Volume 147

Chicago's Perennial School Row

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ILLIAM MCANDREW'S career in Chicago has been stormy. Coming there from New York to become directing head of Chicago's school system, he was greeted

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by progressives as a progressive. He had A National Guard flying-fields the

old "Jenny" airplanes, which have been the training ships of volunteer

been chosen by a school board appointed in the main by Mayor Dever. Before long those who had hailed him began to complain that he was arbitrary. The criticism was due largely to the establishment by him of discipline which was sorely needed. Thus trouble was brewing early. Then ex-Mayor Thompson, running as a candidate against Mayor Dever, boldly declared that if he were elected he would oust Mr. McAndrew. He declared that under Mr. McAndrew's Superintendency the Chicago schools were permeated with pro-British teachings, and he fulminated against King George V. But under the law the Superintendent is not removed except by trial and on charges. Mr. McAndrew's term expires on the first of next February. Without waiting for the term to expire, the Board of Education has brought charges and has suspended Mr. McAndrew pending the trial.

Nominally, the charge against Mr. McAndrew is that of insubordination. There are nearly three hundred teachers employed in clerical work which Mr. McAndrew says can be done only by persons with the training and experience of teachers. Mayor Thompson's Civil Service Commission demanded that those teachers be replaced by clerks selected under the Civil Service Law. As there is no eligible list, the first clerks to be appointed would be chosen by spoils methods. Mr. McAndrew declared the order ambiguous. In litigation started by the teacher-clerks Mr. McAndrew was called as a witness and testified that, in his opinion as an educator, the positions should be filled by persons with the training and experience of teachers. This testimony, counter to the views of the Board of Education, defendant in the suit, angered the Board's attorney. It was inconceivable that an official of the Board should subordinate the will of the Board and its attorney to his own professional standards.

Are American public schools to be conducted for the sake of the children or for the sake of politics? This is the

The "Peteys" Displace the " Jennies

Underwood & Underwood

William McAndrew, suspended Superintendent of the Chicago public schools

aviators in the Reserve Corps, took off on September 1 for the last time. Their nickname came from the letters J-N by which they were classified, but "Jenny" was too gay a name for them. Designed in 1915, of wooden construction, and often under-powered according to modern standards, they had a record of nose-diving crashes that won them the unenviable title of "flying coffins."

These antiquated planes have now been scrapped in accordance with an army order of last April. During the summer training-camp period intervening between that order and its date of taking effect there were two fatal accidents in these "Jenny" planes. At Pine Camp, New York, on July 6, the fall of one of these planes killed Captain Curtis Wheeler and Lieutenant Carl Sack. At Wichita, Kansas, a little over a

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month later, Lieutenant C. A. Pearson lost his life when another of them plunged to earth.

Neither of these costly casualties has been satisfactorily explained, and probably neither can ever be explained. All we know is that young men of incalculable value to their country were allowed to risk their lives in airplanes admitted -by the fact of the army order retiring them to be obsolete and dangerous. Why their continued use was permitted is the real mystery.

"Petey" planes, that take their nickname from the letters P-T classifying them as preliminary training planes, will replace the "Jennies." The "Peteys" are up to date in design, construction, and and bid fair to make a better power, record than the ill-fated "Jennies." The lamentable thing is that they are coming into service so late. If the importance and merits of the National Guard service had been recognized, the civilian volunteers would have had the modern planes they have needed and the "Jennies" would all have been on the junk-heap at least a year ago. From now on, it is to be hoped, the Guard will get more of the sort of attention and equipment it deserves.

Air Flights, Actual and Planned

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HE transatlantic, no-stop airplane flight westward is, as we write, still in the future. Hope for the St. Raphael and its voyagers-Colonel Minchin, Captain Hamilton, and the Princess Lowenstein-Wertheim- has been abandoned; one theory for which some evidence seems to exist is that the St. Raphael was actually sighted on the Newfoundland coast, but by some strange confusion of compass or pilot flew eastward until her fuel was exhausted. Levine may try the feat any day, and there is a rumor that he too may carry a woman passenger; his pilot, Captain Hinchcliffe, has a high reputation for daring and skill; he was a fighting aviator in war time and has lost one eye. Courtney abandoned the non-stop idea, started for the Azores and came down in Spain. Others may this year brave the fate of Nungesser, Coli, and the St. Raphael's voyagers, but it is doubtful. The reason of the greater danger in the east-to-west flight is succinctly put in an editorial comment of the New

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York "World:" "The aviators are learning what old sailormen knew all alongthat it is 'up hill' crossing the North Atlantic headed west. Prevailing winds on that stormy stretch of sea are westerly, and a head wind that impedes a steamship by a fraction of its day's run. impedes an airplane by exactly its entire weight per hour."

There are at least half a dozen other trans-sea air flights planned or talked about. There is a continued and growing interest in the world circling of the Pride of Detroit, manned by Brock and Schlee. They were detained at Constantinople because of Turkish red tape; but on September 6 they reached Calcutta. The exciting part of the voyage will be across the Pacific; two stops are planned, one at Midway Islands (belonging to the United States and possessing a radio beacon) and the other at Honolulu. To accomplish this will be a notable aviation feat of daring and skill.

