ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT, Editor-in-Chief and Secretary LAWRENCE F. ABBOTT, Contributing Editor The Outlook is indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature Volume 147 Uncle Sam Effects a Cure E The Outlook ARL CARROLL, convicted of perjury, was started on a journey to Atlanta. He collapsed in transit, was taken to a hospital, and his friends and lawyers set up a howl to the effect that his transfer to Atlanta would be the death of him. Hard-hearted (or keen-visioned) Government physicians begged to differ from this opinion, and Mr. Carroll's interrupted journey was resumed Atlantawards. Once within the prison walls, his health, instead of declining, promptly began to improve. Word now comes that he has recovered sufficiently to be transferred to the prison farm, where in wall-less seclusion he will work out the remainder of his sentence. Who knows but that if Mr. Carroll had promptly taken advantage of the Government's offer of a vacation from Broadway he might have escaped all the consequences of his earlier illness? Men with less influence and money would undoubtedly have had to follow such a course whether they wished to or no. We have never thought of the Atlanta Penitentiary as a health resort, but perhaps, like the imaginary mongoose in the old story, it may be a grand cure for imaginary ills. Score one for Uncle Sam. It may be that the next time he is confronted with a case like that of Earl Carroll he will not permit sentimental influences to warp his judgment. Crime and Youth A SUB-COMMISSION of the New York State Crime Commission composed of Senator John Knight of Arcade, Assemblyman Walter S. Gedney of Nyack, and Colonel George F. Chandler of Kingston has just filed a report of importance in its narration of the relationship of youth to crime. The Committee finds as a result of its researches, covering 25,000 cases of felony, that "the median age for those who commit robberies, perhaps the most serious of the so-called professional crimes, is not over twenty-three, while for those who commit burglary it is fractionally lower. The median age for forgery and fraud is about thirty, while grand larceny falls somewhere between twenty-five and thirty." Number I have been committed by some halfcrazed individual fanatic.. The culmination of these crimes came in the destruction in part of the fine old Cathedral at Quebec and in, the burning of the famous Shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupré. Now the mystery has apparently been solved. A convict who was about to begin a long term of imprisonment at Columbus, Ohio, has told in detail of the commission of a long list of burnings of churches in Canada and the United States for the sole object of stealing the treasures of gold and silver vessels and sometimes money. He admits that he has been committing crimes of this kind for a great many years, and asserts that his robberies probably yielded him in all about $300,000, mostly in gold, silver, and jewels from sacred vessels and paraphernalia. Among these crimes were the burning of the two great churches named above. In these cases, however, the criminal and his accomplices were unable to get possession of what they were seeking. The Church of Ste. Anne de Beaupré alone is said to have had in its shrine jewels worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but before the robbers could seize the jewels the priests of the church had rescued them. If this story is true, it unveils a new form of professional criminality, and one that is as despicable as it is sordid. Why Mississippi Chose a Demagogue HOUGH Mississippi has fought val iantly for almost twenty years to free itself from the demagogy fomented and fastened upon it by James K. Vardaman, that demagogy is still potent. Theodore G. Bilbo, the eager recipient of Vardaman's mantle, is again to be Governor, having won the Democratic nomination in a run-off primary. When Henry L. Whitfield was elected Governor in 1924, the long fight appeared to be won. Whitfield typified the State's best traditions. By profession an educator for years State Superintendent of Schools and for other years president of a college he had developed qualities of statesmanship which promised to make him a servant of his State 3 4 as dependable if not as brilliant as were L. Q. C. Lamar and John Sharp Willliams. Vardamanism had been defeated before, but by compromise. Vardaman himself had been displaced in the United States Senate, but by Pat Harrison, a Senator not the ideal of those who waged the fight. In the election of Whitfield there appeared on the surface to be no compromise, but there was. In order to secure Whitfield's election it had been necessary to place on the ticket with him as the candidate for Lieutenant-Governor Dennis Murphree, a politician of no particularly outstanding ability. Governor Whitfield died. Mr. Murphree became Governor, with the bulk of Whitfield's supporters obligated to him. In the ensuing contest for the Democratic nomination for Governor the State was thus deprived of the opportunity to make a free choice. Either of the two candidates eliminated in the primary might have been under other circumstances stronger than Murphree. When the run-off campaign came, with Murphree and Bilbo as the contenders, the State was already deprived of opportunity to choose the candidate it would have preferred. Of the two contenders, it is hardly to be doubted that Murphree would have been the choice if he had not been made a fool of by some of his overzealous supporters. Murphree charged Bilbo with having received a congratulatory letter from Governor Smith, of New York. Though the ostensible object was to show that Bilbo was the tool of the wets, there was at least the appearance of an effort to inject anti-Catholic prejudice into the