Evening Star Newspaper, March 17, 1935, Page 31

Editorial Page Civic Activities Part 2—12 Pages HAWAII PRESENTS CLAIM FOR STATEHOOD IN BILL Importance of Paci Defense Is Cited 1 in Congress. BY SAMUEL WILDER' KING, Delegate in Congress from Hawail. OVELIEST and most romantic spot under the American flag in the opinion of the thousands who visit it, Hawaii is today more vital to our country than at any time since its annexation 37 years ago. Substantial reasons support this contention. The United States Gov- ernment, recognizing the islands as | forming the most strategical point in our Pacific coast defenses and a | likely center for trans-Pacific avia- | tion lines that will soon stretch to | Asia, New Zealand and Australia, is about to complete at Pear] Harbor an impregnable naval base, with dry | docks, barracks, increased radio sta- tions, workshops and other necessary adjuncts. It will make Hawaii a scene of intense activity for years. Secondly. Hawalii is becoming increas- ingly important as an integral part of the United States, because tourists, turned back from Europe on account | of unfavorable exchange. find that in | the islands money has the same pur- | chasing power as on the mainland. | By thousands of Americans the Ha- waiian Archipelago, with its vast stretches of sugar cane and pineapples, | its varied scenery and temperate cli- | mate, is being “rediscovered” as a de- | lightful playground. Finally. there is the practical consideration that Ha- waii, instead of being a liability to the Federal Government, is an asset, since it contributes more to the Treas- ury than it costs to administer it. In addition, its tropical produce is in- valuable to our commerce. and in time of war would provide certain essen- tials. | For these reasons I, as a Delegate in Congress, representing the 380,000 | Hawaiians, have deemed it an oppor- tune time to put forward our claims to statehood. To this end I have introduced a bill. for which I am mus- tering support, to raise the status of Hawail, now a Territory, to that of a State. The people of Hawaii desire 1t; I think they deserve it. Worthy of Vast Sums. Fortunately, the islands. with their nearest point a little over 2.000 miles from the mainland, are so situated in the Pacific as to be worthy of the vast sums which the Federal Government is soon to expend on them for defenses. From Hawaii, the “big island,” and Oahu, the island on which Honolulu is located, they stretch for almost 1,500 miles northwest toward Asia. With Midway, the cable station, WAKE, 1,500 miles farther west, and Guam. another cable station, all under the American flag, they form a series of stepping stones by which airplanes in a succession of easy hops may reach the Asiatic mainland by way of the Philippines. Most of the little islands in the chain are coral atolls inclosing lagoons; some of the lagoons would provide splendid landing places for planes, while many of the islands could be used for stores in time of war. But it is the Pearl Harbor naval base and its protecting fortifications upon which the Government is soon to spend $26,000.000 and later per- haps many times that much. Naval strategists regard Pearl Harbor, eight | miles from Honolulu, as the finest | natural naval base in the world. It | has an area of 10 square miles. has{ a depth of about 40 feet, is reached | through a narrow channel and is pro- tected from the sea by intervening elevations. It would be difficult for an enemy to destroy ships anchored | 1n it. | Bills now before Congress provide for expenditures of $15,000,000 by the Navy at Pearl Harbor. About $10,- 000.000 is to be used for two floating dry docks, and there are to be work- shops, power plants, barracks, cold storage. an extension of the submarine | base, radio equipment and other ac- cessories to cost $5.000,000. Navy offi- cials admit that these expenditures are only preliminary and that eventually more millions are to be invested in | America’s chief outpost for defense. ‘ Army to Spend $11,000,000. ‘The Army. a division of which is | stationed here to protect the naval base, is to spend $11,000,000 on the construction on Oahu of an air base. ‘The site is within a stone's throw of | Pearl Harbor. The plan calls for the | biggest and most efficient air base ever | built. | With world conditions as they are, the expenditures seem justified. Hawaii is a center from which vast areas in the Pacific can be reached. 