Week by Week
WEEK BY WEEK THE details of M. Briand's plan for a United States of Europe have at last been made public. They remind one very much of our own federal organization, as it was conceived by...
...Whenever that occurs—particularly whenever religious or social differences are injected into the discussion— the consequences are injurious to community good-will and to scholastic peace...
...This support was so encouraging, that the Society for the Repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment is considering running wet candidates on an independent ticket next fall...
...We can all sympathize with the righteous indignation so well described by Senator Ashurst: "The Congressional Record would not be mailable if it contained in print what Senators think of the dial telephone system...
...understanding of the first must depend upon revising our ideas of farm holdings...
...Novel readers, especially detective-novel readers, are delighted...
...Whatever put it in train, it was a clear and complete triumph of the ideal over the natural, and as such will lead a variety of people to say, according to their different tastes, that O. Henry—or Oscar Wilde, or Plato, or Professor Babbitt—was right...
...apparently the cohesion of the superstate must depend on the strength of the member states' desires to prosper economically and morally through cooperation...
...But when these deducHibernia Crescens 120 THE COMMONWEAL June 4, 1930 tions are made, he insists, the march toward prosperity must be admitted to be extraordinary...
...To leave in the dark a situation of the kind created by the ban placed upon the Hayes-Moon book is to leave unexplained an event which many people have accepted as evidence of prejudice and educational short-sightedness...
...To understand the matter fully, one must bear in mind that an individual textbook seldom seems of great importance to a school executive...
...At any rate no public review of a book by a jury of historians was permitted, nor were the authors consoled with anything beyond a vague admonition to do better in the future...
...And this is a pity, because there is no lessening in our need to learn what they can teach us...
...But it is very doubtful whether such sensational price-cutting is wise...
...This method of procedure could not easily be abused by publishers and would obviously be more nearly in accord with American traditions than the method now in vogue...
...The Vatican, as might have been expected, has expressed its approval of the whole business in no uncertain terms...
...Davis and Pinchot have won the Republican nominations for senator and governor in Pennsylvania...
...Primaries Mr...
...Cosgrave not only convinces the admiring outsider of the soundness of his policies, but stands in a fair way to sell those policies entire to the Irish Unionists themselves...
...We plead for a moratorium of a few months, to restore them to par...
...For these reasons The Commonweal, which may fairly claim to have worked on many occasions for better understanding between the groups which constitute America, strongly urges the New York City Board of Eudcation to consider favorably the amendment above proposed...
...The summary and crown of all this vigorous economic growth is the decline of taxes...
...is there any reason to suppose that one can treble the sale of any book in America merely by lowering its price...
...Such a plan has many virtues...
...The matter is particularly significant because the metropolis is, in so many ways, accepted by the nation at large as a source of community experiment and example...
...The horrors of a war between such units were barely foreshadowed in 1914-18...
...These ever more numerous sallies of our social critics into the old world, these punctual committings to print of all the painful things they learn there about the American tourist, have a steadily lessening effect...
...They had wearily been discussing Dollar a^ ^e dark problems of a sick industry, ¦^t 1 when suddenly four publishers, three fairly new and one older firm, announced independently that they intended to reduce the price of novels from $2.50 to $1.00...
...Within a day or so the other houses held conferences, their managers issued statements, and the American bookbuying public was faced with two hostile parties in the business—the $2.50 publishers and the $1.00 publishers...
...EjITHER the campaign to restore Chicago's moral credit is producing positive results, or the absence of Mr...
...If this should happen, the Pennsylvania election will be much more worth watching than usual...
...During President Cosgrave's visit to this country, The Commonweal published an interview with him of which the optimistic tone aroused a good deal of comment...
...It is already working at half power...
...Gerould is probably right in calling Americans (as she does in the current Harper's) more sentimental than Europeans, less patient, less seasoned mentally and only in a material sense kinder...
...The extraordinary element in these primaries, however, was the large support given the wet candidates, who had no political organization behind them and who were neither of them politicians...
...Davis's majority over his two opponents, for there was also a wet candidate, shows at least a strong feeling in a manufacturing state against the present tariff...
...A Truce to Criticism latest compatriot to lecture us on our deficiencies is Mrs...
...In all probability Mr...
...No one, indeed, could seriously question it by this time...
...Is America or England or Germany making the inevitable blood-money ? Even if international war is done away with, it looks as though the munitions makers could always count on an active Chinese market...
...The whole gesture will test further the application of mass production to an industry to which it has never proved fitted, except for standard reference and religious books...
...One has only to pass a resolution directing the sergeant-at-arms to remove the dratted things, and the telephone company is forced to swallow its pride in humble acceptance of the edict...
...So many volumes, on all subjects, are now written and issued that it is even to the advantage of educational authorities to curtail their lists...
