St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 26

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, WEDNESDAY, MAY 4, authority, has attained the defunctitude. of a "salted HOW TO STOP LYNCHING. mackerel." Law-abiding citizens everywhere will approve the purposeful way in which the authorities at Bowling fr ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Founded bv JOSEPH PbLlTXEH Dec.

12 181 S. Published by the Pulitzer Publishing Twelfth and Olive Streets. The members of those organizations are doubtless grieved beyond expression at this pronouncement, Green, assisted by the State administration, are pre but they will recover presently. It is not our purpose1 paring to investigate the recent lynching and their expressed determination to identify the lynchers, If however, to moralize on the Invincible resilience of youth. This enisod has a more profound side.

It POST-DISPATCH CIRCULATION Average 1020: Sunday Averaae SR1.9Si is educational in a most practical way. It is an DAILY AND SUNDAY AVERAGE. 191,086 THE POST-DISPATCH PLAT- FORM. I know that my retirement will make no difference in Its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent; never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty. JOSEPH PULITZER, April 10.

1907. LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE. possible, and prosecute them. It will be noticed, too, that agitation for a State anti-lynching law has been revived, inspired, of course, by the Bowling Green affair. While efforts In behalf of the law and for the suppression of lawlessness have the sanction of sound public sentiment, certain elemental facts ought, in this connection, to be faced.

Without palliating the violence of the Bowling Green mob we believe it to be true that Bowling Green sentiment would judge less harshly the mob's summary vengeance had the criminal accomplished his design. The law is the law and lawlessness is intolerable, but we ought to take the limitations of human nature into account. The intended victim of this negro was saved from outrage and probably brutal death by providential chance. Had no such chance intervened, had the frightful crime been committed, the community judgment which today censures the mob would measurably Justify the mob's action. This may be deplorable.

It may be a savage throwback. It is a fact, though, lament it as we will, and it is with facts we have to deal. How shall we deal with them? How may we proceed to uphold the dignity and majesty of the law and put down lawlessness? The one way which promises that result is the fast, sure and adequate functioning of the law. It ought to be understood that opposition to lynching Is not predicated on the belief that the victim does not deserve the punishment meted out to him. It is not to the degree of punishment, but to the manner of its administration, which tends to bring all law into contempt, that Intelligent, thoughtful public sentiment excepts.

It may be doubted if the public mind makes much of a distinction between the brute who happens to be foiled in his attempt and the one who isn't. If the law could have forfeited the life of the negro, Hammonds, whose guilty Intent was established beyond question by circumstances and, later, by confession, there would have been no necessity for mob vengeance. The work of the Bowling Green mob was, in part at least, a protest against the inadequacy of the law's sentence. As such it addresses a challenge to our lawmakers. The Post-Dispatch submits to the administration the advisability of putting attempted criminal assault in the same legal category of accomplished crime, with the same swift and final penalty.

But meanwhile the law must be vindicated by the punishment of the lynchers. experience of a kind which will be encountered very often in the world beyond the high school days. This Is the era of the ban. Verboten has become a fetish. Whatever the majority don't like Is proscribed.

Preparation for this order of things cannot commence too early. High school students are old enough to be taught to kotow to the thou-shalt-not-ables. RENTAL OPPRESSIONS, The testimony of nearly 80 tenants in the Board of Aldermen's hearing on the rent question offers evidence of grinding hardships in many cases. Not only is there evidence of rapid rent increases of from 60 to 150 per cent, but of brutal conditions in which apartments have been rented to others on short notice in order to obtain excessive rents in short order. In some cases methods resembled auctions, in which the apartments were let to the highest bidders, without consideration for the rights or interests of tenants or of ordinary "humanity.

There is evidence also of utter neglect of repairs on account of the house shortage, so that repair costs did not figure In the rental Increases. In some cases landlords insist upon the signing of long-term leases far in advance of the expiration of leases in order to insure against any fall In rents. W'hen one considers that it was the homes of people, the only shelter they could find, which were thus bandied about greedily and heartlessly, the hardship becomes manifest. The landlords are yet to be heard from, and, of course, different light may be put upon some of the cases. But the actual increases and the methods used in many cases supply a basis for necessary legislation for the protection of tenants during the present emergency.

