The evening world. Newspaper, January 26, 1921, Page 26

She EGY Borin, ESTABLISHED BY JOSEPH PULITZER. rk Raw, New York. Park Row. MEMBER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. he Asocinted Prem is exclusively entitied to the use : tor GE all news deapatohes credited to tt oF mot otherwise credited im this HOW FAR WILL GOV. MILLER GET WITH THIS METHOD? $ there explanation or excuse for the amazing attitude of the Governor of New York toward whe City of New York? i Following Gov. Miller's message on the traction . situation, the Mayor of this city, four Borough Pres- idents, the President of the Board of Aldermen, the > @orporation Counsel and the Commissioner of " Plant and Structures went to Albany yesterday to present the city’s point of view regarding the solu- tion’ of certam of its own traction problems. ‘All they got from the Governor was a tirade ‘against the “loose thinking” of those who stand by | home rule and self-government for 2 community of 5,500,000, embracing half the population of the State. ' Gov. Miller professes desire to find a speedy way ‘out of this city’s traction difficulties. He begins by bullying the city, antagonizing its @ government and flouting home rule im the faces of 3 all who Support it. ‘ Instezd of co-operation, contempt. ‘Instead of aid, tyranny. ‘ Instead of concerted action, the certainty of & jee dissension and indefinite delay. — we , How many years will it take to settle traction " troubles and build new subways on the line Gov. Miller has chosen? _ Anew system of signs for directing subway travellers is advocated as “a convenience for visitors.” . Ien't this a polite and diplomatic ‘method | of getting around the fact that most New _ Yorkers do not know their way about in their own home town? rf REVERSE THE COMMITTEE VOTE. , Legislature should not act in agreement with its committees which yesterday voted to ij tamper the Lockwood Committee by refusing it the powers of investigation it asks. Under the powers it possessed last yéar the com- “mittee could have “stirred things up.” It could ” have abused the powers it had by gding into mat- ters riot immediately concerned with housing. The committee did not do this. It did “stir up” 4 filings that needed to be stirred. No Legislature _ | gould trave foreseen what these things would be. j New York wants to know and needs to know + ny “J crisis. The record of the Lockwood Committee is (god and sufficient guarantee that its investigators ‘vill not abuse the confidence of the Legislature and will not make illegitimate use of the powers it asks. ‘The discretion which the committee has used is _ the reason why legislators should not allow a packed _ eommittee controlled by bankers to prevent as much 1 @f'an investigation of banking practice as the Lock- ~ wood Committee deems necessary. Yesterday's 7 to 6 vote in committee should be reversed when the matter comes before the whole ; membership of the Legislature. any and every fact which bears on the housing Striking waitresses in Boston recruited their picket Mines oy smiling on the crowds of passing men. Would there be any capitalists left to-day if Karl Marx had only thought to put more “Pollyanna stuff” into Socialism? THE CRUX OF THE CONFERENCE. HE new conference of the Supreme Council of the Allied Nations in Paris has not opened doors and windows to the world. The world will not find fault, however, provided the intimacy of the discussion advanoes understand- ing and agreement regarding momentous matters pensing. So far the conference seems only to have handled the question of German disarmament to the extent of referring it to the military experts, while Aus- tia’s plight is submitted to the study of Allied rep- Tesentatives who will look into the related economic conditions of all Europe. The real crux of the conference—the question of German reparations—has been reserved as the toughest business of the session. , The problem is to make Germany pay in a way that will not turn her into a desperate and danger- ! tous bankrupt threatening the economic recovery of the sest of Europe. j At the same time, there must not be anything that looks too much like repudiation of public de- , Mand in’ England—and the same demand tenfold ‘45 insistent in France—that' the last possible penny f reparation shall be exacted. by The Prow Publishing | WHICH IS RIGHT? OV. MILLER in his traction message said: “The water bas already been squeezed out of the securities and the companies are not earning fixed charges.” Transit Construction Commissioner Delaney said | yesterday in reply to the Governor: BE aise ths iovel_news published herein | det recommends, any reasonable consideration of a change in the rate of fare must proceed. “So far aa records