object was to curb predatory business. It did curb business, predatory and otherwise, powerfully. It accomplished a lot of good. But, after the habit of revolutions, it went too far. It has accomplished a lot of harm.

This counter-revolution is probably not different from other revolutions. It may, and very likely will, accomplish a great deal of good. There is bureaucracy in Washington, and anything that can deal it an effective blow will render a service to the country. Governmental

regulation of business has become galling in spots, and anything that can loosen the thongs where they bind will confer a public benefit.

But I have no doubt that these revolutionists, after the manner of revolutionists, magnify the evils against which they war. They will go too far if they can; not that they mean to now, but that they will become intoxicated with success-what successful revolutionist does not?-and go to lengths that they never originally dreamed of.

This revolution is waxing. The high tide of its frenzy is for the future. Let us hope that the fuel for its engine is ample. But let us hope also that its brakes are working properly. The danger will be when the legislative stage comes. Your Congressman is the wildest of all revolutionists when he knows that he is revolving with the populace. We may be in for an orgy of repeal within the next few years that will equal, if it does not surpass, the orgy of enactment of the past decade or two.

By DAVID P. REED

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AR on collegiate football, first declared by Harvard, and now taken up by most of the leading colleges of the East, including Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, and Brown, bids fair to abolish the crowded stadiums that are now the scene of many a brilliant battle for victory.

The beginning of the proposed reform by undergraduates in one of the so-called "Big Three" universities, the oldest rivals in the history of football, is not only of interest, but is in itself significant.

The suggested rules were a veritable whirlwind in their stimulus of National interest, and six days after the submission of the plan to the undergraduate body of Harvard a resolution more drastic in its demands than the one submitted by Harvard was signed by a committee of undergraduates from Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, Williams, Wesleyan, and Bowdoin a committee appointed by the twenty-seven representatives of an intercollegiate parley at Wesleyan. Understanding of the student movement against the over-emphasis of college football may best be gained by glancing at its birth at Harvard and its rapid progress over the United States.

Before the close of the football season a prominent athlete whose name is writtén high up in the records of Harvard's greatest athletes and football warriors declared that football is not enjoyed by

With this as a gentle warning of the bomb which was coming, the "Crimson" on December 1 launched its real war with an editorial advocating, among other drastic reforms, abolition of half the schedule, none but undergraduates and alumni allowed as spectators, and the abolition of all spring and pre-season practices. Hardly had the printer's ink dried before the Yale student body as mirrored in the "Yale News" surprised the world with a declaration that "the 'Yale News' is in complete sympathy with the 'Crimson' idea, although unprepared to accept the program in all its details." The following day Princeton highly praised the attitude taken by Harvard and commented: "Undoubtedly our contemporary has fairly stated the case against football-the side-show is seriously threatening to swallow the big show."

ISCUSSION has mainly centered about the Harvard resolutions, which are a good indication in a general way of what the undergraduates of America have in mind as the ultimate goal:

The "Crimson" looks forward to the time when the Harvard football season will be conducted somewhat as follows:

1. The season will begin when college opens in the fall, and end as it

does at present. There will be no spring practice, and no practice in September before college opens.

2. All students who want to play football will be assigned to class teams and receive the best coaching available.

3. For the first month of college interclass games will constitute the schedule.

4. At the end of that period a varsity squad will be formed from the players who have shown the greatest ability in the interclass contests.

5. The varsity squad will then play a series of not more than three intercollegiate games, say with Yale and two other universities, provided these universities will agree to adopt a similar plan. To avoid unfairness in such games, it will of course be necessary for the other institutions to accept the same plan of preparation as Harvard.

6. Meanwhile, the class teams will have been reorganized, and will continue their games until the close of the Class-team players will still have the opportunity of promotion to the varsity squad if they demonstrate sufficient merit.

season.

7. The winning class team will play a final game with Yale's winning class

team.

8. It goes without saying that football conducted in this manner will not carry the financial burden of athletics as it now does. This last point is vital and inevitable if football is to escape from the evils of over-emphasis which now are manifest. So long as colleges depend upon gate receipts from football games to support their entire athletic programs, this fact alone will remain a sufficient excuse for continuing the present unsatisfactory system.

The three oldest traditional rivals found immediate support in a number of the Eastern institutions of learning. Dartmouth, conceded the championship

of the East in football this season, is not satisfied to bask in the glory of a wonderful team. "The 'Dartmouth' believes that intercollegiate football means more to the present undergraduate generation than any other single influence of the college, including intellectual training. For this reason it is a menace in its present form, and steps should be taken to restore it to its properly subordinate position." The "Brown Daily Herald" first took up the fight in defense of the game, but declares that "football, aside from the game itself, has many evil connections and consequences."