On September 6 Bertaud and Hill started from Old Orchard, Maine, on the voyage on which they hope to reach Rome.

In view of the fact that, including the ten lives lost in the Hawaii race and preparation therefor, fifteen persons (two of them women) have perished in transoceanic flying, it is not surprising that at the recent meeting of the American Bar Association a resolution was unanimously adopted that pledged members of the Bar Association to urge Congress to pass legislation extending the powers of the Secretary of Commerce to include regulation of such flights. Mr. MacCracken, the Assistant Secretary for Aeronautics of the Department of Commerce, commenting on the resolution in an interview, said the Department would be glad to assume regulatory power if Congress saw fit to confer it.

The Other Side of Aviation

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RAMATIC as the round-the-world and transoceanic airplane flights may be, more solid progress in aeronautics is being made by events in this country which are not so widely heralded in the press. The transference by the Post Office Department to private enterprise of the last of its air mail routes—that between New York and Chicago-marks an epoch in aviation development in this country. There are now fifteen privately owned lines flying in the air mail and half a dozen others for which contracts have been let and which will soon be in operation. Nearly all of them, according to Postmaster New, can be conducted with profit and safety.

Another evidence of safe and sane interest in aviation is the response which

The transoceanic fliers have taught us two lessons: First, that it is possible to span both the Atlantic and the Pacific; second, that such flights are still very dangerous with present-day equipment. They have pointed the way to a glowing future for aviation, but what we now need is practical development rather than romantic and sensational attempts at further records. The establishment of air lines, the construction of airports, and increasing emphasis upon the factor of safety are the most propitious signs of aeronautical development.

A Message to Legislators
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HE judgment of the American Bar Association is the composite judgment of the best legal minds of America. On matters pertaining purely to legal procedure recommendations of this Association should have weight with Congress as great, perhaps, as the recommendations of the President; with other legislative bodies, weight greater, perhaps, than those of Governors, because haps, than those of Governors, because they more nearly embody the National judgment upon State matters of National import.

The American Bar Association, at its recent meeting in Buffalo, was more concerned with the evil of legal delay than,

perhaps, with any other single question. perhaps, with any other single question. It went on record as declaring that "delays in the course of the law are prejudicial to justice." It cited as an example the Sacco-Vanzetti case. It empowered its committee to meet with committees of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, the American Federation of Labor, the American Bankers Association, and other bodies. for the purpose of working out means of expediting trials. When those recommendations are made, it will be the duty of Congress and State Legislatures to give them serious and prompt consideration. Even before they are made it will be the duty of those bodies to give thought to this tremendously important question.

On one matter of delay-outside, however, of regular court procedure-the American Bar Association did not wait for further investigation. It declared that appeals of Federal taxpayers to the Board of Tax Appeals are too long delayed and called upon Congress and the Commissioner of Internal] Revenue for correction. It asked, too, that in tax cases where fraud is charged the burden of proof be placed on the Commissioner of Internal Revenue instead of, as it now is, on the taxpayer.

Again, the Association emphasized the importance of uniform State laws on real estate and chattel mortgages, commercial practices, bankruptcy, motor-vehicle regulation.

Another year was given to the various committees for consideration of plans for reforming the rules governing medical and other expert testimony, ridding the p profession of dishonest lawyers by additional disbarment proceedings, and abolishing the contingent fee as a cause of corruption and delay in trials.

Farming as an Engineering

Problem

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RESIDENT COOLIDGE, it is understood, has been at work recently on the recommendations that he will make to Congress concerning the agricultural situation. The American Society of Agricultural Engineers, through representatives, called on him one day and made recommendations based on the premise that, though the quantity of farm products is adequate, the quality satisfactory, and the cost of food and other products to the consumer not excessive, "a large number of American farmers do not enjoy as favorable a situation as the individuals in other indus tries and vocations."

The recommendations laid down a program which, in the judgment of the engineers, would place the farmer on a parity with other producers. There is in the program nothing of price-fixing, nothing of withholding products from the channels of trade, nothing resembling the provisions of the McNaryHaugen Bill. Farm financing should be on the basis of the earning power of land rather than on speculative value:| industrial uses of farm products should be developed; surplus farm population should be transferred, under supervision. to other industries; an engineering study should be made with the object of secur ing greater production per farm worker: the Government should carry out a research program in keeping with the work of the agricultural colleges and experiment stations.

If the substance of these recommen

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dations had been made the basis of a Federal program at the time when pressure for farm relief first became heavy, the Government might have done by now the greater part of what Government can do toward the solution of such a problem. The cry now will be from the McNary-Haugenites that agriculture cannot wait for so slow a cure. Of course, it must wait, since the quick cure is no cure, and it is to be hoped that the President will embody some such sound principles in his recommendations to Congress and to his administrative assistants.

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Farming as a Problem in Surplus N the same day on which the agricultural engineers came to see him, there came also to visit and advise the President a delegation of co-operative dairymen and a group interested in the development of the Columbia River Basin irrigation project.

