Camden People - Gordon Mackay

GORDON MACKAY was born Massachusetts on August 27, 1877. He began working in journalism in Boston in 1895, and came to Philadelphia in 1909.

By 1911 he was employed by the Philadelphia Times, and his columns on baseball were already being circulated nationally. In early 1913 he was working as a sportswriter for the Cleveland Leader, and was already well known as a sports reporter. He returned to Philadelphia, and worked as sports editor for the the Philadelphia Press, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Public Ledger, and lastly the Philadelphia Record. He also covered general news stories. By 1935 Gordon Mackay had come to work in Camden, as a featured columnist and reporter with the Camden Courier-Post.

He married to Inez Kane around 1913 at the age of 35. Gordon and Inez Kane Mackay were living with Inez' mother and siblings at the time of the 1920 census, at 2229 North 13th Street in Philadelphia. Gordon Mackay was already working as a newspaper reporter in Philadelphia by this time. By 1925 he was working for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and was

referred to in one of the Inquirer's advertisements as "That king of baseball writers and recognized authority on boxing, wrestling, and other sports".

In 1930 Gordon Mackay was sports editor of the Philadelphia Record. Gordon and Inez Mackay were living in April of that year at a home they had bought

at 5850 Pendridge Street in Philadelphia, with their three children, Gordon J., Elizabeth, and Jane. He was then reporting for the Philadelphia Record.

Gordon Mackay was one of 13 reporters who in 1931 made up a panel responsible for picking the American and National League All Star Teams, which in those days were post-season awards, as the mid-season All Star Game had not been instituted yet. In November of 1931, he wrote a column for Record which was reprinted in the Frankford Gazette of Northeast Philadelphia, concerning the demise of the Frankford Yellowjackets, an early NFL franchise.

As stated above, by 1935 Gordon Mackay was writing for the Camden Courier-Post. In Camden he wrote about more than sports. His column, which was published several times a week, was entitled Is Zat So? A wonderful writer with a great command of the English language, Mackay wrote on a variety of subjects, and seemed to be acquainted with virtually everyone in Camden and Philadelphia, great and small. A prolific worker, Gordon Mackay was still covering the news for the Courier along with writing his regular column,

Gordon Mackay passed away at the state hospital in Trenton New Jersey on February 16, 1941. He had been in hospital for 18 months. His health had declined after the death of his wife on December 31, 1938.

Assorted Articles by Gordon Mackay
Date	Newspaper	Topic
1922	Philadelphia	Boxing- Tommy Loughran vs.- Gene Tunney
12/18/1925	Philadelphia Inquirer	Football - The Pottsville Maroons
11/9/1931, 11/13/1931	Philadelphia Record, Frankford Gazette	Football - The Frankford Yellowjackets
November 1937	Camden Courier-Post	Camden - Labor Temple, Joe Hamilton
1/3/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden - East Camden, Bernard J. "Barney" Tracy
1/4/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden - Republican Politics in Camden County
1/5/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden - Camden Police Christmas Charity Activities
1/7/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden - "A Living Wage" & George Hertline's Bet
1/8/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden - The Stanley Sanhedrin, Dave Weitzman, Dora Rose, Gene R. Mariano, Samuel P. Orlando
1/13/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden - Andy Bonito's Italian Bakery (known as Oriti's Pastry from the 1940s through early 1970s)
1/14/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden - Dave Weitzman, Motor Vehicle Inspections
1/15/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden - John McKenna, bar owner, McKenna's Cafe
1/17/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden- Child entertainers, show business
1/18/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden- Republican Politics, Florence Baker, David Baird Jr., Mary Kobus
1/20/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden, Sports - Andy McMahon
1/21/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden, North Camden - Tom Homan; Dan McConnell (Note: subject's name was misspelled as "Holman")
1/22/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden, Vaudeville - H.L. Keely
1/22/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden- John Roskze
1/26/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden, Politics - David Baird Jr.
1/27/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden, Business - Sig Schoenagle
1/28/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden DeSoto Car Dealer - Morris Puro
2/8/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden, Immigrants - Mark Marritz, Pat Iarossi, Ann Pennington, The Dooleys
2/11/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Gene Tunney, Boston Politician James Curley & Thomas Curley
2/11/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Pyne Poynt Social Club Banquet
2/12/1938	Camden Courier-Post	John Remington
2/14/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Henry Peterson, Dr. Arthur Swanborg, Edward Martin
2/14/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Garrett Cox Pogue
2/15/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Dan Roche, Fenian Rebellion of 1866, Fenian Raid on Canada
2/16/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Campaign for 1939 Opened by Brunner George Brunner, Mary Kobus, Frank Hartmann Jr.
2/16/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Connie Mack
2/17/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Paul Robeson, Oliver Bond
2/28/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Mae West, the hardships of $100,000 a year
6/1/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden, Boxing - Frankie Conway
6/8/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden, YMCA - Ken Smullen, William Partenheimer
6/10/1938	Camden Courier-Post	Camden, Lawyers - L. Scott Cherchesky
6/1/1939	Camden Courier-Post	Camden, Law School, Peter Albano

Philadelphia - 1922

Tommy Loughran Has His Work Cut Out
For Him When He Faces Tunney

By Gordon MacKay
Philadelphia, PA
1922

Down by the sad sea waves that billow their way to the sands of Wildwood, Tommy Loughran, the real Adonis of the padded mitts, is finishing his training for another ambitious fight for the nineteen-year-old lion of the hour in fistic Philadelphia.
       On Thursday night Tomasco intends to wallop Gene Tunney, and of course, Gene expects to interpose considerable objection to any such intentions on the part of the South Philadelphia battler.
       Loughran looks like the best bet that boxing devotees of this city have to wear a crown later in his young life. Nineteen years old, tall, and put together in fine symmetry and ample preparations, Tommy has a long ring career ahead of him if one of those tough birds do not make him a wreck and total loss long before his time.
       Fighting Tunney cannot be called easy. Gene is a real fighter, first in the trenches of Flanders and next in the resined arenas of his homeland.

Rise to Fame Rapid

His rise to fame and fortune were rapid and his descent out of the chains speedy. Managed and chaperoned by a wily manager, who knew how to bring his lad to the eminence and peak in jigtime, Tunney has had a profitable career under the foxy and wise Doc Bagley, who has had a stable of fighters since the days when Hector was a pup.
       He picked Tunney out of the fistic flotsam and jetsam that the war tossed upon the shores of fighting America, and Doc showed excellent judgment and a keen mind for getting the ducats as revealed in the splendid record which Tunney accumulated in the past few years.
       Gene mounted the ladder of fame by leaps and bounds. So rapidly did he move his way upward that he was signed for a bout with Battling Levinsky, the Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde of the boxing circles.
      As Barney Williams, this fighter did not accumulate much except muscles on his legs from running around the ring. But as Battling Levinsky, with Dan Morgan as his mentor, the Quaker City boxer made a goodly pile of grit and also acquired a title, somewhat shopworn and marked down, but a title, nevertheless.

Was Proud Possessor

It was called the light-heavyweight championship, whatever that may mean. But, whatever it was, Barney Battling held it. He was its more or less proud possessor on the evening he first made the intimate acquaintance of Eugene Tunney, Esq.
       Gene poked Barney around something scandalous on that occasion and wound up by yanking that title right off Barney's curly bean. Gene wore the bauble until the night he lured Harry Greb, the Pittsburgh Kangaroo and shimmy dancer, into the ring.
       When these boys bade farewell to the spectators Harry wore the crown and Gene wore divers and sundry bruises, inflected with more or less severity by the victorious Stogieman.
       Greb came over here and fought Loughran several weeks ago, and while in the opinion of this writer Greb was entitled to a shade, there were numerous spectators among those present who thought that the laurel and the garland should roost on the clammy brow of Thomas.

Fight Was Close

The fight was close and very even, but the knowledge and ring craft of Greb gave him the verdict, so far as the opinion of this humble disciple of the typewriter and papyrus was concerned.
       Now Loughran takes on Tunney and the latter will prove to be no cinch. If Tommy has learned something from his bout with Greb he may eke through a winner, but Tunney is no mark for anybody.
       Gene can box and is long and rangy. He has had more experience than the handsome Thomas. But the latter is always ready and willing and has supreme confidence in his own ability to put the bee to the visiting fireman.
       Thomas Apollo is a fine drawing card at the gate, and it is possible that South Philadelphia will flit through the turnstile in a steady parade to watch its favorite and idol in action. The Phillies' park, where the impresarios will conduct these fistic melees, is adequate to hold the crowd, and a good night's programme should ensue.
       The Loughran-Tunney bout is the headliner, but there are other numbers on the card that shape up tolerably well too. Earl France, dignified collegian, with an intelligent knowledge of how to handle a foe, is due to mingle responsive dukes with George K. O. Chaney, whose left hand is as poisonous as a viper's caress.
       A lightweight bout in which much will be at stake will bring together Pal Moran, of New Orleans, and Harry (Kid) Brown, of this city. Moran, who has fought Benny Leonard twice, aspires to be the next opponent of Lew Tendler.
      Lightweights also will appear in the other two contests. Joe Tiplitz and Joe Benjamin have been matched for the second number while Kid Wagner, of this city, and Earl Baird, of New York, will fight in the opening contest.

* * *

Ten Best Bouts Fought By Loughran and Tunney

Tommy Loughran

Jimmy Darcy....13.....W Young Fisher...12.....W Mike McTigue...10...N.D. Jackie Clark....8...N.D. Fay Kaiser......8...N.D. Bryan Downey....8...N.D. Harry Greb......8...N.D. Vinnie Lopez....5...K.O. Frank Carbone...8...N.D. Len Rawlins.....6...N.D.

Gene Tunney

Battling Levinsky......15.....W Harry Greb.............15.....L Charley Weinert........12...N.D. Whitey Wenzel...........8...K.O. Sergeant Ray Smith......2...K.O. Sergeant Ray Thompson...3...K.O. Fay Kaiser.............10.....W Jimmy Darcy............12.....W Jack Renault...........10.....W Clay Turner.............8.....W

Philadelphia Inquirer- December 18, 1925

POTTSVILLE IS KING

Speaking of champions, and who can mention the name of the Pottsville Maroons without speaking of champions. The Chicago Cardinals are trying to cloud the title to the kingship by framing up a pretty putrid sort of buncombe. But the Cardinals can frame their stuff. Joe Carr as president of the National Pro League can rant and rave and gesticulate and ban, the Westeners can rail and bluster, but where-ever the football fan reads the dope, Pottsville is the professional champion of football.
     Pretty scurvy trick that worked, we'll inform the universe. The Cardinals, in order to tie Pottsville
and thus place themselves in alignment, for a battered crown, revived the disfranchised Milwaukee
team and beat them. To form an eleven, to have a sufficient ensemble aboard the field, four Chicago
high school boys, we are informed, were imported for the occasion. The names of the kids escape us
for the minute, but we understand they have made a clean breast of the whole affair.
     Pottsville has been the target for a lot of official acts since the Maroons came down here to play the Four Horsemen. They invaded territorial rights, but verbal permission was given to them, and it was the official who was to blame and not Pottsville.
     But the strangest part of the whole matter is how the Chicagoans hoodwinked themselves. They
had never seen the Maroons in action, as we understand, and thought Pottsville had some sort of hick team, comprised of boys who carried straws stuck in the corner of their mouths and who had to currycomb their hair every morning to get the hayseed out.
     So the Cardinals merrily challenged the Pottsville boys to play a game in the Illinoisan metropolis. Doc Striegal, manager of the Maroons, wired and asked if it was for a title.

THOUGHT IT WAS EASY

Covering their face with their hands to smother the broad smile that curved their manly lips, the
Cards wired right back and said it was for the title surely. Certainly, certainly. Who were these hicks from a jerkwater burg named Pottsville who thought they could beat the great Cardinals of the greatest city of Illinois? Faugh! Perish the thought! Well the Maroons went out to Chicago and took the Cardinals just as the exalted General Grant took Richmond. Didn't take the Maroons quite so long as it took U.S.G., but it amounted to the same thing.
So bitterly disappointed were the Chicagoans over the fact that they had tossed away their own title that the manager is said to have broken down and wept. Not figuratively speaking, but actual tears did the noble-hearted son of the wide open space shed. Then came this hodge podge known as the victory over Milwaukee and now the Cardinals feel they have a chance for the title. But we're just the same as the Veteran Athletes. So far as we are concerned we sat at the banquet board of the champion football players in the world of the commercialed cowskin, and that goes for us to the end of the chapter.
Furthermore we want to say that whenever you speak of sports in the coal countree, you speak of SPORTS too. Pottsville handed the crown, the laurel, the bay and the garlands to their heroes, and did it niftily, ornately and meritoriously. But that isn't all they handed to them. They got a brown traveling bag that made the writers mouth water. They got gold footballs, they got sweaters, they got jeweled emblems, they got a lot of presents, and everyone of those boys knew there was a Santa Claus before Pottsville got done showering them with gifts.

MERITED HIS PRAISE

No wonder Herb Stein, the peerless center said to this writer, astonishment in every word, surprise in every tone.
        "Did you ever see anything like it? I wouldn't expect anything like this from a college, but to a
professional team. By gee, it's wonderful!" Wonderful was the very term.
     Incidentally Pottsville is going out and do its football on a big scale next season. It wouldn't be a bit surprising if a stadium with a capacity of 15,000 were built, and the Maroons given a throne in keeping with the dignity of their rulership. But stadium or no stadium, Missus Pottsville's football family are all Maroons, and they are the champions of the world.
     Laugh off that one, Chicago-

Frankford Gazette - November 13, 1931

GORDON MACKAY WRITES ABOUT YELLOW JACKETS

Expresses Regret At Passing of Great Gridiron Machine

Gordon Mackay, well known sports writer in “The Philadelphia Record” on Monday, had this to say of the Frankford Yellow Jackets --

“The current depression and internal troubles appear to have doomed professional football in Frankford. The mere fact that Shep Royle quit active connection with the eleven, that Louis Castor, one of the pioneers in founding the eleven, brought suit and that the players have decided to travel, bring vividly to mind that the Jackets seem to have reached the end of the trail. The principle reason for a dubious future lies in the idle looms of the district. Frankford is a textile center, and when looms are not humming and cotton and other staples not produced, the prosperity of the community is seriously endangered, and sport suffers along with other things.
      No matter the future nothing can dim the prestige, power and advertising the Yellow Jackets brought to a thriving home and prosperous community. For years and years an intercommunity rivalry existed between Frankford and Holmesburg. Geography and sport conspired to create a natural enmity between the villages, an enmity that existed not only along the broad lines of sport, however.
      The annual football duel between these rivals was one big autumn festivity in that section. Victory had adorned the banners of both until finally Frankford had an enormous idea, a great vision. Professional football was pushing its nose at this time and Royle, Castor, Howard Bowker and others of the invincibles determined on a plan so radical as to stamp Frankford as its originator.
      The community would enter the National League of Professional Football. This idea might seem trite nowadays, but fifteen years or more ago, when Frankford broached the proposition, it was not only one of the most radical steps in sport, but one of the most dramatic attempts around here in many seasons.

Frankford Showed Great Civic Spirit

Skeptics abounded on every hand. New York, Chicago, cities of that size might support a professional football team. But Frankford? Bah! Here were Penn, Temple, Villanova, a host of colleges all drawing football support from the army who marched to the gridiron stands every week-end.
      But the soul of the adventurer and the iron of the pioneer were in those young men of Frankford. They formed the Frankford A. A., subscribed for its stock, swept a big community idea right into the consciousness of the Northeast. It was the first time a community the size of Frankford dared brave the wrath of the gods and dared to launch a project of such size and moment.
      The noble experiment in Frankford was watched with eager and intense eyes at home and abroad. Shep, Howard, Lou – all lads who made the Jackets a landmark in Frankford, all plunged ahead with lusty spirit and growing funds. Behind the team marched a solid phalanx of support, the community of Frankford.
      The first season was weathered. These doughty lads masked their home address under no municipal costume. No sir, these lads who went here, there and everywhere to play, East and West, were the FRANKFORD YELLOW JACKETS. The name of the community wandered about the whole world, and parts of the nation where pro football teams dwelt became Frankford conscious.
      It was the greatest advertising the community ever had. It did more good than 100 orators and was of more value than 200 ballyhoos. Frankford football spoke for itself and its community. Within a few years the experiment was stamped with success and doubt and trepidation no longer existed in Frankford on the El.
      Once, perhaps twice, the championship was won and added laurels came to the players and added luster to the community. The Frankford idea spread into Green Bay, Wis., and Portsmouth, Ohio.

Crash Imminent, Dissolution Inevitable

It was always with a mind that could sense progress that these pioneers dealt with the question of football in Frankford. It was always with a point of view where money wasn’t the ultimate to be considered. In fact, these adventurers and experimenters never profited a cent personally from football – all the money was given to community projects, hospitals and other institutions of like nature and value and use.
So Frankford and its football became a fixture and folks paid less attention outside. Frankford’s place in pro football was firmly and definitely established. We hope our outlook is wrong, we hope that Frankford remains secure in its old place. But things look doubtful, and let us hope that such a community drama, a community adventure, shall not perish from the gridiron."

Camden Courier-Post - October 27, 1937

Is Zat So?
by
GORDON MACKAY

FIFTY years rolled away in the twinkling of an eye the other day and once more we sat in the peanut gallery of the Old Howard listening to "Alexander" tell his trials and tribulations to "Henry Clay Jones." You youngsters of 40 perhaps do not know those distinguished thespians, but ask dad, he knows.

He'll tell you all about McIntyre and Heath. Jim Mclntyre, now called to join the celestial choir, while Tom Heath, at 84, still lives in stage memories that can never fade, for him or those who witnessed the famous "Georgia Minstrels."

Mclntyre & Heath were as familiar to the average eye as ham and eggs, bread and milk, coffee and sugar for 60 years. Perhaps, no team in the history of Thespis ever existed so long together. Even now the eye dims a mite to think that the kids of today have no chance to see the lugubrious Alexander, taken away from "his good job in the livery stable," to travel with a minstrel troupe that usually was stranded and never billed.

The reason that memory took a nose dive into the past was Joe Hamilton. Joe, now a veteran trouper himself, intends to give Camden a treat on December 10, when he'll put on an old time minstrel show in the Labor Temple.

This veteran will gather about him the boys who were the stars of blackface years ago. While many will be missing in the flesh their ghosts will hover over the circle as end men crack their jokes, and the interlocutor puts the questions glibly and often to that immemorial "Mr. Bones," without whom no minstrel show is complete and no production is a minstrel show.

JOE HAMILTON REAL VETERAN

Joe Hamilton himself was one of the best of all minstrels, a trouper who still hankers for the banjo and the burnt cork. To prove that this venerable hoofer still can slap down those soft shoe as agilely as he did in days of yore, Joe may dance a bit after the interlocutor rails for the "opening number" 15 days before next Christmas.

The veteran minstrel was born in Kensington, or to be more specific, in Fishtown". That means perhaps little to the resident of Camden, but "Fishtown" has a physical identify that makes it still apart from Philadelphia, although it remains its Sixteenth ward.

Joe, like all other gamins of the district, won his first spurs as a thespian when he was the winner of an amateur night, given at one of the local theatres in his district. It was a few steps, and we mean steps literally and figuratively, for Joe was a dancer, in the parlance of the profession "a hoofer", that took Joseph from the amateur ranks to those of professional entertainers.

As a minstrel and an actor he traveled all ever the country, and believe it or not, Mr. Ripley, while Joe has reached that allotted span of threescore and ten, he can hum a mean number, warble a fine ballad or topical song, and throw a few steps that would make the average hoofer look like a contortionist.

For 38 years after that fateful amateur night, Joe was on the stage. He played with McIntyre and Heath, and one of his proudest memories is the offer that McIntyre made to Joe, asking him to take Heath's part, when that veteran performer had become ill and wanted a rest. Joe was a pal of all the great song writers and songbirds of an era that alas, has passed away, to the sadness of the trouper and the utter woe of those who sat and heard them in the good old days.

OLD PALS HAVE PASSED AWAY

It fell to our lot to know personally many of the old minstrels and singers whose names were those of the friends of long ago to Joe. First. was the late Hughie Dougherty, who was one of Frank Dumont's minstrels, in the heyday of that minnesinger in the old Arch Street Theatre.

Hughie and myself were strong friends. We were together on a training trip with the Athletics to Atlanta in 1910, when Connie Mack was piloting the team that later in the year was to give the lean leader his first world champion baseball+++++

..............Hibernian brogue under ..... the patois of the blackface comic is a secret which he alone knew and he never told me, anyway.

Then Joe and Jimmy Thornton were buddies. Jimmy, who wrote "When You Were Sweet Sixteen," "My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon" and other song hits of another and to my mind, a more melodious day, was also a friend of yours truly.

One of the Christmas cards we especially treasure every Yuletide is from Jimmy, who now lives in Long Island. Jimmy, in the days when he and his grand wife, the late Bonnie Thornton, were headliners, liked to dwell where wassail prevailed. It was during those moods that good old Irish melody spurred him to write some of "the most singingest" songs that were "ever warbled by a barbershop quartet, or by strolling minstrels, standing by the old board fence in the light of the moon.

Make no mistake about Joe Hamilton, either. A little troubled and beset by his old enemy rheumatism, he has days when he doesn't feel so chipper, but usually he is a grizzled old veteran who wears well and defies Father Time to give him a bust in the nose.

Agile in mind and "trippety" on his feet yet, Joe wants to show the youngsters of today a real minstrel show. The thespian spirit and traditions of the stage have hit the Hamilton family in another direction, too.

One of Camden's prettiest contributions to stage, screen and radio is Kay Hamilton, or otherwise Mrs. Peter Trado. Winsome and petite, Kay has delighted thousands upon thousands with her singing over the air, in musical comedy and talking pictures. If possible, she'll be along to help Dad in his coming minstrel show, which will be the goods. A reunion of old time minstrels and blackface comedians such as hasn't been seen in many a moon.

Personally, I'm going to break a leg to get there. There are certain young Mackays who will be among the audience, for Dad wants these youngsters to see, look and listen, when a real old-time minstrel show gets under way on December 10, in the Labor Temple, Broadway and Royden street.

And here is hoping that Joe Hamilton's voice remains as melodious as ever and that rheumatism may be conquered, so the grand old hoofer and minstrel can be able to step as he did in the days of McIntyre, Heath, Thornton, Dougherty, Dumont, Dockstader, Primrose, West and those other magnificent blackface performers who made minstrelsy impressive and their hearers delighted.

Camden Courier-Post - February 1, 1938

Is Zat So?
by
GORDON MACKAY

STOUT fellas like Connie Mack and Gerry Nugent would sum up the situation like this:

'Time to warm up a new pitcher and send that bird to the showers."

