Judge — April 22, 1922 — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE TORTOISE ARRIVES ENATOR WALSH of Montana is a Democrat. He is also an able lawyer. Recently he submitted to the judiciary committee of the Senate a report upon the damnable activities of Attorney-General Palmer two or three years ago, also a Democrat, in suppressing the con- stitutional rights of men to assemble and speak their minds. The report, which is written by twelve leading American lawyers, including Roscoe Pound, head of the Harvard Law School, finds that the proceedings of Palmer's department were an “unmitigated outrage”—strong but swell, elegant language, that, for one Democrat to use of another—and that they denied “the most sacred and inviolable rights” guaranteed by the Constitution; and, further, the report says that the “dictates of enlightened humanity were no less ruthlessly disregarded.” So arrives the tortoise; and so the hare goes to pot. The truth has been a long time coming. It had to go through a madhouse, defended by brute: But the truth is here, and we know now what a “deliberate usurpation of constitutional government” Attorney-General Palmer was promoting in his red raids of 1919 and ’20. If anarchy should rise in America, not Lenine or Trotsky, but Palmer would be the little fat father of revolt and rebellion. He sowed the seed of it. ART AND THE I. & R. TERRIBLE ROW has been kicked up this spring over Macmonnies’ statue, “Civic Virtue.” And artists are obviously peevish because public senti- ment has been called into court to act as jury in the case against the work of Mr. Macmonnies. Macmonnies, how- ever, should not complain. He chose his profession care- fully. It is the only profession in which a ‘man has to appeal to the initiative and referendum for his honors. The artist, whether he be a creator of things in stone or steel or tone or words or paint or bronze, has to wait with his hat in his hand, some- times for centuries, while the people are voting upon his offer- ing. No artist can escape the appeal to the public. And the bigger the row about his work, the sooner the matter is settled. If one’s own generation wran- gle and rows and bickers about a man’s work, then that much less is left for posterity to settle. And it is a rule of the business, no matter how the journeymen dislike it, that “the customer is always right”— always in the end. The lawyer, the doctor, the carpenter, the mechanic, the merchant, the broker, and their kith and kin, can do the day’s work, pocket their money and snap their fingers at the mob. But those who would deal in truth and beauty have to stand pulling humble forelocks before the people, even before pos- terity, waiting for the truth and beauty in men’s hearts to re- spond and accept their work. Popularity, vogue, puffs, claque, sometimes make the waiting pleasant. But they do not re- duce the time. “Civic Virtue” is at the moment on a monu- ment smiling at grief. And its creator may thank his stars that now. century before knowing verdict. the clamor has come It beats waiting for a the A Receiving Station. 19 A VOTIVE OFFERING TO AN AMERICAN GOD N ADVERTISING pageant is scheduled for one of our large cities this month. Advertising is the genie which is transforming America into a place of com- fort, luxury and ease for the millions. Advertising in the last twenty years has changed the economic status of at least one-fifth, and probably one-fourth, of our people; raising them from a lower to a higher standard, increasing their wants; and, by increasing their wants, increasing their ambitions, and hence their capacities and also their pur- chasing power. Advertising is the Archimedean lever that is moving the world. If the things were done in another and elder age that advertising is doing now, a whole mythology would gather about it, and we should witness the birth of a young god—powerful, restless, indomitable, and wise, dominating. He would flash in the sylvan glades of the want advertisements and disport himself in the sunny whiteness of the department store’s wide space. But, what a god he would be! How beneficent, how omniscient, how powerful! The advertising pageant they are putting on in one of our cities is the twentieth century's way of making votive offerings to its god—to the god whose very name we do not know. GOOD FOR THE FIGURE N ANOTHER year we shall be a nation of fat men; not that we are sticking away too many calories; but we are laughing too much. The other day our esteemed contemporary, the National Republican, published by the Republican National Committee down at Washington, pro- duced enough mirth to add four cubits to your Uncle Sam's stature. In a long, important-looking list of the achievements of the Republican Administration, the National Republican listed, among other things, as Number Four, this: Social- istic Tendencies Stopped. And then we have, as Number Eight, included the Farmers’ Emergency Tariff—a measure to protect one class of citizens from the international law of supply and demand; then, as Number Ten, the Highway Act, which makes the Government a road builder; as Number Eleven, the Maternity Act, which puts the Government into the business of supervising child birth; as Number Twelve, the Packers’ Regulation Act, which makes the manufacturer of food a government ward; as Number Thirteen, the Grain Gambling Restricted, an Act which prevents fools from part- ing with their money by grain gambling; and NumberFourteen, Authorized Loan to Farmers, a law which makes the Govern- ment responsible for the pros- perity of one class of producers. All of these Acts are good. They are wise and beneficent legislation. But every line of every Act just listed was vig- orously denounced as wicked and socialistic by old line Re- publicans when the Democrats were advocating these laws. Reams of good white paper were dirtied up even in this Congress by Republicans brand- ing each of these measures as the child of Bolshevism. Of all the invertebrates the poli- tician is the only one that al- ways makes men laugh. He is to the lower orders of life what the jackass is to the higher mammals. In the meantime, UncleSam laughs and grows fat. comichooks..