The dairymen urged the fostering of co-operative farming organizations and an educational program among their members to get more butter fat from each cow. The President is reported to have urged them to milk more cows. If by this he meant that the problem of farming is how to produce more, not per acre or per cow, but per farm worker, he was simply stating a sound principle in concrete form. But of course the farmer who merely milks more cows that do not pay in milk for their feed and care is like the cheap John who argues that he can afford to sell suits below cost because he makes so many of them.

The irrigationists certainly offered no solution to the farmers' problems. To add 1,800,000 acres to the farm land of the country at a time when the farm land now in cultivation does not pay the farmers an adequate profit would be to increase the difficulties with which the farmers are contending. The trouble with the farmers is that they do not know how to dispose of their surplus crops. The irrigationists, if they had their way, would add more land to grow a larger surplus. The way out is to find new ways to dispose of the crops that our lands already produce. One of the most significant suggestions of the agricultural engineers was to find one of those ways in new uses for agricultural products in industry.

Real Help for the Farmer

OMETHING, no doubt a great deal, toward the relief of American agriculture in the long run has been accomplished in the consolidation of the three units of the United States Department of Agriculture having to do with ag

ricultural chemistry-the Bureau of Chemistry, the Bureau of Soils, and the Fixed Nitrogen Laboratory. The new name is the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, and the appointment of Dr. Henry G. Knight as Chief was recently announced.

The tendency heretofore has been, naturally, to have one of these units in charge of a chemist, another in charge of a specialist in nitrogen fixation, the third of a specialist in soil surveys and the like, each devoted, necessarily, to his own specialty rather than to the promotion of agricultural practice in general. The new bureau is now under the direc

tion of a man who is a chemist and a student of soils, but, above those, an agronomist. He comes to the Department of Agriculture from the University of West Virginia, where he has been Dean of the College of Agriculture and Director of the Experiment Station. He has served in somewhat similar capaci

The Outlook for woman tennis player of the world. She has proved this in her playing on the Continent of Europe. She proved it at Wimbledon, in England. She again proved it on August 30, at Forest Hills, New York, in winning for the fourth time the Women's National Championship. Her English opponent in the finals, her junior by five years, Miss Betty Nuthall, is, however, at sixteen years of age her not unworthy rival not only in tennis but in deserved popularity. The match which ended the tournament was never in doubt; but Miss Wills had good reason for employing to the full both her power and her skill. The doubles championship was won by two English players, Mrs. Kathleen McKane Godfree and Miss Ermyntrude Harvey. Again Miss Nuthall was in the finals, this time with her fellow-countrywoman, Miss Joan Fry.

Calles Reviews the Year in Mexico

ties at the University of Washington, PRESIDENT CALLES opened the thirty

the University of Oklahoma, and Cornell University, has acquired a broad experience in addition to thorough college training, and is in position to direct the chemistry and soils work of the Department along the lines of greatest practical benefit to agriculture.

second session of the Mexican Congress on September 1 with a Message that was distinguished for its quietness of tone. The important aspect of his address was its clear indication that there will be no change in the policies of his Government which have caused most trouble in the international relations of Mexico.

Nothing of the proficiency of the specialist is, however, to be lost. Dr. C. A. Browne, who has been Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry for several years, will continue to direct the fifteen divisions doing the chemical research work. It was at his own request that he was relieved of administrative duties in order that he might devote his energies to research. Likewise, Dr. F. G. Cottrell, who has been at the head of the fixednitrogen and fertilizer group of divisions, will remain in charge of that work. The soils work, so long under the direction of Professor Milton Whitney, will be in charge of Dr. A. G. McCall, who has been executive secretary of the International Congress of Soil Science.

The two critical points of Mexican policy have been the application of the oil and land laws and the regulation of the churches. The first has involved Mexico in controversy primarily with the United States, and secondarily with other nations whose citizens own petroleum and land titles in Mexico. The second has involved her in conflict with the Roman Catholic Church.

In the field of agricultural chemistry, though it is by no means a new field, there is large opportunity for usefulness to American farming, and the Department of Agriculture is in better position than it has been before to render the needed service. If it does, indeed, render it, and if other bureaus do the like, we may be rid in a generation or so of the recurrent cry for quack remedies for the farmer.

Helen Wills Regains Her Title
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ESIDES being an art student and a personable young woman, Miss Helen Wills, of Berkeley, California, is unquestionably the greatest amateur

President Calles makes it evident that his administration will countenance no surrender of the fundamental principles of the new Constitution, declaring the land and the sub-soil rights to be the property of the nation, to be assigned for use by concession. He declares that it is misunderstanding and indecision on the part of the authorities at Washington that have complicated relations between the United States and Mexico and kept them unsatisfactory. But his speech is notably devoid of any note of defiance. Instead, he emphasizes the loss occasioned to Mexico in trade and industrial development through inability to attract capital. His remarks on the need of foreign investment and his readiness to facilitate it give grounds for expectation that he will assent to some practical adjustment of the difficulties over oil and land rights.

His comment on the results of the