Big Business needs to warm up some new pitchers to put the ball over the plate at the hearings before the various legislative committees of the Congress. None of those who have toed the rubber heretofore seems to have anything on the ball, and are trying to get by with a prayer rather than plenty of stuff.

Let's look over the lads who stepped out of the bullpen to don the spangles for Big Business. The first was William Knudsen, head of General Motors. In his line Knudsen is one of the big boys of the motor world, and knows his stuff about making whizcars from the sprocket to the windshield.

He told and told truly that General Motors wasn't employing so many men because the demand for new cars slackened, and there was no use in building cars when nobody would buy them; That is so axiomatic that it shouldn't be taken as a pearl of great price or revealing any tremendous wisdom.

Mr. Knudsen also found that policies of the administration had created a reign of "fear," So he replied to a question to that, effect pumped at him by Senator Lodge, the youthful son of Massachusetts. When Knudsen declared that the administration inculcated fear by its acts, Senator Byrnes asked the motor magnate what corrective remedy he would apply to allay fear and to repel the recession.

'That was the poser. Summed up in a nutshell Knudsen didn't have any answer. All he knew was that what Roosevelt did was wrong.

WHY SALARIES SO LARGE EH WOT?

Personally I would propound a question to General Motors' Knudsen and all the other Knudsens. Trade in automobiles went to pot during 1937, especially during the latter part of the year. Workers were thrown into idleness, wages were reduced because hours of labor, were curtailed. At the same time the salaries of the executives headed by Alfred P. Sloan with more than $500,000 amounted to more than three million dollars.

Supposedly these executives received those tremendous salaries because of their value to the corporation. The thing that sticks in my craw is how to evaluate an executive's salary. He gets $500,000 when business is good, he gets just as much salary when business hits the skids,

The worker doesn't continue to work 40 hours a week when no automobiles are sold. Then why should Mr. Sloan; et al, receive the same salary during bad times as in flourishing times?

You would be informed if you asked that question that Sloan and his associates are worth every nickel they get because of the business they bring to General Motors. All right. But are they worth as much salary when business is rotten and they apparently have fallen down on the job like a ton of bricks?

You don't pay workers, full time when they haven't the work at hand. You don't pay a worker who falls down on the job and lets business go to blazes as much salary as you, do when business booms and the goose hangs high.

If Sloan and his associates are worth $500,000 in boom times because they make business for the corporation, they most certainly should take a big cut when they let trade go to pot and bring rotten days to General Motors. Bad logic, poor reasoning to say that. Sloan is worth as much money when he lets business become poor, as he is when business booms. No can do! Doesn't sound right.

DU PONT ALSO WORKS "IN FOG"

Big Business sent Lammot du Pont to the mound with instructions to shoot them down the middle and not to work the corners of the plate. Mr. du Pont said the businessman was in a "fog of uncertainty” because he did not know what the Administration was doing. Perhaps there have been a groundwork for that belief.

Morgenthau wants the budget balanced, Ickes and Hopkins want WPA and relief, supplied with more money. Eccles argues for spending, expenditures. In that respect the administration not only has Mr. du Pont guessing but persons devoted to the New Deal as well.

Taking the du Pont word for the fact that he was in "a fog of uncertainty" over the Administration's policies, du Pont also proved that he was in some, thing of a mist himself over several other matters.

He attacked the Wagner Labor Law as "uncertain" regarding the dealings between employer and employee, then followed this by saying that du Pont had no labor troubles because the corporation "followed the law." On one hand du Pont didn't know what the law meant, on the other he knew it so well that by strict obedience to its provisions du Pont warded off any possibility of labor troubles.

Du Pont also stated that he held, the policies of the New Deal in great fear, yet under Roosevelt the du Pont dividends became richer and more lush than ever before. The "fog of uncertainty" had not blotted dividends out of existence, in fact it seemed to have bolstered, them.

Despite this "fog of uncertainty" du Pont said that his corporation planned to spend $35,000,000 in plant expansion in 1938, which didn't make sense to the committee in view of the fact that all corporate spending had been supposed to have been suspended until the magnates were able to see "through the fog of uncertainty".

Big Business’ last nominee for the slab was a rookie named Jimmy Cromwell. His mother is the wife of E. T. Stotesbury, partner in the House of Morgan. Jimmy's wife is the former Doris Duke, one of the richest women in the United States.

Jimmy went to Washington to ask the repeal of estate taxes, to free the poor toiler by sticking a sales tax un everything he bought. Jimmy proved he had plenty of courage if his common sense might have been open to argument.

Cromwell's big moment was when he declared that his wife had 50 millions in tax exempt securities. In other words the poor sucker named John Q. Public had to pay taxes that protected this Duke wealth that didn't yield a nickel to Uncle Sam.

If the Doris Duke Cromwell bonds were stolen it would be the sucker money provided by the plumber, the shoemaker, the printer and other forms of civic life that would pay the police to recover the bonds.

If the Duke heiress should be "snatched," it would be the money of the newsdealer, the reporter, the automobile mechanic that would pay the police that would save Doris Duke Cromwell.

For sheer unadulterated brass you have to hand it to Jimmy. With the Duke-Cromwell domicile paying not one cent for protection out of this tremendous wealth, Jimmy had the gall to ask the plumber, the newsdealer and the other protectors of his wealth and his wife's wealth to pay two cents sales tax on a pound of steak, to run the government.

Warm up ·another pitcher, pronto.

Camden Courier-Post - February 2, 1938

Is Zat So?
by
GORDON MACKAY

PENNSAUKEN and politics are allied and tied together like ham and eggs. The boys and the girls, too, play the game in that township eight days in every week. You find more cliques, coteries and cabals in Pennsauken than might be expected in a place thrice its size. Every time you step on a man's toe in that place, you've trod on the bunion of a political leader, or at least a person who believes himself a political leader.

The Democratic leader, at least on the nights that the Pennsauken Democratic Club meets, is Charlie Rudd. Charlie is a tall, good-looking barrister, with a yen toward peace and a hankering for victory. In appearance Mr. Rudd is both natty and personable. In brains Mr. Rudd, while no Jim Farley, speaking politically, knows his way around.

One of the principal assets I find in Brother Rudd is his absolute refusal to take himself so seriously that he has to order his hats direct from the manufacturer. Mr. Rudd, as president of the Pennsauken Democratic Club, opposes W. L. Napoleon Rogers, C. P., who as head of the United Republican Club of Pennsauken, Is the big potato of the majority. Mr. Rogers' political sense, I might state, has been greatly heightened. He is a person who reflects the benefits that come through the chastening rod. Since he accepted the defunct nomination of the G. O. P.-less majority in the Board of Freeholders and bared his neck to the blasts, Les has been a huge light and learned to keep the cards he plays closed to his necktie hereafter.

The United Republican Club of Pennsauken has a conspicuous home, around the corner from the rival headquarters.

HARMONY EVER CLUB WATCHWORD

Once inside the precincts of the United Republican Club and harmony sits on the bough like a bird. Sweetness and light fairly ooze through the pores of the members, as they stand at attention and "Heil Rogers" to their heart's content and the danger that the welkin may be shattered.

Peace, amity and harmony form inseparable triplets in the club meetings. Outside the structure the merry members of the U,RC. run as fast as their legs can carry them to grab back their hammers and start working on their leaders. The noise that you hear as you near Pennsauken on nights that the United Republican Club meets is the whir of the grindstones sharpening the axes to be wielded, after harmony hall had its innings and scores no errors, also no runs or hits.

Talk with the leaders of Pennsauken and you discover that everybody is back of W. L. Napoleon Rogers, but some of them carry their knives in their hands waiting the chance to poke it so far into Les' back that you can use the handle for a hat rack.

Perhaps Br'er Rogers is aware of the manner in which harmony masquerades in this fashion. but if not we take this opportunity to inform Les to that general effect, as Mr. Rogers and myself are buddies from the word go, with 'to ---" added .... Having given Old Pal Les a boost and warned him in advance, because we like the C. P. at that, we return to our first idol, Charles Rudd, barrister, Democrat, the man who can keep Walter Olsen, of the township committee, quiet on meeting nights.

Mr. Rudd's greatest worry is Mr. William Harker. Mr. Harker is president of the New Deal Democratic Club which comprises, as near as I can learn, Mr. Harker, member of the township committee, and a lithograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It seems that Mr. Harker, like the well known Julius Caesar, would rather be "first in Gaul than second in Rome."

HARKER FLOCKS ALL BY HIMSELF

Mr. Rudd's friends will insist that I have misspelled, the word "Gaul" in talking about Mr. Harker but who am I to bother myself with the family quarrels of Pennsauken politics? My Idea was to write about C. Rudd, the attorney and political leader to point out the fact that Pennsauken Democrats could travel farther and do much worse than follow the banner of the urbane and taciturn Charlie Rudd.

We always have had the deepest admiration for the political leader who refuses to envision himself as a combined pocket edition of Demosthenes, Napoleon, Roosevelt and Lincoln. And in this respect we find that Br'er Rudd measures up to our qualifications. He takes the bitter with the sweet. When he says nay, nay and yea, yea, he means it.

One of the most touching spectacles, one which shows the real brotherly love that exists under the gruff surface of Pennsauken politics, is to see Les Rogers buttonholing Charlie Rudd in a corner of Camden City Hall to offer Charlie 30 pieces of silver, if he will hogtie and harrow the Pennsauken Democratic Club.

'Tis a majestic spectacle, too, my countrymen, to witness the lordly manner in which Charlie tells Les to take his low offer and begone. For Charlie's education has enabled him to read of two certain miscreants named Judas Iscariot and Benedict Arnold, and Charlie Budd wants no part of the role of either.

Charlie's cup of joy ran over In November, 1936, when certain gentleman named Roosevelt ran for President. The G.O.P. ran for cover at the same time. Charlie smiled the smile that won't come off when F.D.R. swept through Pennsauken like rumor that Les Rogers had kissed George Brunner.

Since that red-letter day alas!

Der Fuehrer of the First Jersey Belch, Adolf Hague, Insisted on Meinherr Moore for Governor and that cooked the goose of victory for Charlie in Pennsauken last November.

BUDD LUCKY AS CHIEF OF 600 FAITHFUL

The unanimous manner in which Pennsauken refused to vote for Moore pained Charlie Rudd as a Democrat greatly, but didn't trouble him so much as a leader. Why should the camel strain at a gnat and swallow a mountain, or words to that general effect?

To attend a meeting of the Pennsauken Democratic Club is to at tend a convocation of Democrats who are fighters every inch. They fear neither the storms, that rage, the winds that blow, no the United Republican Club just around the corner.

Of course, they give due credit to such men· as Freeholder Westcott, the Hustling Heckler, for aiding the Democratic cause by sitting in the Camden County Board of Freeholders as a Republican member from Pennsauken.

Now that Charlie Budd can take a deep breath without hearing some good Democrat cuss Moore to the skies, you'll see his qualities if leadership evoke great response. Meanwhile the Democrats of Pennsauken are to be complimented on having such leader as Charlie Rudd. Charlie Rudd is darn lucky to be the president of a club that has more than 600 Democrats in Pennsauken.

And if Charlie finds that the club is in need of funds to make a real fight, let him see Bill Davis. If that man can keep his present financial system intact, not only can he take the Pennsauken Democrats out of the red, but he might be borrowed for that purpose by the Democratic National Committee.

Camden Courier-Post - February 2, 1938

Corliss Spoofs at the Groundhog So Don't Let Its Shadow Worry You	Marmota Monax Nothing but a Ham Prophet Anyhow, Camden Expert Declares WE'LL GET WEATHER OF SOME VARIETY By GORDON MACKAY Let Marmota Monax do his best or worst today, it's all the same to Samuel T. Corliss, Camden's weather expert and a man who declares the groundhog is a ham prophet anyway you take him. "Groundhog? Hunh!" declared the venerable gentleman who measures the wind often to find if Summer has gone with the wind, or Winter either. "What difference does it make whether the groundhog pops out to see his shadow, or to take a squint at the world in general? He doesn't mean anything. "I see where a University of Pennsylvania professor says the groundhog probably comes out of his hole to grab some garlic. Well that

Mr. "Marmota Monax"- groundhog to you- consults his weather report for his annual prognostication today while Samuel T. Corliss (Inset), Camden's veteran weather prophet takes exception to his ability and calls him just "another quack."
sounds reasonable to me. It's about the only thing that would bring a groundhog out. "Groundhogs are in the same class with goose bones, heavier pelts, thicker coats on pigeons and the rest of those old-fashioned ways to reveal the coming weather. And none of them is worth a darn. None of them is any good. "Let me tell you a story to illustrate just how little the groundhog has on the ball. There were a couple of farmers in Pennsylvania talking together about the coming Winter. "'This is going to a terrible Winter,' said one of them. 'The animals all have heavier coats, the pigeons are getting thicker coverings, the bark on the tree is growing thicker, too.' . "'My gosh,' replied the other farmer, 'you're not going to have all that to yourself are you. Over in our county we haven't noticed any such things as that, so I guess this Winter is all going to be in your county.' "Same way with the ground hog. He doesn't mean a thing as far as the weather is concerned, whether he sees his shadow or not means nothing." "Then you think the stuff about the groundhog and St. Swithin's Day is bunk?" he was asked. "I don't think anything about that," was the reply. "I just think the groundhog and his shadow is a fable and the stuff about St. Swithin and the weather is a fairy tale. I'll rely on the wind to tell the weather, it hasn't failed me yet. "Give you an idea. Rained hard on Monday and friends of mine wanted to go somewhere today. So they called me up to ask me what Tuesday's weather was going to be. I told them it would be clear and cold but one of them said, 'the weatherman says it will be fair and warmer.' "’That's all right with me,' I told this friend, 'but I say it will be clear and colder.' Who wins?" Clear and cold it certainly was. Then Corliss smiled- the veteran prophet has passed his 80th birthday and is still going strong -and said; "Want to put a knockout on the groundhog, once and for all?" "Sure," he was told, Hit's nice work if you can do it." ' "Groundhog comes out in February doesn't he? Yes. Well I want to say that February and August are, the on]y feminine months in the year. Thougnt that 'feminine' would get you. What does it mean? It means that February and August are the only months in the year that won't be dictated to. "I never make any predictions about either of them, for they'll fool all the weather prophets in the universe. I just want to say that I measured this Winter with the wind the same as always, and I told the Courier-Post we would have a 'normal' Winter. That means not too hot and not too cold. And that s what we have had thus far and that's what we'll have until Spring. "So don't bother about the groundhog. As a weather prophet he is just a ham anyway."

Camden Courier-Post - February 3, 1938

Is Zat So?
by
GORDON MACKAY

SQUIRE BENJAMIN FOGELMAN relishes a title that has made him both fortune and fame in the past decade; For the squire. is that large and vocal gentleman known as "Benny the Bum," who has one of the night spots in Philadelphia,

Mr. Fogelman has been a choice, acquaintance and friend of mine for many years, and there is much about Benjamin, the Vagrant, to interest one and also to weld him to friend ship with Bee, the Bee.

Our original tete-a-tetes with Benjamin, the Nomad, date back to the days when Mr. Fogelman was casting sheep's eyes at repeal and wondering when legitimate liquor would smooth his pathway into the night life of the Quaker city ...

Mr. Fogelman's business, as we noted, was largely comprised of losing bets on prize fights. Benjamin, the Hobo, at the time we speak would willingly bet on anything and everything. And, there were those who accommodated Benjamin, the Wanderer by betting him to a standstill, and also seeing that he did not win by taking care of the jury before the fight started.

It was during a run of ill luck that Benny, the Traveler, came to me, not with tears in his eyes, but with wistfulness in his face and anguish in his tones. Somehow or other, Benjamin seemed to believe that sports writers possessed occult information denied to other denizens of this mundane sphere. So he beseeched us to yank him out of the depression in which he found himself by always betting on the wrong gee.

TWO KNOCKOUTS ON SINGLE CARD

It so happened that when Benjamin, the Bee, appealed to us there was a fight program arranged for the following Monday night at the Arena. On the card were two gentlemen, one named George Courtney and another whose name escapes me for the nonce. Both could box, both could hit.

Courtney and the other disciple of the manly art were in separate melees. Thus, as Mr. Fogelman, still suffering from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, appealed to the writer for a good tip, we said:

"Take Courtney- and the other bird to win by a kayo."

Benjamin, surname Fogelman, looked at us in a surprise as mute as it was telling. He scratched his head for some time, then said:

"Is that on the level, I could get about 9 to 2 on that bet?"

"It's on the, level for me," I retorted, "and just to prove my heart and tongue are clicking together, I'm writing that fact in the sheet."

“Wait a day or two will you?" begged Mr. Fogelman. As it was not the intention of the writer to spill same prophecy until the Sunday edition, it was with willingness we consented. At that time in our naive way we didn't figure what was rambling through the brain of Bee, the Bee.

In Sunday's fight dope we went to bat, predicting that Courtney would knock out his man and that a similar performance would be recorded with my second favorite winning via a kayo.

On Monday night, the evening of the fisticuffs, Courtney and the other favorite won as per prediction and in a manner so described. Among those who wanted to pat the majestic back of the writer was Mr. Fogelman, the smiling as only Benjamin, the Vagrant, can smile.

CLEANED UP AT 5 TO 1

The mirth, jollity and glee that bathed Mr. Fogelman in such a glow of satisfaction was uncorked even to a greater extent, as he insisted that he drive me back to the office in his own particular gasoline chariot.

"I got 5 to 1 on a kayo," chortled Benjamin, as we rode officeward." "And did I clean up? I didn't get any bets on the decision, but when I said knockout in both of them, I got 5 to 1. Made a parlay on a half a dozen of them, too,"

Which was the furtherance of a beautiful friendship, made all the loftier and cemented the harder be cause after that we gave Mr. Fogelman no tips on bets on pugs. It is enough to tempt the lass and jade called Milady Fortune once, never twice.

Mr. Fogelman, however, continued to pick them in his own way. His picking was extremely one-sided, always wrong, he said. Meanwhile, the business of losing bets seemed to make Benny prosperous, and in a fit of brain inertia he opened a night club. ,

At least that is the manner in which the boys along the Rialto on Broad street gazed upon the venture fathered by Bee, the Bee. Mr. Fogelman, however, seemed to look upon ill-starred ventures with a patronizing eye. He plunged into the vortex called Philadelphia night life with a vengeance and plenty of the do-re-mi, as the boys along the asphalt in mid-city Philadelphia say.

Finally Mr. Fogelman hit upon a fine advertisement for his place. The night life was filled with spots called Chez This and Chez That, and Palais This and Palais That, so Fogelman, with that instinctive luck he owns, called his spot "Benny the Bum's." The name spread like wildfire. In side the palatial night club one found that it was as ritzy as any thing New York offered. Hence prosperity has followed Benny.

Months had fled since we conversed with Benny until the other day, when we ran into him through sheerest accident. The greeting we received was effusive not to say elaborate. Mr. Fogelman intimated that he would rather have Mackay for his guest than Governor Earle, although Benny is quite a friend of the Governor's at that. In fact the Delmonico of Broad street in Philadelphia knows persons, personages and personalities. Benny is all to the good with all of them.

Perhaps his innate modesty would compel him to refrain telling his best story. Mr. Fogelman and a friend were in New York and decided to visit the hot spots. Mr. Fogelman had his card of introduction, okehed by a so-called big shot. The door man turned a frosty face at Benny and his pal.

"I don't know that guy," said the sentry, "you blokes may be all right, but don't you know somebody that can okeh you?"

Quickly did Mr. Fogelman spring to the breach.

"Sure, Benny, the Bum," said that worthy himself.

"Come in," yelled the doorkeeper, "I'm a great friend of Benny, the Bum, myself."

Camden Courier-Post - February 3, 1938

Junior Red Cross Activities Told to Astonished Elders
12,000 Members in County Learn Meaning of Real Charity
Through Aid to Sick and Needy School Classmates

By GORDON MACKAY

Bright-faced boys and girls of the Collingswood schools, representative of the 12,000 members the junior council of the Red Cross has in Camden County, astonished their elders last night by the nature and scope of their humanitarian work,

These revelations were made at the meeting of the Camden County Chapter of the Red Cross, with Dr. Leon N. Neulen, superintendent of Camden city schools, presiding.

So remarkably humane did these boys and children reveal themselves that they shared honors with Fire man Harry Cooling, of the Collingswood fire department, who was an unsung hero until last night, too.

Henry D. Rooney, familiarly known in Red Cross circles as "Pop" and the man in charge of the first aid efforts of the organization, disclosed the hero role that Cooling played some months ago.

"Cooling was a student at the first aid school we were maintaining at Collingswood," said Rooney, "and he was in class one night studying when a call came to him. The police department had found a woman overcome by gas.”

Errand of Mercy

"The Policeman who found the victim knew the fire department was at first aid school that night. So he telephoned to the firemen for assistance and Harry Cooling responded. He revived the woman and then summoned a doctor.

"The physician sent for an ambulance to take the victim to the hospital. The doctor said to Harry: 'You're going with us,' That woman became unconscious twice when on the way to the hospital and each time Harry revived her. She is alive and well today."

While Harry shone because of Rooney's tale, the youngsters basked in the sunlight of their own description of the work they did, told with modesty, and actually astounding the elders on hand.

William Stevenson, who is chairman of the junior council in Collingswood and a senior in the high school, opened the program for his associates. He disclosed that every student in the high schools and every pupil in the elementary grades is a member of the junior council. They are organized to take care of needy pupils, and the anonymous manner in which such humanitarian work is performed was explained at length by the young spokesman.

$967 Spent In Aid

Miss Dorothy Thorne gave an insight into the activities of the juniors, measured in dollars and cents. She told of the collection of $1001 from the Collingswood school children during the past year, of which $967.34 was spent to aid youngsters, needy, sick or ailing.

The manner in which these young people spent the money was an insight into the expansive work they do. One needy pupil was given a vital X-ray examination for which the juniors paid $15.

Another bill of $10 which was paid, provided medicine in hospitals for students whose own. Pocketbooks couldn't supply the money. Milk for babies, meat for the hungry, clothing for the needy- all these activities were set forth in a chapter that evoked praise from Dr. Neulen, the chairman.

The Christmas work of the high and grade school youngsters, too, formed an illuminating chapter. Miss Jessie Watt of the high school, recited how the schools have been supplying these baskets for five years.

152 Baskets Sent Out

"No family is identified by name,'" she said, "but each is known by a number which is placed on the basket and the address of the person to whom the basket is to be de livered is appended.

"In 1937 at Christmas we sent out 152 baskets."

"These baskets,” added Miss Watt, "if totaled in money, would· have amounted to possibly $1500, all of the baskets being supplied by the school children alone."