The "Yale News" hit at the heart of the reaction in its editorial column: "We have no longer a college game; we have a seasonal occupation of professional coaches and sport writers, designed by them in detail, and incidentally involving the intensive services of certain youths in search of an education."

than four games, but Princeton fears that such action of shutting out all other institutions would tend to have a distinctly deleterious effect on both the members of the group and upon the understanding and harmony of intercollegiate relations throughout the country. "Every football game is a link in the chain of friendship welded between the two competing institutions," states the "Princetonian." "It is one more contact, one more thing in common, and rightly so, for it is based upon an affair of almost universal common appeal. То ignore this fact is fatal."

The "Yale News," on the other hand, believes that the mechanical restrictions suggested by Harvard would succeed in eliminating over-emphasis resulting from graduate interest. "There is every reason to believe that what was left would be comparable to the present status of crew, which represents good training and in general a correct balance of importance and pleasure."

The "Dartmouth" sums up its opinion in the statement: "We would rather see the college play only the three or four evenly matched games of the year than to oppose such teams as have been brought to Hanover for early season games in the past.”

hysterical, and more normal method." B

The "Daily Illini" of Illinois University and the Alma Mater of the famous "Red" Grange, heartily agrees that football has too prominent a place, but is at a loss as to the best remedy. The student publications of the University of Chicago, Syracuse, Cornell, and many others ask their readers for a serious discussion on the matter without as yet committing themselves as to the wisest policy.

But the "Crimson" does not advocate such a drastic change at one fell swoop as it hopes will be the final outcome. Rather, it suggests for the present that scouting be abandoned; spring and preseason practices be abolished; daily practices be limited to three hours; the head coach be chosen from Harvard alumni; no public sale of tickets to any Harvard football game; and for the present no change in the Harvard schedule. In commenting on the proposed big Eastern football league, the "Crimson" declares that with its big conference games each week it would bring to final completion those evils against which the "Crimson" directs these proposals.

Examination of the Harvard plan brings forward two main problemsover-emphasis and the financing of other college sports by some other means. Dartmouth and Yale agree in advocating a restricted schedule of not more

UT now the ideals of the college undergraduate meet a formidable snag. Money, the average undergraduate discovers, is unfortunately a requisite for a good many of the enjoyable things in the world, and sports are no exception. Yale reports that the gross total of receipts for sports of the 1924-5 season is $801,258, of which football realized nearly $700,000 with a net profit of over $320,000. Nearly all of this income was spent in the support of the other major and minor sports, none of which were able to break even. Harvard receipts are not as high, but the proportion is nearly the same, while statistics from Princeton, when published, will probably indicate the same situation as they have had in past years.

To the idealist who shouts for the noncommercialization of football the practicalist asks for a solution to the financial problem. The "Yale News" looks, as do most university financial projects, to the alumni, but suggests the raising of prices, with the added advantage of a more desirable crowd at their contests. The "Daily Princetonian," fully aware of the numerous demands made upon the generous alumni, is more skeptical. "We cannot forget that class football teams as well as a number of non-self-supporting sports, such as crew and tennis, are dependent upon the gate receipts of football for their presence in the athletic

program. The suggestion of the 'Crimson' that athletic endowments be provided for this purpose seems too visionary and impracticable to ever be realized." The "Princetonian" suggests a compromise plan, however, which would eliminate the first game of the season, and with it the early practices.

The resolutions adopted by the committee at Wesleyan, which was mentioned before, goes still further in urging that the coach be not allowed to sit on the players' bench during the game, so that the contest will actually be played and directed by undergraduates instead of paid coaches.

In this day and age of professional football players such as "Red" Grange it would be considered a distinct faux pas not, at least, to refer to professional football. To our surprise, professional football, instead of being decried as a further evil, is welcomed with open arms by the "Harvard Crimson" as a means for lessening the intensity of collegiate football. If the sport writers can be persuaded to fill their columns about professionals, so much the better for the college athlete.

W

HAT will be the outcome of all of this agitation?

The plans suggested and the comments made have largely been taken from the publications of Dartmouth, considered champion of the East, Princeton, champion of the "Big Three," Yale, Harvard, and Brown, for in these institutions the sentiment crystallized more quickly. But the editorial and news columns of other college papers are beginning to be filled with cries for reform.

With the awakening of student opinion comes the announcement of an expected meeting of officials of Yale, Harvard, and Princeton to discuss, among other things, the over-emphasis of football and the provisions with regard to entrance into commercial football shortly after the closing of the regular season. Again, the question of over-emphasis is to be the subject of debate between the members of the Eastern Collegiate Debate League, which includes Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Williams, Dartmouth, Amherst, and Pennsylvania.

