line up with these blankets and spell East Teabone. But in the confusion of the moment they were able to produce nothing but a stirring exhortation to Eat Beans, with a superfluous E searching vainly for a place in the animated anagram. O and T, who had drunk too much lukewarm root beer, were taking no interest in the proceedings. Mrs. Challis, somewhat chagrined, shoved the soldiers and savages into the elder bushes as graciously as possible, and announced the sec- ond scene of the pageant. It was called “The Development of Agriculture.” Seven little girls from Miss Maulsby's Sunday school class danced across the cow pasture, impersonating wheat, corn, oats, barley, alfalfa and timothy. (At the last minute Daphne Cohen, Alfalfa’s younger sister, had insisted upon taking part in the performance, so she was added to the ensemble, representing Wild Rice.) They an- nounced in shrill uncertain tones that: We supply the raw material For your bread and cake and cereal. Children of the fertile plain, All we ask is sun and rain . .. Then they sat down on the ground, and the Raindrops (Miss Higgins' primary class) danced around them with watering cans, sing- ing: Patter, patter, little drops, Falling on the farmers’ crops . . . The scene might have ended as happily as it started, if Wild Rice hadn’t stuck her foot out and tripped up a couple of Raindrops, caus- ing them to fall on Barley with the effect of a cloudburst. There were squeals of rage from he assorted Cereals, wails from the Raindrops and exclamations of dismay from the assembled By Weare Holbrook. relatives in the audience. The mother of Wild Rice galloped from the side-lines, smacked her soundly and hauled her out of the arena. Other mothers joined the melee to discipline or de- fend their offspring. . anN Mrs. Challis emerged from the elder f bushes there was nothing to mark the recent conflict but a few battered watering cans. “I'm afraid it will be impossible to continue the program as it was originally planned,” she announced breathlessly. “The next number will be an allegorical playlet with five characters— the Farmer, the Banker, the First Mortgage and the Protective Tariff. While the players are getting into their costumes I will give you a brief resume of the growth of the community in the nineteenth century. “As you look about you, it may seem incred- ible that only a few decades ago East Teabone was nothing but a—a cow pasture.. Our paved streets, our humming factories——" A sudden stir among the ladies in the audi- ence caused Mrs. Challis to pause. She glanced over her shoulder. Across the field ambled a large red cow—one of Mr. Smitch’s herd had crashed the gate. It was coming toward her slowly, but purposefully. “Our humming streets,” continued Mrs. Challis nervously, “our paved factories, all have sprung, as it were, from the seeds of industry planted by the sturdy pioneers who——" Several ladies in the front row of spectators had risen and were making their way rapidly out of the crowd. Mrs. Challis looked around again. The beast was close behind her, gazing at her with large speculative eyes and chewing in a menacing manner. “The sturdy pioneers,” repeated Mrs. Challis with a slight quaver in her voice, “who b-braved the perils of the wilderness, and preserved——" But what the sturdy pioneers preserved was never explained, for just at that moment the cow threw back its head and emitted an apocalyptic bellow. It was a bellow of Wagner- ian proportions, expressing the weltschmerz of generations of discontented cows—and it was too much for Mrs. Challis. With a shriek she gathered her Grecian robes about her and staged a little pageant of progress herself, dash- ing across the pasture, hurdling a barbed-wire fence and disappearing into a clump of shrub- bery on the other side of the road. Do S The Indian Braves were members of grade 4-B. Then came British Soldiers With A Keg Of Root Beer. This concluded the afternoon’s entertainment, much to the disappointment of several hundred children who had prepared to take part in “The Rise of Industrialism,” * Dance of the Calories,” “The Evolution of Built-in Plumbing™ and other scenes arranged for the latter part of the program. But the grown-ups were satisfied. In pag- eants of progress, the play’s not the thing; it’s the rehearsals that count—and Mrs. Challis had done a valuable service to the community by keeping the younger generation busy during the worst part of the long vacation. But even so, Mrs. Challis cannot quite take the place of the little red school house, as a so~ Jution of the unemployment problem. It is only in June, July and August that parents really appreciate the advantages of the modern educational system. Looking back, they realize that schooldays were, after all, the happiest days of their lives. And they don't mean their own schooldays, either. Porto Rico Must Reforest. RESTATION in Porto Rico has reached the point where it is seriously menacing the economic welfare of the island, according te the Forest Service of the Department of Agri- culture. ’ Many steep slopes once covered with timber are now being used for agricultural purposes, and are subject to serious erosion in times of heavy rainfall, In fact, the forests have been so depleted that at present about the only virgin timber left is in the Luquilla National Forest, which consists of 13,500 acres. The recent hurricane which did such heavy damage has at least given the forests a tem- porary respite, perhaps of two years, from cut- ting; for the windfalls have produced enough timber to take care of the charcoal needs for that period. Reforestation is the solution for the island, for trees grow so rapidly there that good saw timber can be produced in 20 to 30 years, Mangrove forests produce charcoal wood within seven years. Mahogany, although not native to the island, can be grown there to produce saw timber in 30 to 40 vears. Change in Village Store. THE automobile, in its revolutionizing of busi- ness and industry in this country, has brought about a great change in the manner of running the village or cross-roads store. Time was. not s0 many years ago, when the owner of the country store looked forward to the visit of the traveling salesman, when he would order, and usually with a fairly keen idea of quantities, for six months in advance. He knew about how many customers he would have and about the quantities which would be sold. Now, with all his customers within easy reach of a nearby city or town, with the department stores and chain stores competing, he can only guess at what his sales will be. He buys now from hand to mouth and probably drives in to the wholesaler's himself every week or two to keep his rather thin stocks replenished. Ladybird Protects Plants. THE ladybird, one of the common beetles of the garden, is man’s ally against one of the pests which are ever ready to attack the tender new shoots of trees, roots and plants— the aphids. The ladybirds are a natural enemy of the aphids, and will consume great quanti- ties of them in the course of a season. There are varieties of beetles closely resembling the ladybirds in shape and size which are leaf eaters, however, and present a pest in them- selves.