campaign—and this, coming from a man whose name is commonly pronounced as if spelled "Denny Murphy," may have seemed to certain Mississippians not in good faith. In any event, Bilbo was able to disprove the charge. In the court of public opinion, slander was proved against Murphree. The revulsion gave Bilbo the nomination. The result does not prove that a majority of Mississippians want the type of government made familiar by Bilbo's preceptor and by Bilbo himself. It goes a good way, on the contrary, to show that Mississippi does not want this type of government and that the fight against it will go on. Meanwhile, however, Mississippi must suffer. A rumor was cur The Outlook for September 7, 1927 verely in the past from Vardaman- Exit Necator Americanus L ITERALLY translated, the name of the hookworm is "the American murderer" and never was a parasite more aptly named. When, some fifteen years ago, Mr. J. D. Rockefeller made a gift of a million dollars to aid in the cure and prevention of the hookworm disease, there was some ridicule of the idea that the hookworm was a cause of laziness, but the appellation "the lazy sickness" was as true as the scientific designation of the parasite as a murderer. Its ravages lowered the vitality and thus increased the death rate from other diseases. It also so reduced the energy of those attacked that it injured their working ability. The fight against the hookworm has been prolonged and vigorous. Now the Health Board of the Rockefeller Foundation is able to announce that, if the disease has not entirely been eradicated, it has come under control to a large extent the world over, while in the United States it has almost entirely disappeared. It is stated that about seven million persons have been cured and restored to something like normal activity. The successful campaign against the hookworm is equaled by that carried on by the Rockefeller Foundation against malaria. True malaria is the result of the bite of only one of three kinds of the anopheles mosquito known in the United States. The war against it first found and defined the breeding grounds of this particular species of mosquito, and then concentrated on its destruction. Altogether the progress, as reported by the Health Board of the Rockefeller Institute, in ridding the world of dangerous forms of disease and also in improving health conditions both in town and country, especially as they affect children, is most encouraging. It is true that baffling problems, the greatest of which is perhaps that of cancer, still remain unsolved; but the evidence of this single report alone is enough to show that science has made extraordinary advances in the last quarter of a century. With the Long-Distance Fliers rent in New York two days after the THE outstanding accomplishment in result was known that a wealthy Chicagoan who had been ready to launch a big industry in northeastern Mississippi -a region sorely in need of industrieshad at once canceled his arrangements. Business in Mississippi has suffered se the air for the last week in August was the clean and straight flight of the Pride of Detroit, manned by William S. Brock and Edward S. Schlee. They left Harbor Grace, in Newfoundland, on August 27, and after their flight of 2,350 miles landed at Croydon (the airport for London) "as calmly as though they were members of a personally conducted tourist party" on the morning of August 28, having made the flight in a trifle less than twenty-three hours. This was the first step in an attempt to set a new record for circling the globe. Since Jules Verne's story which made his fictitious travelers go around the world in eighty days the record has been very much reduced, and at present it stands at about twenty-eight and a half days, as made by two travelers who used airplane, steamship, and railway as best they could. With anything like good luck, Brock and Schlee will find it easy to beat this record and hope to reduce it to fifteen days. Their second step, from London to Munich, was as businesslike and successful as the first. The Pride of Detroit landed at Munich on August 29, after an eight hours' flight. Their next stop was Belgrade. The only previous attempt to fly around the world was that of American, British, French, and Italian airmen in 1924. The trip was completed by two American planes, piloted by Lieutenants Smith and Nelson, in about five months, with, of course, many stops. The phrase "around the world" perhaps needs some definition or limitation. This flight, which was completed only by the American planes, did not, in fact, traverse any very large stretches of ocean. The record was from Santa Monica, California, to Seattle, thence to Sitka, and thence through Alaska and the waters near the coast of Siberia to Japan and China, thence to India, and back to Europe; while the return voyage westward "across the Atlantic" from England was by way of the Orkney Isles, Iceland, Greenland, Labrador, and Nova Scotia-a passage which involved no very long distances of ocean flight. It was still a matter of doubt on August 30 whether or not Paul Redfern had met with a tragic end in his attempt at a flight from Brunswick, Georgia, to Brazil. His plane was seen and reported east of the Bahama Islands, but that was on Saturday, August 27, and no sure tidings had come from him later than that up to August 30, although a report came that a plane which might well have been Redfern's had been seen in the air over the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela. It is possible, therefore, as we write, that Redfern may have landed to repair his plane and again taken the air, or that he has come down later than this last observation was reported and is making his way through the forests toward the coast. He had planned to make the flight to Rio de Janeiro if his fuel held |