...It is to be hoped that generous donors in sufficient number can be found...
...We therefore suggest that Section 10 be amended by the addition of a subsequent clause providing that before any textbook, chart or map may be stricken from the list, thirty days' notice must be given to the publishers involved...
...It would appear from the observations of the Herald Tribune's investigator, Mr...
...The outcome has been a disposition on the part of public opinion to see in this controversy a test case bearing upon the legislation now in force...
...Each ¦n T- component state remains sovereign and Pan-Europe • j j u i ¦ i independent, but elects to the central government representatives who shall deliberate on such matters as tariffs, communications, labor problems, hygiene and assistance to backward peoples...
...This is the ineluctable fact with which Mr...
...The factories, too, are flourishing...
...It would, we think, prevent the recurrence of such acrimonious disturbances as the one here commented upon...
...James J. Davis did not represent city machine politics to quite such an extent...
...but piled on in the way that has latterly become popular, it is ineffective as well...
...it may likewise show a desire to endorse the administration, of which Mr...
...1 HE booksellers of America have just completed one of the most eventful meetings in recent publishing history...
...OCCASIONALLY poor Mr...
...Campbell himself now fully appreciates the risk involved...
...But speaking as confirmed readers of periodical literature, we timidly express the wish that a week might occasionally pass without our being told so...
...It has two causes: the agricultural revival, and the government's promotion of new industries...
...Katherine Fullerton Gerould...
...Hankow, at last reports, was under martial law...
...When completed, it is expected to assimilate the various private power companies now operating in Ireland, and to modernize the remotest districts with electric light...
...Capone has disintegrated the gunmen...
...There is many an American citizen who would give a great deal to have the use, even for five minutes, of a good, husky sergeant-at-arms...
...It seems exceedingly doubtful...
...Governor Pinchot's integrity, his prohibition support in the rural districts, and rural hatred of the Vare machine had probably a great deal to do with this...
...But practical expediency must never be accepted as a substitute for public policy...
...One feels sure that Mr...
...1 HE upshot of the battle over Modern History, the exiled Hayes-Moon text, has been the persistent question: what can be done to prevent recurrences of this regrettable performance...
...Soviet Russia shows no signs of favoring M. Briand...
...All the others who have preceded her in this field are probably right too: Europeans beyond doubt do find large numbers of us naive and blatant and illmannered...
...A HEARTENING interlude in the story, common on both sides of the Atlantic, of industrial curtailment and economic depression, is found in the Herald Tribune's studies of the Irish Free State...
...Strangely June 4, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 119 Merely a Schoolbook enough, Senator Grundy's ally, Gifford Pinchot, defeated the Vare candidate for the gubernatorial nomination, F. S. Brown, of Philadelphia...
...This section reads: "The Board of Education reserves the right during the period for which this contract is made to strike from the list of textbooks, charts, maps, etc., herein contained or hereto attached, such books, charts, maps or other supplies as may be deemed for the best interest of the city so to do, and no claim or damage will be allowed because of the striking of such textbooks or other supplies from said list...
...nOW many people were killed last week in China is a question no one can answer—one hears of fifteen thousand here, of twenty thousand ^j1jna there, of thirty thousand somewhere else...
...Considerable money is needed if Saint Bonaventure's is to resemble, in any notable manner, the familiar phoenix...
...But one is astounded to find that such a protest apparently must be accepted at its face value by the authorities in charge...
...Is it wise to divide the civilized world into even larger potentially hostile units...
...Meanwhile Saint Bonaventure's College, possibly the best-known Franciscan college in the United States, is seeking to recover from the effects of a disastrous fire which virtually destroyed its plant...
...and he notes, too, the slackness in the linen and ship-building industries of the six counties of the north...
...One shares the earnestness of the educational builders and trusts that they will triumph, magna cum laude, over the well-known difficulties involved...
...But there will probably be general agreement that no outlander can ever hope to understand Chicago...
...JjUT the query remains: who shall deem it "for the best interest of the city" to drop a book from the approved list...
...It should be observed that nobody denies the right of an individual to protest, as did Dr...
...jj These figures are of course exaggerated, " but there has been terrible slaughter...
...Is Chicago Changing...
...The interesting question is who supplies the munitions for all this killing...
...Campbell's action was based on Section 10 of the general contract in force between the New York City Board of Education and textbook publishers...
...Perhaps it will be America's achievement to have shown by example the first practical way to a united Europe...
...The northern generals are in retreat, although the Communists and bandits have the field to themselves in southern territory, because of the absence of Chiang Kai-shek's army at present concentrating its attention on Peking...
...Never have they been offered such a bargain...
...The industrial expansion centers mainly in the long-debated electrification of the Shannon river...
