# The New York Times/1929/10/24/Editorial

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MR. HOOVER AT HIS BEST.
The President has never appeared to better advantage than in the addresses which he has made this week. Doubtless the chief reason is that the subjects with which he dealt have long engaged his professional interest. About them his mind plays freely, and when he writes on them his style is lucid and effective. Speaking at the Edison celebration, he turned easily from the immediate event, which he characterized felicitously, to a brief discussion of the place which laboratories and scientific research have come to play in our national life, bound as they are to assume larger importance year by year. Such ideas came naturally and gracefully from one who has devoted so much time and energy to seeking room and opportunity for pure science in American education.
At Louisville last evening Mr. Hoover took up a problem with which he has an even more profound acquaintance. Long studies of transportation by water, together with his experience and successful labors in connection with the great Mississippi flood, have given him unquestionable authority in the whole matter of the proper development of our internal waterways. One has only to read his address at Louisville to perceive his firm grasp of the question, which he looks at as a whole, together with his mastery of the technical details. The President looks forward to an entire system of Inland transportation by river, coordinated, controlled, extended wherever a commercial or agricultural profit can be demonstrated, not destructively competitive with railroads, but supplementary to them, constituting a great national asset of which we have only begun to realize the potentialities. Not before since he became our first engineer President has Mr. Hoover displayed to his fellow-countrymen so full a measure of his special talent when applied to a vital concern of the nation.
THE SENATE "SHOW."
Etymologically, the Senate is a collection of old men. Old men have a tendency to second childhood. The grave frolic, the child's play out of which the Insurgent-Democratic company has had and given so much enjoyment, is quite in keeping with the ancient-juvenile Senatorial character. "Let's play we want to help the farmer. Let's play we want to pass a tariff bill." The unexpected element of humor and surprise comes in doing the exact contrary of what is pretended. In June Mr. Borah's motion to restrict tariff revision to agricultural schedules was lost by a single vote. In late October Mr. Thomas's motion to a similar effect gets only ten votes, even Mr. Borah turning a cold eye upon his own child.
The "patter" in the dialogue of this performance was peculiarly rich. Mr. Norris would have voted with Mr. Thomas seven or eight weeks ago, but now for two months the Senate has talked about the administrative details of the bill and made far-reaching constructive changes. It has altered the flexible provisions of the House bill for the sake of buffeting Mr. Hoover and without expectation that the House will accept the changes. In the plenilune of its jocosity it has established the office of the Consumers' Counsel. If its amendments are accepted, a scientific tariff is to emerge. There will be no more general tariff revision and logs will be rolled no more. In the art of spoofery Mr. Norris is almost without rival. Of the two months of endless speeches on those "administrative features" that the House will bash he said:
   I think the historian will have to say that it has never been excelled either in time consumed, in intelligence displayed or results achieved so far as the administrative features of tariff legislation are concerned.
As there is to be no more general tariff revision after the coalition millennium, let's have some now. So Mr. Simmons. He voted for the Borah resolution, but now the opponents of the Hawley-Smoot bill have the upper hand. Let us tilt against the "horribly unjust" rates of the Fordney-McCumber bill. Let us aid agriculture by reducing industrial rates. If he had carried out his thought, he would have said: "Let's relieve the farmer by preventing him from getting any relief, by making impossible the passing of a tariff bill." One would have thought that the debenture amendment, favored only by the Grange among the farmers, but irresistibly attractive to the coalition because offensive to Mr. Hoover, would have been deemed enough to make impossible agreement between the House and the Senate on a tariff measure; but the allied enthusiasts are so tickled with the notable success of their show—at least up to the moment calcium carbide was mentioned—that they keep adding to it. The stage is crowded, and "something doing" all the time.
Is the audience as well satisfied as the actors? Mr. Blease, less of an artist than his associates, may perhaps be a better judge of the opinion of spectators. He petulantly cried out: "What is the use of trying to fool the people of this country?"
COLLEGE ATHLETICS.