Douglas Reese of the high school senior class, who helped to deliver the baskets, told of the joy of the recipients, and how he and his fellows learned how the other half lived.

"It was an experience we will never forget," he declared.

Richard Miller, a chubby youngster who attends Garfield school, recited the international amity which is promoted by Collingswood grade schools and foreign school children.

"We send cartons from our school, and the other schools to foreign countries, filled with toys and playthings, dolls and everything that a child would ask at Christmas, but no war toys” he said.

"And no soap," he declared fervently, while his elder auditors roared, "because we don't want to insult them by malting them think we think they need soap."

Garments Distributed

Betty Jane Vogel, also of the Garfield school, told of the instruction which the pupils receive, while Phyllis Greene, of the junior high school, narrated how each of the 300 girls in the school supplied a garment she had made to be given a needy girl last Christmas.

Dorothy Paul, of Oaklyn, who at tends Collingswood High school, revealed the international friendship and amity that Collingswood youngsters are promoting by an. exchange of letters and gifts. She exhibited a tremendous portfolio which had been sent by Collingswood High to a high school in Czechoslovakia. The aliens to reciprocate, sent back, a portfolio showing the process of steel-making in the great plants at Skoda.

Miss Paul also explained that these exchanges were made with high schools as far afield as South Africa, with those in Italy and other European countries.

Helen Barton, also a student at the junior high, was the 1937 delegate to the national conference of the junior council held in Washington. She recited how the juniors had contributed between $15,000. and $18,000 during the last year to be expended in helping communities to supply libraries and playgrounds to the boys and girls of those places.

Miss Barton also recited a story regarding an accident which had occurred to two children in Delaware, who afterwards became wards of junior council.

Pay for Surgery

"They had been in an accident," she related, "and it was necessary to resort to plastic surgery in order to keep their faces from being scarred for life. The junior council sent them to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where the operations were per formed and new faces literally given to the children."

Reports were received from various committees at the session held before the juniors took charge. Representatives told how the various communities are fighting the depression by having the various Red Cross units make sweaters, jackets and other articles of clothing to supply the needy who lack these essentials.

The county chapter, too, reported $6000 sent to Washington national headquarters; as payment for the membership which had been recruited during the past year. Miss Viola E. Williams, executive secretary, reported the chapter would embrace 12,500 members shortly, the greatest known to the organization since wartime.

Mrs. M. E. Linden was presented with a pin for having recruited the largest number of new members for the Collingswood unit.

Camden Courier-Post - February 4, 1938

Is Zat So?
by
GORDON MACKAY

CHEMIST by profession and rated as South Jersey's foremost expert on toxicology in court trials, A. C. Herting of Haddon Heights, holds many interesting experiences during his career. The Hertings were chemists as a matter of heritage. "A. C." the Haddon Heights chemist is known, was educated at the College of Pharmacy, Temple University, and the University of Leipzig, Germany.

His father was one of the leading chemists of Philadelphia, employed by several corporations as their expert. "A. C." followed in the sire's steps. Chemistry is a science is interesting as it is valuable. To appear as a witness in murder trials is sufficient repute to fix a man's status.

Herting has been a government witness in several murder cases, two of which stand out in his memory because of the bizarre and novel features connected with the crimes and the trial of the defendants. One of these was the murder of an organist some years ago in one of the Amboys.

"This girl was beautiful," Herting told the writer, "she was the organist in one of the leading churches of the city. She married a young man who had been her swain since childhood. He left her the day following the wedding, and not a word ever came from either bride or bridegroom as to the reasons for this apparent desertion.

"One night she was heard playing the organ in the church, an edifice which was a short distance from her home. In fact the girl could walk the distance in five minutes. Her duties as organist ended at 9 p. m" so her father waited for his daughter's arrival.

GIRL SLAIN IN DRUNKEN FRENZY

"The father became uneasy when five minutes after the hour had gone. When 10 minutes tied, and his daughter did not appear, the father started to search for her. It was snowing. When he got outside, the father discovered something that looked like a bundle lying on the ground. It was his ravished child.

"Suspects were arrested and their clothing turned over to me. I found blood spots on several of these garments belonging to different suspects. Finally I nailed a Negro as the murderer because the bloodspots on his coat corresponded to the blood of the girl who was slain."

"In another murder case that was tried in Salem County," continued· Herting, "it was necessary to present tests that were the result of experiments on guinea pigs. In fact I earned the nickname 'The Guinea Pig Chemist.'

"The layout was this: boarding in Pennsgrove was a dope peddler and a young fellow who worked at duPont's. There were a number of other young men boarding there, who were employed in the duPont plant, too. The bunch formed a clique, played pool together, went to shows together, were an informal club.

"One night Haslett- he was the chap who died- was invited by the other fellows to play pool. 'No,' Haslett said, 'I've got a bad headache and think I'll pass tonight.' 'Oh,' the drug peddler told him, 'I'll give you something that will cure that headache right away.

"The narcotic dealer went to his own room, came back with a powder. Haslett swallowed it.

The party started for the pool game. Haslett had just about reached the sidewalk, when he collapsed. He was hurried to the hospital, but did not regain, consciousness before he died.

"The police were told about the headache powders. Here occurred the first untoward incident regarding that case. The coroner and coroner's physician differed politically."

COMPELLED TO MAKE AUTOPSY ON VICTIM

"As a result of this political antagonism," narrated Herting, neither of them was willing to perform the autopsy. So I performed it. I discovered morphine in the stomach of the victim, As an outcome of the autopsy, policemen searched the drug peddler's room, to discover many decks of heroin there.

"He was arrested, and indicted for second degree murder in giving Haslett an overdose of heroin. I had a roblem there. Morphine found in the victim's stomach, no narcotic but heroin found in the room. My theory was that heroin introduced into the system by mouth would be come morphine in the stomach, as morphine is the base of heroin.

"I was compelled to experiment on guinea pigs and rabbits to prove my theory. I fed these animals heroin in an overdose to correspond to the amount of morphine found in Haslett's stomach. I discovered the truth,

heroin taken internally in that manner became morphine.

"I presented my findings, attending the trial until the case was given to the jury. I had to make a 5 p.m. train out of Salem on that day, so I didn't get the result of the verdict. I looked in the newspapers for several days, but could discover nothing about the verdict.

"It slipped my mind until one 'day I was walking down Market street in Camden, when I happened to run into the judge who tried the case. He looked at me in a curious manner, then said: 'Do you belong to any fraternal orders?' I told him I was an Odd Fellow. Then I asked the question I had long wanted answered: 'What was the verdict?'

"'Acquittal,' he told me. I could scarcely believe it, although I believed then, and I believe now, that the government erred in not asking for an indictment for involuntary manslaughter rather than second degree murder.

" ‘Yes,’ he said to me, 'I knew the verdict would be acquittal when I saw the prosecutor allow one juror enter the box.

" 'How was that?' I asked rather surprised, 'Well,' the judge said, 'the juror and the defendant were both members of the same fraternal order.' I thought that was rather far-fetched reasoning. I was convinced that this might be something of an alibi for the acquittal.

"I had another case in Salem County, where a gang of four bad men banded together to rob. They didn't intend to murder but one night they took a guard at duPont's, robbed him, then shot him to prevent identification.

"I was the chemist retained by the government to test bloodstains found on the garments of one of the men. The defendants said they had stolen some chickens and killed them, and that the stains were chicken's blood.

'The defense lawyer challenged my qualifications. He thought he would be smart, so he said: 'I suppose you can tell chicken blood, cat blood, elephant blood, can you?' 'Yes,' I answered, 'Oh,' he replied, eyeing me as if I was a smarty and trying to get by with a bluff, 'and how would, you be able to qualify to tell those different kinds of blood?'

" 'Because of the tests that I have made in the Philadelphia Zoo on the various animals you have named,' I replied. That shut him up right then and there.".

Camden Courier-Post - February 5, 1938

Is Zat So?
by
GORDON MACKAY

SILENCE is golden where rumpus and ruction in the Democratic camp is ·concerned. Once upon a time whenever the unterrified Democracy squabbled and battled, fought and bled, 'twas tip secret. Indeed, the Democrats seemed to occupy nine-tenths of their time fighting over something that wasn't worth a left hook to the chin.

It was row, row, row, from morn till late at night, fighting over the 'crumbs that fell from the tables of the opulent G. O. P. of that day and date. Nowadays, however, the shoe is on the other foot. It is the G. O. P. that lurks ‘round for the crumbs, of both comfort and patron .age, fighting their battles and spreading the tidings of their strife to the four corners of the county.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have foxily masked their bitterness, put a lid on acrimonious charges, created the erroneous inference that the dove of peace bears an olive branch in its bill. The impression is that a cooing pigeon is no sweeter than the harmony that prevails among the bigwigs of the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Roosevelt of Hyde Park. Despite the apparent smoothness of the appearance, there is strife and battle galore raging beneath the surface. It is carried on in a quiet strain. That it exists is only too true, as the warring leaders would admit, if they were compelled to testify under oath.

Oddly enough it seems a battle for leadership rather than spoils. For the Brunner-Kelleher wing of party leadership has a blunt edge on its rivals. This edge is due to the fact that the other camp has its leaders all nicely tucked away in lucrative jobs.

LEADERS CARED FOR IN BILLETS

A brief glance over the situation will reveal this fact. Harry T. Maloney, a chubby gentleman with a beaming face and a modulated voice, is the collector of internal revenue. Mrs. Emma E. Hyland, suave, maternal and friendly to one and all, is postmaster. Samuel P. Orlando, both debonair and daring, is county prosecutor.

Naturally, none of these leaders has a valid claim to kick against the personal deal received from the Democratic party and its leadership. None of those mentioned above could expect to see huge forces rallying around their flag, when those to whom the invitation must be given are found idle and unemployed .

Practically then the Brunner-Kelleher faction is in the position of declaring that the present Democratic leadership hasn't treated the rival clique any too poorly, when such jobs are allotted to the leader ship of the antis, opposed to the Mayor and County Treasurer.

Though this be logical, yet whoever heard, of logic swaying politics, or guiding a politico? The battle for leadership goes on apace. Circumstances lent an opportunity to the anti-Brunner leadership that came close to spelling curtains for the ruling element in the local Democratic camp.

All the strife and its consequent strategy harks back to the Moore-Clee battle of last November. Mayor Brunner and Treasurer Kelleher were on a spot. They had Moore, with his anti-Roosevelt record in the United States Senate, his Hague smear, for their gubernatorial candidate. So many different elements in .the Democratic party opposed Moore and Hague that Brunner was right behind the eight ball,

He couldn't help the Clee vote that piled up here any more than he could take credit for the tremendous sweep that carried the county for Roosevelt in 1936, Brunner in one instance was riding on a. victor's coattails in Camden County. 1n the other instance he was beneath a juggernaut that was flattening him out, along with Kelleher.

SITUATION GAVE RIVALS CHANCE

Harry Roye, one of their ticket for Assembly, kicked over the traces. Support usually given to Brunner and Kelleher in certain quarters was missing. George and Eddie were fighting a hopeless cause.

But this didn't deter the other faction from making hay while the sun shone. Missionaries of that camp ran to North Jersey with stories that Brunner and Kelleher were lying down on the job. As a matter of fact neither was lying down on the job. Both were punch drunk, politically speaking, from the socks they were taking on the chin for Moore.

The tales bore fruit. North Jersey began to act decidedly sore toward the local majority leaders. When the freeholders' election revealed a gain of eight seats for the Brunner-Kelleher leadership, the glee of the rival camp was unrestrained. The couriers of the other faction raced to Jersey City and jubilantly yelled "'Ve told you so." These ambassadors pointed to the triumph of the freeholders on the Democratic ticket as convincing proof that Brunner and Kelleher and their allies laid down on Moore to save the local ticket. When George and Eddie went to Jersey City to confer with· Moore, Hague and the party dictators, the Camdenites were confronted with this view of the election results in Camden County.

Then Brunner and Kelleher cut loose. They told Hague's minions and Moore's messengers that Camden County leaders had a right to be sore, not North Jersey. All that Brunner and Kelleher and their allies had sacrificed, declared the Camden county leaders, were three assemblymen, absolute control of the County Board of Freeholders and several minor posts as well.

Instead of Brunner and Kelleher lying down on the job, the North Jersey doubters were told, it was the fact that Brunner and Kelleher in carrying along Moore had lost everything else;

The Camden county leaders were indignant, sore and talkative, too. They pointedly told Hague and his allies, that if they didn't like the manner in which the Camden County leaders had performed to go take a jump in the nearest Jake.

Such was the situation until some allies of Hague looked over the Camden county figures. They discovered that with all the odds that were against them, Brunner and Kelleher and their organization had actually delivered 84 percent of the registered Democratic vote to Moore- a performance that was a miracle, in view of the tremendous opposition that arose against Moore among both the G. O. P. and the Rooseveltians in the Democratic ranks.

When some stout soul in North Jersey pointed out that Governor Moore and his cohorts couldn't overlook a leadership that was able to muster 84 percent of the Democratic vote at the polls, despite the terrific battle to which this leadership had been subjected, Moore and his satellites saw a great white light shining. No less an authority than Governor Moore, when informed, told Mayor Brunner and Treasurer Kelleher that all patronage would come through the State committee representatives. The Mayor, fortified with this claim, publicly told the fact at a banquet recently that he and Mrs. Mary Ellen Soistmann, State committeewoman, would handle all patronage. '

How the news and the switch in official viewpoint will affect the other wing of the Democracy is not given to me to divulge. I'm merely stating that the harmony that seems to spread its silvery wings over the Democratic party, has a few sour notes buried in the symphony.

Camden Courier-Post - February 5, 1938

*Heads Banquet*	PYNE POYNT CLUB ARRANGES BANQUET Annual Get-Together of 27 Year-Old Organization Set for February 26 Twenty-seven year's ago a group of North Camden young men banded together to promote sports. Since that time an enviable record or achievements has been set up as the result of that meeting in the home of Albert R. Heap, 544 Bailey Street, in the latter part of January, 1911. There, it was that the young men formed themselves into the Pyne Poynt Social Club. They met there for about three weeks, then moved to the Southwest corner of Fifth and Erie Streets; which has been the headquarters since. The original group and those who joined in the years which immediately followed the organization meeting have scattered, many of them have moved out of the city, but each year they get together at a banquet. Annual Banquet February 26 The time now is 'approaching when the annual banquet will be held. It is scheduled for Saturday night, February 26, in the headquarters of the organization. It is the gala occasion to which the older members look forward through the year- the opportunity to reminisce

FRANK KELLEY
Chairman of the committee which is arranging the twenty- seventh annual banquet of the Pyne Poynt Social Club, which is to be held Saturday night, February 26.
on the days that have gone and to recount the things they have done to promote sports. And, while the years have piled up for them, individually, there's not one of the group of about 60 members, who will attend the banquet, who is not just as peppy as ever in his interest for the original undertaking of the club. "It will be the twenty-seventh annual banquet," said Frank Kelley, chairman of the banquet committee, "and the boys will be coming home for the get-together. They'll come from Washington, from Illinois, Delaware, several sections of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Old friendships will be renewed, old times and the affairs of the Pyne Poynt Social Club of bygone years will be discussed. It will be a night that will' be enjoyed by everybody:" Gordon Mackay To Speak It seems fitting, members pointed out, that the principal speaker should be a man well versed in sports, from the marble games of boyhood, through baseball, football, championship fights- everything in sports. The speaker will be Gordon Mackay, member of the editorial staff of the Courier-Post Newspapers. Mackay, through his 40 years in newspaper work, will recount his experiences in sports- and Mackay knows sports and those who have made history in its various phases. In addition to Kelley, the banquet committee is composed of Hamilton Batten, George Ash, Alfred J. Ross, Jr., Jacob Dreher, Ellery Caskey, Nick Adezio, Edward H. Winters, Alex Kahnweiler and Harry F. Walton. As chairman of the entertainment committee, Ross will be assisted by: Robert Johnson, William Huber and Caskey.

Camden Courier-Post - February 7, 1938

Is Zat So?
by
GORDON MACKAY

THIS writer makes a grand salaam to the school children of Collingswood. The youngsters are members of the junior council of the American Red Cross, itself indicative of the humanitarian objectives of the young folk. Few persons, unless they are cognizant of the grand work of the school pupils in the grade schools and ·the students in the high schools, can realize how effective these youngsters are in their charities and humanities. I

When I stop to consider that, years ago, when this grizzled old codger was a pupil in a grammar school, that the only contact we had with foreign nations was on a round globe that turned on a swivel, the amity and alliances that these Collingswood boys and. girls have built abroad seem a miracle.

We also regard as significant a little Incident connected with this international alliance between Southern Jersey and Central Europe. One realizes that the children in the classrooms reflect the nature of domestic thought, the trend of home training, home beliefs, home aims. This fact was proved to a startling degree by the straw votes taken in the suburban high schools in 1936 on the presidential contest.

The communities ran almost identical at the polls with the straw votes in the classrooms, so that the school children were really revealing the manner in which pa and ma were going to vote at the polls.

. This prelude was merely to allude more convincingly to a little fact that may have escaped particular attention at a recent meeting of the Camden County Chapter of the Red Cross in the Collingswood borough hall. The students in the junior high school made a portfolio last Christmas to send to high school children in Czechoslovakia.

MUNITIONS WORK AT SKODA SHOWN

Naturally as junior members of the great Red Cross, the C.H.S. students included in their portfolio, largely pictorial, scenes that were "interesting to pacific students here, pictures of school work, student activities, and the like.

It is significant that the portfolio which the students in a high school in Prague returned to Collingswood contained pictures of the great munitions works called Skoda. A plant that ranks with the Krupps in Germany, or any of the great plants in our own country.

I have been hearing views given by those who have returned from Europe. These travelers agree Europe is martial-minded, and that war is in everybody's thought, if not on everybody's' lips. It was necessary to take everything with a grain of salt, for after all, an American viewpoint on a European situation is not necessarily reflective of European thoughts.

But a school child's mind is reflective of the thoughts of his elders.

The mere fact that these children in Czechoslovakia should believe that their friends in South Jersey would, be interested in pictures of the great munitions plant reveals to me, at least that Europe is war-minded. I believe the kids disclosed this better than all the premiers, dictators and rulers on the continent.

I shall stick to the original premise that a child reflects its domicile, reflects its parents, reflects the home thoughts and beliefs, and this portfolio, filled with pictures of a munitions plant, is tile best argument to me that Europe is thinking and dreaming of war. Hence the warrant, insofar as I am concerned, for the increase in Uncle Sam's own national defenses.

It also indicates the simplicity of the student mind in Prague. At a distance of thousands of miles these simple children probably felt that the little pals in America were thinking along the same lines as the offspring of the Czechs.

MUCH CREDIT DUE YOUNGSTERS

Hence what could come with greater pleasure to the Collingswood children, or be fraught with a sterner message that we in Czechoslovakia are prepared, too, than to send the Jersey children a book filled with majestic pictures of Skoda's great munitions' plant.

Indeed, to my mind, it was the most telling and significant indication that war is in the European mind from peasant to dictator. To turn to the other side of the picture the work of these children among the needy of the school students is one of the finest examples of brotherly love to be found anywhere.

These youngsters, too, have learned the great lesson of real benevolence- that charity must be anonymous, that giving to the poor must be done in a spirit of helpful ness, in a mood of brotherliness whereby the one who has, gives of his store to the one who has not.

The manner in which these youngsters distribute their Christmas baskets is in this same generous spirit. The families in want are not exposed, their names are a secret. The baskets are filled; each has a number and an address. The almoners deliver these baskets to the addresses. All the children know, unless the person to whom the basket is delivered furnishes the information, is that the right number got the right basket.

The mere fact that these, school children in Collingswood could collect $1001 for their charitable work is in itself a high water mark of excellence and efficiency. And the manner in which the kids distributed the money, the practical uses to which they put the funds, is another feather in their caps.

When I read about this Junior Red, Cross I got the impression that it was one of the usual organizations for the youngsters, an organization that gave them a pin to wear and a sweater to knit, then decided to call everything jake.

That is the usual nature of most of these "junior" organizations- a pair of knitting needles, some wool and a pin: Presto; the whole thing is complete, the entire picture filled, If I was astounded at the international scope of their work, or the fact that these school children were actually carrying on international amity in its most fruitful fashion, between the children of the various countries, the elders present were paralyzed.

If those elders revealed an insight Into their real impression of the junior council, I'm sure they would say that they had had the same idea as Mackay- a pin, a skein of wool, a pair of knitting needles.

When the amplified, expansive labors of, these children were disclosed to them, the elders were flabbergasted, but delightedly so. The children won unstinted plaudits from the chairman, Dr. Leon N. Neulen, and they deserved every tribute, every garland.

So I wish they would take another grand salaam from the author..

Camden Courier-Post - February 8, 1938

Is Zat So?
by
GORDON MACKAY

YOU can always rely on Camden to bring back the normal balance. The more I see of this city the more it is impressed on me that realism can be found anywhere in the place. Camden is a good antidote for pessimism and cynicism, if you only want to find the cure and are fortunate enough to locate it.

This thought seeped into my ken the other day after I had read one of I those kind of magazine articles, that always give me a pain in the neck. It was one of those "expert" articles telling youth how to find its proper sphere in the business world.

The dame who was dishing out the piffle-paffle on that score had the decency to admit that one of her students wanted to "know how he would get a job'' rather than listen to all the ballyhoo about how to fill in your own conspicuous niche.

Accompanying the article was the usual honey from personnel managers about openings that their corporation possessed for the paragons who could answer all the requirements. The fact that these personnel managers declared there was always room for such material made me laugh. For, argued the Mackay, if all these positions are crying and begging for men, how come there are 10 million unemployed in this country, according to unemployment census.

Of course the whole business was a lot of guff and meant nothing in the face of the facts. Certainly these positions couldn’t go begging without being filled fromn the raw material that might be found in the army of 10 million idle workers. That type of hooey is even too tough for an incurable optimist like myself to swallow

LAUGHABILITIES RISE AT DETECTIVE “MAG”

My laughter increased as I read one of those "true detective" publications. What made me laugh was that every article, factually correct, ended with the admonition that crime does not pay. That suited me all right, too. Until I cast a surreptitious eye over the advertisements in this magazine; only to discover that it was packed from cover to cover with all the gyp and sucker advertisements that one can shake up.

The fact that this magazine was pushing out its message that crime does not pay and then purveying to the lads that trim the suckers whenever the trimming was good was too much for my blood. I began to want to exercise profanity, which is something that intimate friends know is a thing that Mackay rarely uses.

So we went fro the domestic hearth in both sorrow and anger, only to bump into Mark Marritz. Mark will never be president of the United States but if Haddon Township remains a G.O.P. citadel it is a fair assumption that Mark will always be solicitor for the township unless he rebels and becomes a Democrat.