...It is no valid objection that all this truth-telling is wearying—though it is wearying...
...Just like Senator Glass, each of us has objected "to being transformed into one of the employees of the telephone company without compensation...
...There are, besides the tremendous sugar-beet plant at Carlow, more than a hundred small new factories, backed by a trades' loan guarantee, and fostered by a tariff that even our protective experts would regard with respect...
...Substantially all it does is to treble the marginal sale necessary for profitable publishing...
...No mention of military organization is included in the plan...
...He is careful to qualify his statement...
...Roberts has spent the last year abroad, and the last quarter of it in Ireland, and it is his conclusion that Ireland is at present the most hopeful spot in Europe...
...If the arbiter is one man, there is danger lest his judgment be so biased, timorous or restricted that honest scholarship and the aims of popular education may both suffer...
...Campbell first looked at the incident as a mere matter of routine, and then found himself in a blind alley without exits...
...breeding laws have replaced the live stock at the top of the British cattle market...
...But they do now own their average of thirty acres or thereabouts, and are being taught by the Dublin faculty of agricultural science and the Cork and Galway faculties of dairy science to make them pay...
...But it pays to be a statesman...
...Even when they paid only $1.00 for thrillers, before the war, they paid two to three times as much in value as they will have to pay now...
...Two armed men stopped a wealthy and well-known gentleman and the lady whom he was escorting home from the theatre, and began by demanding the lady's money and jewels...
...Haughwout, against a book he considers hostile to his point of view...
...All of this affects definitely only a fraction of published books, textbooks, technical works and general non-fiction not being included in the change...
...Such a ruling permits the discard at any time of works adjudged to have become obsolete, or to have been proved either incorrect or pedagogically unserviceable...
...This is the one alarming aspect of the plan...
...Meanwhile Great Britain, because of the dominions, has let it be understood that she can only take the part of a friendly observer in any United States of Europe...
...Loans will be granted these with the understanding that repayment is to be made on the instalment plan after graduation...
...and that, if requested, a hearing shall be given within the period specified by a committee appointed by the Board...
...Average Citizen has real cause for envying his political masters...
...Certainly the latest holdup story, vouched for by the New York Times, has more points in common with the old fireside favorite, Editha's Burglar, than with the recent machine-gun school of fact and fiction...
...They closed with the offer, and though one of them was weak enough afterward to snatch the lady's purse, he shamefacedly restored it upon the gentleman's reproaching him with breaking his agreement...
...Educational requirements have increased so greatly that the old system of working one's way through school is no longer feasible for many...
...JVlESSRS...
...Rigorous legislation has restored the quality of Irish dairy and meat products to its former famous standard—a fact recorded in the large immediate increase in exports...
...It looks like another attempt to play what one New York publisher calls "the old Hindu game—you sell all your units at a loss, but you sell so many units that you make a profit...
...He notes the continuing economic problem on the west coast, where the limitation of the resources to fishing, and the lack of transportation for that, have created an age-long poverty with which the present has not yet learned to deal...
...The public in general has tamely submitted to the O! To Be a maddening dial telephones...
...Any pedagogue knows that a criticism too often repeated destroys its own purpose...
...As soon as the plan was made public, the French government assured the State Department that M. Briand's European federation was not aimed against us—an assurance which has obviously only a diplomatic meaning, for if our interests as a nation should ever conflict with those of Europe, as a nation, it would be folly to suppose that any European union would not direct its energies against us...
...They remind one very much of our own federal organization, as it was conceived by many Mr Briand's Americans before the Civil War...
...The gentleman gallantly protested, and suggested that they take instead "his diamond ring worth $2,400, a costly wrist watch, a jade pin and $100 in bills...
...The former represents the VareThe Philadelphia organization, which thus Pennsylvania defeated Senator Grundy of tariff fame...
...And if the present sale of popular fiction cannot be trebled, everyone will be worse off than ever—authors getting less royalties, publishers nearer bankruptcy, booksellers definitely obliged to become grocers or night-lunch proprietors...
...Davis has hitherto been a member...
...The net result is that Nanking seems a little better off than it was a few weeks ago...
...The 100,000 tenants who have become proprietors since 1923 do not own hundreds of acres apiece...
...It has very little wet or dry significance...
...he had the support of the White House and national republicanism...
...what else 0 . could it do...
...Villanova College, long known for its Augustinian tradiat f tions, is seeking an endowment, part of . which is to be set aside for a somewhat Education novd purpose> The Franklin Fund, as this portion is to be named, will be used to aid needy students...
...Edward F. Roberts, that the confidence of the President was not merely professional, but amply and scientifically founded...
...1 WO Catholic educational institutions are making strong pleas for contributions...
Vol. 12 • June 1930 • No. 5
