Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1936-07-02
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| the medium of a House investigation
rather than fight individually to show
how ridiculous, how unsound, the plan
| was.
| Having set up the picture showing
an utterly impossible program on the
part of DR.. Townsend and his ASSOC
| ciates and followers, the House poll
ticians were confronted suddenly by
| DR.. Townsend's arrogance in his re-
fusal to testify. That presented sud-
| den change in the scenery. To ex-
| plain the dangers in this new prob
| lem, it is only necessary to say that
| if the House had acted promptly by
| voting that DR.. Townsend was in con-
| tempt and must spend some time in
| jail, / expect the result would have
| been martyrdom for DR.. Townsend.
Martyrdom is always bad from a po-
litical standpoint if the opposition has
the martyr.
The house, therefore, has turned
| over the affair to the courts and the
courts being slow moving as they al
ways are, will not get around to prose-
AeAIS
to have any influence on the election.
So we can see readily that DIR. Town
send is left out in the cold. He can
neither use the influence that is char
acteristic of martyrdom nor can he say
that his skirts are clear. The house
has left him hanging conveniently in
mid-air and it was done solely for
political reasons.
There may be some more hearings
on the Townsend plan during the sum-
mer but the chances are that Repre-
| sentative Bell will not call the COM
mittee together again for some months
Practically, the case is closed. 1t has
undoubtedly stopped to large meas
ure the drain that the Townsend or
| ganization was making on the I'M
| thinking, the aged and the destitute
whose quarters, dimes and nickels
| have financed the thing thus far.
| While the committee did good job by
exposing the character of the scheme,
| l still am doubtful that it has brought
| to itself or to the house of represen-
tatives any fresh confidence in our
governmental structure.
The national capital, along with
| manv other sections of the country,
| has been listening to-
1I-xedr the purring of
| Ioc,,sts hordes of "locusts."
I! I use the word To-
Gusts in quotation marks because they
are not really locusts. They are ci-
cadas but to the most of us they are
| and will remain the seventeen-year
| locusts.
1t is said that the first colonists in
America, never before having met with
the insects and believing that every
thing of Gods creation was accounted
for in the Bible, concluded they were
locusts and the name has stuck. In
any event, they appear in greatest
numbers at seventeen-year intervals
and 1886 seems to be banner year.
Back in 1919, trees in many sections
of the country were pierced by tiny
| saw-like instruments which the De-
partment of Agriculture says are part
of the equipment of the female ci-
cadas. Billions of eggs were deposited
under the soft bark. A month or two
later, grubs emerged on the branches
and dropped unnoticed to the earth.
Then, the chronology of the life Of
these cicadas becomes a matter of
darkness for seventeen long years. The
insect in grub form burroweG itself
in the soil and subsisted on the juices
of roots. AS far as anyone knows.
they did little or no harm but after
sixteen years and few months of
this life, the grubs awoke this spring
and out they came. They acted on
instinct, of course.
Through the last several weeks
these great beetle-like bugs with wings
like isinglass have been humming and
drumming and leaving their empty
shells attached to trees and grasses.
During that period, the males have
spent their daylight hours singing. The
Department of Agriculture is not quite
sure why this singing has gone on be-
cause it has ascertained that all Of
the lady cicadas are quite deaf.
Perhaps 1 have devoted too much
space to the story of the seventeen
year locust. Perhaps lthe seventeen
year locust is not important at all ex-
cept to the robins and the starlings
and the sparrows and the other birds
which have had a feast in 1896 that
almost no other bird now living has
known. But 1 have thought about
these seventeen-year locusts, a train
of thoughts, in fact. They lead to
this:
What will conditions be in 1853 or
seventeen years hence when those
humans on earth will hear again the
mating song of the locusts?
Will the policies and the principles
initiated by Franklin D. Roosevelt and
called "the New Deal' be firmly i'm
bedded as American traditions or will
they be cast out as impractical and
forgotten? Will the changes in civil
ization be such that people will be
willing to submit to RECOMMENDATION, to
have their government tell them what
to do and how to do it, or will this ma