Now Mark Marntz is an excellent antidote for skepticism, pessimism and cynicism regarding America and her institutions. Mark was born in Kiev, Russia where he remained until he was 10 years old, when the family migrated to Wilmington.

"You can't tell me anything about Russia today,” Marritz ventured to the writer. ''because I know how it was before the World War. I was born in Kiev and we were compelled to keep a picture of the Czar in the house, in fact every household in Russia had to display the Czar’s picture.”

“Jewish boys in Kiev, where they had massacres and pogroms against the Jewish people, were not allowed to go to school. They were prohibited form getting an education”.

HAD HIS FIGHT TO GET AHEAD

“The only way we Jewish boys- my father was a merchant in Kiev- could get an education was through the rabbi. He couldn’t have a regular school either, he was compelled to teach each boy as a separate pupil.

“I got a good working knowledge of mathematics from the rabbi and also some of the Russian and Jewish culture. Imagine how I felt, too, when my father came to America and we settled in Wilmington. For I had to go into the first class in the lowest grade at school, because I could not speak English.”

"I had to learn the alphabet just like youngsters who were going to a school for the first time. As soon as I mastered English, though, I went ahead more - rapidly, for the rabbi's teaching had given me education along the lines that were necessary to me."

Marritz is a walking advertisement for the destiny and glories of the melting pot. Energetic, good-looklng, personable and with a talent for conversation and a penchant for the law. Mark assuaged some of the indignation that was wrought when we read the hooey that had been printed in those magazines.

Next we get a further advance back to normalcy when we bumped into Pat Iarossi. Pat is a barber but that doesn't deter him from basking in the sunshine at Miami and thanking his lucky stars that his family moved from San Marco in Italy to Camden years ago.

Pat is another excellent example of the melting-pot. His barber-shop is now located at 600 North Third Street, site having been Pat's for the past 14 years. Before that he had a shop on Front Street, where he barbered the native sons and daughters for 20 years.

Make no mistake, Pat has carried the tradition of the America that benefited him so much into his own activities. The years of service of his four employees amount to 52.

The oldest employee has been stropping the razors there for 18 years while the baby of the outfit, who is not so old either, has been employed by Pat for 10 years. Two others enjoy, terms of 14 and 12 years.

Pat’s greatest memories cluster about Ann Pennington, Camden's gift to the Follies and the stage, and the Dooleys, a theatrical family which also is a proud Camden possession.

"I used to cut Ann Pennington’s hair when she was a child," Pat recalled. "And the Dooleys always made my shop their headquarters. Billy Dooley worked for me. The kids, six of them, trained in a patch we called the 'cow lot’. Rae and May were the two girls, while Johnny was the big shot of the boys.”

“They used to turn cartwheels right out in the lot there and come into my shop to do a little vocal rehearsing. Ann Pennington was always dancing, you couldn't keep her feet still. I remember one day Ann, Johnny Dooley and a girl named Moore went over to Lubin's in Philadelphia, trying to break into the movies.

“Lubin wouldn’t handle them and they all came crying into my shop.” Whereupon Pat produced a post card dated in 1911 showing Johnny Dooley starring in the old Bijou Theatre in Philadelphia.

So Pat has no envy of the thespians or of anybody else. Why should he- Miami is some place to spend the Winter.

Camden Courier-Post - February 9, 1938

Is Zat So?
by
GORDON MACKAY

May we not at this time proffer a suggestion to Mayor Brunner, Eddie Kelleher and the other party sachems that should be a sure-fire plan to make Camden county safe for Democracy? We advise that the Democrats gather a fund of $4000, the money to be expended in giving testimonial dinners to Republican leaders, near-leaders and persons who figure themselves to be both.

Engage tables enough to accommodate about 350 persons. Invite representatives of all the various G. O. P. factions in the county, give a half dozen tickets to boisterous Democrats, so that the latter can sit back in their seats and enjoy the subsequent dogfight on a full stomach.

This idea that I am advancing to register about 5000 more Democrats in the county and paralyze the remnants of the once-powerful county G.O.P., was born when I attended the recent testimonial dinner to Louis Bantivoglio, freeholder from the Fifth ward.

Naturally my attendance was purely in a professional capacity. Speeches were made by divers and sundry spokesmen, the high-light being the sales talk for Bantivoglio and Baird by David Baird, Jr. The latter waxed wrathfully but warily in castigating the "half-breeds," as he once sarcastically termed the Republicans of the ilk and stature and political. leanings of Commissioner Mary W. Kobus.

Rarely, too, have we ever attended a banquet, either in the capacity of guest or reporter that ever awakened so many echoes of the past as did the dinner to the Fifth ward freeholder.

MRS. KOBUS ELECTED LOUIS

First came the information from friends of Commissioner Kobus that she was responsible for the election of Bantivoglio from the Fifth ward as freeholder. In view of the fact that Squire Baird seemed to feel that the freeholder's election was a personal triumph; this appeared strange to yours truly.

We moseyed about, however, and discovered that whether the squire likes it or not Mary W. Kobus and her minions did elect Bantivoglio. The leaders of the Kobus faction who put, the thing across were headed by a woman named Madeline Salvatore and a gentleman named "Bucky" Branch.

Bantivoglio was elected by something less than 40 votes, These votes could easily have been given to his opponent but there were strategic reasons why the Kobus faction didn't want a Democrat chosen from the Fifth ward.

So Branch, who is a policeman, I believe, and who was not working on election day, it being his regular day off, went into his precinct and put over the votes that elected Bantivoglio .

And Mr. "Bucky" Branch, I have been informed, has been so sore at the fact that he did elect Louis Bantivoglio that he moans and cries and berates himself ever since the trick was turned ..

Politicos who told me the story about the Kobus support for Bantivoglio gave a rather sensible reason for the step that was taken by the anti-Baird folk. The New Dealers among the Republicans sensed that the division between the Republicans and Democrats in the 1938 Board of Freeholders was going: to be exceedingly close.

Too close, in fact, to take any chances. So it was decided to support Bantivoglio in the Fifth ward, because he was a regular Baird Republican and couldn't be won to the coalition, The reasoning of the Kobusitees was clear and correct.

Had Bantivoglio been beaten by a Democrat, the board would have been divided equally, The Democrats would then have been able to deal with an individual rather than a faction, One vote would have given either side control. Thus by putting Bantivoglio across the Kobus faction made it imperative for the Democrats to deal with that clique; in fact Brunner and his minions had to do that little thing.

In view of this analysis I'm con tent to believe that the Kobus claim that the New Dealers elected Louis Bantivoglio is absolutely okay.

LADY " COPPER" NOT TRADE PARTY

Now don't get the information askew. Mrs. Kobus had no official or personal hand in this matter. It was the keen thought of some of her lieutenants, whose judgment appears to have been excellent, that fashioned this plan and executed it.

Meanwhile numerous politicos have been jibing Baird's statement that he would "rather have one Louis Bantivoglio than 1000 ingrates.". These political seers and soothsayers declared that such a declaration proved that its author was all wet in his political judgment and short sighted in his political history.

These politicos ambushed Mackay the other day, crammed him. into a corner and told him that if it "hadn't been for Bantivoglio Baird would have control of the city commission today."

These chuckling anti-Bairdites not only bearded me in my den, but dared me to disprove their statements by taking a look at the record. A stranger to politics in Camden, I didn't know the import of this statement until I squinted at the ward returns for the 1935 city commission election.

There in black and white is the proof that Baird lost the city commission fight because of the Bantivoglio-Leo Rea alliance in the Fifth ward. Just to take a look at the record again and to refresh jaded memories, the regular Baird slate received the following votes in the Fifth ward:

Bennett, 1016; Leonard, 1001; Lummis, 962; Rhone, 963; von Nieda, 1081. The New Deal ticket, then supported by the Messrs. Bantivoglio and Rea, polled these votes;· Baker, 1032; Brunner, 1022; Hartmann, 1001; Kobus, 1024, and Reesman, 930.

We would call your attention particularly to the Leonard-Hartmann vote. Louis and Leo supported candidates Brunner, Kobus and Hartmann, of the New Deal.

Leonard and Hartmann polled exactly the same vote, 1001. And the recount revealed Hartmann a winner by SEVEN votes, the box score showing Hartmann, 17,338, and Leonard, 17,331. And the Fifth ward turned the trick, for it would have been easy for Louis and Leo to have given Hartmann the same vote that Reesman received, or 71 less, and elected Leonard. There would have been no recount then.

Which scrutiny of the returns would seem to show that Bantivoglio as a friend of the squire proved his valor and vigilance in the cause by seating a New Deal commissioner and owing his seat in the Board of Freeholders to the Kobus clan.

In connection with this fund which the Democrats should raise to give testimonial dinners to G.O.P. leaders et cetera we might suggest that on each occasion they have, David Baird Jr., named for a new office. In order, that my friend, Florence Baker, can show her loyalty and friendship to the Old Guard Field Marshal by asking his election to the said office.

This suggestion to, the Messrs. Brunner, Kelleher and the others is made tax-free, and no charge for usage. If that scheme doesn't make Camden county safe for Democracy, nothing will.

Camden Courier-Post - February 9, 1938

BAIRD AIDES HELD SEEKING CITY RULE
Orlando Warns Democrats at Fete to Moore, Crean and Mrs. Soistmann?

by GORDON MACKAY

David Baird Jr., and his allies have already arranged their slate for the next city commission election and are laying plans to recapture the city government of Camden. Democrats should know of this movement and prepare to thwart the proposed plans at once.

This warning was given by County Prosecutor Samuel P. Orlando last night, at a testimonial dinner in the Hof Brau at which three Ninth Ward Democrats were feted, and at which 500 were present. The trio honored comprised Mrs. Mary Ellen Soistmann, state committee woman; Oscar Moore, freeholder, and John J. Crean, assistant city solicitor and county committeeman.

While the three guests were feted and presented with wrist watches and other tokens, the affair took on a love feast aspect for the three New Deal commissioners arid all shades and leanings of Democratic leadership.

Mayor George E. Brunner was toastmaster and took occasion to poke fun at the G.O.P. and its tribulations over the county headquarters.

Brunner Jests at G.O.P.

"I have just received word," said the Mayor with due solemnity, "that the Republican county committee of whom I, read today was having trouble over their headquarters, have finally solved their troubles tonight.”

"I understand they are giving up their present location and. have just been presented by the Bell Telephone Company with a booth, and are now looking for another tenant to whom the committee can sublet half the space."

Orlando's warning came after he congratulated the special guests, He said:

"I have every reason to believe that Dave Baird and the rest of the Republican chieftains are already laying their plans to capture the city commission. They are working to the end with their own slate, so that they can take from the people of Camden the good government which they have received far some time.

"We Democrats do not want to take this warning lightly, we want to remember that Baird and his chieftains are already working toward capturing the government of Camden, and this is something that .we want to prevent at all hazards."

Orlando also congratulated the gathering as an indication of the growth of the party, and the faith that the people of Camden come to have in the Democratic party and in its principles."

The prosecutor also prophesied greater honors in the future for the triumvirate who were the guests of the occasion.

Disclaims Harmony Rift

Mrs. Emma E. Hyland, postmaster and long a figure in Ninth Ward affairs declared she resented any newspaper stories that hinted that there was the slightest rift in the Democratic party.

She told of the trouble the Democrats in the Ninth Ward, which, she declared, had never elected a Democratic freeholder until Oscar Moore was chosen. Mrs. Hyland told of detectives shadowing her home during election, and of 'the struggles' that she and Moore had known together in fighting for the party in that bailiwick.

"I want to say" continued the postmaster, "that we must all be impressed by the spirit of harmony that this gathering means has come to pass.

"I don't want you, and I will not myself believe all you read in the newspapers declaring we are fighting among· ourselves, for if there is anything like that in progress, I don't know anything about it and I don't believe you do, either."

County Treasurer Edward J. Kelleher, hailed as "The Father of the Democratic Party in Camden County" contrasted the spectacle before him with the harmony dinner which he and others sponsored years ago.

“We sold 150 tickets," he said, "and gave away 150 more, and when the sponsors reached the hall at 7 p.m., the hour of the dinner, there wasn't a single other person on hand. Later the hall was filled, and it held 200 guests. 200 to attend a Democratic harmony dinner that embraced all of Camden county."

Officials Laud Guests

Mrs. Bertha Shippen Irving, postmaster of Haddonfield; Police Judge Gene R. Mariano and others also congratulated the guests. Mayor Brunner introduced Commissioner Frank J. Hartmann by calling attention to the cleanup campaign now under Hartmann auspices.

"Just as Hartmann is making Camden a cleaner city in which to live," said the Mayor, "so has Commissioner Kobus made the city clean from crime. The streets are clean, the city is clean, and this has only been made possible by the efforts of the three commissioners who have worked in harmony, and who are going to continue to work in harmony." Crean, Moore and Mrs. Soistmann spoke their thanks to those present for the banquet, the gifts and the sentiments expressed.

Camden Courier-Post - February 10, 1938

Is Zat So?
by
GORDON MACKAY

COUNTY PROSECUTOR SAM ORLANDO, with a laugh on his lips and paternal pride in his eyes, was telling me how Signor Mike Orlando intended to become a county prosecutor like his dad. Signor Mike has reached the ripe and robust age of 7. His career, as mapped by the precocious young gentleman is as follows:

"Go to Peddie Institute, then to Princeton, then to the Harvard Law School, pass the bar association, go around and shake hands with every body, get elected, then don't do any more work."

"That's Mike's program," said his dapper daddy, while a series of chuckles rippled from his lips. "And Mike's program is not so bad, but it's a lot different from his old man's, although I did pass the examinations and was admitted to the bar 15 years after I landed in this country."

Then Signor Orlando, the Elder, recited the pilgrimage of a young Sicilian of 9 from his native Italy to the Cumberland County city of Bridgeton. It might be dubbed "The Americanization of Samuel P. Orlando."

"My father was a laborer," said Sam, "and when I came to this country with my parents we settled in Bridgeton. I started school when I was 9. That was how old I was when I got here. They put me in the 'zero' class, with kids 5 and 6 years old,

"I was the only Italian pupil in the school. I didn't know but four words of English. They were 'yes,' 'no,' 'good day,' 'goodbye.' I stood about two feet higher than the rest of my class, because they were kids just starting to school.

"Well, as I was the first Italian in Bridgeton school, I got the works from fellows who today are the best and closest friends I have anywhere. They laughed at me. Because I didn't know the language they gave me all sorts of steers that made me the joke of the school. Kids do that, it's all in fun, anyway.

SENT HOME ON BLUFF

"I'll never forget the first day we had school and the recess came around 10:30, The class was allowed out for five or 10 minutes. I went out with the rest and the other kids said to me: 'Go home, all over today.' I went home. When I got there my mother asked me why I wasn't in school.

"I told her the school was through, that I was sent home. She told me to go back to school. I did and found out I had been razzed. In Italy, although I was only 9, I worked in the fields before we came to this country. And to help the old man I got up at 4 o'clock in the morning and worked till 8 o'clock at night on the farms around Bridgeton.

"I want to tell you something about that, to have you know what child labor meant in some parts of South Jersey when I was a kid, 30 years ago. I was about 10 when I started working in the fields there, 4 in the morning until 8 at night. You got a job through a padrone, boss of the Italians.

"Farmers and other businessmen didn't conduct their affairs with you dlrect- everything came through the padrone. You didn't lead a dog's life then, you did worse. You got up before the sun was even up, and you got up in the barn because you slept there in a pile of hay, "You worked for the farmer, and he let you know that you worked for him. You didn't sleep in the house, you didn't eat in the house, you didn't even get your water from the family well. You can imagine that when you were 10 years old; ·and started working at 4 o'clock in the morning and quit at 8 o'clock at night, cooked your own stuff out side and grabbed it as you could, you didn't need any pills to go to sleep at night.

"I did that every summer all the time I went to school. The other kids had never gone to school with an Italian kid before, and the way they jibed 'the little dago' as they called me; was a caution. I had to fight 75 percent of the other scholars in order to live, and my record I guess is filled with an equal number of wins and losses.

BASEBALL GAVE SAM HEADACHE

"In Italy we never saw a baseball game and when I started to play it was a headache. It was weeks before I learned how to hold the bat, and when I got my first hit playing the game I carried the bat down to first base with me, I wouldn't let go of it. They called me 'out' because. I carried the bat to the base and I didn't know any different.

"Despite this tough break I fought right along and soon, they stopped razzing 'the little wop'- you know that 'wop' comes from 'woppi,' which means a 'sport'- and we became fast friends. I like to go back to Bridgeton these days and tell them in that town about the time that I was the first Italian kid that went to school there.

"And the funny part of the whole business is that the Italians are as strong in Cumberland County today as in any part of Jersey; At any rate, they promoted me so fast- you could skip classes in those days- that I really got the eight years schooling in five years.

"You can bet it was a relief, too, to find myself among boys about my own age, but all bigger than I was. That's when the fights, started. And we had plenty. I managed to save some money and got into Lehigh, then went to Dickinson Law School in Carlisle, Pa.

"That's one thing I feel proudest about, that I was admitted to the bar 15 years after I landed in this country, not able to speak or to understand a single word of English. Even when I got the hang of English at school I spoke broken English and forgot to sound the final 'a' in banana like the rest of them.

"When I think of 30 years ago and the way we went through school and fought for a chance to make good, Mike gives me a laugh. He is the modern kid, he isn't going to become county prosecutor the hard way. Mike has it all figured out, and he told me just how it would be done just as I've told it to you.".

Camden Courier-Post - February 11, 1938

Is Zat So!
By
GORDON MACKAY

HOLLYWOOD scenario writers toy with fanciful plots and bizarre situations, all children of imagination wedded to screen-breeding. At the same time we can point to two stories from real life that, transferred to the screen, would make a rip-snorting factual movie that would interest anybody who cared to see it.

Our first hero would be Colonel James Joseph Tunney of Greenwich, Conn. He is known to millions everywhere as Gene Tunney, who retired undefeated as heavyweight champion of the world. No fanciful tale, no imaginative plot could excel in realism and fact the actual life history and career of Gene Tunney. A second character from real life we would recommend to the Ben Hechts of Hollywood is James Michael Curley of Boston, twice mayor of his native city, twice governor of his native Massachusetts.

Had not arrogance and ruthlessness characterized Curley, while at the peak of his power, he would now be sitting In the United States Senate wearing the toga that enwraps young Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. For Curley could never see harmony restored between himself and his political enemies. He remained so vindictive that he recently was defeated in an attempted comeback as Mayor of Boston.

"Jim' was defeated, too, by a youngster who formerly was his aide. Defeated more as a rebuke to his unyielding hatred of those who had opposed him than as a setback to the brand of politics which
Jim Curley always played. A scenario dealing with Curley's career would have to hark back 35 years.

TWO CURLEYS BECAME PALS

At that time Jim and Tom Curley, who had no kinship other than politics, were young Democrats in Ward 17, Boston. They rebelled against the domination of the Old Guard in ward affairs, organizing the Tammany Club to give the former battle.

In the course of events the entrenched political rulers of the ward laughed at these young "pretenders." To these hard-shelled oldsters the Curleys and their cohorts were just "young whippersnappers." The first couple of elections revealed the Tammany Club behind the eight ball,
but persistence finally won, Jim and Tom became co-leaders of the ward.

Ward politics in Boston, as in other large cities, is based largely on aid. The poor are fed, the judge is asked to go easy, the cops are told to lay off, typical machine politics rule the roost. The Curleys, tutored in this game early, worked It even to bigger results.

Then came the climax to their careers up to that time. An examination was held for post office clerks in Boston. About 100 or more men appeared to take the examinations. Federal jobs were not regarded as such sinecures then as now in the days of depressions, recessions, processions and what have you.

After the list of eligibles was made public, Jim Curley and Tom Curley were arrested. The charge was that each of them had impersonated a candidate for one of the jobs, taken the examination In his name, and the funniest thing about it one of the substitutes had failed to pass.

The Curleys made no attempt to deny their complicity in such a ruse and subterfuge. They were too slick for that— aid had been furnished to other chaps in devious ways, but nobody had ever been
willing to take the rap from Uncle Sam to take examinations for clerkships and post-office jobs.

Jim and Tom were found guilty and went to Charles street jail, there to remain for several months. They were treated as heroes. Callous politics found nothing nefarious in "fronting for a guy." Jim and Tom were rated as masters, because they were willing to jeopardize their liberty to help another chap out.

So strong and powerful was this grip upon political emotions and individual sentiments that Jim Curley came out of jail to be elected to the board of aldermen. Able as an orator, magnetic in personality, with a resonant voice and a student's knowledge of history and the classics, Jim
Curley was a marked man.

CURLEY BOTH IMPRESSIVE

Both were handsome, impressive in manner. Jim had the more magnetic personality. As an orator Jim ranked with the best in Massachusetts, where they breed orators in every block. Curley's rivals tried to block his path to the board by citing his jail sentence. Instead of hurting Curley this charge only made him stronger with the body politic.

Several terms Curley passed in the board of aldermen, then he decided to go to Congress. Curley won the Democratic nomination, equivalent to election in his district. Jim served several terms there. In Congress Jim decided he wanted to become Mayor of Boston. His birthplace where the Lowells and the Cabots sneered openly at the man who went to Congress from Charles street jail, as they jeeringly declared.

Curley knew how to handle that type of Mayflower aristocracy. As a matter of fact the Plymouth Rock brethren have the bluest blood and the least voice in affairs of any group in Boston politics. They have the Somerset and Algonquin clubs, they have the Junior League, fill all the Sunday society pages, but they never reach a seat in the municipal government—the proletariat sees to that. Boston is the only city in which I ever lived where the sacred cows were so turned out to dry pastures, never even given a bell to wear around their necks. Curley was chosen mayor several times. This position started his downfall.

A vindictive gentleman, with a tongue that dripped acid and vituperation, he could get under the skin of his rivals as no other political figure in the state. Curley's rise didn't set so' well with the state bosses. When Jim announced that he would be a candidate for governor, they tried to stop him dead.

It was the usual stunt, too. They went into the sacred precincts of the Back Bay to select a candidate from the bluebloods.

General Charlie Cole was chosen for that honor. He was nominated at a state convention.

Curley told them to go to the devil, he would run in the primaries and would lick the stuffing out of his rival. Massachusetts had no time for Mayflower descendants or Back Bay homes, he declared.

The voters went to the polls and nominated Curley, then elected him. So there is your ready-made Hollywood scenario.

Camden Courier-Post - February 11, 1938

BANQUET ARRANGED BY PYNE POYNT CLUB
27th Annual Event Expected to Break Record on Night of Feb. 26

The twenty-seventh annual banquet of the Pyne Poynt Social Club promises to be the most successful and best attended in the history of this North Camden sports and social group.

