THE OMAHA GUIDE
Published Every Saturday at 2418-20 Grant St.
Omaha, Nebraska
Phone WEbster 1517
Entered as Second Class Matter March 15, 1927,
at the Post Office at Omaha, Nebr., under
Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION $2.00 PER YEAR
All News Copy of Chrurches and add Organi
aations must be in our office not later than
6:00 p. m. Monday for curren issue. All Adver
tising Copy or Paid Articles not later than
Wednesday noon, preceeding date of issue, to
insure publication.
Race prejudice must go. The Fatherhood of
God and the Brotherhood of Man must prevail.
These are the only principles whil will stand
the acid test of good.
James H. Williams & James E. Seay—Linotype
operators and Pressmen. Paul Barnett—Foreman.
EDITORIALS
JUDGE LYNCH SITS ON A ORAFFIC CASE
Having issued out justice uphold
ing white supremacy, Judge Lunch,
condescends to the level of trying traf
fic cases. While this belongs to the
lower courts and highway patrolmen,
who may be working in part on a fee
scale, Judge Lynch, felt the absence of
the regular cases he was set up to re
gulate, felt called upon to intercede in
a trafjfic accident down in Daytona
Beach, Florida.
His victim, of course, was a color
ed man, a man of good repute and one
of the oldest and trusted taxi cab driv
ers in the city. His good citizenship
and his traffic accident record were of
no use to him. While he would not for
anything have openly committed the
accident which claimed the life of a
white youth, he was called upon to pay
with his life for an accident for which
he might not have been at fault.
Here lies the grave danger in al
lowing lynch law to supercede the civil
law. When men are allowed to start
out lynching an individual about one
crime, they will wind up by lynching
him for almost anything else. A dan
gerous precedent is set and if allowed
to stand, men will feel called upon to
lynch for failing to stop at red lights,
other minor accidents or for stealing
a ham.
In this measure constituted autho
rity suffer. It is drawn into disrepute.
Its mission will be to serve in those
left over cases of such minor impor
tance as would not appeal to those who
take the law into their own hands. It
will have to limp along behind the mob
and in the event it does not carry out
the wishes of the mob, as happened in
another of (recent memory, the mob
will proceed to try the case over and
administer such justice as it sees fit.
W<* especially refer to an incident in
which after a man received his sen
tence from the hands of the court, he
was seized and led off by the mob
which proceeded to mete out such pun
ishment as the courts failed to carry
out.
We cannot long survive a condition
in which the mob is stronger than the
court. We cannot long countenance
war being made on our own citizens
while sponsoring a general plan of
world peace and propogating the
“Good neighbor’ sentiment.
What action will be taken by con
stituted authority in Daytona Beach
remains to be seen. But it is hoped
that prompt and adequate action will
be taken.
-0O0—
NATIONAL NEGRO INSURANCE WEEK
Thirty-nine member companies of
The National Negro Insurance Asso
ciation began Monday their fifth an
nual observance of National Negro
Insurance Week, with a production
goal of $20,000,000,000. It appear high
ly certain that this ambitious program
will be humanlized thereby establish
ing an all time high for business pro
duced in a single week by Negro Life
Insurance Companies.
During this observance, 8,000 field
men wearing the button of the Asso
ciation will converge on the homes of
Colored America carrying a message
of .twofold service—PROTECTION
and EMPLOYMENT. TO RECLAIM
THE NERRO FOR THE NEGRO will
be the common objectives of these
thcjjsands of builders of l>omes and
social security. They will leave no
stone unturned in this mass effort to
impress upon America’s tenth man the
importance of seeking full returns on
his investments, of realizing that it is
not smart to spend your money where
you cannot work, of refusing to con
done “taxation without representa
tion”; for truly “taxation without re
presentation” is as unjust and despic
able today as it was in the days of
the “Boston Tea Party when the A
merican colonies were struggling to
get from under the crimson cross of
England.
-dOo
USE YOUR BRUNS
The winner of a school prize wrote
this: “A match has a head but rlo
brains. When you use its head use your
brains!”
That’s good advice for every per
son in this broad land of ours—adult
as well as child. For matches and smok
ing, according to the National Board
of Fire Underwriters, cause three
times as mar^y fires as any other known
cause. They are responsible for four
chimneys *md flues; and almost six
times as many fjres as overheated
times as many as lightning.
Putting it another way, matches
and smokinig cause 27 per cent of all
and smoking cause 27 per cent of all
known cause comprise 83 per cent of
the total. That means that misuse of
matches is responsible for the burning
to death of thousands of people every
year—to say nothing of property de
struction running into the tens of
millions.
The tragic phase of this is that
every fire caused by a match or by
smoking material is a preventable
fire. There is no excuse for going to
sleep in bed with a cigarette in your
hand—but pedple do it continually,
and a great many of them never again
awaken in this world. Nothing is easier
than to stamp out a cigar butt when
you are finished with it, or to properly
dispose of the ashes from a pipe—but
each year there are untold instances
where this isn’t done— and in some
thousands of those instances fires big
or small, result. It certainly doesn’t call
for any great effort to dispose of your
matches and cigiarettes in the ash tray
in your car, instead of throwing them
out of the windjow-—but millions of
acres of ravaged land that once bore
magnificent timber, offer mute testi
monoy to how many times this simple
smoking precaution is forgotten.
Smoke if you will—but don’t for
get the obligation evei^y smoker owes
to everyone else—and that is to be ever
watchful of what happens to smoking
materials when he is done with them.
The most common cause of fire is the
most inexcusable.
