Judge — July 10, 1926 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

JUDGE Editor, Norman Anthony. ociate Editor, William Morr “Hell Bent fer Heaven” N THE Pennsylvania primaries’ scandal Gifford Pinchot has come off relatively unscathed. His expenditure of $195,000, while indecent by any reasonable standard, is so far below the disgorgements of his competitors that it seems modest and ascetic by comparison. So far as the purchase of votes is concerned he can still make a bluff at the Sir Galahad business. But if Gifford Pinchot hadn't spent a cent in’ the primary campaign, if he had stumped the State like itinerant monk begging his way, he would still be a greater menace to our institutions than Mr. Pepper or Mr. Vare or both of them, with all their hardboiled henchmen and banker bandits thrown in. For Governor Pinchot is an unscrupulous “good” man. He has no more respect for representative government or the will of the people than Chang Tso-lin or Joseph R. Grundy, albeit in conspiring to betray his State he does it not with bankers or manufacturers or saloon key pers but with the W. C. T. U. Unscrupulous bad men are usually found out and discredited before they can effect permanent damage, but unserupulous men, dis- guised by their “goodness,” are often allowed to proceed with their wrecking operations until dis able. Hell is paved with the Pinchot. is irretriev- intentions of men like Doctor! Doctor! the matter with the Sesquicentennial? It has just experienced its third official opening, or pulmotor application, and_ still the show languishes. Convention after convention has met in Philadelphia. ‘Their delegates, drawn from the four quarters of the Con- tinent, have paraded through Broad. street, listened to flamboyant flapdoodle from Mayor Kendrick, tanked up in their hotel rooms and gone home with a grouch. ‘The fair grounds, they say, are a waste of dust and unfinished con- struction, most ef the exhibits non-existent, the midway a joke, and nobody there. They blame it on Philadelphia. Is it all Philadelphia's fault? It is easy, with Phila- delphia’s reputation for hearse-like speed, to dismiss the unfinished grounds with a “What could : But so far as our imperfect memory goes there was never a world’s fair that lived up to schedule in this respec! i y, with the fragrance of the Pennsylvania prima still in the nostrils, to believe that the whole project. is graft-ridden. But great exposition that hasn't be These things won’t matter in the long run if there is a proper national zest for the show. Is there? you expe name g is Houghton, William Eagar Fisher, Phil Rosa. Dramatic Editor, George Jean Nathan, W = HAVE no desire to he dogmatic about intangibles so we shall be content to raise the question. But it will occur to you, as it has to us, that there is a thick layer of irony underlying the occasion for the fair—the 150th anni- versary of our Declaration of Independence. Not so long dgo we, as a people, would have jumped to the cele- bration of such an event with a pric and single-minded. But are aware of a certain mockery “independence,” ‘The and joy wholehearted now millions of good citizens contained in the this word, impishly cnough, is apt to provoke a mental picture of Wayne B. Wheeler haunting the Capitol committee rooms in Wash- ington or signaling from his seat in the Senate gallery to his creatures on the floor; of the palace, standing so im- pudently just across the street from the Capitol, which houses a certain Board of Public Mora what too ready word mention Prohibition and of an old lady with sharp eyes and a some- ated at her desk in the Capitol at Harrisburg writing W. C. T. U. checks to pay the salaries of State enforcement officers. And these s are prompted to ‘emperance, smile, s as an aftermath of sions these good citi “Whadya mean, independence tos Or PERHAPS we flatter them by assuming any particular interest on their part in the details of government, at least between primaries. Maybe what modifies their ardor when they think of attending the first great fair since Prohibition is a certain inconvenience and uncertainty of lubrication, As F. P. A. says, “probably more persons took long trips to Chicago (to the World's Fair there) to see the Streets of Cairo, the Dahomey Village and Old Vienna than to gaze at the exhibits in the Fisheries and the Administration Buildings.” In duces the average American male to unlimber sufficiently to visit. a World's Fair is the prospect of a holi from home and of a respite, provit ’ etl other words, what. in- ny however meager, from the But when the most important of these provincialisms and. restrictions have been written into Federal law sive journey? At home at least you Of course, all this is mere conjecture. alisms and restrictions of home. why make the expen- “know the ropes. Other World's Fairs have got off to as poor a start as this one and struck their stride as the summer waned. We shall be quite as happy to see the Sesqui pick up as the hungriest mer- chant in Philadelphia. For if Ameri national party in the old-fashione the killjoys that prey on her political vitals, it will presage a second declaration of independenc And that’s what We need now as much as Pinchot needs a keeper. Wl MW. a can stage ar » hearty way, despite comicbooks.com