Life — November 10, 1927 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

NOVEMBER 10, 19: “While there is Life there’s: Hope" VOL, 90, 2349 Published 1 LIFR PUBLISHING COMPANY 393 Madison Cusnirs Dasa Ginsow, Pr Cum Maxwer Lasxcuonse G R. E. 3. Surawoov, Editor F. D, Casey, Art Editor ” ther being a 9, little cold now RWiror lady swimmers, and seas unfavorable to dames who to fly across the Atlantic, the most interesting figure in’ the for the moment is Mayor ‘Thompson of Chi The electorate of Chi- cago is reported to £50,000 Germans, 400,000 1 300,000 Jews, 300,000) Trish, Ital- ians, 200,000 Bohemians and Czecho Slovaks, 125,000) Swedes, 50,000 Norwegians and 50,000 Greeks. Add asp news yntain les, 200,000 to these a very large number of Negroes and an appreciable repre sentation of the older Aw un stocks from New England and. the South, and you have, politically aking, a remarkable conglom- William Hale Ider American stock f and the son of a mil- lionaire, he is Mayor of Chicago for the immediate that Ma Dever was overzealous in his effec to enforce the Dry laws isa Wet. Plainly enough he has the kind of political ability that with the electorate that made Mayor last spring by 83,000 jority. All King George is a j has prospered well. hompson de rives from th millionaire reason ts ‘Thompson goes him ma- his campaign against » but one that In the matter of taking pro- English histories out of the Public Library of Chicago and burning them on the lake front, it is possible that he en just a grain too picturesque. The idea of raiding libraries and burning books seems actually to have inspired n degree) of torror that Thompson's other has public Avenue, New York ident Vice-President Secretary and Treasurer SON eccentricities have not lately stirred up. A good many books about the fathers of the Republic that e been put out of late have dwelt more on their failings than their virtues. me of them can be spared but most of them in time will die a natural death and do not need burning. In the school-book histories there is a ment but that consid- not come to the fore McAndrew, large money eration has Thompson is against the Superintendent of Schools who York, and has been ssful with his voters in pic- him as King George's stool It is rather awful that the came from New very suce of a city as important as ject to Thomp- son’s kind of polities; nevertheless tl re likely to survive the Mayor. Elner Davis, who wrote ‘Thomp- son up in’ the July number of Harper's Magazine, insists that he ind that his winning the Chicago should be sul is clever, last election was partly due to that fact and partly to the political stupidities of what Davis calls Seri- Chicag. i to be ous Persons in Persons are liable not ¢ wise about the polities of gre It takes men of real talent to man- age these great cong ations o population. ‘The Chicago elec to- rate is just an instrument to be played upon and for the purpose of playing on that instrument Mayor Thompson is by no means a bad musician, nonsense does not go on forever beating sense Any great city is a strange animal that calls for curious trainers, but Chicago has a claim to be the most curious urban animal in the world and certainly its present trainer is a very, very curious figure. vertheless, Books are having rather a hard time with censors and objectors. Boston has an index due, it may be, to Catholic influence. tradition of the sacred printed The character o volumes has come down from the time when books were scarce and dear. That tradition has pretty well Books nowadays are Alfred never gone to grass. about as sacred as soap. Smith that he read a book to pass the time and in- deed that he never read books much anyhow. He is not the worse thought of for that admission, Best sellers are commonly candy for the mind; form of indulgence not especially wisdom or even to has confessed conducive to knowledge. R. McADOO of the Democratic party is a belligerent Dry. So is Mr. Borah of the Borah party. Whereas Dr. Murray Butler of the Republican party may be described is a belligerent Wet, tho who wants back what was before the Amendment. Mr. MeAdoo_ insists that the Democratic party shall de- clare for the Drys. Mr. Borah makes the same demand on the Republican party, but Dr. Butler is opposed to ill Dry parties whatever. It makes rather a difficult mix-up There ought to b Dry party for zh not one Mr. McAdoo and a Wet party for Dr. Butler. As for Mr. Borah, he is a liability in any party that he affiliates with, so there is no use to take thought about him, but he is right in insisting that Prohibition is the issue, though more Wets want to modify it than to beat it. Since the politicians are all so ifraid of Prohibition and insist that it is fatal for any party to come out for the Wets and are met by the as- surance that it is equally fatal to line up with the Drys, why don’t they try to medicate this issue in the coming session of Congress? Of course it would be hard work but they must have thought of it. It seems likely that the majority of the vote neither Wet nor Dry, that they return to the pr wish to ment status and that they are not satisfied with present conditions un der the Volstead Act. E. S. Martin.