The house shortage has the effect of monopoly in a necessary of life and the constitutional right of the Government to protect the public from extortion and hardship is not only affirmed by the Supreme Court, but is fundamental in recognized legal principles embodied In the common law. Is the showing of the Mississippi barge line, as compared with the railroads, due to the fact that there's no "water" in the river? California has reduced its inheritance tax. There's the place to die. Why Pick on the Landlords? To the Editor of the Post-Dispatch. Why these continual flings at "profiteering landlords," "rent hogs" and so on? Why should not landlords get as much rent as they possibly can? Everybody knows that everybody does It; that it is the recognized rule in business of all kinds to squeeze all you can out of the other fellow.

Everybody knows that the bankers, the coal mine owners, the oil well owners, the steel mill owners and all other prosperous business men are engaged in doing Just that thing. Why blame the landlord especially? In fact, why blame anybody? Where are you going to draw the line between a fair price and an unfair price? Our greatest economists assure us that the only rule of commerce is to exac "all the traffic will bear." There is no right and wrong about it; it is a struggle for the spoils and "Vae woe the loser! A Just price! a fair price? Out upon it! 'There is no such thing. Hold him by the throat and shake him until the money drops out of his pockets; that the only civilized way of doing it. I confess that I do not go with the economists. I believe that there is a rule of -Just price.

I believe that civilization is doomed for lack of it; but then I am only one those execrable Socialists, whom nobody of good sense listens to. JOHN BEVERLEY ROBINSON. COMMODORE NEWBERRY RETURN. The famous victory of Truman H. Newberry deserves a plumed and bugled hour.

It will have it, AN UNDESIRABLE ALIEN. CONFORMIST LEADERS. That sage of Emporia, who has shown the world how to be a Kansan and yet not take himself too seriously, has succumbed to the inevitable conclusion that our major political parties, while proper In form, are pawing the air when it comes to principles. In other words, they are shameless trimmers, which, for fear of alienating any class or faction, creed or clique, have cultivated the oracular art of using too, if Washington has any respect for the law of dramatic values as laid down by Aristotle. A committee of arrangements should be appointed at once to see that Newberry's resumption of his expensive seat in the greatest deliberative body on earth shall be a dithyrambic din.

The dominant note of the demonstration wilj, of course, be nautical. For Newberry's first love, as The MIRROR of PUBLIC OPINION Vacation Schools. To th Editor of the Pot-Diptch. Now that the Board of Education has sufficient funds cannot something be done to increase the number of vacation schools, so that all children who desire to attend may do so? The vacation school In itself is an excellent thing, but it has been the cause of "much dissatisfaction and complaint from the parents on account of the number of children fhat are denied the priv JUST A MINUTE Written for the POST-DISPATCH by Clark McAdams words for the concealment of meaning rather than its conveyance. Thus they have become merely rival patronage groups, with nothing at stake except the everybody knows, is the sad and solemn sea.

The I Commodore was a sailor before he was a statesman. ilege of attending. Last summer my little girl was not al lowed to attend, although I was very anxious to have her do so. As the principal and teacher explained the case to me. it seems that on account of insufficient funds, the number of children admitted had to be very limited.

I wish that other mothers would take this matter up, bo that our children may all receive the benefit of the vacation schools. The summer vacation Is entirely too long and is a great waste in the child's school life. A few hours' school In the morning lg an Ideal arrangement for summer. It is not at hard on the children and helps their education wonderfully. Let us hope that this summer the opportunity of attending summer school will be granted to every child who wants it.

MRS. E. F. BAXTER. This column is designed to reproduce without bias the latest comment by the leading publicists, newspapers and periodicals on the questions of the day.

OUR MILK SUPPLY. From the Survey. IN connection with a comprehensive inquiry into the milk supply of St Louis. the Public Welfare Committee of that city has come upon some perturbing facts. So far as they deal with pasteurization, the sanitary condition of dairies and the methods of sale from open receptacles, the facts found are not alarming, and the evils disclosed have already effectively been tackled by the committee itself; while the Federal Department of Agriculture has been induced to carry out a thorough survey of the approximately 7000 dairy farms within a radius of 100 miles from which St Louis receives 80 per cent of Its milk supply.

But an examination of the prices charged to distributer and consumer, compared with those of other cities, showed a discrepancy that is not easily explained. The subject is Important because In St. Louis as elsewhere the children of, the poorer classes are often, owing to the high price of fresh milk, brought up on condensed and store milk, which, as all authorities are agreed, is no adequate substitute. TChat really happened in St Louis and Is always happen a Secretary of theNavy before he was a Senator. A Themistocles rather than an Aristides, the great occasion of his return should have a saline tang and tidal roll.

