The Washington times., 1936-06-18
NOW
An Orator Gets
Taken DOWn'
RENTING PERILS
BY HELEN ESSARY

hENllNU fEh1LS
e, BY HELEN ESsARY
The perils Of speechmaking dc
not always lie with the audience
Sometimes it is the orator who suf
. fers.
Mrs. John w. Guider, daughter
Of Frank ]. Hogan, told me a story
the other day about Representa-.
tive John F. Dockweiler, Of Cali
fornia.
Representative Dockweiler, en-
tering the Los Angeles hall where
he was about to make a speech,
met an old lady on crutches, Strug'
Cling through the crowd.
Mr.. Dockweiler, who is really
very kind, asked the lonely cripple
II he could help her to her seat
She said yes, that she would like
to be taken upstairs.
AS they slowly mounted the steps
to the gallery the old lady said
she had come to the meeting be.
cause she liked politics. She didn't
know who would speak. Said her
new friend:
Ellis name is DOckweiler."
"DOckweiler, indeed! If that's
the case you can be of still
greater help, young man. Take
me down stairs and out of this
hall--at Once!"
Mrs. Henry F. Grady, whose
husband is special adviser to the
Secretary of State on foreign
trade agreements, is another Cali
fornian with public turn Of
mind,
Mrs, Grady has returned to
washington after winter in
California. She is now on her
way to Philadelphia, where she
will make one of the "Seconding
Roosevelt speeches" More def.
mite, however, than her political
convictions is Mrs. Grady'S new
theory that life's greatest mis-
take is renting ones house to an
interior decorator.
Mrs. Grady's house is one OF
the ,loveliest in Southern Califor'
mia. She has cherished it particu'
1arly for it's old Spanish furni'
ture, inherited from her ancestors,
the soft gray of its floors, achieved
after weeks of experimenting
with paint, and the beauty of the
Spanish rugs.
When Mrs. Grady took her
house back last week from the in.
terror decorator. her gray floors
were black. The Spanish furni'
ture had been painted white. The
rugs, put outdoors on the patio
had been worn threadbare on the
hard stone floors. Treasured win
dow curtains had been used as bed
spreads and the walls had been
draped with dyed cheesecloth.
Norman Thomas appeal to Mr.
Roosevelt for the punishment OF
the men who beat the strikebreak
ers for the Arkansas sharecroppers
reminds me of the remark, already
quoted in this column, made by a
Department of Agriculture Off
cial:
'NOrthernerS were determined
to free the slaves. Now they are
rushing down South again to
save the sharecrOppers."
The sharecropper, the tenant
farmer of the South, feels at pres
ent that he has been exploited BY
unScrupulouS land owners.
David Cohn in God Shakes Gre
ation," a story of the Mississippi
Delta country, writes Sympathet
ically of the sharecropping sltua
tion. He says:
''In the Delta where cotton
Is the one money crop, the rela-
ti0nship between crOpper and
farm owner is roughly one OF
partnership. One partner pro-
videS the capital, the other pro-
Vides the labor. And they agree
to divide the profits.
But the profits, if any, can
be divided only when they have
been made, and they cannot be
made. until the cotton is
marketed nine months after the
partnership has begun. During
that time the crOpper must live'
and his partner, the farmer,
agrees to lend him enough
money in the form of cash or
food, to tide him over until the
crouS come in. The loans will
then be repaid to the farmer
and the profits will then be
divided.
at is important to note that
this is partnership in which
the crOpper agrees to share half
the profits, but does not agree
to share half the losses.
"The crOpper'S risk is that he
may not receive, in addition to a
living. much money or any
money at all. The farmers
risk is. that the crOpper's half
of the produce will not be
enough to pay for the sums ad-
vanced to him for his sub
sistence. And certainly not
enough to cover the indirect
charges of salaries for OverSeers,
and interest on money borrowed.
taxes. depreciation on stock
and tools, and the costs of seed
and repairs"