show, no water has beon squeezed out of the privately owned transit lines. The water is all there, but dividends and interest are not being pald on much of it.” Here is an issue clearly joined. Commissioner Delaney has put his finger squarely on the one most important fundamental question in the transit situation. It must be admitted that, in this direction at least, Commissioner Delaney in his official capacity has had greater opportunity for forming a reasoned opinion based on fact than has Gov. Miller. Let us have an answer to thts question. Ether Gov. Miller ts right or he is wrong. Either there is water in the transft securities or there is not. Here ts the first and most important point to be srmined in the investigation which Gov. Miller It is the starting point from which Has the water been squeezed out? The United States Steel Corporation is the best known example of the dehydration of stock. Com- mo stock in that corporation was virtually all water when issued. But the dividend policy of the company has been conservative. cess of 6 or 7 per cent. were reinvested in plant and equipment. Earnings in ex- Have New York transit companies followed this example? What has been the dividend policy of New York transit corporations whose financial present is inex- tricably rooted in a scandalously speculative past? Has anybody yet got to the bottom of the fixed charge obligations inherited from the old era when New York transit manipulation was notoriously a super-gold-brick game? No one knows with certainty whether transit stocks on which dividends are now demanded repre- sent the dry facts of actual present physical value or stagnant waters accumulated years ago. In any modification of transit contracts “in the interest of the city” and looking to “unified munici- pal ownership,” the capitalization of the properties on which interest and dividends must be paid is of paramount importance. On this capitalization will depend the surplus over operating expenses, which must be collected in fares. Under a flexible fare agreement operating ex- pense plus the fixed charges divided by the number, of riders would establish the fare which must be paid, whether this be 5 cents, 8 cents or 3 cents. If Gov. Miller has the facts to justify his state- ment that “the water has been squeezed out,” he should make them public. If not—dhd it is hard to conceive how he can have gained such information which has been hidden from other students of the transit situation—then + the question of capitalization and fixed charges should be answered preparatory to a discussion of the larger problem, No mere change in the system of supervision or reguiation can command public confidence and sup- port unless it is based on a knowledge that valua- tions of the transit properties are not inflated and that the rate of return on these valuations is not excessive. FROM THE CITY OF HI LAN. To the Heaven-Born Mayor of Pekin, China: Your Excellency has demanded to know why the admirable Mayor of this City of Hi Lan has closed his ears to the demand of citizens that he remove his Overlord of Police, who permits robbers to go about in twos and threes and, single out citizens to beat and rob. The explanation is written in our Book of Books, in the story of Min Sun, disciple of Confucius, We are told how his stepmother, having three children of her own, beat Min cruelly, and his father, learning this, became wroth and would have put her owt. But Min said no, it was better that one child be beaten than that three be motherless. Knowing this, the scholarly Hi Lan believes tt better that one citizen should be robbed than that three robbers should starve, and 1oill not put the Overlord of Police away from him, but rather urges that all citizens should show the humility and benevolence that have won our reverence for Min Sun HONG, COMMISSIONER. TWICE OVERS. ce ‘OMEN'S waists should cover their necks un- less they want to gel pneumonia.”—Reo. M. G. Kyle of St, Louis, 66 DQEOPLE simply would not buy at the prices Sapo THE EVENING WORLD, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26, 192 r's Idea of Partnership nt pe ne eB GS we er fe cay much in a few wh. ‘8 Who Your editorial The public instinctiyely to voice its wishes. force is indispensable to their struggle to preven The Lockwood public's interest. ture of every industry. Various real estate fortified with powerful doubtedly desperate in to cause the nullification in the rent law, obnoxiot large extent curbed the adequate in protecting come other obstacles. to scheme, his purpose. The tenant {s pounded sion and, unable to m. rents, is with boarders. High rents force the business man to dema' for many. fundamental principle I was surprise letter of the 18th invited ¢. ner of Wall