T

The Mail Bag

The What's the Use Club

HE article by Mr. Seitz in your issue of March 17 invites a comeback. The irst column and a quarter gets my unqualified approval. I have an intimate acquaintance with the What's the Use Club. Some of my best friends are members in good standing. If asked, they would heartly oppose the idea of discontinuing churches in general. Such influence as a hurch exerts is generally good and desirale. Sometimes the club members have eaths and weddings in their families, and hey expect as a natural right to have the ervices of a preacher at their disposal. gain, along about Easter in particular, hey sometimes indulge in new duds, and he logical place to exhibit them to advanage is church. Therefore they confidently ok forward to a nice warm, comfortable hurch to honor with their presence, with a reacher on hand primed with a good seron. The question of who pays for all this ither never enters their heads or is unnteresting.

But Mr. Seitz makes other statements hat sound to me cynical and out of order, nd they ought to be challenged. Without eservation, he says the Tariff Commission owned by beneficiaries. If he knows this nd isn't a member of the What's the Use lub himself, he ought to take his proof to e Attorney-General. If he doesn't know why make the nasty charge?

The desire of Mr. Ford's D. T. & I. Railad, with its unique status as to traffic, to pset the delicate freight-rate structure inlves questions too intricate for any but perts to discuss. It cannot be handled operly by an offhand slap at the Interate Commerce Commission.

The

Mr. Seitz says that Mr. Loree proposes find the money to build another trunk he between Chicago and New York. ference is that Mr. Loree is going to ance the enterprise himself. I suspect is would be a trifle beyond even his cketbook and that he would sell stocks d bonds to hopeful investors. It is barely ssible that the action of the Inter-State ommerce Commission was due to a desire protect the interests of the hopeful instors. The existing trunk lines are hanng the traffic without strain. The points congestion are always in the terminals. the natural growth of the country deands it later on, the existing facilities can expanded to accommodate the increased affic, and to add another line with incalably expensive terminals in the large ies would simply be equivalent to dividthe income by a larger divisor without proving physical conditions.

I admit my incompetence to debate these tremely technical and difficult questions Eh an expert, but with such knowledge I have, and without further and conacing argument from Mr. Seitz, I am tisfied to believe in the integrity and gment of the Commission.

Chicago, Illinois.

GEORGE C. HUNT.

The Blight of the Bureaucrat

ILL you accept the thanks of an old reader for your protest against the posal to set up at Washington a bureau education designed to direct all our pubschools?

The chances are, of course, that such a eau would attempt to control private I parochial schools, close all experintal stations, and completely standardize cation. It is not surprising that average (Continued on page 507)

It Shoots Where You Hold It

SMITH & WESSON

ON

your

N the accuracy of revolver depends the quality of your marksmanship.

It is significant proof of Smith & Wesson accuracy that the winner of every match in the United States Revolver Association Indoor Championships used a Smith & Wesson. The unfailing accuof the arm makes the score a real racy test of the shooter's ability.

Smith & Wesson revolvers are SAFE. They cannot fire unless you actually pull the trigger-and the cylinder of every Smith & Wesson is double-locked.

Long life is the heritage of every Smith & Wesson. Constructed of specially hardened alloy steel, heat treated, its lifetime is measured by generations.

You can learn to shoot in your cellar. Write Dept. 19 and we will tell you how.

ublic school teachers favor this plan. Most of them, poor things, are themselves ictims of standardization and love the readmill and the lock-step; but schools, fter all, are primarily for children, and verybody knows, or should know, that the uccessful teacher is he who brings out the est powers latent in the child, not he who rics to make all children alike.

The fault of our schools at present is that Do many of the people who run them are opy-cats, scared by any departure from -and-dried and dead formulas. Official iscouragement of teachers who think beond the normal school, and who are about ur only hope of progress in education, ould be a calamity of the first order. Yet hat is exactly what would happen in the ureaucrats' paradise. We should have all he schools beating time to a nodding punit at Washington, all the teachers tangled 1 red tape, and all the children reduced to ice, uniform jack-straws.

Great teachers are great innovators, and, our present confusion, one school after nother adopts their methods; some chools, at any rate, remain alive, and here is always hope for others. We who ave seen in one generation kindergartens, anual training, athletic play, school mcheons, and specialized high schools acpted as a part of the public school system ould use every effort to save the children our home communities from the blight the standardized and bureaucratic mind gnant in Washington. JOHN D. ADAMS. Memphis, New York.

Swing, Swing Together

AM a former kindergarten teacher, and it so happens that I spent this morning a public school kindergarten-the first ne in years. Later I opened my Outlook March 10, and was amazed at the first itorial, "Hop, Skip, and Jump!" May I ggest that the editor who is responsible that item spend a morning (preferably whole morning) in that Brooklyn public hool kindergarten? He will then learn e several things which were embodied in e apparently puerile game of "Hop! Skip! mp!" The "damsel of eighteen with an of authority" had spent two good years ying to master her job of directing and trolling those "twenty-five five-years." and the fact that they did "hop," ip." "jump," in mass and at her comnd, proves they had learned, not only ividual, but group obedience. Also they re exercising in the open air-working some of the abounding surplus energy babyhood before going back to their ssroom, where every effort is made to ag out each individual child's personality I initiative.

n many homes there is little or no obeace; in the kindergarten there is obence-happy, cheerful obedience to comnds-not such a small "detail in their cation" as you may think. J. DOROTHY RUSSELL.