Critics of the extent to which American colleges have commercialized and overstressed athletics will find ample support in the bulletin, No. 23, just issued by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. It is the most thorough investigation of the subject ever undertaken. The number of colleges surveyed and personally visited and the large amount of data in the bulletin make it evidence not to be ignored. For the alumni and faculty of few institutions is there left occasion to point with pride.
However, the bulletin observes a growing tendency to restore college athletics to the amateur plane they once occupied. It notes, for example, increasing instances of determination on the part of college presidents and responsible alumni officials to put football back where it belongs. The facts developed in the bulletin should be of great aid in this move. Perhaps the reform is too large to be attempted by any one university or even several. But if the athletic conferences, which now only make rules, will see that they are lived up to, remedies may be hastened.
Blame for present conditions is freely assigned by the investigators. To the alumni, who offer various forms of subsidies to prospective athletic stars. To the press, which "showers demoralizing publicity on the players." To the faculty, which yields to the commercial instinct for winning games at the expense of college standards. To the conferences, which make laws solely for the record. In order to bring matters back to the simple basis of amateurism, Dr. Pritchett, in the preface to the bulletin, proposes:
   The paid coach, the gate receipts, the special training tables, the costly sweaters and expensive journeys in special Pullman cars, the recruiting from the high school, the demoralizing publicity showered on the players, the devotion of an undue proportion of time to training, the devices for putting a desirable athlete but a weak scholar across the hurdles of the examination—these ought to stop.
It is a large order, as any college president can tell Dr. Pritchett. But, with the bulletin open in hand, a beginning can be made. The facts unearthed by the Carnegie Foundation show how necessary it is that this be done. One page of the bulletin alone would be sufficient to persuade the average college man that amateur standards have been considerably impaired. It gives a list—all too short—of institutions where "no evidence was found that athletes were subsidized by any group or individual." Although the authors of the bulletin rigidly include under the head of "subsidies" even such light preferences for athletes as are involved in granting food-selling concessions at games, the list is one on which every college should wish to appear.
Great portions of the report deal with the growth of the professional coaching system, and the investigators are firmly in favor—as is Dr. Angell of Yale—of restoring leadership in the course of play to the captain and his team. Now players are but chessmen, says the bulletin, and coaches are higher paid than professors. The coach must place winning over every other consideration. From this comes much of the loss of quality which participation in athletics is presumed to bestow. "The paid coach," an Oxford don is quoted as saying, "is at the bottom of all difficulties in American college athletics." Many will agree that the coach must bear a good deal of the responsibility. But what university will lead the way to a change? What college that now maintains a separate employment agency for athletes desirous of working through will be the first, after reading the report, to merge it with the agency for non-athletes? The authors of the bulletin are certain that such leadership will be successful and will soon attract followers.
VIOLATING THE SOUND RULE.
One of the eminent lawyers who have come out in support of the reelection of Judge Callaghan of Brooklyn wrote in a letter published yesterday of what he called "the sound rule." It is that a judge of the Supreme Court who has served out one term acceptably should be given another without respect to party politics. Judge Callaghan was first elected as a Republican, but many Democrats are now offering him aid. Among them is Mr. John W. Davis, who said early this month: "The maintenance of an efficient, independent and fearless judiciary is of supreme importance to every citizen. I know of no more certain way to accomplish this result than by re-electing judges who have demonstrated their fitness during their terms of judicial office, without regard to their political affillations."
This is the principle which the Democratic organization, under Mr. McCooey of Brooklyn, refused to uphold. Various excuses were given, but they do not hold water. Judge Callaghan's record on the bench stands up as excellent, even after the close scrutiny of political opponents has searched it for flaws. Many may have forgotten the firm and effective way in which he presided over the trial of the former Secretary of State, Mrs. Knapp, at Albany. For that difficult work he was designated by Governor Smith. Though Mrs. Knapp was of his own political party, Judge Callaghan withstood every kind of partisan appeal or pressure and exerted his full power to see to it that justice was done in that case. All told, it is clear that the voters of the Second Judicial District have a fine opportunity to repudiate the action of a political boss in reaching out for judicial spoils, and at the same time to keep on the bench of the Supreme Court a judge of well-approved integrity and ability.