The undergraduates who started the game of football, the undergraduates who play the game, and the undergraduates who most strongly support the game have taken up arms against football. What will happen no one can say. But the youth of America, who made football, may yet be the saviors of the game, and football may soon take its rightful place in the arena of intercollegiate sports.

A

FTER deliberating for more than forty-six hours upon the guilt or innocence of Dr. Ossian Sweet and ten other Negroes of the charge of murder, a Detroit jury on November 27 reported its inability to reach a verdict, and was discharged. It seems appropriate that this trial-in many ways one of the most remarkable in all our annals --should end thus indecisively; there is as little agreement in the country at large upon the real problem involved as there was agreement among the jurors. For State of Michigan versus Sweet et al. was more than a murder trial, although ostensibly the issue was whether the defendants were criminally liable for the killing of a white man. Two races were on trial; two races forced by fate to live together, but making a sorry, disorderly, and often bloody mess of it all. The court-room became a forum for the dis

groes were forced to return to their former homes. In one or two instances the Negroes, frightened by the crowds, used firearms, but no one was ever seriously injured. In the latter part of June of this year a certain Dr. Turner, a Negro physician, bought a home in a white neighborhood, and with his family moved into it. A great crowd assembled and, unmolested by the police sent to guard against violence, jeered and yelled, and then stoned the house and demolished the doctor's car. By a ruse the doctor was induced to open the door, and the mob surged into the house, tore out the furnishings, and in the presence of policemen forced the doctor to sign a conveyance of his property. No one was ever prosecuted for the riot.

Only a few days before this incident another Negro doctor, Ossian Sweet, lately returned from special study

our social problems in its most acute form the whole difficult business of relations between the dominant white and the developing black people.

To say that on the evening of September 9 Leon Breiner, a white man, was killed by a bullet fired from the house in which Dr. Sweet, a Negro, lived and in which the eleven defendants had gathered tells little. To understand why these Negroes were barricaded in their house in a white neighborhood, and why the shot that killed Breiner was fired, one must have before him the whole picture of race relations in Detroit—a picture now entirely typical of a score of other Northern cities affected by the recent Negro migration.

F

IFTEEN years ago there were only about five thousand Negroes in Detroit out of a total population of a half million. They lived in three wards in one section of the city. In the next ten years their numbers multiplied eight times, and to-day it has been estimated that there are nearly 80,000 Negroes in the Motor City. These thousands are crammed, for the most part, into the same territory in which a scant onesixteenth of their number lived in 1910.

From time to time in recent months Ne

groes of some means have made efforts to escape these crowded conditions and have purchased homes outside the "segregated" district. In almost every case mob violence resulted and the Ne

est white neighborhood. The residents of the neighborhood, upon hearing of the purchase, held a mass-meeting attended by about seven hundred men and women. An association was formed with the frank purpose of preventing, by one means or another, an influx of Negroes into the district. Having been promised police protection, Dr. Sweet moved into his home on September 8. That a hostile crowd gathered in the vicinity is certain, but how large is not clear, estimates of eye-witnesses ranging from 50 to 1,500. For two days and a night the house and its occupants were under this constant surveillance, so that no one within dared relax vigilance even for sleep. Although a squad of sixteen police, in charge of a deputy superintendent, was on duty, about dusk of the second day the crowd began stoning the house. The Negroes within armed themselves. The barrage of stones had continued for about an hour when a volley of shots was fired from the house, and Leon Breiner, standing on the steps of a near-by house, fell dead. The occupants of the house, including Dr. Sweet's wife, were arrested and charged with murder in the first degree.

defense and home defense, possessed by. every white man, would be denied the Negro, who needed it most; that the Negro and his wife and children would be left to the mercy of the mob and unfriendly police, not only in Detroit, but in Chicago, Indianapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Omaha, and in all those Northern centers where migration has made this old yet new race problem acute. In Chicago, for example, in the Negro churches a special collection for the Sweet Defense Fund was taken and all Negro publications contained extended discussion of the case. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People engaged the most distinguished trial lawyer of our time, Mr. Clarence Darrow, as well as his Scopes case associate, Mr. Arthur Garfield Hayes.

THE trial began before Judge Frank

Murphy on October 30. The State's case proceeded upon the theory that the gathering of these eleven Negroes in the Sweet house with rifles and revolvers was pursuant to an agreement among them to shoot to kill in case any one on the outside should make even the slightest trespass upon the house, and regardless of the necessity of defense. Many witnesses, most of them residents of the neighborhood, testified that the crowd was not extremely large, and that there were never any acts justifying the defendants' fear of their lives. No effort was made to prove just who fired the fatal shot.

