Judge — April 1936 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

| | The Coming Campaign SHI can be Chinaman, or ev ute Henry Mencken says you t Roosevelt this year with 1a Republican, Maybe wublicans who t They’ country has generally preferred dull men 1 tryit At the can be much excitement in. this hard to see how nent ~ campaign. We could get excited if we ¢ any stock in the idea of a real issue drawn between progressives and conservatives, If Al Smith should take 1 walk that would lead the conservatives out of the Democratic party, and Borah take a walk leading th of the Republican party... But it just doesn't happen that way in American The job of party leaders is never to let a clear battle be drawn, always to cloud the issues, bid for support from all factions, and stake their whole play could t progressives out polities n confusion there’s a lot of big talk about issues We're in dui stage now. Senator Dickinson has so little he “solemn refere: the very words sense of humor as We are. he says customary to hold “not our mn referendum on the fu America. We shall be called upon to decide. not between one formula of recovery and another, but the very rm of government der which our children and children’s chi wre to live.” Everybody. except ips. the Senator himself, knows ey There has never yet heen an election in America that decided anything for a longer period than four years, The 1916 election decided that we were against to war, and six months were in the war. The 1928 election de- fed that we wanted Hoover to give us two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot. Need we cite er we irther ex- amples? Far from being a solemn refer- endum. this fall's election is likely to be just another of those things. We'd be as much pl man if we could see a knock out fight over the Constitut among those who wot ern industrial civilization process that has kept us all stirred up for the past thirty years, over inc woman suffrage, prohibition and its re- does it seem very good sense Iministration has in defiance of the sa- cred document he Supreme steps in and calls a halt ho must laugh will, about the tremendous pother and expense of NRA and AAA, all gone for say nothing of the time lost when we might have been doing som thing real as historians surely date of the decisions, in case you have inst the New gold clause Ttwo for it. cases was Congress what the Constitu- tion would permit it to do. The way to deal with the Constitution 1 but has never a constitutional convent its interpretation of heen tried. prepared years in I doing a thorough job But no political par in our gen- eration at least, will have the nerve to urge so honest and so drastic a proce- ve to a campaign on Constitution, credulous folk t ze of the Supreme Court. It has even Republicans le majestic bench itself for a candidate—might for example nomi- ute Mr. Roberts, one of the middle- send him to the s to blast Roosevelt as the ene- There’s no government doubt that the “nine old men” are in bad much of the time. but the trouble is ferent ones of them are in bad with s at different times, ac- se toes the majority has itferent group last trampled up Some forty meas- ures are now before Congress designed to make the Supreme Court something less than supreme. Five to four decisions. s. But n, only are of course the bane of legislat of 121 decisions in the past ter five were five to four, and more than one hundred were unanimous. The de nagainst NRA was a clean white- wash—9 to 0 TVA was 8 wisely in the nin favor of r Krock writes York Time he deci 1 “Judges ne judges on ypeal to them > faults.” But, he adds, “Mortality laws usually take care of Supreme Court tender INO th carmesign of 1936 will not be IN a solemn referendum. It may be. Jim paign in any grounds wh h may as legal or wise, has de es. tley predicts, the dirtiest cam- story. But the dirt will be obscuring the issues. No bright and shin- ing armor, no swift clean thrust of lance, no loud clear call to victory or death, It will be a sloppy, m mbo-j bo, eeny-meeny-r You may think Ogden Mills a omic character, but you've ¢ that he dof idea wh ie called rig ent book “L. hen he mac a: “TL he: of property eralism Fights On this mighty declaration of f lieve that a wide distribution pl a dis tribution, among so large a proportion I would like to see so wi the families of the country, as to com- urity with freedom, and to fix sit ist nor Fascist, but bine s the iracter of society, maki neither Commt Proprietary.” There, fellow citizens and suckers. is a platform on which we can all unite! On that we could elect a Roosevelt or a Hoover or even an Ogden Mills. But you couldn't call it a solemn referendum. comicbooks.com