1f a circle is drawn on a line 2,000 miles from | Honolulu, with that city as the center, it will be seen that the islands com- mand a wide radius of activity. The circle would reach in the north almost to the Aleutian Islands; would in- clude in the west Wake Island (re- cently turned over to the jurisdiction of the Navy); would penetrate in the southwest the Japanese-mandated Marshall Islands and in the south | would embrace Samoa. Two-thousand- | mile flights by airplanes are now en- tirely practicable. Hawaii, therefore, | would be at the very heart of trans- Pacific air travel. It is because of the increased im- portance of their islands that the peo- | ple of Hawaii are urging that they be | admitted to statehood. Our people | have no other political destiny than to become the forty-ninth State in the Union. Their claims to that dis- tinction are clear. I shall recite briefly some of them. In point of population Hawaii ex- ceeds in numbers that of almost any Territory at the time of its admission to the Union. Her 380,000 people com- pare with the 20,000 Wyoming had. and with Nebraska's 28,000, Arkansas’ 30,000, Colorado’s 40,000, Nevada’s 42,000, Missouri’s 66,000, California’s 90,000, Montana’s 142,000, Idaho’s 160,000 and Arizona’s 204,000. On the average Hawaii has five times as many people as these Territories had at the time of their admission. Even today Hawaii has more people than has Nevada, Wyoming, Delaware or Ver- mont, and has almost as many as has Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico or New Hampshire. The Island of Hawali, or the “big island,” as it is called, is al- most the size of Connecticut. Oahu, | with 140,000 population, is about half the size of Rhode Island. From a financial standpoint Hawaii is an asset to the Nation. For 35 years she has paid into the Federal Treas- ury five times as much as has been expended on her administration. Al- together she has contributed a net profit of $150,000,000 to the United States Treasury. She sends over :5 | | population, might easily have ffil]en\l | four fic Islands to U. S. by Their Delegate 000,000 to Washington yearly in rev- enue, and has had spent on her an average of $1,000,000 annually for ter- ritorial projects. Of the $100,000,000 she receives for her produce she spends the major portion in the States, importing from the mainland about $91,000,000 in American goods. This is in contrast to the condition that prevails in for- eign countries that trade with the United States. Cuba, for example, sells great quantities of sugar to the United States, but does not need to spend the money here. Her people are fond of European luxuries 2nd they spend much of their money, which they obtain from this country, for European goods. Situated at the crossroads of the Pacific. our people are very much alive as to what is going’ on in the world. The Hawaiians are progressive because of their contacts with the throngs of visitors to their shores. Our educational facilities compare | favorably with those on the mainland. With education compulsory, our schools | are open 42 weeks in the year. Our | teachers are adequately paid, the | same scale prevailing for country teachers as for those in the cities It may interest people on the main- land to learn that we do not tolerate any unsightly billboards. It is a cus- tom among our people not to patron- ize any establishment that defaces the countryside with advertisements. Perhaps this is because of our in- herent love of scenery, and Hawaii abounds in graceful sweeps of cane- fields. pineapple plantations, rice- paddies, precipitous mountains, gar- dens, beaches and lovely landscapes. Honolulu, the metropolis of the is- lands. is'a modern. progressive city. It has a police force that might well be a model for any city on the main- land. The force is organized on a scientific basis, with an expert at the head of it, and is entirely free of poli- tics in the selection of its personnel. Discovered by Cook in 1778. Although at one time after its dis- covery by Capt. Cook in January, 1778. Hawaii, with its Polynesian under the domination of the British, the PFrench. or even the Russians, luc! it came under the sway of American influence. For years prior | to its annexation it was influenced by | American missionaries, who intro- duced American educational ideals, and by American business men. Fundamentally, therefore, we of Hawaii are Americans. Hawaii made of itself a free gift to America. a valuable gift from any point of view, strategic, economic, cul- tural or political. The American Nation recognized this and passed the organic act con- stituting Hawaii as an organized ter- ritory, with the same degree of au- tonomy then enjoyed by several ter- ritories on the mainland that have since become States. By inference Hawaii could aspire | to the same destiny. It had a larger | degree of home rule than Alaska, in | 1900 as yet an undeveloped country. | It was properly treated differently | from