PRIVATE RETAILERS GAR DO THE JOB
The general details of a new Gov
ernment-Business plan for disposing
of surplus food products at low cost
to the needy, have recently been dis
closed. While the plan is subject to
further modification and revision, and
is not complete a|s to particulars as
yet, one salient point is clear: Both
government officials and business
leaders appear to be convinced that
the surpluses should be moved by us
ing established private trade channels
—and not by some superimposed dis
tribution system to be operated by the
government.
It is proposed, for example, that
the plan be tested in a group of select
ed communities before it is extended to
nation-wide scope.. In each of thepe
cities it would be required that the
local relief set-up be cooperative, that
records of sale before and after adop
tion of the plan be provided—and, most
imj Jjrtant, that there must be gebd
chain and organized independent mer
chant groups to do the actual work
of selling the products.
This is a reasonable approach to
the problem. A government distribu
tion system would be immensely costly
to the taxpayers. It wjould undoubtedly
beepme the plaything of politics, as
government businesses almost invaria
bly do. It would unnecessarily dupli
cate existing distribution channels. It
would deprive private merchants of
business, and perhaps cause them to
shut down in some cases, thus throw
ing men out of work. And it is not
needed. Our private “mass merchan
disers” have proven that they can do
a splendid job of moving surpluses—
as witness the producer-consumer
campaigns in which both chains and
organized independents have partici
pated And, in the meeting over the
new plan, held between Department
of Agriculture officials and represent
atives of private retail outlets, the lat
ter have shown the fullest willingness
to cooperate.
There is every evidence that if a
plan for ajdipg (agriculture and the
needy is necessary in this country, the
established retail channels are ready
and able to do the job with maximum
efficiency. And they’ll do it without
cost to the taxpayers.
-vvu
THE AMERICAN MERCHANT .. - <
The American merchant, has given
the American people the best retail
service in the world. A typical small
town store in this country, dealing in
food, hardware, drugs, try goods or
anything else, offers a far wider se
lection of goods, of a far better quality
than a iypical store in any other land.
This goes for single unit as well as
multiple-unit merchandising.
Equally important, first-class ser
vice hasn’t involved high price. In the
typical store, costs have been cut to
the bone. Centralized buying has re
duced handling and distributing ex
pense. Big turnover has made is possi
ble to earn a satisfactory gross profit
at a very small unit profit. The result,
from the consumer’s point of view, is
more goods for less money, and a high
er standard of living for the family.
Economists, consumer groups, news
papers, government officials and oth
ers have been pointing out that our
American merchants should be en
couraged to the full in this trend. In
creased dpnsumpticji of the produce
of farm and factory is the key to in
creased national income, increased
employment—and eventual prosperity.
And increased consumption is almost
purely an economic matter. The bulk
of American families use all they can
afford. When prices go up, they buy
less. When down, they buy more.
Under a free competitive system,
every merchant tries to outdo the
merchant next door. He lowers prices
when he can. When that is impractical
he offers additional service. He in
creases his advertising, and betters
his displays. And the whole community
profits. So does the merchant himself,
who finds more and more customers
entering his door— and taking more
and more goods away with them when
they leave.
Of late years we have had a legis
latixe epidemic of laws which in one
way or another curb competition, force
merchandising sots to rise, and thus
tends to reduce the general standard
of living. But recently enthusiasm for
such laws seems to have considerably
cooled. Most of us have come to realize
that no one wins in the long run when
we put laws in the path of progress
in any field.
-0O0
PREVENT THE FIRES OF TOMORROW *
Prevent tomorrow’s fires by build
ing today’s buildings safely.
There’s a motto that should never
be out of the mind of anyone planning
to erect a structure of any kind—or
civic authorities responsible for local
building codes.
The National Board of Fire Un
derwriters has made a new study of
building fires. This study shows that
there are “several outstanding factors
which not only in themselves increase
the probability of losse/s because of
inherent conditions, but also prevent
effective fire fighting.” These factors
make up a lengthy list Some of the
major ones are: Excessive areas, open
stairways, uninsulated steelwork, lack
of gre dors, and weak floors and struc
tural members which fail swiftly when
fire breaks out. Another danger, found
in many buildings, is the existence of
inaccessible places where fires can
grow without discovery until they
have gone beyond immediate control.
The selution to bad building, nat
urally, lies in the passage and rigorous
enforcement of up to date building
cod/es. It is trule that a £\ound code
ma|y increase costs of construction to
some extent. But it is also true, in the
words of the National Board that
“each day examples arise in which
some cheapening of construction has
caused the loss of a life or the destruc
tion of property values which may in
fluence the economic well being of the
entire community.” Certainly saving a
few dollars in the initial cost of a
building, isn’t worth the risk entailed.
The National Board has also issu
ed a new bulletin on building codes as
an instrument of fire prevention,
which will be sent free upon applica
tion to its offices at 85 John Street,
New York City. There isn’t a town ill
America, no matter how small, that
can afford to be without a sound build
ing code—or to continue in force a
code that in obsolete and out of accord
with the conditions of today.
-- - — ..
NO MAGIC ">'■.
Much of the most important agri
cultural history of the last two decades
has been written by the marketing
cooperaives. In the brief span of a
generation, they have grown and de
veloped to their present dominant
place in the economic and social life
of the farmer. *
During that time, many a coopera
tive has beei started with high hopes
—only to fai' and fall by the wayside.
In some cases that was due to inade
quate financing. In others it was due
to inexperienced management. In a
few it was due to insufficient support
from producers in its areas. And in a
good many it was due to branching
cut into other fields of endeavor, such
as purchasing, at the expense of the
primary purpose of the real marketing
cooperative—the sale of the produce
of its members.
Cooperation has done great things.
But is hasn’t done them by magic. The
successful marketing cooperative!
have been built on sound business prin
ciples. They have been managed bj
efficient executives, and they hav
merited and won the loyal support o
farmers. And they have stuck to thei
lasts.
o