For chairman of the Committee of Arrangements there is, happily, but one candidate the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge, whose debt to Newberry is beyond accounting. To the Michigan purchase Mr. Lodge owes the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee and the opportunity for performing what may yet be appraised as the most sinister disservice in American annals. Moreover, there is also a Viking strain in Mr.

Lodge. How else could he have created his grandfather he first Secretary of our navy? History may not know it, but that is what Henry Cabot Lodge did for an ancestor, and he, therefore, is the man of all men, by every token of gratitude and congrulty, to direct the reception to Detroit's only Commodore. It may be remarked, too, we think, that no special appropriation of the public funds will have to be made for acclaiming the gallant seamanship by which Newberry tacked into Washington instead of Leavenworth. Newberry pays for his glory. This grizzled old tar has a checkbook under his blouse as big as a family Bible.

Up with the topsail, then, and fill the lee scuppers to the brim. Sagas and salutes. And let Triton blow his wreathed horn. We gather from what Senator Spencer says that there are almost no applicants for the St. Louis Postoffice.

He can think of only three, and none of these seems to strike him as very likely to get it. If no one who is competent wants to come forward. Just a Minute will take it. He has a reason for this that cannot fail to impress Senator Spencer. For some time past it has been assumed that there goes with the postmastership in St.

Louis a sort of paternal relation to the community. The Postmaster seeks to lead and advise us In such broad fields as those of ethics and civics, and he is by some strange alchemy in the breast of the public officeholder the foremost local exponent of the national genius and our common love of country. This is perhaps admirable, but Just a Minute foresees that Postmasters cannot always keep it up. As both the city and the country grow, and as other people who might share this great task with the Postmaster are shooed off by his official insignia, either the country or the postoffice will collapse. Just a Minute would like to be Postmaster long enough to get this situation straightened out.

We need to understand precisely what the Postmaster is and what he is not. Possibly Senator Spencer will not feel that Just a Minute has been a good enough Republican to deserve this honor, but the city of St. Louis has been sufficiently Republican to deserve the reform. Sir: The Investigation now being conducted by the Board of Aldermen in the matter of extortionate demands of landlords is developing beyond any reasonable doubt that It is the present salaries paid railroad men that is the cause of the high cost of living. Only one of these complainants thus far has acknowledged that he is a railroad man; but we are Inclined to believe that all are for, who else could pay such prices as are being denfanded for living (pardon the expression) quarters? Rail wages must come down.

T. W. S. In a grocery store during April: Anti-Medical Trust. To th Editor of the Post-Disps-tch.

My attention was called to an article kinder the caption pro medical trust. After carefully reading this article it becomes quite evident that this letter is Written under the guidance of a medical enjoyment of power and emoluments. It is true, as Mr. White says, that the solution, or at least the power of correction, rests with the Individual voter. We have let the politicians and the hereditary partisans a combination of busyhead and bonehead run things.

Republicanism has become a religion in the North, as has Democracy in the South. And while campaigners put up a formal batt'e to get the public to take them seriously, the soul of their appeal is covered in one -ford office. But does the fault lie entirely with the ancestor-worshipers who "vote her straight" end those who, as in the last election, vote principally their resentments? Mr. White may have yielded half facetiously to the temptation of epigrammatic expression when he said: "I am independent from December to November, curing November I am a pretty regular Republican." But it strikes us that this is a very good description of the course habitually followed by men to whom the people have a right to look for leadership. Mr.

Taft and Mr. Hughes, prior to the 1920 campaign, were active advocates of a league to enforce peace much more radical than the Versailles covenant. They were for signing up the treaty, as was Mr. Hoover, with reservations or without, until the issue came up in election. Then they all fell in line with the oppositionists, and Mr.

Taft, the hitherto energetic pro-leaguer, went so far as to offer a new school of logic, which reasoned that the way to get what you want is to vote against it. These leaders had their convictions until campaign time. Then they all turned off regular. Which are the more to blame blind followers or conformist leaders? The combination of building material and labor prices promises to maintain the status quo of the skyline. We trust that when Mr.

Kahn refers to "the man on the street" he doesn't mean Wall street. ing is that at a time of rising cost of production etudent. The fact is evidently their is a the consumer is asked for much more than the actual rise; at times of falling cost he Is only grudgingly and belatedly given the fall In price LOVED HARMONIES. SPRING comes, and plays upon a lute, vine-strung; Her melodies of sap and all outward flung In little leaf-tones, perchance rainy-sweet. Like tearful thanks timed to a glad heart's beat.