BIOLOGY AT WHITE PLAINS.
Seldom has such a word of power been spoken in behalf of any county as the tribute to Westchester just given by her famous and sole Elder, Younger and In-Between Statesman, William L. Ward. Others have written about the natural beauties of Westchester, her fine roads and her various salubrities. But no one has hitherto pointed out a peculiar virtue in the Westchester air which goes beyond putting roses into the cheeks of kiddies, and lumberjack appetites into their office-working fathers. It remained for Mr. Ward to discover that there is something in the air of Westchester which immediately begins to work upon new Democratic residents and after an election or two transforms them into Republicans. Mr. Ward's canvassers have found—and extraordinary things canvassers do come across on the eve of an election—this metamorphosis actually under way. They report any number of immigrant Democrats who continue to vote Democratic on State and national issues and vote Republican on local issues.
Ah, you will say, but is not this arrested development in Democratic immigrants in Westchester rather ominous for the Gubernatorial and Congressional elections next year? Not at all. By that time the Ward canvassers will find that the metabolistic process is 100 per cent complete, and naturalized Democratic aliens have been made safe for Republicanism in Albany and Washington. It is something in the air. It is with the civilization and natural advantages of Westchester as with the glory that was Greece, the rich and gracious civilization of early China. Even as Greece subdued her stern Roman conquerors, and the Han culture tamed the savage Manchu invader, so the immanent powers of New Rochelle and Scarsdale seize upon the Democratic settler from the Ninth Assembly District, Manhattan, and speedily incorporate him into the famous Republican plurality which so regularly "comes down to the Bronx."
SHIPS AND SUGAR.
Displeasing as have been some of the methods of the Congressional group which has sought to restrict the importation of Philippine sugar into this country, the latest plan has at least the merit of focusing attention on a real question too little understood. It was proposed in the Senate that the coastwise shipping laws of the United States be extended to the Philippine Islands, so as to restrict the right of foreign vessels to ply among them and between them and the United States. The sponsor of the proposal did not hesitate to make it plain that the purpose was to make it possible so to raise the cost of freight rates on Philippine sugar coming to the United States as to make it virtually impossible for Philippine sugar producers to ship to the United States at a profit.
The shipping situation in the Philippines has long been complicated. Section 21 of the United States merchant marine act of 1920 provides for the ultimate extension to the islands of the coastwise shipping regulations, but does not make it mandatory. Extension of this clause to the Philippines has been opposed by Americans and Filipinos alike. The reason is that, however unsatisfactory the present shipping arrangements within the islands and with foreign countries, the scarcity of American ships and the high cost of operating them are such that if the insular trade were to be confined alone to American bottoms the additional cost and inconveniences would bring about serious economic difficulties.
Several American lines now ship direct to and from the Philippines. But so do Canadian, Japanese, Dutch and other companies. About half the foreign trade of the islands is carried in American bottoms. They have to compete with foreign lines and fix their rates accordingly. If the coastwise shipping provisions were applied, competition would cease to exist. At the same time, useful means of inter-island communication would be destroyed, as foreign boats furnish in numerous instances the quickest and best means of travel.
The circumstances under which the proposal to eliminate these vessels has been made will not do much to strengthen the confidence of the Filipinos in the intentions of the Senate. As a matter of public policy, the War Department, in charge of the Philippines, has opposed the plan. As in the case of the recent move to grant immediate independence, advocates have thought not at all of the Filipinos but only of their American constituents. Protectors of American beet sugar are apparently determined to stop at nothing in their efforts to injure the Philippine sugar industry.
THEATRICAL MINORITIES.