the new territory acquired as a result of the Spanish-American War. All of its citizens under the former republic were granted full American citizenship. The former president of the republic became the first governor; many | subordinates who had served under | the monarchy and the republic con- tinued to serve under the territory. The President of the United States, with the approval of the Senate, has the power of appointment of the governor, the secretary of the terri- tory. the justices of the Supreme Court and judges of the Circuit Courts. The people of Hawaii elect the Hawaiian Legislature, which func- tions as any State Legislature does, and the governor appoints the ter- ritorial department heads, with the approval of the territorial Senate. People Select Delegate. The people also elect. as their spokesman in Washington, a delegate to Congress. as other territories for- i | ‘ | | merly did, and as Alaska still does, a delegate who is a member of the United States House of Representa- tives with all rights as such except he right to vote. As authorized under the organic act. the Hewaiian Legislature created county governments modeled after the American plan. As the territory consists of eight inhabited islands, the subdivision into | smaller units is more logical than might be the case on the mainland, EDITORIAL SECTION he Sundiy St WASHINGTON, D. C, Political Panacea Peddlers Self-Appointed Soothers of Nation’s Woes Have Been Numerous During Country’s History. UEY P. LONG is not the first spectacular political figure to win millions of followers with plans for sharing the Nation's wealth; nor is Father Charles E. Coughlin the first orator to attract the attention of the voters to economic theories regarded by conservatives as| unorthodox. American history—and | the second half of the nineteenth cen- | tury—records a long list of pictur- | esque political and economic seers who gained at least temporary fame be- cause of their novel proposals to end depressions, and their vigor in pre- senting them. Without benefit of the radio, or even loud speakers for addressing crowds in person, these men, and one woman, won wide hearings for their ideas and made their names familiar in all parts of the country. Most of them were sponsors of new poltiical organizations which sought to oust the familiar parties from power. Greenback Party Formed. Financial problems which grew out | of the depression after the Civil War ! gave birth to the Greenback party, the ablest chieftain of which was Gen. James B. Weaver. To raise funds for carrying on its fight against the Southern Confederacy, the Fed- eral Government issued enormous amounts of paper currency. Coin was scarce and there were notes even for fractions of the dollar, so small that they were called “shin plasters.” these obligations were printed in green on their backs; hence their name. party, this political body favored “the further increased use of greenback currency and a complete recognition of such as legal tender.” The too liberal use of this fiat money was de- moralizing. The panic of 1873 was only one of its manifestations. | Weaver was a strong personality. He had served in the Civil War and was brevetted a brigadier general; had been a United States district af a world power and brought it into the Pacific area more than ever before. Today Hawaii is America's western outpost, almost a fundamental neces- sity in the protection of the western coast of the mainland. This part in America’s scheme of defense is pri- marily naval. As a fleet base Hawaii serves America. The army simply pro- tects that base from attack and has no other reason for being in Hawaii. | When sail power was the means of an imperative need. When steam from coal became the source of power especially | locomotion on the seas Hawaii was | Votes Always UPPER. LEFT TO RIGHT. “PITCHFORK” LIAM H. “COIN" HARVEY, THOM:S E. WATSON JAMES R. COX. SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH a By-Product. & r—— S BEN TILLMAN. WIL- AND FATHER CENTER. LEFT TO RIGHT. HOWARD SCOTT. EUGENE V. DEBS, UPTON SINC | LOWER, | JENNINGS BRYAN. 