Or, in warm, drowsy tones, like sunny-easa Swayed by the vagabondage of a breeze And lisping "space" and "voyaging In dreams Of zephyr-ships and petal-rafts and The flowers, a choral form, "which Spring directs; Their colorature work teems with bright ef-' fects! Rare voices pool or alternate in song The golden jonquil-tones rise clear and strong. But oh, the violet-pianissimo Comes sweet and peeping-shy. Now fast, now slow. Enchanting scales are run in every hue Legato and staccato roulades, too. Soprano, white, high lily-voice is classed; While divers blooms lend rich tones unsurpassed.

All train toward sweet perfection, which will come. As harvest-store" for each nectarium. No breeze will lack its cargo of perfume; And liquid music, bubbling in each bloom On tap, will bless (vows every petal-note Some wee-wing's little, music-thirsty throat. BETH HEWLETT. Viscount James Bryce tells us in the current Geographic how great rivers impress him, and what he feels many of us must have felt.

He is describing the rivers of Siberia: "After many hours' journey through this delightful parterre, the traveler sees beneath him in a valley 300 feet deep, the grandest of all the Siberian rivers, the Yenisei, with the city of Krasnoyarsk lying on the slope between the station and the stream. "This Is the finest view of a river from a railroad I can remember to have seen anywhere. The Mississippi at St Louis and the St. Lawrence at Montreal are as wide, and may have as great a volume; but the banks are comparatively low. Here the coup d'aell of the bold heights and the mighty stream filling the long hollow that winds away to the north between rocks and thick woods Is magnificent.

"Nothing in nature Is grander than a great river. It embodies the irresistible strength of the forces of nature and their changeful activity, ever the same and yet ever, different, here with a glassy surface, there swirling with deep eddies, making and unmaking islets, here eating away the bank, there piling up sand to enlarge it. It is older than man, and will outlive him; it is a part of his life, serves him In many ways, but it heeds not his coming or going. 'These great Siberian rivers specially Impress the imagination, because their sources lie in unexplored snowy solitudes, and from their middle course in habitable lands they descend into a frozen wilderness terra domibus negata to find their ending In an Icebound sea. "We had just come from a long voyage up and down another famous river, the Yangtze, singularly unlike its Siberian eisters In this, that it is the central avenue of commerce through a highly cultivated country, passing on its way many cities swarming with people, and bearing on Its bosom not only steamships, but fleets of sailing craft such as can be seen nowhere on Rhine or Danube or Mississippi, or even on the Nile, where once they carried all the traffic of the country." No.

41144: Sign at an automobile repair shop, Olive street: Invite us to your next blowout. THE END OP THE FEATS. The action of the Board of Education in banning high school fraternities and sororities has been upheld by a court's ruling which was determined, it is presumed, by the testimony of principals and teachers. Those witnesses deposed that such organizations were subversive of discipline and scholarship and made for snobbishness. With the untoward Influences abolished it is to be hoped that discipline and scholarship will improve and snobbishness subside.

Possibly such desirable results will follow. Perhaps a questionnaire addressed to the principals and teachers a year from now would show that the things hoped for had come about. But no such inquiry will be conducted. The frats and sororities are dead now, dead as the law of supply and demand, which, according to eminent The Last New Oysters to which he Is entitled. Differences In overhead expenses and in carelessness on the part of the public in the handling of bottles explain to some -extent the variation of distributing costs.

Both cources of excessive cost can be eliminated. But the main cause is excessive competition, which eems to be especially developed In St Louis, and almost duplicates the essential cost of delivery. I. W. W.

WAR-TIME CASES. From the Nation. CLASS hatred, not Justice, is served when T9 Industrial Workers of the World. Including "BUI" Haywood, go behind Federal prison bars. ome on sentences of 20 years, as a consequence of the United States Supreme Court's refusal to review their convictions.

Largely because of the lowly Industrial' and social status of most of Its members, the sincerity of their beliefs, the Isolation of their lives, and many misconceptions of their philosophy of life, the I. W. W. have been peculiarly subject to persecution by the crowd hysteria of the so-called "respectable element" In this country. The I.

