The New Republic

 A FEW weeks ago the Department of Commerce issued a newspaper statement about sugar. It was highly statistical and painfully dull in style, but it contained a few words destined to have results sensational enough for anybody. “Production for 1923 only 125,000 tons higher than last year,” said a note at the beginning. “Consumption needs estimated at 725,000 tons above production.” Five hundred newspaper editors and sub-editors read this and said to themselves, “Sugar shortage.” Forthwith, they wrote headlines for their papers which also said: “Sugar shortage.” READ MORE >>

THE French adventure in the Ruhr checked the rising propaganda for the entrance of the United States into the League of Nations, but it has not entirely arrested it. The case as the pro-Leaguers present it is very simple: Isolation means the continuance of war, cooperation the cessation of war. The League of Nations represents the method of cooperation; it represents the only existing attempt in that direction. The syllogism completes itself. READ MORE >>

Omens these: In Paterson, the silk city, little third and fourth class shops are flooded with fine silks to be sold at any price; there has been a panic in silk. A year ago a butcher got $1.35 a pound for his raw calf hides and today he is lucky to get 25 cents; the bottom has fallen out of the leather market. The sign of the night rider appears in the South. The farming industry in convention at Washington demands unlimited federal credit to enable the South to sit on its cotton until the price is 40 cents again, and the West to hold its wheat for $3.00 a bushel; else all are ruined. READ MORE >>

More ingenious use of Scripture has rarely been made than in a recent preliminary report of the National Association of Manufacturers. The document deals with the legislative minimum wage. It will repay reading by anyone who wishes to mix laughter with his tears. He will find that the discussion begins at the beginning, with Genesis, in fact, from which we learn that Jacob worked seven years in payment for each of his wives, Leah and Rachel, and six years more for the possession of a herd of cattle. READ MORE >>

A Far Country, by Winston Churchill. New York: The Macmillan Company. $1.50 net.  READ MORE >>

One great thing the matter with Congress is congressmen. There are other things the matter with it, but the chief trouble is the men who make it up. Back of these men, and converting them seemingly into mere manifestations of it, is the terribly ancient system of doing Congressional business which pertains in the Capitol at Washington. In a sense the system is the matter with Congress, not congressmen; but if ever liberation is to come it will be had at human hands, and the hands will be those of the slaves of the system who alone can strike off their shackles. READ MORE >>

Not long ago a very eminent member of the present administration at Washington, in speaking to the students of the University of Virginia, declared with evident candor and some fervor that all he knew about the science of government he had learned from Thomas Jefferson who, by the way, so highly prized things academic that he omitted from his chosen epitaph all mention of his service as President of the United States, and in its place recorded his labors in the foundation of the honorable university that bears the name of the Old Dominion. READ MORE >>