1 —Photos by Associated | propagandist editor. He was a forci- ble writer and a magnetic speaker. put forward his financial theories. He could fill any hall with listeners drawn by his spell as an orator. no matter what his audience’s political views might be. He argued for prohibiting note cir- IR AND WILLIAM ALFRED LEFT TO RIGHT, GEN. JACOB S. COXEY AND WILLIAM “WHISKERS” PEFFER. Press, Harris-Ewing and Underwood. All| torney in Towa, and then became a | culation of banks and for making | paper currency exchangeable for | bonds and demanded that coins be Formally known as the Independent | In season and out of season, Weaver |used for payment of national debt | or the payment of principal and in- | terest on bonds only when they were | specifically marked as redeemable in | gold. Weaver, king of inflation, wove his spell on the voters of the Mid- | west. As a representative of the Na- | U. S. APPROACH TO LATINS THROUGH CULTURE URGED |Greater Manifestation of Pan-Ameri- canism and Understanding Seen in New Method. | BY GASTON NERVAL. HERE are three ways of ap- with adjacent areas arbitrarily cut up | v into separate counties. often without | Hawaii's value was hardly less. With regard to geographical or economic | greater and greater radius of action boundaries | by oil-burning vessels Hawaii may be All this was natural, the following |slightly less important. out of the American procedure in But its 2.000 miles distance from similar cases, the organization of local | the West Coast, its commanding loca- government with a minimum of na- tion in the North Pacific, both for tional control and interference, and furthermore a recognition of Hawaii’s long history of self-government. Texas was annexed into the Union as a State; Hawaii was annexed into |the Union as a Territory and has successfully maintained itself in that capacity with no more than the usual troubles of government. The value of Hawaii as a naval out- post, controlling the North Pacific, was realized from earliest times. The first naval visitors recognized its stra- tegic location and urged the United | States to obtain the exclusive use-of bases in the country. : Several treaties were suggested. | looking to the cession of Pearl Harbor to the United States. The kingdom in most cases was agreeable to such an arrangement, expecting no doubt that material advantages would more than compensate for some small loss of territory or sovereignty. U. S. Turned Deat Ear. 1 But the United States, still pre- | occupied with developing its own vast | hinterland, turned a deaf ear to any | Pacific outpost and declined to ap- prove any treaty for such a project. | Other nations were also alive to | the possibilities of a navai base in | Hawaii and perhaps ,America’s in- difference might have thrown Hawaii into the arms of some other power, had not that indifference been coupled with a firm stand against such an eventuality and a strong support of the sovereignty of the Hawaiian king- dom. | Up to the annexation therefore the | strategic value of Hawaii was still po- !bentlsl and not actual. The Spanish- | American war made the United States | ocean and air travel, gives America | such a tremendous advantage in any Pacific operation that it is hardly conceivable that its strategic value will ever be less. The probable inability of the coun- try to maintain itself as an inde- | pendent nation made the alternative | faced in 1898 one, not of independence | versus annexation, but of belonging either to America or some other | nation. With such an alternative there was | only one answer, both for Hawaii and | for America. The occupation of this tolerated by the latter. * For Hawaii, its history tied it to the American Nation, its destiny since at least the 1870's has been to become in some manner attached to America, a des- tiny actively promoted by its leading business interests and accepted by its native people. The creation of a fleet naval base in Hawaii, the maintenance of an Army department here for the pro- tection of that base, aggregating per- haps 20,000 men, brings into the local scene a military atmosphere that no other American community has to such a marked degree. Our aspiration is ultimate State- hood. There is no place in the Amer- ican scheme of government for any community that is permanently barred from achieving the status of a sovereign State. The question of time might be subject to argument, but it hardly can be maintained that Ha- wail can be kept in the status of a Territory, . | the whole course of proaching pan - Americanism. I One is the way of government officials and “career” diplomats who think of inter-American problems exclusively in terms of poli- | tics; they are guided by political theo- ries, by historical traditions, by the | necessity of hard-boiled political ex- | pediency, and they pretend to build | Pan-American friendship upon the un- | ratified treaties and innocuous resolu- tions of governmentally sponsored in- ternational conferences. The second way is that of business men and traveling commercial agents, who think purely in terms of dollars | and cents, and, of course, in terms of | the profit which they may derive from | the Latin American markets; they are | interested primarily in the expansion of foreign trade, in the establishment