Judge — January 26, 1929 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

Tink-a-Tink Ts tinkers are at the tariff again, and all the marts of trade echo the tintinnabulation. Strange how like it is to the clinking of gold ieces one against another! These Ways and Means rings rank with the best comedy before the pub- lic today. They have much the same. side-splitting oas the Marx Brothers. years ago we began to create tariff com for quote fact-finding unquote. Pn years Je the tariff flexible, authorizing the Presi dent to adjust rates after investigation by the com Six hundred applications for cl been filed since then. Eighty-three have been inves sion’s staff of two hundred persons, working sometimes as long as cighteen months on one job. Forty recommendations have been sent to the White House. The President has cted on twenty-eight of these. In_ twenty-three cases he has raised the rate. We shall not soon forget, however, that glorious day when he reduced tissi ges have tigated by the comm the rate on bob-white quail. Obviously the flexible tariff has shown very little Hexion. But, instead of secking the remedy in’ a different sort of tariff board and continuing the effort to get the tariff out of polities, we hurl it: further than ever into the morass of politics. And such poli ties!) The sub-committees holding these hearings consist solely of Republicans, ‘The ten Democrats on the committee will have not so much as a finger nail in the framing of the bill. Five thousand sched ules to be tinkered with, and not one on which any De tiny tap. And r—the noun is a synonym for rat has any wisdom worth a ently the consun tariff-payer—will not even be heard. He is in much the same case as the consumers of electric light and power who appeared at a recent New York hearing on a merger and were excluded because they were not parties in interest Ah. well, we'll have all the more time to sit back and listen to the cheery clangor of the tinkers at their devoted labors. Modern Tyranny A nite talk by Fremont Older jogs our pitiably #4 short memories with the reminder that Mooney and Billings are still din California, “History has no record of a ays Older, Associate Editor, Richard J. Walsh Dramatic Editor, George Jean Nathan “than was the conviction and imprisonment of these two men.” That is going some in a period which has so lately seen the legal murder of » and Vanzetti. ‘The cases have their points of similarity. During a preparedness parade in San Francisco in 1916 a bomb was thrown that killed ten persons. Because Tom Mooney was a labor agitator and in bad with powerful people, it was possible to frame evidence enough to convict him, and Billings along with him. It has since been amply shown that the evidence was perjured. Each man has a complete alibi. But the governing class still thinks, as Massa- chusetts squires thought, that it is a good ic punish a couple of damned radicals got the right man with the wrong evidence neat way they put it The only official who can set Mooncy and Billings free is Governor Young. And he says that he will be too busy to go into the matter before next April. Until then, at least, California must remain with Massachusetts in the category of disgraced States. That neither State seems to mind it much ma the matter even worse. Alvan T. Fuller lately re- tired from the governorship of the old Bay State full of honors and complacency. and only a hand- ful, it seems, remain to contemn him. Does Gov- ernor Young hanker for a niche alongside Fuller's? anyway A Snail Goes Free Usrortesateny the first charge ever brought in the New York tratlic court against a motorist who went too slow, had to be thrown out because the judge could find no law to cover the case. The driver was poking along, the cop told him to step on it and arrested him when he refused to go faster. He was obstructing the traffic, although in motion at a pace which proba would have heen regarded vele days. As usual. the law has not caught up with the facts. In our day of speed, the fast driver is on the ave less danger- ous than the slow one who holds the procession back, tempting those behind to pass him recklessly. gets messed up in the jams, stalls his motor at cross is incapable of pulling quickly out of a tight and is just generally dumb. We probably need to enact a new type of ordinance to rid the roads of these snails. And if we don’t, they'll all he killed off in time any wa as scorching in the ROILW, comicbooks.com