W. W. convictions In U18 were under war legislation now no longer In ef feet and on evidence that their lawyers declare as illegally obtained by the Department of Justice. The Imprisonment of these men now can verve no practical end, but will embitter thousands against the Judicial system of the' country. Their case Is another argument for a pardon of all political prisoners.

Hearings are to begin soon on the building materials situation In St. Louis. Then let's have some doings. 'nigger in the wood pile" somewhere as the brilliant writer of this article is ashamed of the article or of his name, as he signs Pro-Trust. Now this writer is very strong In his phraseology on good "Red Blooded Americanism" and still acts the part of a "nigger in the wood pile" in dodging behind a signature.

The public at large taken little or no stock in letters written by persons that have not the fore said good "Red Blooded Americanism" and back bone enought to sign their names to their .1 No one has objections to the party that wrote this supposingly article to attend any medical school that he so wishes to attend or to complete as much pre medical or college courses that he may see fit. Any well thinking person is bound to admit that medicine is an Inexhaustlve subject the master of which depends on the man's ability to do un-exausivtty practise than mere theoretical education, The writer seems to lay special stress on the ability of the trust colleges and seems to doubt the ability of the other Bchools to impart knowledge. The professor in these high class schools are man that graduated from the so-called diploma mills, but It seems that as soon as a tnan becames associated with the trust colleges, he becomes automatically endowed with the divined knowledge and assumes self appointed guardianship of the public The whole question dissolves its self down to the fact that the governor in signing the medical bill did nothing more than uphold the action of the state legislature, who as representatives of the people, passed a medical bill as protection of the people as a whole. The bill In many ways does not lower the standard of the state, but does meet with the approval of a certain element of political doctors who are satisfied with nothing short of class distinction and who would like to dictate all laws pertaining to medical practice in this state. Missourians are known as a "SHOW ME TYPE" and do not need to be awakened, and when the referendum comes we will speak our minds.

What'do you SHOW ME, ex-soldier, Dr. Joseph R. SIntzel. EDITORIAL SPARKS. NO? What the world Is getting now Is peace on the time-payment plan.

Chicago News. The present will be known to the historian as the Jazz and wood alcohol era. Montgomery But we have new vegetables now. THOUGHTS OF SPRING. Horace.

Book I. Ode 4. SPRING'S western breeze dispels the winter cold. And from the docks the vessels now are drawn; The plowmen leave their fire and sheep their fold. And frost no longer glisters on the lawn.

Cytherea leads her choirs In Luna's light; With Nymphs the Graces tripping hand In hand In modest dances Join; while Vulcan bright. With flaming forge, incites his Cyclop band. With heads adorned with wreaths from myrtle wove. Or flowers fresh that fertile fields now bear. We go to worship Pan In his blest grove The sacrifice of lambs or kids to share! Tis certain Death with stalking stride will deign To knock at lowly huts or mansions grand.

That life is short and hopes, remote are vain. Except the tomb, the Shades, and Pluto's land. And, Sestius, when you've reached that destined bourne. You ne'er with dice can festal honors claim; Then, too, your son beloved by youths, you'll mourn. Young Lycldas, who'll soon the maidens' hearts Inflame! JOHN B.

QUINN. But there really won't be much doing In the way of the declaration of peace until Col. Harvey strikes London. Los Angeles Times. Short dresses are now explained.

A statistician discovers that women are growing taller. Burllns-ton Free Pess. THE AGE LIMIT FOR WORK. From the New York World. THERE is no probability that Postmaster-General Hays will get a Carnegie medal for taking the arbitrary age limit out of the retirement order for poetofflce employes.

Yet it Is quite possible that by this act he has qualified as a life-saver. Under the order as it stood, men had to retire at 65, women at 62. Among the everyday busy people of the world are men and women carrying much greater burdens of years, doing their share of the world's work as ably and eagerly as any younger workers. For many of these to let go of activity would be a step just ahead of letting go of life itself. Economle advantage always is in the retention of experience in the public service.

That there is a phase of the humane In keeping veterans at work Is a detail which often is overlooked, but which we like to think was In the mind of Mr. Hays. "Curves i.ake woman angelic," says an enthusl i.st. They aiso make angels of speeders. Baltimore fun.

The high cost of drinking is another specter that i plaguing the British; also the Americans. Seattle Post-Intelllffencer. After shoctlng at her husband three times, that Chicago woman, if emotionally inclined, would have cried, "Oh, how I miss you." Nashville Tennesseean i i Si i A New York Evening World..