of economic links, the promotion of more rapid means of communication Third Approch. | It‘is along these two ways—as we | have often stressed in these columns— that all the attempts at pan-American accord have been directed to this day. But there is a third way of approach- ing pan-Americanism, still untried, which is neither political nor economic, but offers more possibilities than either one of these. We have defined it, in previous articles, as the cultural approach—the way of educators, in- tellectuals, social leaders, who know that any real understanding must | come from the things of the mind and who rely more on education and mutual knowledge than on the old political formulas or even the new commercial endeavors. Of course, only when the three lines of approach are pursued in unison— that is, when the political misunder- standings are being removed and the economic links fostered at the same time that the cultural rapprochement is taking place—will fl‘u pan-Amer- { ican ideal become something else than mere diplomatic flattery or a romantic | figure of speech. But, either because the cultural way has been the only one neglected heretofore, or because without it the other two will never accomplish much, emphasis upon the cultural approach is the greatest need of the pan-American movement today. | It has remained for a distinguished educator in the United States to best describe this need. In the current issue of World Affairs, Dr. Glen Levin | Swiggett discusses “a new orientation | toward Latin America” in such clear and outspoken terms that none of his countrymen interested in inter-Amer- | ican affairs can fail to understand his message. It must be said at the start | that Dr. Swiggett is no new convert. | For many years he has been a pioneer 'in the field, and has worked inde- fatigably for the establishment of an | inter-American federation of educa- | tion. But in his latest contribution, | Dr. Swigzett goes even farther than before. He calls, now, for a “social approach” to pan-Americanism, one which would lay stress not cnly on the cultural and spiritual heritage of | the Latin Americans, but also on a better knowledge and appreciation of their social aspirations and their struggles for self-expression, both in their culture and in their social organization. Problem for U. S. Latin America, in the opinion of Dr. Swiggett, has become for the United States little more than a prob- lem in foreign relations. He says: “We seem unable to consider this region with detachment, to study dis- interestedly any part of it as we study other countries and other regions. Political and economic motives have largely determined our relations with and our understanding of, these 20 Latin nations, 17 of which occupy a very large part of the Western Hemisphere. Our Government may be said to have become Latin America- minded with the Monroe doctrine of 17, 1935. | tional Greenback Labor party, in which had been merged some of the | remnants of the nativists with labor, | | he went to Congress in 1878 as 1 of 14 | | such leaders. The Greenbackers at | | that time controlled fully a million | votes. Nominated for President by | his party in 1880, Weaver found that | | the movement had begun to dwindle | {and he had barely a third of the | popular ballots which he had ex- pected. Next Candidate Fared Worse. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, who had been both a Republican and a Demo- crat, turned his political coat once more and accepted the Greenback nomination for the presidency. He had much less success than his predecessor. There was a boring | within the Greenback contingent and | the remains of the party were largely | ) absorbed by Populism. Picturesque personalities pervaded Populism in its heydeyv—Jerry Simp- son, the “sockless solon™; “Whiskers” Peffer, “Coin” Harvey, “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman. They were associated with the efforts of the farmer class | to get into the political picture. What | New Yorkers called “the gay nineties” | were far from cheerful in the Mid- | west. Crop shortages or failures, de- | clines in the prices of agricultural commodities, the drop in breadstuff exports, drought, dust storms and cattle diseases added to the gloom of the agragrian element. It was a time for agitators, and there were plenty of them, especially in Nebraska and Kansas. Out of the | old Grange societies and farmers' alliances came to the materials from which the People’s party, commonly | when, Autos—Aviation Cross-Word Puzzle ECLIPSE OF LONG SEEN IN PROSPERITY RETURN Roosevelt Leftism Held Encourage- ment for Wealth-Sharing, Although Plans Are Virtually Alike. BY MARK SULLIVAN. HE current