and solicit opinions for and inst lar according to each opi To the Falitor of The Evening Work! captioned Who?" apropos of the building probe, once again clearly demonstrates your Persistent devotion to public welfare. Your mighty ests” from plundering them. investigation has proved to be a vital necessity in the Any obstruction to their scope of action Injures the tu- backed by enormous funds, are un- While the present laws have to a of greedy landlords, they are still in- ‘The landlord has found ways to evade the oppressive rent clause and over- particulars reads like the expense ace count of Cook's tour ‘round the world In the course ef litigation, the un serupulous landlord has been found bribe and corrupt every nfluence necessary in order to achieve +From start to finish of the case he has the advantage ‘ime, money and counsel, forced to crowd his home his product, and the result is misery ‘The Legislature must ramember this to read 8. J. W.'s F, A. to stand on the cor- Broad Streets to hibttion, each to pay the other a dol- | cl He should know that there ts not one nickel-nureing Prohibitionist in this { town to-day who would take such a From Evening World Readers What kind of a letter do you find most readable? Ien’t it the one that gives you the worth of a thousand words in o couple of hundred? There is fine mental exercise and @ lot of sutisfaction im trying words. Take time to be brief. ’ {under the license regime. Allowing |another six months before enforce- “Who's ment officials could get organized for energetic activity, it will be under- ;Stood why there would be more ar- rests for 1920 than 1919. One does not sce ag many drunks on the streets ‘and the subways as formerly. This \is very noticeable. Drunkenness is actually decreasing although official figures seem to prove the contrary. The figures may not lie, but some editors in their ef- | fort to explain them have likely gone \astray. A. D. BATCHELOR. New York, Jan. 23, 1921. clings to you the people in t the “inter- Good Habits In Rending. To the Extitor of The Evening World: You have been publishing articles on your editorial page of special in- terest to me as a mother who has Ibeon a teacher—namely the Mytho- logical Romances and Our National Monuments. Articles of this type may be used so easily to encourage young folks to supplement home and School education gud are interesting to young and old, Would it be possible, when this series 1s cOmplete, for you to discover and use some other such series? Newspapers develop good daily hab- its which can never be acquired through magazines. HELEN DENNINGER. jan, 21, 1921, associations, lobbies and their efforts of provisions us to them. ® profiteering the tenant. His bill of of] Nutley, N. Ju 21, 192 into submis- From the Civil Service, eet the high| foi? Baitor of The Brening World : I am a Government clerk, having served in the War Department at Washington for nine months, I saw service with the army in the field, and upon being discharged was reinstated as a civil service clerk at $1,200 in the worker and nd more for and function Beastie Port of Embarkation offices. © That be sd FAR H. HecKER, | W4s in March, 1919. Am now serving Bronx, Jan. aad at the same basic salary, but with a . bonus increase of $240 per annum, Is It @ “Chancet” which became effective July, 1919, To the Biitor of The Leng Workd which Congres$ threatened to ‘revoke last year, In this connection I often criticised The Evening World for the stand it took recently in trying to enforce the discharge of many of the Jovernment ks, Of course, The Evening Worid helped to bring this about, with the result that our special department ts severely handicapped for the want of clerks. ‘The last cut of one-third took in which he against Pro- nion received. chance. JUSTICE, | place this January, and a previous re- New York, Ja 23, 1921. duction in December of a third took away @ great many valuable clerks. Figures and Truth, I realize that The Evening World To the Bxiitor of The Breaing Worki meant to confine its efforts mainly to UNCOMMCN SENSE By John Blake (Copyright, 1921, by Joho Blake) KEEP YOUR BATTERIES CHARGED. Exactly as the flow of current from a central generator restores the strength of an exhausted electric motor car, so sleep restores the strength that you expend during a day's work, There is nothing that will so quickly break down your nerves and destroy your usefulness as the loss of sleep. You will read that Napoleon and other great men got along with very little sleep. But Napoleon while he did not sleep long stretches at night, used to make up for it by taking “cat naps’ whenever he could get the chance. He would sleep in his carriage on his way to and from his head- quarters. He would lock