From different parts of the country acknowledgments are coming in to Frank Kelley, chairman of the banquet committee, from members that they will be present at the dinner to be held Saturday night, Feb. 26, at the club's headquarters, corner of Fifth and Erie streets.

"We are striving to make this affair the best in the history of the club," said President Ed H. Winters, "and we believe it will far out measure our fondest expectations in the matter of attendance and the good time that everyone there will have.

"The club, in the years that it has been in existence, has occupied a prominent place in the sporting and social affairs of North Camden. It has been the means of making and holding friendships, and the
friendships so established are cemented further each year by the annual banquet. The members look forward to it."

This year the principal speaker will be Gordon Mackay, member of the editorial staff of the Courier-Post newspapers. Mackay, who has been associated with newspapers for the last 40 years, will talk of sports, on which he is an acknowledged authority.

Among those who already have said they will attend are William Brandt, of Washington; George A. E. Rheinhold, also of Washington; William N. Cann, of Wilmington; Howard Hurlock and Louis Schwaiger, of Philadelphia; Robert Johnson, R. K. Dawrinson, Victor J. Paxson, Walter Adams, Harry McKinney, Fred Schwaiger, Ralph T. Githens, William Oberst, Clarence Rudolph and Arthur Messier, of Westwood; Herbert Schaeffer, of Bloomfield; Harry Edginton, of Milton, Del.; Thomas Kerr, of Bogota; Ren Plum, of Mt. Ephraim; J. Russell Taylor and Ed D. Crosley, of Buffalo, and Arthur Truitt, of Bridgeport, Conn.

Since the organization of the club, in the latter part of January, 1911, the following have been presidents: Harry F. Walton, 1911 and 1912; Cecil Battle. 1913 and 1914; George Townsend, 1915 and 1916; Frank Boyer, 1917; John Begg, 1918; Frank Haines, 1919, 1920 and 1931; John R. Taylor, 1921; Alex Kahnweiler, 1922; Ed. H. Winters, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1935, 1936 and 1937; Richard Barry, 1932 and 1933; and Frank J. Hartmann, Jr.., now city commissioner, in 1934.

Vice presidents have been: Willard Fox, 1911; Battle. 1912; Barry, 1913 and 1931: Begg, 1914, 1915 and 1916 Arthur Messier, 1917, 1923, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1928 and 1929; Haines, 1918; Winters, 1919; Schaeffer, 1921; William Benecke, 1922; W. E. Baird 1930; Barry, 1931; Otto H. Braun 1932, and Kahnweiler, 1933, 1934, 1935 1936 and 1937.

Camden Courier-Post - February 12, 1938

Is Zat So!
By
GORDON MACKAY

"EIGHTY-EIGHT communities can't just be wrong, when they run from Massachusetts to Florida.

Thus when they say that John C. Remington, Jr., is a good consulting engineer that's good enough for me and the compliment should tickle Jay Remington down to his great toe.

Visit his office, however, and you'l see the trophy that he prizes the highest has nothing to do with
engineering. It's a silver mug presented to the Remington-Vosbury team for winning the championship
in the Camden Industrial Baseball League The engraving shows that the silver cup was acquired in
1926, or a dozen years ago.

Now the 88 names on the blackboard that stands in the hallway outside the offices of Remington and Goff on Cooper street testify to the professional standing of the firm and its head. But the silver mug reveals that Jay Remington is prouder of the fact that he played football 14 years, and baseball for as long a period, than he is of any keys that might be presented to him to reveal that he was a tiptop
student.

In a gabfast, too, he and I became quite convinced that he had really introduced baseball to London
before the late John J. McGraw and the major league missionaries from the United States had slipped
baseball into a clutch with cricket as the great British sport.

"Come to think about it," said Remington, "perhaps we five chaps who went over on a cattle-boat after I was graduated from Drexel Institute really did put baseball on first base in London. I want to tell
you about that so you'll be able to understand the whole business.

STORM SCARED MR. REMINGTON

"When I was graduated from Drexel in 1909 four others and myself made a trip on a cattle boat. The name of the ship was the 'Crown Point.' We had 406 head of cattle aboard when we sailed.

"We were about two weeks getting across and before we reached the English Channel we ran into the worst storm that I ever saw. I was scared to death. The waves washed overboard 12 cattle that were on the poop deck and we had three calves born on the voyage to equal things a little.

"We also had a smart aleck in our bunch. When the storm was at its worst and we were afraid that we would never hit dry land again he liked to sit down on a box and play 'Home, Sweet Home' for us on a mouth-organ. Maybe we didn't crown that bird whenever he started that tune.

"When I got to London I got a job with the Western Electric Company at West Woolwich, a suburb of London. We had a lot of other Americans working m the plant. So we started playing baseball. Then we had two leagues, and I guess I helped to found the first baseball leagues that London ever had.

"I remember we had six teams in each league. Our club was called the 'Nondescripts,' another was the 'Crystal Palace,' a third one was named 'Shepard's Bush.' We played in the Crystal Palace in London and we played TWILIGHT BASEBALL. I'm darn sure that we had the .first twilight leagues ever in baseball.

"The days are strange in London. It will be as bright as daylight until 9 or 9.30 p. m. and in a half an
hour it will be as black as your hat. The Londoners got to like our baseball and would pay six-pence
and a shilling to sit in the Crystal Palace It wasn't anything odd to have 3000 or 4000 to watch one of
the ball games.

"I had one experience In London that I'll never forget—a walk down 'Petticoat Lane.' That street
harbors more crooks than any in the world."

L1MEHOUSE DENS OPENED TO HIM

"It came about in a peculiar manner," continued Remington. "At the boarding-house where I lived
was. another young fellow with whom I became quite chummy. He turned out to be one of the men of
Scotland Yard. He took me through the opium dens in Limehouse, then he suggested that we do
'Petticoat Lane.'

"That's a street where you find the real cockney in London. It has every thing in the way of crooks and criminals. Before we started for 'The Lane' this sleuth said to me: 'Now you'll get your pocket picked before you have been 10 minutes in 'The Lane.'

"He knew where I kept my watch, in my vest pocket. I wanted to outsmart him, and when he wasn't
looking I switched my watch to the fob pocket of my pants. We hadn't gone 100 steps into The Lane
before I put my hand In my pocket and the watch was gone.

"I told the detective and he laughed, then called to a fellow who seemed to be loitering in front of a
pool room. When we walked over to the stranger, the fellow on the sidewalk said: 'This your watch?
And he handed me my watch, which was once my father's.

" 'Better keep an eye on that watch,' the second Scotland Yard man said: 'You'll probably lose it again in a few minutes.' This time 1 was bound to outsmart the whole Yard. So I wrapped the watch in my handkerchief, and dropped it in my upper vest pocket.

'We walked down The Lane a little further and seemed to get into a crowd. When I reached for my
watch, I'll be darned if it wasn't gone again. Know who picked my pocket the second time? A third
Scotland Yard man. I put my watch in my overcoat pocket, and whenever I went out with my pal from
the Yard I left the watch at home."

Remington says that he loved football and wouldn't have quit the gridiron after 14 years of strife and
battle save that he was married.

"I played for Haddonfield High, for Drexel and for the Frankford A. C. Played halfback and fullback. The games we had in pro football with Holmesburg A. C.—the Yellowjackets succeeded them — were hummers. That annual Thanksgiving Day game between Frankford and Holmesburg was as tough a fight as you would ever want.

"I've gone into games when my legs would be numb from the knee down, wrapped with rubber to keep them from paining me. I would play almost an entire half before the blood would circulate in those
legs so that I could feel anything.

"The toughest experience I had was at Steelton, Pa., one day. We played the Y. M. C. A. there and
beat them 5 to 0—in those days a touchdown counted five points. The game was played in a field
covered with mud. They wouldn't let us dress after the game, instead they bombarded and pelted us
with bricks or anything that was handy.

"The train crew wouldn't let us Bit in the passenger coaches, wouldn't let us wash in the toilet rooms, but herded us in our football suits in the baggage coach. Te managed to get dressed in the baggage car, wiped some of the mud from our faces but we rode all the way to Philadelphia before we could wash.

"Football was the sport I really loved, although I was pretty fair at baseball. I was a southpaw, with
lots of smoke. Just blaze 'em straight down the alley, I played first base, too, because I was a left-
hander.

"I was no Rube Waddell as a pitcher, but boy, oh boy, how I could hit. A left-hand hitter, I could
sock that apple and ran pretty fast, too. Baseball's all right but give me football. Ah there's the sport
for my money."

Camden Courier-Post * February 14, 1938

Adventurer Once Blind, Near Death, Regains Sight and Is Robust at 75

Dr. Pogue Recalls Years of Fighting Outlaws in Wild West
MARKS BIRTHDAY AT CAMDEN HOME

By GORDON MACKAY

Sightless for five years, wretchedly ill from an agonizing disease, a middle-aged man walked into the office of one of the world's greatest eye specialists in Philadelphia one day 25 years ago.

The patient's visits to Dr. George A. de Schweinitz, oculist to President Wilson and some of the greatest figures in the United States and abroad, had been many. Other noted opthalmologists had been visited, too. Each had uttered a death sentence.

"He'll be blind until he dies," said Dr. de Schweinitz, sadly, to the wife who accompanied her husband on this fateful visft, "and besides he won't live six months."
But the death that the patient had dared against road agents, renegades, criminals and bad men, wasn't quite ready to claim Dr. Garrett Cox Pogue as a victim. So, as St. Valentine's Day is observed today, Dr. Pogue is observing

his seventy-fifth birthday, at his home, 107 North Seventh street.

Peace Officer In West

Dr. Pogue's vision is as clear as in the days of his youth. His health is marred only by a cold that troubles him tormentingly but not seriously. His adventures and experiences are a fortune that money cannot buy, nor time and passing years wither in his memory.

Few men have leaped the five years above the alloted three score years and 10 to know such a life as has been Garrett Pogue's. Born of good Quaker folk he lived by the gun for years, was a peace officer in the Wild West, when it was both wild and woolly. Famed marshals were his buddies, noted outlaws his prey.

Perhaps the most thrilling and dramatic of all his tales of the days that saw him cavalryman, cow-puncher and co-partner of the men who helped to win the West from outlawry and banditry is the tale he tells of "Billy, the Kid."

To the men of seasoned years "Billy, the Kid" needs no introduction. To the youngsters it might be stated that "Billy, the Kid," and the men of his ilk, made the tinhorn bandits of today seem the punks that they are.

"I was riding alone through the desert," said Dr. Pogue, yesterday, 'and I saw the speck of a camp fire down in an arroyo, or valley. I was riding with my rifle over the saddle, my guns in my belt, when I caught the glint of steel in the firelight. "Hands Up!"'

"A man stood down in the arroyo and he said: 'Come down off that hoss with your hands up.' He had a rifle to enforce the command. Now t's no easy matter to slide down 'rom a horse, with your hands in :he air. I did.

" 'Where you going and who are you?' asked this rifleman. Just then I noticed a second man sitting by the fire, and the light glinted on another rifle. 'Pogue's the name,' I told him, 'and I'm riding from Texas to Arizona.' 'My name's Bonney,' the first man said, 'and folks call me "Billy, the Kid."

" 'Billy, the Kid,' an outlaw for whom marshals all over the West were hunting, with 20 rewards on his head. He didn't know that I was a deputy sheriff, I had my badge tucked down.in my shoe.

"I slept that night by the camp-fire, not six feet from Billy, the most feared killer in the whole West. I had breakfast with them in the morning and rode away.

Meets Billy Again

"It was months later, I had turned up in New Mexico. I was a deputy to Marshal Pat Garrett, about whom there are 1000 stories and'legends, all of them true. 'Garrett,' Pat said to me one night, 'I'm told Billy, the Kid is going to visit that Mexican girl he is sweet on over at the ranch.

" 'Get your guns and we'll get Billy.' I took my Winchester and a couple of other guns for my belt. Pat and I rode for the ranch, I was behind a tree with the rifle sticking out, Pat was around behind the corral. Sometime afterward Billy rode up, whistled a couple of times, then rose in his saddle and started to dismount.

"I had a dead bead on his back. I didn't fire a shot. Why? Because I got to thinking about that night by the campfire when we broke bread together and he could have killed me as easy as wink. Something just naturally paralyzed my arm. I waited there, with the hammer of the rifle down, watching Billy to go into the house.

Outlaw Dies On Floor

"In about two minutes it sounded as if all hell broke loose. Guns were popping, but pretty soon there wasn't a sound. I went into the house. There was Billy on the floor, gasping out his last breath. Pat Garrett was on the floor, a couple of wounds in his shoulder, cussing me a blue streak for not throwing a gun on Billy and giving it to him.

"I explained the whole thing to Garrett, and while he cussed a lot he didn't say anything more."

Dr. Pogue's birthright is one strange story also. Born in 1863, his mother was 48 when he was born, his parent dying in childbirth. His father was 54 at the time, two brothers had given up their lives for the Union cause, one at Shiloh, the other at Antietam.

"Science has discovered," said the veteran peace officer to me, "that when a child is born to parents who have passed the meridian of life that the child inherits all the great qualities of his parents.

Of Quaker Origin

"Now I was born in Delaware City, of Quaker parents. Yet I was always a wanderer, always a nomad. My old mammy, who had been born into my family as a slave, told my fortune once. She said that I would visit strange places, see strange sights, but come back to my own native soil to settle down finally.

"I don't know whether that old mammy had second sight, but that is the entire volume of my life history.

"No stranger fate ever accompanied a youngster than myself on my first trip into the wild, unsettled West. I had gone to Denver, didn't like the place, so pushed on to Colorado Springs. I stood leaning against a tree outside the post-office when three men came riding down the street. They were the biggest men I ever saw in the saddle.

Heard Own Name Spoken

"As they came to where I stood one of them said: 'Have you got those checks, Garrett?' I looked at him and said: 'No, I don't know anything about cheeks.' 'I wasn't talking to you' he growled, in the talk westerners use to strangers who butt into business which your westerner doesn't believe concerns anybody but himself.

" 'By the way, youngster, what is your name?' said the biggest of the riders. 'My name is Garrett Pogue,' I told him. 'Want to go to work?' he asked me. I told him I did. Mind you I'm wearing a gray suit, a stiff hat, tenderfoot written all over me.

" 'All right,' he said, 'walk along with us and we'll get you into the buckboard.' They drove me to the ranch. On the way out one of them said that I would help them capture wild horses, in which the region abounded. When we got to the ranch I saw a young fellow not more than 19, black as an Indian, standing several inches over six feet.

Meets His "Partner"

" 'Sam,' said the fellow called Garrett—Garrett Cadle was his name —'I've brought you a partner.' That night Sam and myself went into town and to a dance hall. While we were there a big bully came through the door and said: 'Every so-and-so is going to drink with me.'

"Few of them paid any attention to him. Then he walked right up to me and said: 'Every so-and-so in the place is going to drink with me and you're going to drink with me first.'

"Sam came up to us, quiet like, pushed me away. 'My friend doesn't drink,' Sam said. The big bruiser, had a naked gun—a gun that wasn't bolstered—stuck in his pants. Sam had one down in his boot. The bully made a move toward his gun, Sam almost shot his arm off.

"Pretty soon the door opened and Sheriff Lem Jackson came into the dance hall. He was told that the big bully tried to draw on a man who didn't have a gun and that satisfied the sheriff.

Sheriff Sends Him Away

"It was the sheriff that finally sent me away from the Cadles. I was in town when Garrett Cadle came riding into the place, sitting on his horse, with a bad wound in his shoulder. Behind him were two men, both armed, riding 50 feet apart.

"I had my rifle trained on them. When they got 50 feet away from me I heard Garrett shout: 'rustlers'. I fired a shot and that second man tumbled from the saddle. "Then the third man came into sight: 'Rustler', shouted Garrett. I let that fellow have it.

"When the fourth man hove in sight, and I was ready to draw a bead on him, Garrett yelled: 'Bill'. Sure enough it was his brother. Bill came up, looked at the two men on as ground, fired bang! bang! Just like that. "Mercy shots", Bill said as he bolstered his gun.

" 'Let Garrett go see the Doctor,' Bill said, 'and you and I will go and see Sam'. We found him dead, with one bullet in the top of his head, another in his back. The Cadles had been attacked by the rustlers. I got Bill's idea of 'mercy shots' when I saw that bullet wound in the top of Sam's head—Sam had been killed while he was lying on the ground.

Gets Horses and Money

"We got to the ranch. Pretty soon Sheriff Lem Jackson came riding. He told me that he knew all about it. It seemed that these rustlers had held up the Union Pacific train, killed the engineer, conductor and train crew and got away with loot that was valued in the hundreds of thousands.

"They then killed a couple of deputy sheriffs and were trying to escape to New Mexico and Texas when they ran across the Cadles who were out after wild horses. The train robbers shot Sam dead, then wounded Garrett.

" 'Better git now, son,' the sheriff told me, "because the gang that was
with these fellows will sure get you if they can."

I told the sheriff I didn't have horses or money.

Took Rustlers' Horses

"Take them two rustlers' horses,' he said. 'I know the ranch where they were stolen. I'll give you this receipt, just as good as a bill of sale. You can show it to anybody asks about the animals. Here's $500 which you would have got as a share of the reward offered for them. Git going' into Texas as fast as your pinto will hoof it.' "

"It was good advice, I took it," smiled Pogue, "and when I got there I joined the Texas Rangers and remained with them for years. Then I was a deputy for the Denver and Rio Grande and helped Captain McNulty of the Texas Rangers, Bat Masterson, the grizzled old marshal and the others.

"I was in Canon City, Colo., 50 years ago when they hanged George Withererell to a telegraph pole and brought back a picture of him hanging to the pole, which I still keep."

Camden Courier-Post * February 14, 1938
Photo of the Lynching of George Witherell, December 4, 1888

After this wild and adventurous life, Pogue returned to Philadelphia where he was employed by Samuel T. Bodine of the U. G. I.

Blindness Strikes Him

"It was while I was with that company," continued the chiropractor," that I was stricken blind. For five years—60 months—I got my pay from U. G. I. twice a month. I visited Dr. de Schweinitz. I visited Dr. Webster Fox. I visited every great physician and specialist in Philadelphia—got the same answer— I was hopelessly blind and would die in six months.

"So I decided to try something else as a desperate resort. I went to a man named A. W. Marchand, a chiropractor. Now mark this as a coincidence—he came from Delaware City where I was born myself. I recalled his father as a man in the town we knew as 'Frenchy'.

"Marchand gave me treatments. I regained my sight and my health. I was so impressed that I joined his class in chiropractice, a class of 36, 18 doctors, 18 laymen. I became so interested in the practice that I was graduated from the school. I've been in practice ever since."

And to show that 75 years rested as lightly on his shoulders as a breeze, Dr. Pogue skipped blithely across the room like a two-year-old.

Camden Courier-Post - February 14, 1938

Is Zat So!
By
GORDON MACKAY

FIVE of us sat about the festive board at a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce in Paulsboro not so long ago. Ed Martin, the president, who is also the superintendent of the machine shop of a big oil company, had just recited how an employee had been cajoled into breaking a contract that his firm did not like.

Then up spake Henry W. Peterson. Henry is the president of a big sand company and a member of the South Jersey Port Commission. He is quite a "joiner." Although Henry dwells in Woodbury he belongs to many of the organizations that are located in boroughs where Henry and his company do business. Henry is 45, looks 35, has a laughing eye, a happy look and is darn good company at any stage of the game. He has a liberal outlook on life and its problems.

While I wouldn't nominate Henry as a Brain Truster, he's no hard-boiled Tory or case-hardened conservative either. Just a good scout. Henry recited a story, also. We have heard plenty during the last five years about how "practical" men were needed at the helm instead of "visionaries" who don't know anything about business. After listening to Henry's tale I'll take the visionaries for my dose, because, after all, I want to keep the only shirt I own right on my back.

It seems that Henry's dad was a butter and egg man in Philadelphia, and did business in such marts as a commission merchant on South Water street. The elder Peterson traveled the Middle West to make contacts to sell butter and eggs for the western farmers.

INVENTOR HAD SOME GADGET

And now Henry carries on from here.

"While father was in Minneapolis," he said, "he met a man named Swanborg, a Swede. Swanborg had been educated in Europe, and entered the employ of Henry Ford, where he rose to the position of chief chemist.

"Along came the war and Swanborg went into the chemical warfare division. After peace was declared Swanborg had a yen to invent things. The first thing he discovered was a motor fuel with alcohol as a base, which could be produced to sell at four cents a gallon.

"You can see what a hit that would make with the Standard Oil Company and other big corporations that sold gasoline. The inventor went to the big fellows and offered them his patent, to be awarded on a royalty basis for the inventor.

"Swanborg didn't want to make millions on this fuel. He really wanted the public to have the advantage of his discovery, in order that automobile upkeep would be cheap for the average guy. So he asked Big Business to finance the invention.

"Representatives of a big oil company tested the fuel. They had two automobiles run 200 miles on the speedway in Indianapolis, one using gasoline for fuel, the other using Swanborg's motive power. At the end of the 200 miles' run both machines were taken down. It was found that Swanborg's fuel held up just as good as gasoline. This meant that motor fuel had been revolutionized.

"But the big oil companies couldn't market it, because that would destroy the market for gasoline. Swanborg was willing to accept a royalty, Oh, something like one-hundredth of a dollar a gallon or even less. The big gasoline company, however, suggested an alcohol distributing corporation, one of the biggest in the country.

"SOLD" INVENTION TO SUBSIDIARY

"Swanborg entered negotiations with this alcohol corporation which was probably a subsidiary of the oil company—it happens that way you know. The deal was made, but Swanborg who didn't know anything about business, did not specify how many gallons of the fuel must be sold yearly in order to insure him a royalty—he was satisfied that the public should have the benefits of this discovery that enabled a man to run his car on a fuel that could be sold for four cents a gallon.

"So the alcohol coporation took over the fuel. And promptly sold enough of it to give Swanborg about $80 a month royalty, but it kept that cheap fuel off the market and prevented a tremendous reduction of the sale of gasoline.

"I'm not done with Swanborg yet. He invented a battery which would run an automobile for about $1.50 every 24 hours. It was made with a big railroad spike for one pole, a piece of zinc and a piece of copper, to furnish the positive and negative.

"You could make it out of an old tomato can. The secret, however, was the two powders that were used, one to be poured into the positive, the other into the negative. We tried the gadget out in our offices in Philadelphia and it kept 12 electric lights running steadily for 24 hours. "It was tested on an automobile too, and proved just what the doctor ordered. You can see how the other batteries would fare, with Swanborg's invention reducing the cost of manufacture to about $1.50, or even making the selling price that amount.