commotion about, and by, Gen. Hugh Johnson, Senator Huey Long and Father Coughlin may be understood by following the rise of it. Search for its origin must take ac- count of Mr. Roosevelt. Much that Huey Long is saying now has been said by President Roosevelt a little while ago—what Huey is doing is largely to translate into the language of Z1e cane brakes what Mr. Roosevelt said before him in a more cultured Harvard and Groton English. The sentiment is the same, only the word- ing is different. Not that what Huey Long says is any more provocative and rabble-rousing than a sentence Mr. Roosevelt spoke in his message to Congress as recently as January 4 last: “We find our population suffering from old inequalities, little changed by | past sporadic remedies In spite of | our efforts and in spite of our talk | we have not weeded out the over- priviledged and we have not effectively | lifted up the underpriviledged.” | Is the ordinary man, especially one rather in despair, without money or | a job, to be blamed if he assumes that what Huey Long says is the same thing that Mr. Roosevelt means? Huey says, simply and directly, “Share the wealth.” President Rosevelt says vaguely and circumlocutiously (in a message to Congress) that America must have “a permanent readjustment of many of our ways of thinking and, therefore, of many of our social and economic arrangements.” Little Difference. Between these expressions by Mr. Roosevelt and Senator Long’s “share the wealth” there is some academic distinction. But the average man is not far wrong when he fails to see any real difference. “weed out the overprivileged” means to take some from those that have much. His “lift up the underprivi- leged” means to give to those who have little. True, Mr. Roosevelt would ac- complish the division by slow and gradual processes, while Huey Long creates the impression that he would g0 out at once and take wealth away from those who have much and give it to those who have little. Huey could not do it, of course. His attempt would merely bring paralysis of America as a going concern and the | end would be not a sharing of wealth but a sharing of universal poverty. Even more than Mr. Roosevelt him- self, some of those around him have given out sentiments and phrases as likely to stir up class feeling as any: thing Huey Long is saying. Some | sentences from utterance made durin; the early days of the administration by Mr. Donald Richberg, Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace and Fed- eral Emergeney Relief Administrator Harry L. Hopkins were as apt to cause | shivers to friends of the existing social order as the most provocative slogans that Huey Long is now emitting. Long Delegation Seated. Mr. Roosevelt and those about him were not alarmed about Senator Long at the Democratic National Convention about to nominate Mr. Roosevelt, they urged the convention to seat the delegates from Louisiana brought by Senator Long, as against the delegates brought by Long's rivals. A scene at that convention, which must now give Mr. Roosevelt some dis- taste, consisted of Huey Long and Mr. Mr. Roosevelt's | form was dangerous, that it might make recovery impossible. As to that, however, the true an- swer is almost certainly that some= how, same time, recovery will over= come any and every handicap that is put upon it. There was a cycle of de- pression, and while that cycle con= tinued nothing could stop it. There is now a cycle of recovery and prob- ably nothing can stop that either. It can be retarded, and has been. The low point of the depression was reached in July, 1932, so that the up- ward course has now been under way nearly three years. If the degree of the recovery is disappointing, that is partly due to the fact that a depres- sion so deep and calamitous requires a long time for recovery. Partly it is due to the unwillingness of the Roose- velt administration, during its early months, to foster recovery. Had the administration ignored reform and concentrated upon opening the way for recovery, we should have been farther ahead But while the period of recovery may be made shorter or longer, the fact of recovery is as certain now as the fact of depression was five yesrs ago. Some time. somehow the forces of business recovery will overcome even the impediments put deliberately in its way by the mistakes of states- men; it will break through, or leap over, or crawl under, or detour around, or seep through every obstacle and hurdle. It may possibly be distorted, as it would be by inflation if that should come. But of the coming of recovery we can say what President Coolidge said about the coming of | better weather. To one who remarked, “I think it's going to stop