Counsel for the defendants' theory was that the shots were fired in defense of the lives of the inmates of the house, who were put in such fear of violence at the hands of the crowd that they felt their safety depended upon a resort to arms. Their evidence showed that numerous stones had been thrown, that many threats had been made, and that the defendants had every reason to believe that they were about to be driven out of their home, as many others had been before; it showed further that the shots were fired over the heads of the crowd, and that Breiner may have been killed by a stray bullet from the gun of a Southern policeman who fired at the house. In order to show that these Negroes felt there was need to shoot in self-defense Dr. Sweet was put on the stand, and the Court permitted defense counsel to lay

the whole background of his mental life before the jury. His testimony is a remarkable record of race psychology and human emotions, the only instance of its kind in a court of law. Dr. Sweet told of the stories of lynchings and of burnings which he had heard or read; of the Washington riots (which he actually saw), of those at Chicago and a dozen other cities. All these, the defense urged, affected Dr. Sweet's mind, and created a race fear in him, an explanation of his emotional condition the night of the rioting, justifying his conduct and that of his companions. This remarkable testimony is well summarized by the followlowing excerpt from the Doctor's examination under the skillful guidance of Mr. Hayes:

Q. Doctor, will you, as far as you can, state your state of mind at the time of this shooting?

A. When I opened the door, I saw the mob and realized in a way that I was facing that same mob that has hounded my people throughout its entire history. . . . I realized my back was up against the wall. I was

L

filled with that peculiar type of fear, a fear that only one could experience who knows the history and the sufferings and all the other things which go to make up the history of my race. That is just the way I felt.

PROY

ROBABLY nothing more remarkable than the five-hour closing address of Clarence Darrow has ever been heard in an American court-room. Veteran of a hundred legal battles in which high feeling has prevented dispassionate judgment, he showed the jury, sadly and without condemnation, how deep, how subtle, how difficult to overcome, is the white man's prejudice against the Negro, and yet how necessary for the sake of fair play that they seek to cast it out, for the course of the trial at least. The son of abolitionist parents, and all his life a champion of the blacks, he stood for hours before the twelve men, more the old philosopher and patriarch than the advocate, pleading with them to put themselves in the place of the black defendants, trying to arouse in them a fellow-feeling for the accused.

No matter what may be the result of a retrial, the problem of this case will remain unsolved and rise to trouble us time and again. White feeling against black neighbors will still turn kindly workaday Christian people into mobs of ruthless fiends, and Negroes will continue to move out of congested districts and to arm themselves, well knowing that a tragedy may be precipitated. An interracial commission of high-grade men was appointed by the Mayor after this tragedy, but it is unlikely that it will be more successful in solving the problem for Detroit than the Chicago commission has been for Chicago, where racial violence continues to be a common occur

rence.

The Sweet case is simply another illustration of the difficult race problem which, almost overnight, the North has had thrust upon it.

So long as the problem is ignored, or its solution left to mobs and firearms, there is little reason. to believe that such tragedies will not disgrace us again and again.

AST week we printed extracts and comments from a few of many letters received in reply to or approval of Don Seitz's notable article "Jews, Catholics, and Protestants," in The Outlook of November 25. The following letter from a Jew, whose name we are not at liberty to give, is decidedly the best single reply so far received from a Jewish reader.-THE EDITORS.

A

T the age of six months I was brought from Hungary to the East Side of New York by my Jewish mother. Passing through the usual vicissitudes, I managed to secure an education at a leading university. My youth was passed among Gentile surroundings, and I planned to continue to do so and follow a calling which few of my own people had until then followed. Having obtained more than average success by pursuing this ambition, it may be of interest to know what my reactions have been.

I should state that, while I have not seen the inside of a synagogue for perhaps ten years, I have visited many churches. Nor have I contributed to any Jewish or other sectarian movements, but have supported all patriotic and local welfare movements within my means. I was at Plattsburg in 1916, volunteered for the war at the outset, and went to France as a captain in command of troops.

I have lived in five small towns in different parts of the country, but always among Gentile neighbors. In each instance I went out of my way to do the "Christian" thing, because I realized I was a member of a despised people. Invariably I was welcomed until there came the inevitable discussion of religion and I imparted the knowledge of my racial extraction. Almost without exception, those who had acted as friends subsequently avoided me as a leper. Boyhood friends have told me of hundreds of similar experiences. Occasionally I had to argue that I was a Jew. They did not want to believe that I could be anything so revolting, but if I refused to be hypocrite enough to deny my origin I succeeded in ostracizing myself.