"I don't know what became of that invention, I haven't heard of it. I suppose Swanborg, the idealist, entered another of those contracts to give the general public the benefit of his invention, and didn't specify the number of batteries to be made each year.

"Swanborg was a great engineer and a great chemist, but you can see he didn't know the first thing about business. If he had he would have known enough to make a contract that would have compelled mass production of his cheap motor fuel, the base of which was alcohol.

"Swanborg would also have made it mandatory on the corporation that took over his railroad spike battery; to have guaranteed the manufacture and sale of a certain number each year.''

Which leads me to the conclusion that when dealing with "practical men" instead of "visionaries," it's safeguard to keep one hand on your wallet.

Camden Courier-Post - February 15, 1938

Is Zat So!
By
GORDON MACKAY

HALE and hearty and seven years short of a century in years, a good Paulsboro patriarch sits back with a comeallye on his lips or a dudeen between his teeth, thinking of the Ireland that now stands free beyond the seas.

Daniel G. Roche, 93, strong in his devotion to liberty and freedom and rejoicing that Ireland is no longer "the most distressful country that ever you have seen, for they're hangin' men and women for the wearin' of the green," is known in his neighborhood as "Paulsboro's Beloved Rebel."

You can tear back the curtain of the past for 72 years to picture young Dan Roche, a stripling fresh from the Quid Sod and a gossoon who knew the bloody tragedy of the Ireland whose shores he had left behind, fighting as a Fenian.

Students in schools today, as did the writer years ago, study the Fenian Rebellion of 1866 when a gang of "Young Turks," to be a mite slangy about the army, tried to invade Canada to seize the Dominion, in order to beard the Sassenach in Buckingham Palace and compel the freedom of Erin. So, smoking his pipe 'and at peace with the world, Dan Roche can look back into the past with the eyes of knowledge. For young Dan Roche was a Fenian who had come from the County Kerry to this America, the land flowing with milk and honey, where every man was a king and every Irishman in those days became a cop.

Dan Roche was born May Day, 1845, in the little town' six miles west of Cahirciveen in County Kerry, one of the 13 children who formed the brood of Mr. and Mrs. David Roche. The dad was a farmer in Ireland, which in those days meant freedom to starve to death.

WAS EAGER TO JOIN UNION ARMY

" 'Twas back in the days when I was a spalpeen of 18 that I heard they were having a war over in America," Dan will tell you, "and says I to myself: 'I'll go over and get into the shindig myself.' I had my brother, David, over there and David was living at Port Richmond in Long Island.

"I'll bet Dave's in the war, too, for when could you ever stop an Irishman from getting into any fight that was handy? I got here all right, and- it took nine days to cross the ocean in those times. The | minute I got on shore I hopped into a uniform and went down to see my brother.

"He told me to keep out of the war. So did some of the Union officers. I didn't want to quit, but finally I gave the matter up; the war was nearly over then anyway. Dave told me to learn a trade, so I went to Worcester, Mass., where I started as a machinist's apprentice with the Crompton
Loom Works, the biggest textile machinery makers in the world.

"I got tired there, went to New Haven and drifted all over the East. Back in Ireland I joined the Fenians, for all the young bucks wanted to drive the British off the ould sod. So over here I found the
Fenians were strong and I joined them right away. "I also joined the Clan-ne-Gaels and was president of one of the societies."

By this time, to continue the history of that rebellion famed in annal and song, young Roche was a lieutenant in the Fenian forces. They took 3000 soldiers, armed to the teeth, as was proverbial, to Vermont. While in the Green Mountain State word came that 60,000 Fenians stood armed to make a raid across the Canadian border from Detroit.

These 60,000 young Irishmen, filled with ardor and courage, intended to seize the Dominion, launch an offensive against British - ships and arm privateers to prey upon Britain's merchantmen on the seas.

LUKE DILLON WAS ONE REBEL

Back in Philadelphia years ago was one of the Fenians who was in that insurrection. He was Luke Dillon, called unto his fathers years ago. Luke was primarily concerned with the attempt to blow up the Welland Canal, which would have wreaked untold hardship on Canada's merchant marine. Dan Roche probably knew Luke intimately, for Dillon was one of those daring sons of Erin who wanted to free her through the Fenian rebellion. The leaders of the Irish cause in the United States at this time were Stewart and O'Neal. The partisans of the former wanted direct action, to sail directly to Ireland, challenge the might of Britain on Erin's soil and take all the British Empire into battle if necessary.

O'Neal's men admired the patriotism, courage and ardor of these gossoons, but rebuked their lack of common sense. Ireland had no Navy, nor had the Fenians a ship-of-war, so where would the troops
land if they tried to sail the main and land, on Irish shores?

The O'Neal strategy was to seize Canada and strike at Britain fromher greatest possession. Roche and O'Neal and more than 300 other Irishmen were at Pigeon Hill on the Vermont side of the Canadian
border. They were to strike simultaneously with the raid from Detroit.

Those 300 dauntless raiders chased the Canadians into their home lair and fought for three hours, before they came back to the States again.

The arrival of the O'Neal raiders in Vermont resulted in the arrest of their leader by General George Gordon Meade, the hero of the Battle of Gettysburg. Three or four years later the Irish zealots and patriots tried another raid on Canada, which proved as abortive as the other.

To arm their troops the society hired a blacksmith shop in Jersey City where 5000 Springfield rifles were transformed into breech-loading rifles. These were to be used in the great raid slated for May 27, 1870.

The raid fizzled and Roche became pacific in his efforts to liberate Ireland. The only thing that rankles in his breast today is that the five counties populated mainly by Orangemen have not joined the Irish Free State. Dan made a trip "back home" years ago, but returned to this country when he received a cable asking him to come back at once.

It seems that Roche was engineer on an army vessel at Newport, R. I., when the cavalrymen were sent after Sitting Bull. Washington was in a turmoil over unfounded reports that General U. S. Grant, who had led the Union armies to victory, was going to head a revolution.

Dan got a job at a government munitions plant at Newport and while there met Eugene duPont. Friendship ensued between the pair and duPont asked Roche to come to Carney's Point to head the gun cotton plant to be created there. Roche started as general manager in 1891 and continued as boss for 11 years. In a reorganization Roche lost out but worked for the duPonts at Gibbstown for 12\years afterwards.

Thirty-nine years ago Roche was an engineer on the "Nutmeg State," transporting powder between Bridgeport, Conn., and New York, to be trans-shipped to the Philippines. A strike aboard resulted in a pickup crew manning the vessel. The vessel caught afire, the crew fought the flames for four hours, then abandoned ship.

Fourteen lives were lost in the fire. Roche, by jumping overboard, saved his life. After these adventures and experiences the nonagenarian smokes his pipe, lives in peace and declares that he'll live to be 100 easily.

* * *

Yours truly Inadvertently hit his friend, Ed Martin of Paulsboro, on the chin in yesterday's column. Through a piece of sloppy writing the inference was given that it was Ed's firm that broke a, contract with an employee. No such intention on the part of the writer, whatsoever. The employee was working for a firm in New York that isn't even remotely connected with the industry which employs Ed Martin. Ed was merely telling a story that had come to him."

Camden Courier-Post - February 15, 1938

CAMPAIGN FOR 1939 OPENED BY BRUNNER
Urges Re-election of Himself, Mrs. Kobus
and Hartmann as Commissioners
By
GORDON MACKAY

"Re-elect Brunner, Hartmann and Mrs. Kobus."

Mayor George E. Brunner fired the opening gun of the 1939 city commission campaign last night when he admonished the allied Democratic groups of the Sixth ward to unite behind the candidacy of the New Deal commissioners.

"The manner in which these three commissioners have worked overtime in your behalf and to make Camden a better city in which to live," said the Mayor, "entitles them to your support in the campaign that ends in May, 1939.

"The names of the other two candidates who will run on the same ticket and platform will be known early next year. Your guess as to their names and identities is as good as mine.

"The only thing I can tell you now is that you can be assured the other two commissioners will be as worthy in every way of your support as the three present commissioners I have named.

Brunner Likes Office

"I want to be reelected in 1939. I like the office and I want to go back. I recall one non-partisan commissioner who said he didn't care to be returned, but I noticed 20 days before election he was battling for all he was worth to be reelected.

"I won't stand up here and tell you I don't care for the office. I do. It's tougher than managing fighters, or in being a plumber— and I've been both—but I like it, and I want to stay right in it, so I'm telling you tonight I want to go back."

The Mayor chastised the minority members of the Board of Freeholders as reactionaries.

"If this reactionary group has the courage," asserted the Mayor, "to boost the tax rate 15 cents by not acting on the bond issue for the park commission that the people already have voted, and want to throw 3800 men out of work, let them stand up tomorrow night and say so; don't let them beat about the bush." Brunner spoke before representatives from clubs of the ward at the headquarters of the Sixth Ward Democratic Club, 548 Walnut Street.

Other organizations Included the Women's Democratic Club, Colored Democratic Club, Italian Democratic Club and Women's Roosevelt Democratic Club.

Prepares for Campaign

"I am glad you are gathered lere tonight," he said, "because there is no better time to organize for the campaign to elect the city commission than today. The city election is one year from next May, but already our enemies are preparing for the campaign.

"In the old days our party waited until a few weeks before election in order to give battle to :he opposition, but we can't afford to wait, we must get started now. You know what your three commissioners have done since they assumed office. It was a dirty house that the old government gave us to clean.

"We found the city on the verge of bankruptcy, going nowhere fast. These three persons went to work to bring the city out of chaos. We have taken advantage of the Federal funds to help our city, we have not been afraid to sponsor WPA projects to keep men and women employed.

"The city of Camden has cooperated with the Federal government more than all the rest of the communities in South Jersey combined. These reactionary communities such as the township of Pennsauken are not interested in getting people to work. Pennsauken doesn't want to defeat the depression and the recession.

Assails Big Business

"Reactionary Republicans in that township are interested chiefly in seeing that the depression continues. They don't want WPA work, despite the fact Republicans and Democrats might be employed on projects."

Brunner insisted the same spirit was manifest throughout the nation insofar as leaders of the G. O. P. were concerned.

"They want to see bread lines stretch, do these Big Business leaders," he continued, "so they can domineer the people and keep them under their thumbs as they did before. But the people won't permit that to last long and will take the proper steps soon to correct that condition."

"I said a few moments ago," declared the Mayor, "that the time to prepare for the coming campaign was now. I wish at this time to speak about the two commissioners beside myself whom ] recommend for your support, and with whom I am proud to have worked.

Great Record Made

"They have made a great record, They have helped to assume the relief burden, they have helped to bring Federal projects here. This city was on the verge of bankruptcy two years ago and the city employees were taking that counterfeit money known as scrip. We have done away with scrip and have bettered our city and not one cent has been added to the tax rate.

"It is true we have collected this year more than last year, $1,300,000 more in taxes. But that money was spent before we ever took office, in jobs like the purchase of the Seventh street railroad, which was bought for $302,000 and could have been purchased for $50,000. That's the way those who were in office before us squandered and wasted your money.

"Even with this waste of money we managed to save you $40,000 on that $302,000. I think the previous governments must have been asleep for eight years when I see the mess they made of city government."

"We took over the tax collections and the first thing we did was to start tax sales among the politicians. They were left out of tax sales so long they began to think they never had to pay taxes, but we stopped all that nonsense.

Praises Knowledge of Law

"We have been alert, too, and not let lawyers, who are always trying to slip things over, put anything over on us. I never went to law school but I know more law than 80 percent of the lawyers in Camden, because I had to learn law to help run a government.

"When I see some of the stuff that lawyers try to put over I don't feel like talking with them; I feel like fighting them, hitting them right on the chin. We've done a good job. The commissioner in charge of public works by his recent street cleaning campaign has made this city better.

"A few years ago the Government in power made the name of Camden notorious all over the country. Today, because you have a real director of public safety, Camden is cleaner morally and in every other way than ever before.

"It is because they 'have done such a good job that I ask you tonight to get behind them, and see they are returned to office as well as myself, and I'm talking some for myself, too, for I want to go back."

George Ewing presided and other speakers were Mrs. Hannah Shropshire, William Stetser, John L. Morrissey, Miss Sadie Harris and Saunders Bonson."

Camden Courier-Post - February 16, 1938

Is Zat So!
By
GORDON MACKAY

"MARMOTA MONAX, alias A. Groundhog and Samuel T. Corliss can battle over the ranking of weather prophets, but I'll take Connie Mack or Gerry Nugent for mine. I know that Spring is on the wing, and that the time is near at hand when the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, as the poet sings.

For the writer has just received the annual brochure stating where the Athletics and the Phillies will pass the Spring training period in 1938. The Mackmen are going to Lake Charles, La., while the Phillies will move to Biloxi, Miss.

The transfer of the training camps means that Florida is passing out of the picture as the base of the major league baseball clubs. The Mackmen were stationed at Fort Myers, away down on the tip of the state, for a dozen years, while the Phillies traveled to Winter Haven, for a half dozen or more.

Winter Haven is the place where United States Senator William H. Smathers of Atlantic City chose his bride, one of the fair daughters of the Everglade State, .where there are many whose pulchritude is worth more than a passing stare or a passive glance.

It was years ago that we were in Lake Charles. Connie Mack and his Merrymacks were in training there then. The newspaper by which the author was employed at the time was crusading against the Athletics, hence it was felt that I would be an interloper to travel with the team.

WHEN ROMMEL TOSSED 'KNUCKLES,'

In those days the Mackmen boasted Cy Perkins, Jumping Joe Dugan, Jimmy Dykes, Eddie Rommel and others. The Athletics were loitering in last place, for this was one of the seasons when the cellar and Connie were constant companions.

The cynosure of the Lake Charles folk was a tall, gangling, slimjim, who stood six inches above six feet and seemed to weigh about as much as a lead pencil. He was Bryan Harris, known as "Slim," who had a checkered career as a pitcher. "Slim" came from some town in Texas.

One of "Slim's" confidantes, too, at the time, was a soulful Georgian named Jack Slappey, who was as funny in his cracks as he was deficient in his hooks and fast ones. The Athletics were in a defeatist attitude after several years kerplunk at the bottom and the daily talk turned largely to the fortunes of the
club in the coming season. 'Twas then that Slappey made the crack that went around the world.

"You know, 'Slem,' " Slap said, in his Georgia cracker drawl, "I really thenk we're gwine to git outa the foot this time." His prophecy was as punk as his pitching.

Lake Charles, though, boasts two things that linger in my memory. One is the proprietor of the Hotel Majestic, if he be among the living today. The other was a whistle on the sawmill on the Calcasieu river. The innkeeper was Colonel Calvert. He was the typical Southern kunnel in the flesh, affected a
large and broad sombrero, black as the porters about the hotel.

Col. Calvert spoke with the patois of the Louisiana planter, and gave orders like a cavalry colonel. He was the goods. The porters and chefs and the waiters obeyed his voice, just as their ancestors had jumped at the whip of the late and unlamented Simon Legree.

CORN PONE AND PIGBONE

Colonel Calvert was one of the best story-tellers I've ever heard. He was a partially reconstructed "rebel," but he wasn't quite sure that the damyankees had ever been created for any good purpose. The Colonel, however, was too good a business man, too hospitable a host, to neglect the ease, comfort and cuisine of his guests.

He liked newspapermen, possibly because of their thirst and capacity. For the Colonel liked his juleps and toddies, both of which were served nobbily and with due hospitality by the proprietor, of the Majestic.

He only pulled one boner insofar as this bird is concerned. The Colonel one day suggested that at dinner that night the scribes be the guests at his table for a dinner of corn pone and ham hock. Mebbe I haven't the combination right.

It is some dish over which the Southerners wax poetic, and all the song writers from the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn who warble about the moonlight on the "ribber" rave and become lyric.

We agreed. After the soup was served on came the corn pone and the hambone, or whatever the devil the combination is called. Generous helpings came to each guest's plate, mine included. The Colonel, excellent as a host, wanted to know how we enjoyed this Southern dish.

With one exception, I guess everybody was telling the truth.

That exception was Mackay. He said it was "great" when as a matter of fact it tasted like hell to me. I wouldn't swap a plate of oatmeal for this Southern dish. Heavens knows how I hate oatmeal, after having to stick my nose in a dish of it every day during the years that I knew until I left my teens.

And although Mr. Paul Webb, the large, portly and capable head of the copy desk, declares that I'm all wrong, and that corn pone and its partner are magnificent, I still say they are "lousy."

In announcing the change of base from Fort Myers to Lake Charles the Athletics have introduced the most novel brochure that I've seen in 30 years of covering baseball camps and their denizens.

It is the front cover of the roster that makes it such a novelty. There is a picture of the Lean Leader breaking through a field of newspaper clippings, which in themselves reveal the 50 years that Connie Mack has passed in the game he loves and which he now adorns as of yore.

Away up in the left hand corner is "Meriden signs Young McGillicuddy," thence to 1901 when the clipping says, "Connie Mack to Manage New Club." That was the cornerstone of the longest managerial career ever known in baseball. Each succeeding year that the skinny sachem stays at the helm sees another record created, another season added to the most ornate record that baseball boasts. "Mack' Wins Ninth Pennant" tells its own tale. So does "Connie Mack, 50 years in baseball"— six words that are the epitome of a dazzling record, a brilliant career, an existence known only to one
Philadelphian—Cornelius McGillicuddy, 75, of Germantown, Pa."

Camden Courier-Post - February 17, 1938

Is Zat So!
By
GORDON MACKAY

ART and athletics, pastime or politics—give the Negro of ability an even break and I have always discovered that he'll wind up a topnotcher.

Oratory, too, is a field in which the Negro excels because of the natural dramatic instinct he possesses, the imagery with which he paints his ideas in words, and the sentiment and emotion that is a part of his racial heritage.

Just scan the field anew. Take football for instance. Negroes on college elevens were something of a rarity until a few decades ago, yet the race has produced some of the greatest stars of the gridiron. The first of his color to win recognition as the premier in his position was Billy Lewis, of Harvard.

Forty-odd years ago Billy was center on the Harvard varsity, where he become All-American in that position. His distinction while a personal triumph did not reflect as much glory on the individual 'as did those of his race who came afterwards. Billy Lewis was a lawyer, and as such was one of the first Negroes in the country to be appointed as an assistant United States attorney.

It is when you come to Lewis' successors as All-Americans that you find the striking manifestation of my claim that when a Negro athlete is good, he is bound to be a topnotcher. There is a certain gentleman named Paul Robeson. To win All-American recognition as end when a student at Rutgers University proves the sort of flanker that Paul Robeson turned out.

ROBESON ACTOR, SINGER

Robeson became great as an actor and singer. His performance of Othello, the Moor, in Shakespeare's great tragedy, gave Paul a fame that is enduring, while in the realm of music the great Negro singer has carved his own niche.

Along with Paul there are Fritz Pollard, halfback and Duke Slater, tackle. Fritz was chosen from Brown University, another instance where a Negro star shone so brilliantly that while performing for a
comparatively small university, experts couldn't leave him off the Peerage of the Pigskin.

The same applies to the giant Slater, who not only played a magnificent game but whose sportsmanship was so pronounced and so grand that his rivals accorded to him the repute and honor of "being the cleanest football player they ever had faced."

I know that in the newspaper world the Negro writers are among the best in the profession. There isn't a better newspaperman in America than my friend, Bob Vann, who publishes the Pittsburgh Courier-Journal. Rollo Wilson, who left the Fourth Estate for a Federal position as a chemist, was one of the best sports writers in the land. His descriptive powers, his diction, his comment, ranked him in the class with the best of white writers anywhere.

Such praise, too, is merited by Randy Dixon, Orrin Evans, Joe Ramey, Joe Baker, and other newspapermen of my acquaintance, who can hold rank with any white newspapermen at any time or place.

Ira Thomas, the Athletics scout, declares that the greatest battery that ever stood in shoe leather were Negroes. They were the celebrated Mendoza and Petway, the former a pitcher, the latter a catcher.

"BLACK MATTY" REAL MARVEL

Mendoza was a Cuban and was known as "The Black Matty." Petway was an American Negro who did most of his playing in Cuba, too.

"Mendoza was the greatest pitcher I ever saw," declared Thomas, "and there wasn't a catcher who came within a block of being as good as Petway. Were Negroes in the major leagues, those men would have created a sensation and easily could have been rated as the $100,000 battery."

The list could be extended interminably, in sports, politics, letters and literature. The reason that I referred to the athletic greats of the race—I haven't mentioned De Hart Hubbard, of Michigan; Jesse Owens, of Ohio State; Ned Gourdin, of Harvard; Eulace Peacock, of Temple—is that the two best public speakers I have heard in a dog's age are both Negro orators.

In this category I place Oliver Bond, the sachem of Lawnside, and the Rev. Morris Shepard, of Philadelphia. The latter has been twice elected a member of the State Legislature, and Oliver is given the accolade as the leader of his race in the section where he lives.

Both are Democrats. Twenty years ago it would have taken a man bent on research to discover Negro Democrats who could be hoisted to the pedestal occupied as orators by the clergyman and Oliver. It was my good fortune to listen to Bond, as he spoke at a banquet recently, and walked away with all the honors.

I was so interested in his speech and the personality of the man that I made inquiries to get an insight into Oliver Bond and his antecedents.

Oliver Bond, so I'm told, was a paperhanger, who today is working for WPA. Well, Oliver Bond is one of the best arguments for WP A, for the man has eloquence, knowledge, intelligence and class sticks out all over him.

Whenever I hear anyone haranguing the WPA and giving the boys who work on those projects all the worst of it, my mind hops right away to Oliver Bond. I size the mental equipment of Oliver with the pigmy mind of the squawker. That's enough for me, I'll take Oliver.

Bond's personality is as keen as his language is eloquent and compelling. Turn Oliver Bond loose at any convocation of orators and my half a buck goes on Oliver to race down the stretch so far ahead, the others won't come in until the full of the new moon.

Rev. Shepard is one of the masters of our language. To hear the dominie roll out his sonorous phrases, or to hear him turn his biting wit and searing sarcasm on the enemy, reveals to you an orator who can give nine-tenths of the political talkers cards and spades, then beat them by a couple of grand slams.

I think that when the Democratic party absorbed Negro leaders like Oliver and the good pastor of Philadelphia the party made a ten-strike.

And if any organization wants to hear some rare oratory, some telling eloquence, listen to the mother tongue as it should be waggled, why just invite Oliver or the good dominie for a speech.

Camden Courier-Post - February 18, 1938

Is Zat So!
By
GORDON MACKAY

AMERICA'S first and third cities in point of population have their police departments in charge of a man who has risen from the ranks. New York and Philadelphia, as the bluecoats say it, have police departments "bossed by a cop." Commissioner Valentine of New York and Andy Emanuel, director of Public Safety of Philadelphia, are as unlike as the groundhog and a seal.

