Week by Week
WEEK BY WEEK "D ROADSIDES fired during recent weeks at Com¦*-* munist activity in the United States culminated in a threat to break off commercial relations with Russia. Mr. Matthew Woll,...
...One must admit," we are told further, that "he was an originator who sought new poetic worlds to conquer...
...All this is not purely theoretical...
...We make no brief here for Hopkins's verse, feeling that everybody is quite free to like it or lump it as he sees fit...
...Today the urban fathers have decreed that schools and churches, like garages and stables, cannot be erected in the residential districts unless endorsed by a kind of neighborhood referendum...
...This is often due to the attitude of parents and the ignorance of children...
...1 HE July heat wave (unadvisedly reported defunct) may justly claim to have achieved notoriety...
...drinks must come out of ambassadorial purses, as ' Your heretofore, and not out of the newly Health, Your granted ambassadorial entertainment Excellency I" allowances...
...He points out that, when a machine is brought in to turn out scores of canes in less time than it took to carve this one, it is only the first, and the least, disadvantage of the situation that none of them can answer any buyer's separate need and fancy as did the home-made article...
...Not as an effective measure—we do not pretend to know what an effective measure would be...
...There remains the point that such business relationships may help to keep alive an iniquitous system...
...The necessity for removing their ignorance remains...
...Lahey presents—shows any of the signs of greatness...
...Meanwhile persons living within 200 feet of the "affected district" may protest against the plan, in which case again permission will be denied...
...In all likelihood, the fight will eventually centre round whether the Russians are "dumping" the two products of wood and manganese on the American market, thus underbidding domestic producers to the advantage of paper and steel manufacturers...
...In the case of the former there has been a healthy tendency to allow children to decide their futures for themselves...
...The bishop states that the development of two new parishes has been halted, with considerable resultant costs of time and property...
...Our sage next informs us that he cannot accept the view "that Hopkins's later work—as revealed in the examples Mr...
...and analysts who are popularizing the Chesterton's same attitude now, that, more than Cane anyone else we can think of, he is entitled to recapitulate the dissenter's creed and to restate the doubts...
...Obviously any method, devised to facilitate their understanding of the importance of their decisions and the nature of the work they propose to undertake, will benefit both them and the economic system as a whole...
...The arts of refrigeration have aided domestic safety by preserving food and exuding coolness...
...In the hands of children it will enable them to consider intelligently the important questions which a decision will entail and to prepare themselves at an early age for a chosen career...
...IvECENT inquiries have revealed the fact that a staggeringly large proportion of men and women are engaged in occupations which are uncongenial or for which their aptitudes Careers do not best suit them...
...The result, whether you call the process "a real economic law or merely the exaggeration and perversion of one," is that "sticks snap more and more rapidly, until we are likely to reach the universal destruction of walking sticks through the perfection of walkingstick machines...
...The situation is so serious that an appeal to the courts is being planned...
...This we sincerely doubt...
...Each of the four directions seemed to be tapes toward which it rushed with the exuberance of a good college track man...
...The fancy toys idly with the question of why these gentlemen were not forbidden to drink altogether...
...UNCLE SAM'S cellars in foreign parts are not to be replenished at Uncle Sam's expense...
...He doubted the gospel of efiiciency so long before the critics Mr...
...JVlR...
...park and beach facilities have afforded millions a place of refuge...
...This device would at least not be as hypocritical as the political practice of drinking wet and voting dry...
...This last tumbles to a new nadir of tepid worthlessness in a recent issue, where a notice of Mr...
...We are so much more accustomed to being comfortable than our ancestors were that the business of scorning a hundred degrees or more in the shade has become amazingly difficult...
...The Treasury Department then held up shipments of pulp wood which had already reached United States harbors, and started a heated discussion in which government officials, industrialists and civic groups have participated...
...A „ , .a • city zoning ordinance appears to have Pecksniff in i j * • S u u placed so many restrictions on church Portland property as almost to prevent there being any Catholic institutions or places of worship...
...Although the present trade balance is not huge, it shows so marked an advantage to the United States that, under existing conditions, neither industry nor the administration would welcome an embargo and the consequent Soviet retaliations on our efforts...
...The real fun begins with the purpose of the factory owner to pay for his expensive, perfected machinery by seeing to it "not only that I should buy that stick, but that I should buy another stick and yet another...
...Hopkins sought anything else but "new poetic worlds to conquer," interested as he was in the rhythms of Greek and Old English...
...Boycott is a precarious weapon which could be effective only if it were enforced by all nations against Russia...
...This he does in the New York Times Magazine, with all his old capacity for freshening a familiar topic and making it startling and entertaining...
...He is not concerned, in this writing, to deny that mass production has its blessings, nor, on the other hand, does he deal with the first and most obvious criticism of it: that a machine for doing the work of ioo men may produce temporary economic disaster by throwing ninety-nine of them out of work...
...Corn fields of the Middle-West languished as the two month's drought baked the loam to something like vitreous china...
...This confession of failure to read the poetry under discussion, apart from excerpts not designed to reveal its flavor, is the trade-mark not merely of stupidity but of sloth as well...
...Subscribers to this service will find that here is an authentic guide to all lines of endeavor, written by research authorities and leaders in their respective fields...
...We agree to a certain extent, convinced as we are that Stalin's dictatorship is the most gigantic exploitation scheme on record...
