The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1938-07-07
] COMMENT ON WORLD
J EVENTS

The Securities and Exchange Com
mission has uncovered and blocked off
scheme that bade fair to swindle
thousands of persons out of hundreds
of thousands-or perhaps millions
of dollars.
Two persons, Karl S. Ladner and
Harry Ladner seem to have been
gathering trunks full Of worthless
and obsolete" securities of corpora
tions which have gone through re-
ceivership or reorganization. Three
important companies are the old
Studebaker Corporation of New Jer-
sey, the Richfeld Oil Co. of Califor-
MIA, and the Willy-Overland Corpora
ton. The new stocks Of these COM
.panies are traded in on the New York
Stock Exchange. The old, obsolete
stocks have no value whatsoever; but
they were near enough like the modern
stocks to be sold by personal solicita-
ton.
The SEC found out about the
scheme, got hold of trunk full of
these securities, and got a permanent
injunction against their sale by the
U. S. District Court of Eastern Penn
sylvania. 1t is trying to get hold of
all the stocks; but meantime, is spread
ing warning. The number of unsuspi-
cious folks who have been saved from
being bilked is almost numberless.
x x x
Figures have been brought before
the National Education Association by
DR.. j. B. Mailer, a research student
Of Columbiana University, showing
that the delinquency rate among
children of New York has dropped
more than SO per cent in the last 35
years, since the Children's Court was
founded. 1t is credited, partly to the
court itself, and partly to public and
private childhood welfare organiza-
tions.
There is nothing new about this. The
great majority of juvenile offenders
come from wage earning families,
from youngsters rightly called the
"underprivileged class" In Chicago,
they were found to be particularly fire.
quent in families where the fathers
wages were too scanty to support the
household, and the mother had to go
out to labor, too.
In one case, juvenile offenses in one
district dropped IS per cent in year
after the opening of boys club; and
an inspector came around to find out
why the street lights had so low a
mortality. But probably no other study
has been so comprehensive as this one
in New York
"a boy" said one expert, "would
usually rather do the right thing than
the wrong thing-but he must do
something" And it is true.
X x X
! When it became known that the
General Council Of the international
Federation of Trade Unions had re-
jected the application of the Russian
'trade unions" for affiliation by vote
of 16 to 4, it did not come as sur
prise to those who kept informed of
the negotiations. The International
has had too much experience with the
dictatorship to permit it to do on the
inside what it has been trying to from
the outside for twenty years-capture
or destroy the International.
Moreover, the Russian unions" are
no more unions than are similar or.
ganizations in Nazi Germany anC
Fascist Italy. They are organs of the
dictatorship ruled by Communists
commissars. Their promised fight fol
democracy has the same value as Ear
Browder's. Both have the value of {
plugged nickel. That the British La
Dor Party has taken similar course
was also to be expected.-The New
Leader, New York City.