Andy has been a patrolman and a detective, and now is boss of the whole department. It was about 28 years ago that the writer first, bumped into Andy, to form a friendship that has lasted until the moment.

Emanuel and his partner, Jim Scanlon, were the sleuths in charge of a kidnapping case that electrified Philadelphia and startled its high society, only to result in one of the rarest climaxes I have ever known in a criminal case of its nature.

Robert Buist, a stern, austere Scot, was one of the wealthy men of the city, engaged in the seed business and known in trade circles throughout the United States. Roberta De Janon, was his grandchild, a petted, pampered lassie who was "The, Poor Little Rich Girl.”

ROBERTA WAS LONELY CHILD

The de Janons had been divorced. Buist, the grandfather, took Roberta, the child of Buist's daughter, to rear and to educate. Buist had a suite in the Bellevue-
Stratford, where little Roberta really lived the life of a hermit, despite the riches possessed by her grandsire.

Little Roberta even had her meals brought to the suite, a fact that led to the kidnapping that excited a nation. The waiter who served the heiress to the Buist wealth was named Cohen. He was born in Austria and the fact of his birthplace plays an important role in the entire crime.

Cohen was born to a family of peasants. His birth was in the days when the Hapsburg dynasty ruled the Dual Monarchy, and the Austrian peasant was bred in the caste system. To him, the word of the lord and master was law, to be obeyed implicitly and without question. Cohen carried to these shores the same sense of feudal obedience, and, because Cohen did have this idea, grounded into his action, the crime occurred, as I have said.

Roberta de Janon, with no filial ties to bind her to her parents, because of their separation, had none of the outlets for social contact and play given to normal childhood. She was a shy, retiring little thing. She shrank from any knowledge of the outside world; Her grandfather, a stern Scotsman, wanted his grandchild to remain single, as the grandsire felt that his daughter had tumbled down her own happiness in a house of cards called marriage.

Thus with domestic felicity denied to her, with girl companions unknown to the child, and no solace other than an understanding waiter of humble occupation and alien birth, Roberta pined and worried. A harassed "Little ·Daughter of Money" was she", just the "Poor Little Rich Girl" to the life.

HAD MONEY FOR FLIGHT

Roberta, however, was an omniverous reader. In fact this was the one pastime she could indulge to the full. Movies were not so common in those days as now. Grandsire Buist had the native antipathy of the Scotch Presbyterian toward the theatre.

His grandchild, though, read and read. Perhaps she dreamed, romantically dreamed. At any rate she felt the urge to get into the outside world, to journey into the places of which she had read; She wanted to set her feet in trails that hitherto had been uncharted courses for the maid. One day Roberta told Cohen that· she intended to run away.

Naturally the humble servitor was fearful. He talked more like a father than a servant to the girl, prevailing at last, upon her to remain. But Cohen did not dare to beard Grandfather Buist with the truth, that the granddaughter wanted to get a taste of life, that she craved the normal pleasures and excitements of a girl in her teens.

Roberta, though, beneath her mask of shyness and reticence had something of her kinsman's Scotch stubbornness. She was determined to run away, to get out into the world like other girls, to know the theatre, the cafes, to dance lightly, to find love perhaps.

So Miss De Janon one day told Cohen that she would flee and that he must go with her. There was no romance between the elderly servitor and the young' heiress. She looked upon Cohen as a guide and friend.

Cohen, on the other hand, was firmly baptized in the faith that when the lady of the manor ordered her servant to do a thing, his only course was to obey. He was really Prussianized in his employment, obedient as had been his family and their ancestors to the rule of the Hapsburgs. They did not question, they only obeyed.
So Roberta put her bankroll in Cohen's hands. The waiter packed their grips. Together they started on their pilgrimage.

It was the strangest "elopement" ever recited in the newspapers. It was the most peculiar "kidnapping" with which the Philadelphia police department has ever been compelled to deal. For the "kidnapped" girl had prevailed upon her "abductor" to take along Roberta's little fox terrier, her only source of companionship while her Scotch grandsire was at business during the day.

The furore and the scare that followed in the departure of the waiter and the heiress had the city agog. Fanciful tales were sprung of the romance between the patrician maid and her plebeian swain. So ran the stories in the press while the police sent out circulars, scurried hither and yon in search of the pair.
Finally a woman who ran a lodging house in Chicago saw a picture in a newspaper of Roberta and Cohen. This woman spotted them as guests in her lodging house.

She reported the matter to the police. Roberta and Cohen were arrested. Andy and Jim Scanlon were sent to bring them back. We met the bunch at Fort Wayne, Andy kindly letting us talk to the girl and the waiter. Cohen and the girl agreed that he had merely been a servant all the time. At the trial it was revealed that he had blindly obeyed the wish of the lady of the manor. Roberta had not been harmed in any way.

Cohen's case was gingerly treated as a result. After he had been given a minor sentence Buist took his granddaughter away. Later I read that she had married in San Francisco; today her whereabouts are masked to yours truly..

Camden Courier-Post - February 19, 1938

Is Zat So!
By
GORDON MACKAY

Two substantial and thoughtful citizens of Camden were discussing the peculiarities and oddities of circumstantial evidence in the presence of the writer the other day. One of them was Sig Schoenagle, the other Pat Harding, assistant county prosecutor.

Neither rejected circumstantial evidence as holeproof, nor did they accept it as inconsequential. There was much to be said on both sides, they agreed.

Finally to point a moral and adorn a tale, Merchant Schoenagle related the story which follows, which is good enough to pass on to others who may read this column.

"When I was a young fellow in Philadelphia," said Sig, "I was interested in a certain young woman who lived in the neighborhood where I worked. Her father had a leather finding store on the ground floor of the building while the family resided in the rooms upstairs.

"Several blocks away was another store, the rooms above, being rented to boarders and lodgers. One night while I was calling on the young woman and we were sitting, in the parlor the rear of the second floor was visited by a burglar.

"He escaped with considerable loot including all the young woman's jewelry. We didn't hear a sound yet the burglary must have been committed while we were sitting in the parlor. It wasn't discovered, either, until the next day.

"The young woman informed me of the burglary. I suggested that she give me a list of the articles stolen. I knew the pawnbrokers in the neighborhood and I told her I would give each of them a list for them to be on the watch for the goods and learn who pawned them.

LOCATED LOOT IN ODD MANNER

"I did this. The pawnbrokers agreed, to watch for any disposition of the stuff that might come to their attention. Months passed, not a sign of the gems could be found, nor the least intimation as to any disposition that might have been made of them.

"One of the boarders in the other building to which I have referred, was a young fellow, good looking; who appeared to have no business, yet acted in no way suspicious. He seemed. to be modest in. his manner of living, made no splurge and appeared to have enough money to live according to tastes that appeared simple.

"August 4 is my birthday. On that day I was standing in front of the store beneath the boarding house, talking to the proprietor and this nice-looking young fellow to whom I have already referred.

"'Today is my birthday', I told the shopkeeper, 'and tonight you and I will celebrate.' The good looking fellow said then: You seem to be a pretty good sort of fellow. I think I should make you a present on your 'birthday;' I've got some stuff' upstairs,'" come ahead up and I'll give you a present'.

"I went along", narrated Schoenagle;" and we went into his room. he went to a trunk, he had there and opened it. He took out a handkerchief all knotted together and when he untied the knots he showed me a bunch of jewelry. It was my girl's gems, I almost keeled over when I saw them but I managed to keep my head. "'Go ahead,' the good-looking fellow said to me: 'pick out anything' you like for a present', I made the usual pretense of not wanting any gift, just, to keep him from being suspicious. He insisted, though, that I take something. Finally I chose a little ring and put it in my pocket.

''When I left the fellow I went straight to my girl's house. I showed her the ring and asked her if she recognized it.

SHE RECOGNIZES OWN JEWEL'

"'Why,' she said, 'that's my ring!' I told her I was sure she was right, then up and gave her the whole story. She suggested that we notify the police at once. Right away I considered the situation. Suppose the police should believe that I was in on the job, had really 'fingered' the job for the thief? Wouldn't that put me in a nice jam, especially if the good looking, fellow should name me as an accomplice?

'''I explained this plight of mine to my girl. She had the good sense to see my point. 'I'll tell you what we will do,' I suggested. 'I'll go to the fellow, tell him he has ,your jewels and say to him that if he will return the stuff we'll keep quiet about the whole business. After all, the main thing is to, get back the jewels, isn't it?'

"That's right,' my girl said, 'you do just that very thing.' I, went back to the good-looking fellow and told him the whole circumstances. 'That stuff belongs to my girl,' I ,said. 'I don't know how you got it, or why you have it, or anything else. I don't care. I don't want to appear in any false light, and suspicious persons might put me in just that position if a call is made to the police. Put back the stuff and get yourself out of a jam that you certainly are in, and get me out of one that I might innocently find myself in.'

"He was a pretty good scout, at that. 'I see your point,' he said, 'and I don't want to put you, in any jam, whatsoever. I'll give the stuff to you and you return it to the girl.' He rolled up every article in that handkerchief again and I brought it back to my girl and nobody ever was the wiser.'''

"I found out later that he was a notorious fence for all the thieves who frequented the Tenderloin. The police believed sometimes he went on such jobs himself. I don't know whether he stole the stuff' or whether he was holding it to sell in some other place, after the heat had died down. "A friend, of mine in the police department told me sometime afterward that, the good-looking fellow was killed while robbing a hotel in Pittsburgh." ,

"And so, Pat," smiled Sig, "you can see one case. where circumstantial evidence might have been pretty tough on a fellow named Sig Schoenagle."

Camden Courier-Post - February 21, 1938

Is Zat So!
By
GORDON MACKAY

TWO South Jersey personages "have been recognized recently by the Republican high command as the leaders of the G. O. P. in their respective counties. The persons chosen for this signal distinction are Commissioner Mary W. Kobus of Camden and State Treasurer William H. Albright of Woodbury, Gloucester county.

One North Jersey leader is also recognized. He is County - Clerk Lloyd B. Marsh of Passaic county. These nominees were chosen by the vote of representative Republicans in every section of the state. The selections received the unofficial blessing of the party's high command.

The poll which resulted in this triumvirate being chosen as the outstanding party leaders in the state was conducted by the "Republican Standard Bearer," an official organ of the G. O. P., fostered by the high command and endorsed by the party chieftains in every section of the state.

Each county in the state will be canvassed by the publication, with the consent and tacit agreement of the party leaders, in order that the high command may realize the individuals who are the choice of the voters in their districts as the real leaders in the respective counties.

The balloting for the choices in Camden, Gloucester and Passaic counties follows closlely the general opinion of the party wheelhorses as to the leadership. Albright has long been regarded as the leader of the G. O. P. in Gloucester county, one of the recognized party chieftains in the state.

Marsh is also a figure who has always received recognition as the Passaic leader since he assumed the reins of 'power in party councils in that county.

MARSH'S MODESTY QUITE COMPELLlNG

Marsh's choice is quite a tribute to his, modesty, as a man named Lloyd B. Marsh is the managing director of the "Republican Standard Bearer." To think that some other leader in Passaic County should have been chosen in a contest conducted by Marsh's own newspaper, ot course, is carrying human credulity a bit too far.

I seem to recall, too, that considerable bitterness was expressed by numerous lieutenants of Senator Lester H. Clee over the returns from Passaic county on last election day. There were loud blasts from Clee quarters that the Essex county senator had been sacrificed in Passaic and Essex counties. That in the former bailiwick political hari kari had been committed on the G. O. P. gubernatorial nominee.

These accusations, ot course, came from partial sources. On the other hand there was the excusatory declaration that Marsh was sold out by his own lieutenants, who butchered Clee to make a Roman holiday, although personally Marsh remained highly loyal to the Clee candidacy.

If the latter view be correct then we ask as; a plain, unadulterated newspaperman, who the blazes can reckon Marsh an outstanding leader when he can't even control the actions of his own lieutenants? If that be leadership it's certainly a most peculiar type, A brand of politics which was never called leadership in the neck of the woods where I was born and raised.

Still it's Marsh's newspaper that handled the contest. If a leader can't be a leader in his own newspaper contest, where, I ask you, can he be expected to be recognized, as a leader? The more I dwelt on Marsh and, his leadership, the longer was impelled to take another squint at the returns from the primary and general elections.

Passaic county especially interested me.

VOLTE-FACE IN PASSAIC

Comparisons between the primary results and those in the general election in the three counties are interesting, to determine the caliber and. qualities of the leadership shown by these designated bigwigs of the party.

In the primary, Passaic voted as follows: Clee, 15,771; Powell, 8620, a difference ot 7151; Gloucester: Clee, 10,533, Powell, 2181, a margin 'of 8352; Camden, Clee; 29,683, Powell, 14,141, an edge of 15,542.

In the general election Passaic voted as follows: Clee, 48,886; Moore, 47,363, a margin of 1523; Gloucester, Clee, 20,770, Moore, 9685, a difference of 11,085; Camden, Clee, 67,556, Moore, 31,885, or a difference of 35,671.

Stacked against the pluralities that Albright in Gloucester, and Mrs. Kobus in Camden, obtained for Senator Clee the margin in Passaic seems pitiful. If that is the standing tribute to Marsh's qualifications as a leader, why I'll take vanilla.

Mrs. Kobus, of course, aided by the New Deal Republicans, led the fight for Clee in the primaries and completely swamped the Powell faction. In the general election again, she mustered her forces and went forth. to do battle, piling up a magnificent plurality for the Essex county senator in Mrs. Kobus' home city and county.

To choose her as the G. O. P. leader in Camden county, of course, is merely paying due tribute where tribute is due· and richly deserved. The same thing applies to Albright. He not only swung his county in majestic fashion for Clee in the primary and general elections, but also is accredited with always carrying Gloucester for any candidate Albright chooses to support.

To add to the laurels won by Mrs. Kobus, she nominated a slate of eight freeholder candidates in the primary, electing three in the general election. Her lieutenants are also credited with putting across Louis Bantivoglio in the Fifth Ward of Camden. While Louis is allied with the Baird faction, he owes his election to New Deal support. A support strong enough to put Bantivoglio across by 40 votes.

When you consider the county as a whole, of course, why Mrs. Kobus stands head arid shoulders above her associates in the G.O.P. councils. Therefore when the high command in the Republican party ;yields the palm of county leadership to the director of public safety in Camden, it is only a just recognition of her power, prestige and position.

Hr influence In the county is growing. It is admitted on all sides. Eventually politicos say, she will bring together under her banner all the present factions and divisions in the party. Either the party will march in step with Mary W. Kobus or the party will march as an army of stragglers in retreat, these prophets insist.

The high command of the G.O.P. has recognized her right to leadership. We expect any day now to see the pressure put on Camden county to mobilize beneath the banners of Mrs. Kobus and her New Deal wing.

Camden Courier-Post - February 23, 1938

Is Zat So!
By
GORDON MACKAY

NOW that Harold G. Hoffman has become "Brother Rat" to Heywood Broun, Jay Franklin, Charlie Humes, Dan McConnell, John Fitzgerald, By Jiminy and Yours Truly, it seems only clubby to warn our new fraternity brother of something that he is up against for sure.

Perhaps the former Governor felt he was using slick polities when he waited until the eleventh hour before he named David Baird, Jr., to the bridge commission. Perhaps Hoffman figured he would hand a kick in the 'slats to certain sources the former Governor disliked. Perhaps Hoffman figured it a keen piece of work for a slicker to toss the former U. S. Senator in Camden's lap and tell the county to like it or lump it.

I don't know the motive's that actuated our Brother Rat in this move. Nor am I aware of his idea in making the appointment.

In fact I'm not even critical of the nominee or of his nomination to the commission. I'm merely taking the former Governor into my confidence and telling him that the sorest folk in local G.O.P. circles over the appointment of B'rer Baird are the Baird adherents.

Seems far-fetched to make such a statement, but they have confessed that very fact to yours truly. Don't get the idea they are not as strongly behind the former U. S. Senator as ever they are. The thing that riles the Baird folk is that Hoffman tossed that bundle of woe and trouble on their doorstep about 24 hours before he, Hoffman, was through as Governor of New Jersey,

Baird factionists pay no tribute to Hoffman by citing that he appointed David Baird, Jr., through any friendship for either the appointee or the Camden county G.O.P.

BLAMED HOFFMAN FOR PRESENT STRIFE

No indeed. These Bairdites tell me the party was getting along pretty well. The factions had been solidified behind Senator Clee during the latter's gubernatorial campaign. The Republicans controlled the legislative delegation from Camden county, the three assemblymen and state senator are allied with the G. O. P.

True, the Board of Freeholders was lost and the Baird faction was disappointed over that fact, as one might expect. Still the Baird allies had become reconciled to the loss of control of county affairs, were yielding to the inevitable. Olive branches were extended in several directions. Prominent Baird lieutenants were willing to listen to harmony with the Kobus wing of the party.

Came the appointment. Instantly the old wrangle broke out afresh. It might have occurred in any event but the peculiar circumstances under, which the appointment was made added to the complexity of the situation and the anguish of the factions. First there came a difference as to the meaning of the law which states that a Governor may appoint a commissioner, ad interim, until the legislature elects.

Whether the ad interim appointment continues until a commissioner is chosen by the legislature is a moot question. So involved is the present dispute, indeed, that I learn on good authority that T. Harry Rowland, New Jersey counsel to the bridge commission, will in all probability be asked at the next meeting of the commission to give an opinion as to the meaning of that law.

Rowland will be called upon to render his opinion as to whether David Baird Jr., sits legally on the bridge commission today, or whether his term of office as an ad interim appointee expired when the present state legislature came into life.

ROWLAND WILL HAVE TOUGH JOB

If this question is broached to Rowland he'll wind up behind the eight ball, too.

If he decides the appointment continues until the legislature elects a successor, that will fix Baird's appointment as certain on the commission until somebody is elected to the vacancy caused by the retirement of John B. Kates.

If Rowland determines the appointment terminated with the inauguration of the Governor and legislature, then comes a legal battle that may wind up in the Court of Errors and Appeals. In either event it's not so hot for Brother Rowland.

Meanwhile I hear by the firmly established Mackay grapevine that neither of the present candidates mentioned for bridge commissioner has sufficient votes to be elected. Both sides, I'm told, assert that when the proper time arrives they'll have the votes to elect their man.

Others who are impartial in the survey declare neither of the candidates has enough votes. Unless something gives, these seers contend, there will be a stalemate continue so long as the legislature wishes the present situation to exist.

I understand that the balance of power to determine the election of Baird or former Senator Albert S. Woodruff rests with Union county. Four members of the Assembly from that bailiwick, voting together, can hand the plum to either candidate.

Senator Charles E. Loizeaux, president of the upper branch and Herbert J. Pascoe, Speaker of the Assembly, both hail from Union county. The matter of having their assemblymen vote for Baird or Woodruff has been placed squarely before these two solons.

Loizeaux, it was told to me, tried to duck the issue with the old moth eaten excuse that he never interferes with "the Assembly matters." Whereupon a Woodruff ally called to Senator Loizeaux's attention a couple of occasions when he seemed to slip from such attitude.

When confronted with the charge that on several occasions Senator Loizeaux did not hesitate to stick his fingers into Assembly matters, the presiding officer shut up like a clam. Only to open his mouth anew to intimate that he might give the Woodruff cause a boost with the Union county delegation in the Assembly.

Under such circumstances, and, with a rift wide enough to drive a 10-ton truck created in the party ranks, no wonder exists as to the antipathy the pro-Baird folk feel toward Hoffman.

These same Baird allies provoke considerable comment when they assert that if Hoffman had kept his hands out of the pie, Governor Moore would have named Baird to the commission to spite certain sources of opposition to Moore that dwell in this part of the world.

Altogether Brother Rat Hal made no 10-strike in his selection. To be frank the pro-Baird chaps insist that he just "played hell all around" with his appointment under such conditions.

Camden Courier-Post - February 24, 1938

Is Zat So!
By
GORDON MACKAY

FREED from the restraint of judicial dignity, former Supreme Court Justice Frank T. Lloyd is back to the simple pleasures of the barrister once more.
The justice makes no bones about his release from the ermine. After 30 years tied to judicial duties he told me the other day he "felt like a man free from prison."

"Maybe that's hardly the right comparison," laughed the jurist, "but let's say that I feel like a boy out of school. You know that's a trying position, being on the Supreme bench.

"I'll say that I went through 2000 books a year. The worst of the experience was that you never were free from your work. Don't mistake my meaning. You spent your day in the chambers or in the courtroom, then when you went to bed at night the problems, the cases, 'the decisions, the opinions all raced through your mind during the night."

"So you like the work of getting back into practice?" we asked the justice.

"Yes sir," he replied. Then his eyes twinkled as we suggested that perhaps he might run against a contretemps sometime.

"I want to be around the courtroom," I told the justice, "when you begin to slam an opinion or precedent and find you set them both."

MIGHT HAPPEN HERE ALL RIGHT

"You know," he said seriously, "such a thing could easily happen. In fact, it did to one of my colleagues. You can't keep track of thousands of opinions a year. No man can.

"To refer to my colleague on the supreme bench. He was hearing an argument one day, shortly before I retired from the bench. Counsel for one of the litigants quoted an opinion given in a case similar to the one being heard, and in which my colleague made a ruling.

"It was apparent the justice did not hold much sympathy with the opinion which had just been read.

"Who wrote that opinion my colleague asked, rather sharply. " 'Well,' counsel smiled, 'with all due reference to the court, you did.' "

"Now," laughed the former justice, "it won't do for me to make any arguments unless I'm pretty sure if the origin of the decisions and precedents I quote."

If Justice Lloyd becomes mellow with his release from the judicial serfdom which he says he feels his present freedom to be, I figure New Jersey has judges who should be summarily pushed right into the lay ranks as speedily as possible.

This Garden States, with Hague in Jersey City and some of the judges who wear its ermine, should be rather tolerant of doings below the Hague-Sweatshop Line.

When we scan the destruction of civil liberty in Jersey City, and read some of the unholy decisions of the bench, we stand aghast.

BERRY SEEMS ANOMALY ON BENCH

This Maja Leon Berry seems a veritable anomaly to be wearing the ermine of any judiciary. The decisions that he makes in labor matters are absolutely without reason in either law or fact. He is probably the worst foe that constitutional government knows on any bench of which I have heard.

His ruling that a strike in any plant ends when strikebreakers fill the places, of the strikers' is such a miscarriage of justice, that, if rendered from a backwoods bench, would be laughed out of court.

No, court can sensibly or in reality declare when a strike starts, or when it ends.