the doors of his cabinet and steal half an hour's or an hour's sleep whenever he felt the need of it. Some men require less sleep than others. You will not need as much after you are fifty, for the reason that you have ceased to build up as fast. The process of waste that eventually means death has already begun. But at any age, eight hours of healthful sleep every night will be of benefit to you. See that nothing cuts into it. Get to bed in time to get eight hours of sleep before the hour that you have to arise in the morning. Give up parties or card games, or any nocturnal amusements in order to do it. You can’t make up sleep at the end of the week, you don’t get your night's sleep, it is gone forever. When you get to bed see that nothing breaks into your slumber, Don't eat before retiring, or your effort to digest your food will make you sleep uneasy, If you have worries, put them off till morning. They will keep you from sleep. Avoid coffee at night. Sleep with enough fresh air in the room to insure real rest. There is nothing more important to the man who wants to keep his muscles or his brain in good condition than sleep, and plenty of it. Without it the brain will soon be- come exhausted and cease to function properly, Sleep at night and you will be wide awake in the daytime. Lose your sleep at night and you will be half asleep all day— half asleep and half useless. If . By John Cassel peal. tue ening Wort) Ov, A Signal Code To Lessen Motor Perils By John S. Phillips. Every public spirited citizen must see with growing concern the increase in the number of deaths and injuries caused by motor traffic accidents on the streets of cities and even on country highways. The whole A. B F. distributed as traffic officers throughout the land would be insuffi client for practical and salutary com+ trol. Some plan must be devised by which the traffic will measurably control itself—or at least tend to do so. The congestion in the cities has reached a point where the waste of truck hours, taxi hours, and time loss ones who haggled oyer the soldiers’ bonus? 1 wonder how many of them recelve our much needed Increases and not be in constant fear of being dis- charged. CIVIL SPRVICE. harmony of the soul.—Hazlitt. A handsome woman is a jewel A Better Newspaper, ‘To the PAitor of The Evening Works Ive been reading the letters ana t| Sad! want to commend The Evening World (Words From the Wise |are now shouting economy? Perhaps | Anon the various hames mysteriously Grace has been \tefined, the sappear from the Congressmen’s pay- bin ? en eee. the civil service clerks, will outward expression of inwurd @ good woman is a treasure— It is said figures do not Me. But our interpretation of the figures may give 6,567 arrests for intoxication in 1919 and 5,813 in 1920, With one possible exception, every New York paper has taken the view that this signifies the failure of Pro- hibition. This conclusion betrays superficial reasoning. The increased arrests may be proof of increaged ef- ficiency of enforcement officers, the old license days a drunk was sel- dom arrested unless toe asked, and ii as our faull.—-C, B, Rouse. orderly. | Bix months of the year 191f was | he was dis- Government departments? why they didn’t include their “clerks”? wonder if these Washington, where clerks are appar-jupon its new features during the past ently doing nothing. This leads to the| not always be true. Official figures| present stand of The Evening World in regard to its very clever detective work in disclosing the present Con- |théatrical gressional scandals. As stated recent- ly, Congressmen are carryi: on their payroll of relatives and friends and “John Does" who apparently do no work at all. 1 wonder if these same “honorabies In are the ones who shouted to reduce lyear, I think that the wonderful “John Blake” articles, Bide Dudley's column, Neal O'Hara's humorous stories, the funny cartoon, “Katinka,” and the fearless way in which The Evening World is getting after our City Administration has in- creased your paper 100 per cent. in the line of interest. I like The Eve- ning World for its frank way of telling us people what roplly goes On I wonder abroad and at home, MRS, GEORGE DUNHAM. same men were the! New York City, Jan. 21, 192k, ing names civilian personnel of the different To be discrect in prosperity and patient in adversity is the true motion and effect of a vir- tuous and valiant mind.—Cicero, A We ts like a snowball; the longer it ts rolled the larger it 4s.