The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-01-23

Pegler, ana O1Cen Q1SdSIeeS WIN LleIl as
much as many of his readers. His articles
serve the good purpose of making people
Think
By WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1915, by King Features Syndicate.)
CHICAGO These shy and winsome little
essays have pointed out the failure thus far,
of radio, with it's licentious freedom of ex-
| preston, to achieve any reform or promote
any campaign in the public interest compar
able to many feats of journalism.
Apropos this, there is now raging, in Mr..
Hearst's Chicago Herald-American, crusade
so furious and so obviously right in its cause
that the clamor may be effective even againt
the apathy local pride and legal handouts
which have reduced this civic giant to state
of matted filth.
Chicago, behind it's cosmetic lake front, has
become horrible dump, of decay and squalor,
there have been. in the past, sporadic as
saults by local papers phases of this de-
cline, such as the slums, the nuisance and
menace to health of coal smoke, the incompe-
tence and corruption of successive city and
| county administrations, and the dllapldatlon of
the urban transportation system. But never
before has the false pride OF the community
been flouted as first condition IN a campaign
to arouse the people to realization OF their
own condition. This is risky business in Chi
cago Here the New Yorker is regarded with
sullen resentment when he comments on the
obvious horrors of a rundown community.
Here is popular disposition to chuckle at
the criticisms of Americans from lesser towns
as the naive fault-finding of uncomprehending
hicks
| Nevertheless the Herald-American, under
the supervision OF Lou Ruppel, lately cap
tain Of Marines, has been ripping into Chi
cago's soft under-belly, which is to say the
peoples civic vanity, with series of revela-
| tons, accompanied by pictures so appalling
that they stun. The response has been good,
| although results, of course, cannot be produced
until the anger and selfsympathy of the peo-
| luton.
This is the first time that local newspaper
has had the intelligent courage to admit that
the fault is not in the guilt or incompetence,
the greed or Indifference of any minority ele-
ment such bankers, politicians or property
ownes but in Chicago, itself. Chicago has
gone back. The city hasn't even stood still.
Those who can afford to move to the suburbs
do and they include many of the very
people who proudly call themselves Chicago
ans and resent the mention of conditions which,
they left town to escape Notwithst standing the
| construction of tall buildings during the boom
the loop is frowsier than it forty years
ago. To the west and south are habitations
foul beyond imagination, many but by mol
means all, of them occupied by Negroes and
many Of them relics of the great fire. Public
transportation is horror of overcroWding
dirt and delays which waste millions of hours
| of tired and harried workers and sap energy
that were better used otherwise.
Chicagos temperament is distinctive. T eI
people have heroes and are diverted by the
baseball and football clubs and spectacles att
Soldier Field on the lake front. They flare up
and speak of their opera and concerts and
always, OF the undeniable grace of the shore
and the sky line Of decorative business and
residential buildings which conceals the failure
and filth behind.
There are jobs for millions in the clearance
and rebuilding OF the city when the war isl
over. Ruppels campaign in the Herad-Amer-
lean is constantly warning of the danger OIL
permitting the veterans to return to SUCH
squalor with plan ready to give them jobs
and promise of homes in clean and optinlis-
tic surroundings. He throws Robert Moses att
them, New Yorker who builds parks, grasses
slums and replaces them with decent apart
ments and play areas. He hammers away att
the subject so difficult for people to under
stand, the need of plans and of political CO.
operation between not only the parties and
their leaders but between the state and the
city well.
In some of this propaganda there are in
| constituencies and omissions. For example,
those who have fled to the suburbs more
or less reproached for availing themselves of
Chicagos service, miserable they are, for
their work and entertainment while they pay
their taxes elsewhere. Yet the very descrip-
ton of the squalor in town would justify any
family in moving to better surroundings, a
trend which, incidentally, has begun to affect
the retail trade of the loop. Why else did Har-
old Ickes live in Winnetka? Again, residents
of the Chicago old coast who have not left
town but still live in comfort luxury, are
held up in contrast to the wretched denizens
of dark and heatless novels though, per-
haps, they, too should have run away, failing
that, should knock out their windows, throw
garbage in the halls and crowd themselves
ten or more to a room. Tax-dodgers a r Ell
blamed for the local governments failure to
collect taxes and for defects in the laws which
invite evasion. And investors are reproached
for accepting interest on traction bonds al
| lowed them by the courts. No individual or
minority group is responsible for the social
division between whites and Negroes, one
cause of dreadful congestion in Negro areas,
nor is it true that the influx of Negroes con-
| sists entirely of toilers with sole motive of
| loyal determination to work in the war eff
rort White families landing in town from the
outside are almost equally at loss for quarters
and many if them have correspondingly de-
graded their living conditions. And, finally, in
this vein, New York still has slums, too in
GLIDING areas which have become slums sud-
denly because of headlong and reckless i'm
migration, not all of it helpful to war produc-
ton.
But this is, after all, a crusade calculated
| to shock the people and, apparently, if nee