Some time ago it fell upon me to organize a local patriotic event, although I happened to be the only Jew in town. I immediately decided to include a Catholic priest and Protestant minister on the program. The former immediately accepted without reservation or personal reference. The latter also assisted, but was more active in trying missionary efforts on me. I have never known of Jews trying to convert any one to their belief, still less trying to ostracize or persecute some one else because of such difference in faith.

The fact of my origin has been a con

tinual source of hardship in my professional work, and my Gentile associates could tell better than I what obstacles I have had to overcome. It has been the same in every walk of life, and yet you condemn the Catholic for sticking to his mass and the Jew for not going out of his way to deliberately face hardship.

Most of my relatives and Jewish friends have intermarried with Protestants. In every case but one the child is being raised in the Protestant faith. In the lone exception the child is being taught the tenets of both, so that he may later take his choice. He is already being reviled, however, for having a Christkilling father by his innocent little friends. These pure souls are already being contaminated with teachings of hate.

What has been the result? As a youth I turned to Christianity and its followers to teach me higher ideals than they said my people were capable of. They disappointed me and disillusioned me and turned me back, and in so turning I observed a misunderstood, idealistic people bearing a heavy cross. There was a time when I might have encouraged my son to become a Christian. Church-going people have destroyed that possibility by their very example. Revile the Catholic and Jew, but don't blame them for avoiding your passion and prejudice by sticking to their own religions.

Forewarned by the obliteration of the legalized liquor business in America, "the Trade" in England has become alarmed for its safety and it has taken steps to match a pro-liquor organization for every prohibition society in operation.

These pro-liquor organizations are of two kinds: (1) those openly subsidized by "the Trade," such as the National Trade Defense Association, and (2) those organizations which by their titles might deceive one into believing that they are anti-trade, but which in reality are working in the interests of liquor consumption. Some of these societies are the True Temperance Association (referred to by the prohibitionists as the "True Tippler's Association" and the "Trade Temperance Association"), the Fellowship of Freedom and Reform, and the Freedom Association.

Though the organizations of the second type are supposedly formed by the voting public in order to express their disapproval of the prohibition agitators and to guard their individual liberty from the liquor foes, in reality they derive their financial support and effective leadership from the same sources as the openly acknowledged trade defense societies.

I called upon the officials of organizations of both types, and, from outside inquiries and study as well, I came to my own conclusions as to their methods and purposes.

(I

seen only two intoxicated people. marveled at this and wondered how he kept himself from the outer world, for I saw more drunks than this every night of my stay in England.) He had statistics prepared which demonstrated to him that the arrests for drunkenness in 1924 in Philadelphia were 1 in 40 of the population, while in Birmingham, England (about the same size), they were 1 in 271; in Boston 1 in 19, in Manchester 1 in 164; in Pittsburgh 1 in 24, in Sheffield (likewise a manufacturing community) one in 2,000. His American figures were taken from the Anti-Saloon League records, he claimed. This record of a dry country made him sure that the remedy was not prohibition. However, he spoke glibly (without any seeming awareness of inconsistency) of the great amounts of liquor that were being shipped from Great Britain to America

via Hamburg and the Bahamas. "People come to us and buy large quantities of our goods. If they have the money to buy, it is not for us to question where they take it after purchase. Of course, it is quite evident, however, that it is to be shipped to America."

Mr. Baron continued by stating his opinion that "the Trade" would itself clean up any abuses. He mentioned the fact that the number of pubs is decreasing and that 18,000 licenses have been lost in the last twenty years through for

feiture from misconduct and without compensation.

THE True Temperance Association

contends that the remedy for drunkenness lies in the providing of improved public-houses. It has recently had introduced into both houses of Parliament a bill to transform the pub from a mere drinking bar into a place for food as well as drink, for entertainment, and to provide adjacent playgrounds for children. "It is a reflection upon our civilization," it says, "that the public-house should be merely a comfortless place for drinking beer and whisky."

This Association directed me to several of these "model" improved publichouses. They resemble the cheap restaurant and bar of our pre-prohibition days.

THE Association for the Promotion of

Restaurant Public-Houses in the Poor Districts makes this statement: "Within the trade itself reform of the best kind, because it leads to a change of habit, has been widely promoted by the supply of meals in the better-class public-houses-a reform of inestimable value, particularly to the children in the poor areas. The provision of food in the opinion of this Association is going to do most to reduce excessive drinking."

This movement for these so-called