Enneapolis, Minnesota.

Blessings on Bill's Frosty Pow

FORGIVE you many editorial and literary sins for the sake of Bill Adams's ree Brave Things," worth forty of Hage's dark-brown "cross-sections of Amerlife." I read it with the warm tears ping into my solitary bowl of oatmeal idge at sunrise. As the busy mother of ung family, I am obliged to do most of reading with one hand in the hopper, so peak. Blessings on the man who can us, not how bad things are, which we see all too clearly for ourselves, but to make for a nobler goal! MAFRA WRIGHT NEWHALL.

vet, Michigan.

olume 142

Party Cleavage that Unites

こ

ONGRESS is well on toward the

end of the session, and the strange coalition of Republican

gulars and Democratic regulars still lds. When The Outlook, shortly after journment of the previous Congress,

edicted that the Democratic-radical alition was broken beyond possibility re-establishment, there was no thought a coalition between the regulars of the

April 7, 1926

not likely that they were promised anything in the way of reciprocity, though something of the kind may come to them. On the whole, there are indications, not amounting yet to evidences, of a drawing together of the constructive elements of the two old parties and a widening line. of cleavage from the radicals in both.

A National Prohibition
Referendum by States

TH

Number 14

to be presented. The hearings will be conducted by the original sub-committee, with Senator Means, of Colorado, as chairman. The other members are Harreld, of Oklahoma; Goff, of West Virginia; Reed, of Missouri; and Walsh, of Montana.

Meanwhile, measures intended to secure modification of the liquor laws continue to pile up. Senator Edge, of New Jersey, already the sponsor of two or

complished at this session, however, is

e result of such a coalition. The Reblicans are and have been from the ginning of the session without a major. If they had not had the support of - Democrats, most of the Administran measures would have failed. That oport has come, not from individual mocrats, but from the Democratic anization. The individuals with a dissition to break over party lines have ted more often with the Republican calcitrants. On a few occasions the emocrats have voted with the radicals, usually with the Administration. The most recent demonstration of this me in the confirmation by the Senate the appointment of Thomas F. Woodk as a member of the Inter-State mmerce Commission. Many Republias, not all of them radicals, opposed appointment and rejection was acted as a foregone conclusion. When test came, however, there were only enty-five votes in opposition. While

action was necessarily taken in cutive session, and the result of the -call has not been divulged, it is an en secret that the Democratic organiion

ces.

supported the Administration The opposition consisted mainly the recalcitrants in both camps. The Democrats no doubt had good ugh partisan reasons for supporting President in the appointment of odlock. Mr. Woodlock is nominally Democrat, but admittedly votes the publican ticket in National elections. e Democrats have nothing to hope for m him in a political sense. They had love for him as an individual. It is

diciary Committee is, after all, to conduct hearings on the bills to amend

Thomas F. Woodlock

the Volstead Law. Instructed to study the bills and report to the full committee, the sub-committee reported that hearings should be held. The Committee adopted the report with but one dissenting vote, that of Senator Walsh, of Montana. The Committee voted at the same time to postpone indefinitely any action on the measures aimed at the Eighteenth Amendment. These will "die in committee."

The hearings will run for twelve days instead of for several weeks, as the "wets" originally hoped. When the test came, the "drys" supported the demand for hearings, but insisted that each side could present in six days whatever needs

resolution providing for a National referendum on this question: "Shall Congress amend the National Prohibition Act so as to allow the manufacture, sale, transportation, and possession of beverages containing as great an amount of alcohol as is lawful under the Constitution?"

To this Senator Borah offered and Senator Edge accepted three amendments as follows:

Do you favor such an amendment to the Constitution of the United States as will eliminate, or wholly repeal, the Eighteenth Amendment?

If you favor amending the Volstead Act, is it your desire, notwithstanding such amendments, that the law remain so as to prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages in the United States?

If you favor amending the Volstead Act so as to permit the manufacture and sale of light wines and beer, is it your understanding that such light wines and beer are to be so limited in the alcoholic content as to be nonintoxicating?

The States would be authorized to conduct the referendum at the general election this fall. If any State should make no provision for the referendum, the Postmaster-General and the Secretary of Commerce would be authorized to conduct it through the Post Office Department and the Bureau of the Census.

Senator Edge declares that the "drys" ought to support this resolution if they are as confident of public sentiment as they claim to be.

There is yet another question that has not yet appeared on any referendum so far proposed. The reason is that it goes. to the root of the matter. What