Protection of minorities is a live question in Europe, but, to lovers of the theatre, protection of majorities is of greater importance. Members of an audience who are tardy, who arrive in noisy parties, who cough and gossip during the performance, are undoubtedly in the minority. Despite their comparatively small numbers, they are able to spoil a scene for all the rest. Miss Jane Cowl, who has been variously quoted of late on the subject of audience behavior, said in yesterday's Times that something should be done to protect the majority. She believes that the minority is getting larger. Other respectable theatregoers—Miss Cowl spoke as a spectator and not as a player—have complained of the vociferous minority. Some of them have so far forgotten their own normal restraint as to suggest violent measures. Merely putting the merry-makers out would not satisfy them. They would like to see them in the stocks or in solitary confinement on bread and water. Miss Cowl is not in a temper about the "small groups of self-exploiters," but is plaintively hopeful that some one will find a way of subduing them.
Neither she nor any other alert, imaginative artist would wish to suppress the interested but captious. Honest criticism, even if destructive, must always be welcomed, at least in theory. Mr. Stokowski expressed what many leaders in the arts must feel in his speech to the audience that hissed Schoenberg's music Tuesday night. He granted the right of the audience to hiss. If it is permitted to express its approval by applause, it is also entitled to express disapproval. But hissing, like the obvious inattention of chatty groups at the play, is disconcerting to the performers. In effect, Mr. Stokowski concluded that it might be more polite to show dislike by leaving.
Among other factors the talkies are blamed for the increase in noisy audiences. It is possible to sit in the front row at a sound picture and ridicule the hero and heroine with no fear of being overheard behind the footlights. Applause at the doings of shadow people has often been remarked as a curious phenomenon. It brings no satisfaction to the actors, but it does relieve the spectators' feelings. Sprightly comments on the poor voices or acting are equally unknown to the former and agreeable to the latter. Some theatrical people believe that their audiences are growing larger because the talkies have given movie enthusiasts an appetite for words. If this is the case, the recruits may be bringing with them some of their old cinema habits.
THOMAS HASTINGS.
The death of Mr. Hastingsa is a serious loss to American architecture. Members of his profession have this advantage, that their work lives after them: the good is not so often "interred with their bones." Those who, in generations to come, rest in the gardens of the Ponce de Leon at St. Augustine, or pause in front of the Public Library in this city, or stand, hat in hand, in the Arlington Memorial Amphitheatre above the Potomac, will be able to appreciate Mr. Hastings's talent, and perhaps catch something of the spirit animating him. It had its roots deep. In the days when steel wrought its inevitable transformation he clung to the classic tradition. To him, as to his forebears, the plan was the thing. It must be beautiful in itself; he did most of his important designs himself, even down to the details of ornamentation.
If American architecture can hold its head high in this twentieth century, it has leaders like Mr. Hastings to thank for it. He was one of a number of men whose exceptional talents were recognized in other countries. Many of them were fortunate in their associates. One thinks of the firms which have added lustre to the American tradition: McKim, Mead and White; {{sc|Cram}, Goodhue and Ferguson; Carrere and Hastings. "McKin with his massive fine taste, Mead with his critical ability, White with his flair for decoration"—so wrote a historian of that firm. The same happy equipoise of abilities was to be found in the partnership which Mr. Hastings entered when he left Mr. McKim's office. John Carrere's sound critical judgment and business sense served a useful balance for his creative imagination. At a time when the outlook for American architecture was somewhat dubious they helped to define the goal and illumine the path.
Mr. Hastings never took kindly to the skyscraper. It afforded little opportunity for that spaciousness which he deemed essential to the development of his plan. He was acutely aware, too, of the inevitable effect of unlimited height on city growth. He found no fault with the architect who complied with a client's wish, "but I do find fault," he said not many months ago, "with a city government so short-sighted as not to see the good sense and economic justice of limiting within reason the height of buildings." No doubt it took courage for an architect of his professional standing to challenge with so much vigor this typical American form. But many of his professional brethren feel as he did. He once read somewhere a prophecy that the office building of the future, equipped with artificial sunlight and mechanical ventilation, would require no windows at all. "Possibly," was his comment; "but who wants to be that sort of mole in a human world?"