That is a matter for the parties involved, the strikers. To say that a strike ends when strike-breakers fill places is the same, as to declare that no freeholder can vote on a question in Camden, because a spectator is occupying his seat. That decision just about hits the apex of the ridiculous. That any jurist would make such a decision, save at a minstrel show or a comic opera, is proof enough that one vice-chancellor is the "Berry" for legal decisions that can't lie found in Blackstone, Coke or any other lawyer's mind, save Berry's.

Along with that masterpiece that a strike ends when there are no vacant places at the loom, Berry climbs another legal Matterhorn. The climax to judicial nonsense that leaves Berry in a class by himself.

Berry has just decreed that a labor union cannot be the judge of its own membership. He has ordered a union to reinstate a member who was ousted, for good and sufficient reasons according to the union.

Berry says no. The member must be reinstated because the union is not to be the sole judge of the qualifications of its own membership, a privilege that has been given to any organization of which I have ever heard or read.

Of course, the opportunity to place labor spies in a union is wide open under such a decision. Judging from Berry's record that might be the inspiring motive in, both the member's suit and the bench's decision.

Vice-Chancellor Berry, too, seems to believe, as did Congressman Tim Campbell, famous Tammany sachem of years ago: "What's the Constitution among friends?" The vice-chancellor has just decided that peaceful picketing may be satisfactory to the United States Supreme Court; but we'll have none of those didoes in Ocean County, where justice and freedom sit personified in Vice Chancellor Maja Leon Berry.

Therefore, peaceful picketing of hotels where strikes are in existence in Lakewood, or any other spot, is illegal. We'll have none of that Russian gold circulating in Lakewood, any more than ill Jersey City. We'll have no sabotage of our kitchens and menus in Lakewood hotels under orders from Moscow.

Camden Courier-Post - February 25, 1938

Is Zat So!
By
GORDON MACKAY

FFair, charming and, clever, Mrs. Rocco Palese is one of my "favorite girl friends" -this is rather an exclusive organization- to be found in South Jersey. When this charming-matron proceeded to rebuke me with the chastening rod the other day, I was obedient to the command of Camden's fair daughter.

"The great trouble with you," opined Mrs. Palese, who was talking with Mrs. Florence Baker, Republican state committeewoman, who is also one of the "F. G. F." is that you don't write enough about women."

"Why you should have column after column about the fine women we have in Camden," she added.

As I left the charming Mrs. Palese and the equally winsome Madame Baker it was my fortune to encounter one of the others who are ensconced in the Circle of "F. G. F." She is Mrs. Emma E. Hyland, postmaster of Camden and for years the brave matron who carried aloft the banner of an unterrified but unwelcome Democracy.

Mrs. Hyland smiled in that manner so disarming, and in 'her' own diplomatic way. My thoughts meanwhile ran back to a banquet that was held a few nights before, in which the winsome Mrs. Hyland administered one verbal spanking to that glutton for punishment who writes this potpourri.

Mrs. Hyland verifies sapient remarks made by that astute counselor, Samuel P. Orlando, to wit:

"The great wonder in my mind has been that Mrs. Hyland cou1d battle in politics the way she has and still retain her femininity to such a marked degree."

HARMONY DWELLS IN DEMOCRACY

The sentiments expressed so tersely but eloquently by the limb of the law named Orlando meets with my emphatic "aye". Therefore, when Mrs. Hyland proceeded to chastise this scribe because the Mackay hinted that harmony does not does not dwell in Democracy's tents, the lady appeared vocally ruffled as she proceeded to shoot Mackay at sunrise.

We acknowledged the lambasting, but still there lurked in our mind the same old seed "of suspicion. We recalled when Harry Moore was inducted into office as the only Governor' to thrice have held that exalted office. The inauguration tickets were not profuse in the Brunner-Kelleher camp, hence we wondered why.

At the same time we remembered an innocent remark that we had read in the column of our able colleague, the cheery sprite, known as Charlie Humes. It was to the effect "that I am not supposed to bring people up here now."

As we trudged along the streets our minds burrowed in thought and our brains (?) deeply immersed in imagination we pulled up near Broadway and Stevens street in front of the red brick building which the unrighteous now call "No Man's Land" or more formally the Republican county headquarters.

We were startled out of our reverie by hearing a dulcet voice shouting: "My car is afire! My car is afire! I can't put it out!"

Instantly we knew that voice. It was that of another of our "F. G. F." in trouble, this time Mrs. Baker. Her gasoline chariot had come ablaze. She was in quandary terrific as to extinguishing the flames.

SQUISH! SQUlSHl! OUT GOES FIRE

Don't tell me why woman loses her head in an emergency. Out of a store came a lady; racing with a can in her hand. She was Sadye Levinsky, One of the few women pharmacists in Camden county.

Miss Levinsky knew her stuff as she also knows Mrs. Baker. Sadye went at her job in calm. matter-of-fact fashion that would have won the envy of any volunteer fireman who ever borrowed Fred Lynch's rubber boots.

Squish! Squish! Squish! went the pump in the can. Out, pronto went the flames. Mrs. Baker was profuse in her thanks as Miss Levinsky waved the emergency treatment of the fiery chariot aside, it was all in the day's work.

"Boy", we were saluted. "I've just seen the best emotional thespian, that hasn't made Hollywood. She's a knockout, about the prettiest girl in this county.

"Where is this paragon," we queried, wanting to know something about such a lady myself.

"She is in court trying to get alimony from her husband, Dr. Eppelman," said the barrister. We trudged over to the courthouse where we met a group who were discussing the Ethel Barrymore who had just asked her dentist husband be compelled to support her and a child.

"Phew," said Walter Keown, who was hubby's counsel, "what an actress, what, an actress;" Now that was some tribute for we've seen Pete Keown in court and he can do a John Barrymore, too.

It was at that moment that a petite blonde; with a face that rivaled Helen of Troy's and could launch a thousand ships from any dock in the world came around the corner. She was fetchingly dressed and surrounded by a flotilla of males; all members of her families.

She was Mrs. Eppleman, and that lawyer's description ot her glamour and charm was a prize bit of understatement. If she can act as good as she looks they better get Carole Lombard, Lucille Ball and some of those other gals an annuity right away, for they'll be pushed off the map.

Hardly had we sauntered away from this beauty when we encountered Mrs. Pauline Caperoon, our best bet for the prize politician among all her sex in Camden County. Pauline was as energetic, as politic and loquacious as is characteristic and we had a talkfest about certain folk and their foibles that was enriched, by the strength of Mrs. Caperoon's vocabulary, with an added trimming of a most conservative type from the writer.

After we had chatted with Pauline and learned plenty we should know we walked away again. Just in time to see Mayor Brunner and Mrs. Kobus hiking for a train to Trenton. Of course, we knew they, were just running up to see the Governor, but nothing political. We subsided.

Thus, Mrs. Palese, we feel that we have covered the ground pretty today in a single column, to bring to the attention of our readers (?) something about women.

Camden Courier-Post - February 25, 1938

PYNE POYNT CLUB FETE SET TOMORROW
27th Annual Get-Together Will Hear Gordon Mackay Tell of Oldtime Sports

When members, of the Pyne Poynt Social Club gather in the club's headquarters, southwest corner of Fifth and Erie streets, tomorrow night it will be to mark the twenty-seventh, annual get-together which will be observed with a banquet.

Harry F. Walton, first president of the organization, which was formed in the latter part of January, 1911, will be toastmaster. He served as head of the club in 1911 and 1912.

Gordon Mackay, member of the news staff of the Courier-Post newspapers' and an authority on sports, will be the speaker. Mackay will give highlights on sporting activities with which he has become so familiar in his 40 years of newspaper, work. Frank H. Ryan, managing editor of the Courier-Post, will be a guest.

"Many of the memberrs of the club have gone far afield from Camden,” said Walton, "but on the occasion of the annual dinner they all try to get back home' and rekindle the friendships' made when they were kids up here in North Camden."

Served As Freeholder:,

Walton, elected to the Board of Chosen Freeholders of Camden county as an independent Republican from the Tenth ward, served on the board in 1923 and, 1924. Born in Philadelphia, his parents brought him to Camden at an early age and he has lived in North Camden ever since. He has taken an active interest in civic affairs of the community.

"We believe that this year will be the best banquet that we have ever had," he said.

Present officers of the club are: Ed H. Winters, president; A. S. Kahnweiler, vice president; Hamilton J. Batten, recording secretary; Frank Kelley, financial secretary; Walton, treasurer; Alfred J. Rose, Jr., house chairman, and George Ash, trustee-at-large.

Kelley heads the banquet committee with the following members: Ash, Batten, Walton, Richard Barry, Kahnweiler, E. Caskey, Jacob Dreher and Nick Adezio. Rose is chairman of the entertainment committee, with Robert Johnson, William X. Huber, Jr. and Ellery Caskey as other members.

Club's Wide Membership

Other members of the club are Herman Brandt, Victor J. Paxson, Herbert Schaeffer, William N. Cann, Harry G. McKinney, Louis Schwaiger, David E. Barry, Thomas Kerr, Ren Plum, Ronald K. Lawrinson, William Brandt, William Walton, George A. E. Rheinbold,

Charles Seybold, Fred Schwaiger, J. Allen Brown, George Greene; J. Russell Taylor, Harry Edginton, Samuel Payne, Trester W. Vissell, George H. Schwaiger; George W. Muschlet; Arthur Messler; R. Thornton Greene, William C. Pommerer, Charles Glendenning, William E. Smith, Walter T. Adams, John T. Beal, Otto E. Braun, John Deardon, James Selby, William T. Steele, William Begg and Alfred Huber.

Also Samuel Burrows, William J. Denham, Thomas R. Peacock, Frank H. Haines, Clarence Rudolph, Albert R. Heap, Herbert C. Battle, William Oberst, Fred Stahl; John Begg, Charles Stahl, Charles E. Packer, Paul E. Mount, City Commissioner Frank J. Hartmann Jr., Raymond Rickley, Ralph T. Githens, Howard Hurlock, Martin Steer, Harry Kerr, William Reimer, Curtis O. Sangtinette and Einar Odergaard. John LaRue, Jr., is president of the junior club of the Pyne Poynt Social.

Camden Courier-Post - February 26, 1938

Is Zat So!
By
GORDON MACKAY

TALK about the long arm of coincidence, wait until you read this. Some years ago there wall a senator from Camden county named Albert S. Woodruff. A lawyer of recognized ability throughout the state, he was also a political figure
of prominence in the councils of the state government and the G. O. P.

During his tenure at Trenton a measure was adopted which called for codification of the state laws, or something of that nature whereby a good part of the statute law of New Jersey was rewritten.

One of the laws that came into revision was the law that created the Delaware River Joint Commission, the group 'that has control of the vested interests of the state in Camden Bridge.

And one of the committee that revised those laws was Senator Albert S. Woodruff of Camden county. From this prelude we'll give the floor to Br'er Woodruff and let him give an interesting revelation as to the reason why the law
governing appointments to the bridge commission from New Jersey was rewritten.

"I was fearful," the former solon I told me yesterday, "that we might come to the time when New Jersey would have a Democratic governor who would have the appointment of the bridge commission in his control. I didn't want the
Republican party thus to be stripped of membership on the commission so I wrote, deliberately and with premeditation the clause in the bill that provides for ad interim appointments only until 'the Legislature meets.'

'''I figured that it was rational to assume that in the majority of elections the Legislature would be under Republican control. In fact, my belief is borne out by the complexion of the two branches since revision."

SEE WHAT FUTURE HAS DEVELOPED

"The intention of that law," continued the ex-senator, "was to have no ad interim appointment last longer than the date when the Legislature organized. Thus we would always be assured of G. O. P. membership in control of the bridge on
the Jersey side because the Legislature would always remain in our hands, I felt.

"I'm certain that an opinion from the attorney general will bear out this legal contention that ad interim appointments exist only when the Legislature is out of session and those ad interim appointments expire the instant the Legislature
resumes sittings."

This opinion of the man who rewrote the law is interesting for several obvious reasons. It also reveals how the long arm of coincidence has reached out to take hold of a vexing situation for legislators, bridge counsel and other interested parties.

For David Baird, Jr., recently was given the ad interim appointment by the retiring Governor Hoffman. The Legislature has since been in session but no action has been taken on filling the vacancy caused by the resignation of
Treasurer John B. Kates.

Strangely enough the obstacle to the path of electing Baird to the full term, for which he now occupies the ad interim appointment, is Albert S. Woodruff, who has been boomed for the Kates vacancy. Meanwhile David Baird, Jr., sits as
a bridge, commissioner and the whole kettle of trouble woe and travail boils merrily ever.

The next move in this legislative puzzle must come from some source, while the Democrats have the opportunity to sit back and let the various Republican factions stew in their own juice.

SEEM TO BE SHIFT IN WHISTLE STOP

You solons in the State Legislature want to get a load of THIS information. Some time ago we protested as a resident of Camden about misrepresentation on the various commissions affecting Camden city and county by whistle stop
commissioners.

This is Chapter Two about the same situation as regards the Camden bridge.

Perhaps you men at Trenton are unaware that the whistle stop commissioner from Atlantic county only represents that bailiwick in absentia.

I might inform you gentlemen at Trenton that the bridge commission held a meeting yesterday, in executive session,

I understand, the commissioners from South Jersey took yours truly over the coals. They proceeded to slam the portly scribe about with both vim and Vigor.

That's okeh with me. We've been socked by experts. It doesn't destroy the fact, however, that we did a little investigation on, our own account. The result of that inquiry is that we would like you solons to ask the whistle stop commissioner from Atlantic county if he receives communications to himself at Boonton, N. J. If so why?

Boonton is in Morris county and either the whistle stop commissioner lives in Morris county or he dwells in Atlantic county. If he lives in Morris county, votes there and has his legal residence there, what right has he to sit on the bridge
commission. as a whistle stop commissioner from Atlantic county? "

So much for the whistle stop commissioner from Atlantic City, who probably represents the seaside via Morris county. How about the other whistle stop commissioners? Where do they really live?

Camden Courier-Post - February 28, 1938

Is Zat So!
By
GORDON MACKAY

BOY, I'm glad I'm just an humble working newspaperman. Just think of all the trouble and woe that would confront me if I were a movie star. Or the executive of Big Business. Or the head of some great banking sysiem. I would know about trouble then. I would know what woe was then, if I held one of those ill-paid jobs, where the jobholder has all he can do to cut himself down to his third limousine.

You folk in the hinterland have always labored under the same false impression as myself that being a movie star, or the president of a Big Business enterprise, or head of a great banking system was something of a cushy job. But you are all wrong, just as I've always been all wrong on the same score.
How do I know that I'm all wrong? Well, I read the newspapers. So do you. In fact I had a swell crying spell all to myself the other day, after I read the harrowing tale of the troubles of big movie stars, Big Business panjandrums, banking tycoons.

I just wept in sheer gratitude that I have no $238,000 income for a year like Mae West enjoyed— phooie, not enjoyed, woefully carried is the expression—for 1936.

I was crying through sheer delight and satisfaction, too, when I learned I had to carry no such burden of woe and travail as ladened the buxom shoulders of Miss West.

Why, the screen chatterboxes, such as Fidler and the others, told me a perfectly horrible tale of the suffering of such stars as Miss West. First she earned that $238,-000, honestly, of course. What with income taxes, keeping her wretched hovel of 24 rooms and 12 bathrooms, swimming pools, sun parlors, agents' pickings, servants' wages et cetera, the poor gal was, actually in want, down to her last 221 evening gowns. What about that?

WILY ABOUT HER INVITATIONS

With a man standing behind every bush ready to pick the buxom West's pocketbook, is it any wonder she was afraid to invite anybody "to come up and see me some time'',

Then a man named Haney, a financial writer, stirred my soul to the very/ depths when he told me straight from the shoulder how tough it was to be the $100,000-a-year head of a great corporation.
Of course I had never known there were so many besetting troubles to such a job, but Haney told me all about it. I guess he should know, for Haney writes pieces for the paper every day about such folk, whom I never meet, of course.

Just take a man making $100,000 a year in a Big Business job. Think of how that money just flies out the window. Income taxes. Property taxes. Charities. Club dues. Golf club dues. Expenses of maintaining a down-at-the-heel shack with 24 rooms and 14 bathrooms— talk about eating up money, why it makes your heart ache to think of it.

When I read about how this chap making $100,000 was really down to his last ton of caviar, and that he was even then struggling to determine whether or not he would buy a fire-sale pair of those $65 shoes he had so admired on another fellow-sufferer's feet, another fellow-sufferer in a $100,000 Big Business job, of course, it was all I could do to stop from weeping right in the street.

Then take the banker, with all his problems. He has to know where to make his loans, Uncle Sam is cutting down his interest rates, income taxes grabbing so much of his salary, various expenditures that you and I don't have to worry about.

It was enough to make your heart bleed to read the tragic story of this banking tycoon, who even then was down to the necessity of handling his next $500,000,000 bond issue, with only 1 percent revenue for selling the bonds to those lucky stiffs, known as the public, with no such salary worries as the tycoon knew.

ONLY IRON MEN CAN STAND STRAIN

What keeps those iron men in their jobs? Patriotism and the sterling worth and character of them. It is a patriotic duty to see that those $100,000 jobs should be filled by real Americans.

Men who wouldn't shirk their duties, who are willing to face the utter hopelessness of getting along this year with last year's yacht in order that the high ethics and splendid code of those vocations should be maintained by righteous apostles of the cause.

I admit I'm surprised movie stars reduced to the pittance of $100,000 a year, or executives of Big Business who have to struggle along with $150,000 and a bonus, or banking tycoons who have to fight for a bare existence on $175,000 a year and a share of the profits, should continue in that same old dreary grind.
It takes iron men to go through that harassing situation and keep their hand steady on the helm. It takes men of steel. Men adamantine and sturdy; men of granite, like the towering hills of Vermont or Maine, to accept these terrific hardships of making the 1937 town house do for 1938.

Personally when I finished reading those tales my heart virtually bled for those poor, misguided movie stars and executives, who would face such hardships, such woes, such terrors, for the miserable pittance that remains to them, after they have been paid those $100,000 salaries.

Yet such is human existence the men and women, too, will give their lifeblood to get into the orbit of a movie star, or a position in Big Business or in banking as tycoon who can earn $100,000, on to face the dire life and dreary existence they undergo, according to the writers' picture.

So I say I'm glad I'm just humble newspaper man, with two days off a week in which I enjoy myself in the four rooms with three meals a dsy for me and one bathroom in the house. Gosh, when I think of ships of those $100,000 a year have— excuse me!!!.

Camden Courier-Post - June 1, 1939

Jury Dismissed in Arsenic Case
Of Dead Mouse in Prune Juice
Restaurant Customer III After Alleged Discovery of Reputed Rodent;
Sues for Damages to Health and Good Nature

Hopelessly divided, six to six, the jury in Camden's celebrated "arsenic case" was discharged last night in Court No. 4 by former Judge Leroy W. Loder, of the Cumberland County Common Pleas Court, sitting as special justice to hear the case.

After Foreman Richard C. Hutchinson, of Collingswood, stated he did not believe the jurors could agree if sent back for an all night session Judge Loder discharged them.

Allegations she had drunk prune juice, freighted with an arsenic-stuffed mouse, were the basis on. which-the plaintiff, Miss Celeine Seigle of Camden asked damages from the Home Restaurant Company Camden, of which Frank . Testa is manager.

The plaintiff was represented by Charles A. Rizzi, William Tomar and Saul Teitelman while the defendant's counsel included Charles E. Gant, David E. Van Name and Henry D. Lodge.

Beside Hutcheson the jury comprised Peter Albano, Audubon; Alandria Kozak, Florence; R. Beverly Loring, Wilmington, Del.; Davis F. MacGhee, Moorestown; Gabriel Rudolph, Gloucester; Harold A. Uhl, Glassboro; Veronica Weidman, and Evelvn C. Berg, Martha Essig, Zaven A. Hovsepian and Marjorie S. Smith, all of Camden.

Discovered Dead Mouse

Miss Siegle went to the restaurant about 5.30 p. m. on March 6, last. She ordered prune juice, drank the beverage, and discovered the dead rodent at the bottom.

"I was taken deathly sick," she testified, "and was compelled to return home in a taxicab where I was attended by my family physician. I have been intermittently ill ever since, having lost considerable weight."

Thomas F. Connery followed her on the witness stand. He said he sat at the table directly across from Miss Seigle and saw the entire episode. Connery, on cross examination, said he had not .seen the plaintiff drop anything into the glass. Melvin E. Karns, who said he attended Miss Seigle, described her illness and also the symptoms.

Karns said he discovered by chemical analysis arsenic in the mouth of the mouse and also in the prune juice. He described the amount as one part in 40,000, which he asserted would have been sufficient to cause Miss Seigle's illness.

Knew His Arsenic

On cross examination Karns detected the presence of arsenic by chemical analysis, and also that he was qualified to describe arsenic poisoning because of the number of such cases he had known.

Testa described the cleanliness with which he said he safeguarded customers, and denied the restaurant was crowded at the time of Miss Seigle's alleged sickness.

Samuel L. Shapiro, a law student, stated he was "the sandwich at the restaurant and poured out all the fruit juices ordered. He recited and illustrated how he had poured Miss Seigle's drink, denying anything was in the glass save prune juice.

Miss Myrtle A. Haffer, a waitress, disputed every statement made by the plaintiff's witnesses. She described how she had fastened her eyes on Shapiro when he Poured the juice. On cross-examination by Tomar, she denied "she was very friendly with the sandwich man."

She also stated she took Miss Seigle to a room after her illness and the girl told her to "go away and leave me alone.'

"She wouldn't take a dose of aromatics", testified the waitress, "and she wouldn't let me get her a glass of water. Why she wasn't sick after she almost drank the mouse."

William E. Peel and Dominic Gattuso, court officers, guarded the Jury while they were deliberating and Charles M. Ackley, court clerk, was given the verdict of disagreement.

P. S. All this happened at the practice trial by members of the graduating class of the South Jersey Law School as part of the commencement program.

Sporting News' Obituary-------------Philadelphia Inquirer Obituary---New York Times' Obituary, February 16, 1941, pp. 40.
February 20, 1941, pp. 2, column 6.-----February 16, 1941, pp. 18.

New York Herald-Tribune Obit, February 16, 1941.

Philadelphia Record, February 16, 1941.

Camden Courier-Post - December 11, 1937

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Gordon Mackay - Frank Sheridan - John B. Kates - Dan McConnell - Oliver Stetser - Frank Stetser

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	Camden Courier-Post December 6, 1937 Firmin Michel Christopher Moll Jack Fitzgerald - Frank A. Munsey Walter "Kentucky Rosebud" Edgerton George E. Brunner Gordon Mackay

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