—Anonymous, I hate ta see a thing done by halves; if it be right, do it bold. ly; tf i be wrong, leave tt un | | | ninety nights, ols and trade schools to pedestrians by interruption are in the gross enormous and represent unbelievable money and service values, { propose, as a first step, that we sbould have a simple universal code of signals by hora: Short and pro- longed blasts of the horn, in com bination with intervals, to indicate the intention of the driver giving the signal There are needed compara- tively main signals. Such a set of signals would have to ‘be worked out very carefully, using suggestions and advice of various kinds of experts in street traffic, acoustics, safety, &c. Just to illustrate the idea, and with no purpose of making anything more than a suggestion to start from, let's that the signals were as fal- ng straight ahead”—Two short with @ perceptible interval be- f repeated. right*—Two long “Turning to left"—One short and one long. “Turning around”—Three long. “Back.ng'’—Turee short biasts, (This is a signal suggested for this purpose in bulletins of the National Safety Council.) More wiil be needed, ne doubt, for special purposes, as when a driver of @ truck at the head of a line of ve~ Iucles Wishes to stop and back to curb and must have room to do so, There should also be an answering signal used in case a driver desires to show that he understands. Please note that these on! hints to indicate the kind of si code that might be devised. The + Present difficulties of interruptiong and dangers o? traffic arise in part from the fact that one driver seldom knows the intention of other drivers. And pedestrians have still greater d&fficulties in realizing whether ‘a vehicle is going to turn to the right or to the left or going straight ahead. Any signal code of this kind seems at first glance to be a little compli- cated, but as a matier of fact it is very aimple. We instantly know the difference between long blasts of a horn and short biasts. We know without measuring when an interval between sounds is shorter or longer. All those who have anything to do with water traffic can in a very short time understand the signals of the pikot code, and there are quite a num- ber of them. The intervals are pre- scribed by law in seconds, but that makes no difference; you know what & long biast te and what a short one. Cd ery fog signal on the coast, al- moet, is regulated in such a way that by the length of the eound and the intervals you can determine exactly which one it ie. I have sailed and cruised quite a little and every Friday in summer I go out on the Fall River boat when the North River is most crowded. Yt with few signals boats move in and out safely. In thirty years of travel on the Sound boats and many years of yacht cruising up and dows. the coast, I have never been in @ collision amd have seen only one. In our anarchy of motor traffic we need a fundamental plan, simple and clear, that can be readily learned by drivers and pedestrians, and may, when perfected, be established law as our pilot rules are. Whe: decided upon by competent people, ; it will spread faster throughout the Nation than euch things usually do, for manufacturers, automobile clubs, safety societies, truck owners, trafiie policemen and State officials may be enlisted as an education! force. After working over the possibitte ties of a plan (an idea that ocourred to me first when on the committee appointed by former Commissioner Woods to investigate street trat and accidents) I believe that in the outline above and its corollaries there is the beginning of a practical set of motor signals, that, worked out in detail, will be of real public service, | Ten-Minute Stadies hy New York City Government t, 1901, by the Pree Pyle wrt, Now’ teat breaig Wanye Oo By Wiilis Brooks Hawkins, TMs is the fifty-third article of a series defining the duties of the administrative and legistative officers and boards of the New™ York City Government, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, Evening Schools. The teaching of English and ctvieg to foreigners constitutes the chief work of the evening elementary sch though Instruction in’ the e n branches and in home arts offered as well. irses in commercial subjects and in academic work aro provided) in 4ne evening high schools, where jtrace classes {n women's occupations are also taught The evening trade schools offer only continuation Instruction. « The course covers such subjects as wood and metal work, machine shop prac. tice, printing, electrical work, draws ing, plumbing, Industrial chamiatry, applied physics, mathematics, work in women's trades, and the like, Tha Evening School of Industrial Art 1s open to men and women whose occupations involve the adaptation art to industries, the courses ine) ing instruction in designing jowelry, stained glass, textiles, costumes, mus ral decoration and hook {Iiuetration, ‘The soesions of the ovening al tar” schools usually cover a period of while thone of the wools Gom 280