The Wilmington morning star., 1944-07-13
BY WEsTBRoOK PEGLER

BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
NEW YORK; suppose we must give Mrs
Roosevelt and Mayor LaGuardia credit for
sincerity and good intentions in their attempts
to deal with waywardnesS in children but it
seems to that t h e r understanding is
cramped by their politics.
LaGuardla 1as been mayor of New York
for about 10 years and just at this time it
is no exaggeration to say a child OF, say,
u, is in greater corruption in some of the
New York public schools and particularly in
LaGuardias own residential and political dis
trlct of the city, than he or she would be in
certain OF the slightly gainful summer occu-
pat1ons Which the mayor proScribes. Little
criminals break into the schools at night in
vacation time and destroy furniture, machin-
cry and records and there have been many
cases of stabbing and shooting, including the
episode in which two little girls killed anot.l-
er in a PUBLIC school in the presence Of a
number of other children and teachers Teach
ers have been punched around and generally
terrorlzed, too, and there are reports Of rocks
being thrown through Mr.. LaGuardia's own
Harlem where his personal and political pro-
tege, Vito Marcantonio, the nj y unfailing
spokesman of the Communist party line in
Congress- officiates as the presiding spirit of
the new deal.
The mayor has reminded his subjects that
newspaper and publishing plants are forbidden
areas Of summer employment for children
under 16. Yet except for the influence Of
the communist members of the Newspaper
Guild, of which Mrs. Roosevelt is member
the young would be better off, morally, and
in less peril physically, in the office of a
daily newspaper than in those public schools
under his own tight and autocratic jurisdic-
ton where not mere mischief but downright,
dangerous criminality is ripe.
The communists, OF course, are devoted to
the intentional corruption of youth. This pro-
gram and details of it's operation were set
forth in the confessional autobiography of Ben
jamin Gitlow. the predecessor of Earl BroWder
as the American chief of the Muscovite con-
! spiracy. STILL with few exceptions both allied
with the new deal, the New York newspaper
plants are manned that the communists
could not prevail over the better example OF
the American members of the stats, who
are on the whole, normally decent men and
women whose influence would be good.
Both LaGuardia and Mrs Roosevelt have
| indicated a belief that poverty itself is a
stronger influence for corruption in the young
than the facts show it to have been. They
seem unaware that we have in our mlds. a
kind of people who might be called Park
avenue crackers or rich trash whose young,
girls well boys, turn out to be buns
because their home influences were rotten'
| l never have seen in any of their glvlngs
! on this subject an appreciation of the fact
that squalor does not necessarily consist OF
cracked plaster bedbugs, cold-water plumbing
| and cuttered fire-escapes but exist as con-
| spicuous misbehavor has shown, IN certain
| country mansions of the hereditary gentry
and in their town houses oft the avenues.
The fact that relatively few sucn children
are committed to correctional schools may
md
demurely identified her husband as the ruler
of tae American people Money and position
keen them out Of jail and their names off
| the records but we may firmly sufmlse from
prominent displays of adolescent and early
adult cynicism, graft and spectacular lnol1-
ference to the old American standard OF lam
i1v integrity that some parents IN the upper
brackets have failed conspicuously who new
ertheless think themselves qualified to lecture
o+hers m the moral duty of the parent to
the child. ,
little weight to tae facts OF external lntlu-
arcos outside the home, which have wealth
49, +ha characters of literally millions of
,ro,,no adult Americans and present-day chill
5ran have been the most corrupt greedy and
def;ant1v indecent that have ever before pre-
..s;1ad =, the United States Youth may not
road Supreme Court decisions but they cannot
h,,+ sense the invitation of the new deal die
I'm, that highway robbery is political pre-
rooative of criminals operating under the pa
tronage of LaGuardia and Mrs. Roosevelt.
They have seen trckery and venality, ava
rice masquerading as charity and bold al
lance of their national government with the
foulest depths of the political, and criminal
underworld They cannot have escaped de-
cree of corruption communicating the princi-
n1es and morals of whole American gener-
alton.