raining,” Mr. Coolidge said, “It always has.” May Threaten Chances. Aside from the threat Huey Long is to the country, he is, in more direct sense, a threat to Mr. Roosevelt politi- cally. That menace, Mr. Roosevelt can hardly escape. If Huey Long chooses to organize a party of his own and run as its candidate for President in 1936, he will get a large number of votes, and practically every one of them will be a vote that Mr. Roose- velt would otherw The number of Long votes mi adily be large enough to put Mr. Roosevelt's re-elece tion in some danger. What has hape pened is that Mr. Roosevelt, by radi= cal utterances and actions during the early part of his administration, aided, of course, by the conditions of the time, recruited an army. an army of the left. Now Senator Long has stepped in and taken command of & arge part of the army. Mr. Roose- elt should have known this would 2 | happen, through Senator Long or | some one else. No matter how far Mr. Roosevelt might go to the left, some one else would go farther. No matter how extreme the President's proposals, others would outbid him. When the President proposes $4,000.- 000,000 for relief, Senator La Follette raises the bid to $10,000.000.000, For Mr. Roosevelt politically the problem now is whether he can, by his course during the coming eighteen months, direct to himself or hold to himself a sufficient number of con- servative votes to balance the radicai ones that will be taken away from him by Senator Long’s third party if he has one, and also of Senator La Follette's party, if he has one, and | by suck other radical movements as Roosevelt's son with their arms about | each other in mutual delight over the nomination of Mr. Roosevelt. An- other scene at the same convention, for which Mr. Roosevelt was not re- known as the Populists, were con- jured. It teemed with leaders who had the Pied Piper knack of making men listen and follow. | Jeremiah Simpson, who belonged | to the pioneer days of Populism. had | been a sailor on the Great Lakes. In 1878 he drifted to Kansas, where he | became a farmer and a talker. When his farming interfered with his | oratory, he abandoned the former and became a friend of the down- trodden. For a time he was identi- fied with the Greenback Union Labor party, was elected to Congress three timés as a Populist, and was de- feated thrice for that office. His sobriquet came from his boast that he never wore hose, an omission which he regarded as a sign of virility. He flourished politically through the 90s, and then retired to a stock farm. A Woman in the Field. ‘To that period belonged Mrs. Mary Ellen Lease, who was an aggressive sponsible, but which must now give pain to orthodox Democrats, Father Coughlin, then not so widely known, invited to the platform, throw- ing his curiously hair-raising voice into one of the most rabble-rousing speeches of his career. What I have said about the degree of Mr. Roosevelt's past responsibility for the present phase of Huey Long is necessary to say as a matter of un- derstanding existing conditions. Yet, I feel like apologizing for saying it. Of all the agencies that have at all times held the world back, one of the most potent has been recrimination about the past. The only question worth considering is what Mr. Roose- velt and the rest of us ought to do about Huey Long now. For both Huey Long and Father Coughlin, there is one sure cure. It consists of business improvement. Once we are back to normal prosperity, both the Louisiana “Kingfish” and the | Detroit priest will be as compietely advocate of the rights of the people. | A tall, angular woman with a pierc-{ ing voice, she was heard all over the country. Of unusually good executive ability, she was the first woman president of the Kansas State Board of Charities. She became a lawyer, and devoted herself largely to espous- ing the causes of the poor. As a delegate to the National Popu- list Convention and an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate, Mrs. Lease was in the fore- front of the radicals. She was a natural orator, inspired by an intense sincerity. She will be recalled for years to come by her advice to agri- cultural Kansas: “What you farmers need is to raise less corn and more | hell.” The latter part of this pre- | forgotten as Jacob Coxey of Coxey's Army and the many others who rode the waves of turbulence in past de- pressions. If Mr. Roosevelt wants to escape the menace of Senator Long, let him abandon that presidential at- titude which Mr. Walter Lippmann has called “punitive and terroristic at- tacks on private business.” Attitude Possibly Abandoned. Most of us here in Washington think that, for the present certainly, Mr. Roosevelt