...He purposely relegates all this to attack the contradiction at the heart of a machinery civilization —to attack, that is, the principle that begins by aspiring to mechanical perfection and seems likely to end, of necessity, by putting a high premium on mechanical imperfection...
...The larger question raised by Mr...
...Chesterton as one of its "yes-men...
...And when he concludes that this verse should have "been allowed to remain in oblivion" one is inclined for a moment to share this opinion—if only for the reason that such an interment would have prevented another arrant Bottom from going on parade...
...So runs the official order, in part explicitly, in part by fair implication, and it is probably just as logical and not a bit funnier than many other commands and restrictions flowing from the fascinating anomaly of enforcement...
...As we understand the matter, half of the citizens resident in the block where it is proposed to erect an ecclesiastical structure—church or school—must sign a preliminary petition for the building...
...Despite the increasing attention paid to the selection of vocations, there is still too much dependence on chance, whim or circumstance...
...More, it works no real hardship on our representatives, who are mostly men of means, as the New York Times points out, and who are in any event indurated to using their private funds for the beverages without which it is practically impossible to entertain in most civilized countries...
...But to begin with, there is the reviewer's utter historical ignorance: "He created no vast stir in the poetic atmosphere of his times" is a statement which seems based on information, but reveals a writer wholly ignorant of the circumstances under which Hopkins's poetry was written and of his presentation to the public by Robert Bridges...
...Matthew Woll, representing the t j vi American Federation of Labor, argued Trade with , , N . ^ ., , i 5 u . (or nearly so) that the ban placed by sia the new tariff law upon goods produced by convict, forced or indentured labor must apply to the entire output of Soviet industry...
...Years ago the same metropolis was affected by a School Law which the Supreme Court finally disposed of by appealing to a "tradition of liberty" conferring upon parents the right to educate their children under religious auspices...
...WOLL'S reasoning is to the effect that commerce with Russia helps to foster a social order which not only undermines the existing rights and privileges of labor in the United States but also oppresses the Russian worker...
...It was found that personal prejudice caused some to refuse to sign the necessary petition, while more normal real estate concerns influenced others...
...BEING G. K. Chesterton, he begins with something concrete and grotesque—a cane he made for himself strong enough and long enough for his own individual purposes, with a goblin's head on the knob ugly enough for his own individual taste...
...Cases of prostration are rushed to hospitals equipped to handle such cases in number...
...That is utterly out of the question, for a variety of reasons...
...jVlASS production can never point to Mr...
...And so on to "salesmanship, which means inducing people to buy imperfect wheels as if they were perfect wheels...
...1 HAT attractive surroundings are not always companioned with human amenities is evident from recent news relative to Portland, Oregon...
...Such a method has been recently inaugurated by the Institute of Research in the Professions and Vocations, under the editorial directorship of Dr...
...This petition is then submitted to the council, which may take such action as it pleases...
...Woll will have to be sidestepped as gingerly as possible...
...Primarily it is a matter of exchanging manufactured products for Russian raw materials and money—intrinsically as legitimate as any other business transaction, and in this case so relatively advantageous to the United States that (apart from whether there ought to be a higher tariff on pulp wood and manganese) the benefit as a whole to labor here seems obvious...
...A series of comprehensive monographs describing definite professions in all their aspects, it is appropriately called Careers...
...A further step in this "demoniac logic" involves the machine that makes these machines...
...Though it did not break all records es_, tablished in the past, it tampered with empera- go manv jn suc^ a var;ety of places as tures to make it the foremost topic of the nation's conversation...
...As it is, the procedure will be simple: our ambassadors can simply keep their money in two different pockets, and be sure not to mix up their accounts...
...Everywhere city and country reported sizable death lists signed by grim heat...
...The fact is, however, that the Moscow state monopoly is doing business and that the moral right of the United States to get a part of that business depends entirely upon the nature of the transaction...
...Since this involves the whole question of referendums, the outcome will be watched with the deepest interest...
...and publicity, which means proclaiming this preposterous state of things through ten thousand trumpets of brass, as if it were an age of gold...
...and though we may have heard it often before, there is calamitous testimony all around us that we have not heard it often enough...
...In the South Atlantic states cows, finding their pastures bald and brown, gave up the job of producing milk in despair and concentrated their attention upon keeping off the flies...
...It is nevertheless true that human suffering during the trial was far less than it would have been half a century ago...
...Lahey's life of Gerard Manley Hopkins sums up more literary incompetence than one can find in the poorer college magazines...
...John A. Lapp of Marquette University...
...I HE influential character of the New York Times Book Review justifies one's concern not merely with its usually distinguished reviews of historical, biographical and similar books Tripe but also with its sometimes incredibly bad criticism of poetry...
...All this, however, has its darker side...
...This, of course, is not all there is to the matter, but it is a true bill so far as it goes...
...But the ensuing situation, with some of their excellencies publicly refusing, and others publicly pretending, to obey, with snoopers and breath-sniffers making private reports back to Washington and the rest of the world turning on us a fixed ironic grin, would have been rich in many of the results that so much enforcement activity seems designed to produce...
...This is not merely a wholly ridiculous figure of speech but a misstatement...
...If the United States attempted to enforce it single-handed, the result could only be diversion of trade now coming here to Germany and Britain...
...and mergers, which means making sure there shall be only one imperfect sort of wheel...
...Victory is as probable for one side as another...
...This, too, as it "must be sold as often as possible, must be broken as often as possible...
Vol. 12 • August 1930 • No. 15
