The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1932-08-19
eCherry
Tree In. ~ q, :. ...ss:. :.
We tell the truth
about many things. some etimes pre-
foundly, sometimes Aippantly,
sometimes recklessly.

Some critic of the public taste re.
Gently said that perhaps the reason
so many readers turn to the sport.
ing pages before they read the frs,
page is because success is found in
the sporting pages, while failure fills
the first page.
In sports, this critic pointed out
some contestant wins, some team
wins, some player chalks up vic.
tory in every story.
On the first page, he asserted, fail
ure rules-murder, disaster, destruc.
ton.
The conclusion would have more
merit if there were more truth in the
premise.
Newspaper first pages chronicle
after all, the doings that editors
think are the most important of the
| day. And, out of long practice and
j something akin to intuition, they gen.
orally are not far wrong.
Sporting pages have their impor-
tance, but they have an actual inn
portance far under their apparent
Importance.
Big money has been invested in
the business of making what we
call sports important. A bally-
hoo of tremendous proportions
has been turned loose to make
sports important.
A ventured guess would be that
any departmentalized feature OF
newspaperdom could be given dispro-
portionate Importance if it were bal
| lyhooed half as much as sports have
been ballyhooed. Ballyhoo does count
after all.
So, many persons turn first to the
sports pages because they have been
ballyhooed into it.
The human race is queer about its
sense of values. Great throngs devote
! hours daily to speculation about a
baseball team which is owned by some
magnate, just as Roman emperors
once owned stables of gladiators.
Thousands have gone to extremes
for or against the bonus army.
Columns of invective have been
leveled against the president because
of the expulsion of the bonus army,
taking every rumor for fact.
Yet hundreds of thousands of coal
miners have suffered for months and
even years to extremes unknown by
| the bonus army, without any great
public outcry.
The sports pages will continue to
be popular, perhaps because human
race burdened with responsibilities
beyond any ever known to history pre-
fers to think about something else.
While we roast congress for incom-
petence we spend our time immersed
in arguing about the relative merits
of contenders who are over-paid for
their efforts by promoters who fatten
on our inflated interest. But after
ell. the secret is in the fact that the
spors pages bring us the game, while
the first page brings us the headache
of responsibility.
| There are thousands to whom de-
| mocracy is either a matter for some
one else to worry about, or something
that will run itself and about which
we have no need to bother.
There are great many who feel
the same way about labor unions.
But these instruments do not run
themselves. While we read the sport
pages someone else is reading the
first pages and taking due note of the
facts there chronicled.
Relating the issue to life as a
whole and using the newspaper pages
as symbols, we may say that the read
ers of the sport pages pay the freight
and how they shall pay and how much
they shall pay is determined for them
by readers Of the first pages while
they are still perusing the box scores
or working their blissful way down
toward the last round.
The moral, if moral there be, is
simply that this is darned good time
TO know ALL that is going on.