really has abandoned this attitude. radicals in his administration have not abandoned it, they have become discouraged, or tired, or partially con- verted to a more conservative course. In department after department | either the conservatives or the milder | of the radicals are coming to the top. | In the Department of Agriculture a | “purge” has evicted several of the cept she put in constant practice. She proposed to burn the stubble of all the old parties by the fire of the then youngest—Populism. True champion of the tillers of the | soil was the Populist Senator from | Kansas, William Alfred Peffer, known, perhaps, too familiarly, as “Whiskers” because of the flowing beard which swept his stalwart breast. Peffer, | author and orator, proclaimed the doctrine that “the farmer by virtue of his vocation should control the politics of the country” He had been a farmer in various States, with an {ll success he attributed to the farmers’ not getting “a square deal.” A firebrand in that conflagration of Populism which was to sweep away the old political order was Thomas E. Watson of Georgia, who rose by way of the Farmers’ Alliance. Watson, a Populist member of the House of Representatives in 1891-3, was kncwn by the violence and intolerance of his speeches He attacked the Roman Catholic Church as editor of a maga- | zine bearing his name. He incurred | the enmity of the Jews by vitrolic| abuse of one of their race. Watson was a candidate for Vice | (Continued on Third Fage.), (Gontinueq, on Tenth Page.) more strident and forceful radicals. In the Securities and Exchange Com- mission the chairman, Mr. Joseph P. was . And while many of the | Kennedy, has convinced his associates | of the need of permitting the flow of capital into industry to be as free as | the too radically written law can make | it. N.R. A, so far as it is reenacted at all in June, will omit three-fourths | or more of the restrictions that have hampered the revival of business. Throughout the whole administra- tion Mr. Roosevelt shows signs of hav- ing learned a costly lesson. He started | out to hold recovery back in order to put reform forward on the theory, presumably, that only while the country was sick and flat on its back would it accept the reforms that the radicals pressed upon Mr. Roosevelt and which he pressed upon the country. That course was dangerous from the beginning. As early as the end of 1933, after Mr. Roosevelt had been in office 10 months, he was solemnly warned by some of the most devoted adherents of his views that his pos t of recovery to re- may arise In two respects has Mr. Roosevelt's exuberance done harm to himself and to the country. The violence of his attacks on wealth. on what he and Mrs. Roosevelt call the “overprivi- leged.” has given rise to Huey Long and Father Coughlin. At the other end of his political rainbow the extravagance of the hopes he excited abcut the “more abundant life” has given rise to the venerable Dr. Town- send and his “Townsend plan.* By no_possibility can the hopes of the millions of adherents to the Townsend plan be satisfied—as a matter of fact it is going to turn out, and even the comparatively mild old-age and un- employment insurance that Mr. Roose- velt proposed when he got down to the concrete plan—even that is going to need to be modified. Increased Demand Puts Steel on Profit CLEVELAND (#)—The steel in- dustries re-entered the profit zone last week as operations. up 3 points, reach- ed 45!, per cent of capacity, says the magazine Steel “Last year the rate did not reach this point until March,” the magazine points out, “and did not remain above 45 per cent except through the second quarter, when the industry made a rapid. though temporary financial re- covery.” So rapid has the increase in de- mand for steel become in the last few weeks, the magazine says, that some sheet mills working at capacity for the automobile industry are allotting tonnage to their customers, as in 1929. “Not only ingot production, but also output of finished steel is strongly up- ward.” Some steel producers booked more finished steel in the first 10 days this month than in all of January last year. “Sheet mill operations have risen to an average of 60 per cent, strip mills close to this figure; tin plate to 50 per cent. The nut and bolt in- dustry is at 45 per cent.” Guide for Readers PART 2 8 Page Editorial Page D-2 Hitler Arousing British...D-3 Mary Church Terrell.....D-3 Frank G. Carpenter......D-3 D. C. Civic Affairs.. ..D-4 Automobile and Aviation. D-5 Organization Activities— Women’s Clubs, Masonic, Eastern Star, American Legion Naval Reserves, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Pages D-6-7 Cross-World Puzzle. .D-8