Page Ten
THE UNITED AMERICAN
EDITORIAL
AGAINST RELIGIOUS STRIFE IN POLITICS
T N HIS ADDRESS as retiring president of the Amer-
* ican Bar Association, one of the greatest Amer
icans alive today, Charles Evans Hughes, annunciated
the following warning to America against religious
intolerance and the present tendency to stir up strife
on racial and religious ground for political effect :
What could be a nobler exercise of govern
mental power than to destroy religious error
and save the souls of men from perdition? That
plausible pretext has given us the saddest pages
of history. That is the road that leads back to
the perversion of authority and the abhorrent
practices of the dark days of political disqualifi
cations on grounds of religion, of persecution,
of religious wars, of tortures, of martyrdom.
We have problems enough without introducing
religious strife into our politics.
And there are millions of sound Americans of all
creeds races, and nationalities who are in full accord
with Mr. Hughes, because they believe that he has
expressed not only what was in the minds of the
founders of this nation, but they believe that this
sentiment expresses the spirit and the will of every
rational and fair-thinking American of today.
TAXES AND PROSPERITY
AIT HEN THE next Congress convenes early in
December it is considered certain that one of
the first matters to have attention is the income and
surtax rates. Every indication is that a substantial
reduction of both will be effected. The public is look
ing for a rate reduction in Federal taxes with consider
able interest inasmuch as there is some ground for
the contention that this will mean an added impetus
to business and the promotion' of greater general
prosperity.
Of added significance, economically and politically,
is the manifest confidence in government circles that
the tax reduction and tax revision bill will be enacted
in time to bring relief to the taxpayers for next year.
Support for this belief is found in the evident, change
of attitude on the part of the more radical element
in Congress.
GOVERNMENT PRISONS ARE FULL
I T NCLE SAM has thrown up his hands in despair
for his prisons are full to overflowing.
Politely we are informed by official Washington
that the federal government is short of prison space
for confinment of offenders against its laws and must
now look to the states for quarters so that Uncle Sam
can “farm” out his penalized subjects.
The federal prisons at Atlanta and Leavenworth
both are housing more than three thousand two
hundred convicts. The increase is attributed by depart
ment officials to Attorney-General Sargent’s effort to
clear the federal dockets.
This gives us a cue why federal prisoners so long
AUGUST 1925
remain in the county jails or out on bail before they
are tried. The department of justice waits for some
body’s term to expire in order to get room for those
who are on the waiting list. Is that it?
If so, isn’t the situation rather discouraging?
Warden Biddle of the federal penitentiary at
Leavenworth recently announced that, due to-crowded
prison conditions, he had made arrangements through
the department of justice at Washington to send six
hundred prisoners to the state penal institution at
Huntsville, Texas, and to fourteen prison farms in
that state.
A canvas of state penal institutions throughout
the country has just been completed by the depart
ment of justice to ascertain what the chances are for
quartering more federal prisoners under a contract
system now in operation.
Poor Uncle Sam. He used to have a pretty decent
sort of a family and very little trouble to speak of.
Now his prisons are full and his criminal courts are
working overtime. Trial costs, prison upkeep, food
and clothing for long years of incarceration, imposed
upon his wayward children, are causing him a tremen
dous economic burden.
Why not let us try a dose of constructive Ameri
canization for a change, to see if we can’t cut
down the number of erring members of the American
family. Almost everything else has been tried.
Americanization is a constructive remedy. It begins
with the education in citizenship of the neglected adults.
It is a big job but it can be done if everybody gets
behind the movement with half the vim with which
they have been pushing the cart of some sort or other
of Social Service—a form of humanitarian uplift which
the American public has been “sold” on in recent
years to the exclusion of almost every other kind of
vital work sustaining our American structure of citi
zenship.
A BLOT ON AMERICAN HONOR
'T'HE YOUNG Americans of the A. E.’F. who became
4 interested in, woed and won the young maidens
of foreign lands, while overseas, are appearently, in
many cases, not doing the right thing by them, judging
by much gossip and current news.
A Paris item states that twenty-seven wives of
Americans were abandoned in France during the month
of June. American husbands are charged with send
ing their French wives to their native land in Europe
for a vacation, under promise of keeping them well
supplied with money, but it is said that this is only
a pretext for getting rid of them.
Figures are quoted to show to what extent the
former American soldiers have practiced this form
of abandonment on their unsophisticated young brides.
According to these estimates it is asserted that one
thousand out of five thousand, or one fifth, of the
Franco-American marriages, consumated since the
armistice, have ended this way. The situation is so
alarming that French authorities have been asked to
take up the matter with official Washington.
When the young wives return for a visit with
relatives in France, it is said, that they are no longer
provided for by their American husbands who in a
number of instances are charged with having used