The Mercedes News (Mercedes, Tex.), Vol. 5, No. 74, Ed. 1 Tuesday, August 7, 1928 Page: 4 of 8
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Page 4
THE MERCEDES NEWS, TUESDAY, AUGUST 7, 1928
AN UNEXPECTED FORM OF FARM RELIEF
©he plercehe© Penis
SEMI-WEEKLY
Published each Tuesday and Friday morning at Mer-
cedes, Texas, in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, by the
United Printing Company, Inc.
SUBSCRIPTION: $2.00 per year.
ADVERTISING RATES: Classified, full information
on classified page. Display rates upon request.
TELEPHONE 431-2-3 for news, advertising or job
printing. Entered as second class mail matter at the
postoffice at Mercedes, Hidalgo County, Texas.
THE VALLEY BLUSHES
The moon—brilliant, glorious, curious—came
up out of the blue waters of the gulf a few
nights ago and turned its spotlight on Boca
Chica beach.
The Valley blushed.
Mrs. Pinkie Vann, sheriff of Cameron county,
reached for the telephone receiver.
“They are bathing at Boca Chica without any
clothes on,” came an excited voiee.
“You can’t mean no clothes at all,” exelaimed
the sheriff.
“Well, some of the women are wearing night-
gowns,” the voice conceded.
“Too thin. Leave it to me,” said the sheriff,
as with firm lips and a determined Wrinkle in
her brow she dashed off the following ukase:
“The ordinary bathing suit is abbreviated
enough, in my opinion, to appease even the per-
sons who labor under a nude complex. No per-
son will be allowed to enter the water unless
he or she is outfitted in the approved bathing
suit adopted by all bathing beaches throughout
the country.”
Then the sheriff summoned her deputies and
gave them orders to police the beach.
Now the moon shines on the deserted sands.
Sounds of merriment no longer come from the
water’s edge. The gentle maiden who took her
swim in a nightgown is deprived of that diver-
sion. Never again can it be said at Boea Chica
Her gentle limbs did she undress,
And plunged in, in her loveliness.
/
However much the sheriff and her infor-
mants may apostrophise the moon there are a
lot of primitive Boca Chica bathers who blame
her prying eye for the misfortune that has
overtaken them and are perfectly willing to
share Byron’s opinion:
The devil’s in the moon for misehief; they
Who called her chaste, methinks, began too soon
Their nomenclature; there is not a day,
The longest, not the twenty-first of June,
Sees half the business in a wicked way,
On which three single hours of mischief smile,
And then she looks so modest all the while!
THE MORAL ISSUE
All the forces of prejudice and intolerance
are being assembled for the fight against Gov-
ernor Smith. This is particularly true in the
South, where the Republican leaders have al-
lowed a number of false impressions to take
root. They openly claim that A1 Smith will
bring back the saloon, and in addition are stir-
ring up religious prejudices.
We do not believe that such propaganda will
get anywhere in Texas because our people are
not so ill-advised as to be long misled by such
falsities. In regard to the first charge men-
tioned above, we wish to remind the public that
the Republican party has never gained a repu-
tation for making any effort for the success of
temperance, or, for that matter, has it ever dis-
played any of those qualities which Would lead
one to suppose that it had any religious lean-
ings of any kind. Most of its leaders, if they
have any religion at all, have signally failed to
make any impression on the public to that
effect.
If stealing and grafting in public office are
immoral and thus against good religious tenets,
and we believe they are, then the Republican
party is in no position to raise moral or relig-
ious questions. As to liquor, it is dripping wet;
Mr. Mellon has been charged with having
owned a brewery, and Mr. Hoover is said to be
a stockholder in a large Canadian distillery.
If the party of Fall, Daugherty, Hayes, Sin-
clair and Doheny, to mention a few names, is a
moral and religious party, then the meaning of
morality and religion has undergone violent
changes during the last eight years. But since
the above-named pillars of the Republican party
have been revealed as being anything but
blameless in this connection it would seem that
it would at least be aware that it is in the same
predicament as people who live in a glass house;
and even more so because its claims against
Governor Smith in this direction are based on
its own suppositions.
“All things are evil to the evil.” In other
wlords, besides neglecting at least to give Smith
the credit of having ordinary common sense,
it makes the common error of the malefactor
in judging others by itself.
GENERAL BEACH
Employment by the Arroyo navigation dis-
trict of General Lansing H. Beach as engineer
to make the preliminary estimates for the con-
struction of the proposed port at Harlingen in-
sures that enterprise of a reliable and trust-
worthy computation. General Beach is one of
the most eminent of American navigation en-
gineers. He is familiar with the government’s
policy and procedure in navigation matters.
When his figures are presented at the hearing
of the army board of engineers in the Valley in
October they will be accepted without question.
A splendid start has been made toward the
actual construction of the port. If the Arroyo
channel belongs in the Intracoastal canal sys-
tem it will be placed there. We believe it should
be an integral part of that system. However,
General Beach will be able to determine just
what the conditions are and the result of his
work will largely determine what the future
procedure will be.
It is evident that the navigation district is
being handled by men of broad vision. They
are going at the preliminary work thoroughly
and are not making wild guesses. The people
of the district have every reason to have con-
fidence in the management of their enterprise.
THE NEW FREEDOM
Mrs. Clem Shaver, wife of the former Demo-
cratic national chairman, in a public statement
denounced Dan Moody, Josephus Daniels, Jesse
Jones and other prominent Democrats for nom-
inating A1 Smith, and announced that she was
for “Lord” Hoover. While she did not specific-
ally name her husband as one of the parties re-
sponsible for the nomination of Smith, it is well
known that he took a very prominent part
therein, and her denunciation of the “guilty
parties” was sufficiently broad to include him.
Everyone who read the statement and who was
familiar with the facts so construed it. Here-
after politicians, before taking any definite ac-
tion, would do well to hold a family conference;
otherwise their better halves may exercise
their new-found freedom and denounce them
publicly, holding them up to the ridicule of their
associates.
Some of our astute lady politicians are exer-
cising their freedom of thought and are finding
fault with Governor Smith on the ground that
Mrs. Smith would not grace the White House.
This conclusion is based upon the fact that Mrs.
Smith “has done her own work.” The fact that
the Smiths are from the people and have not
been able to hire expensive servants, and that
Mrs. Smith has had the burden of doing her
own housework seems to disqualify her hus-
band from filling the office of President.
We do not think this will lose Governor Smith
many votes because most of our people are not
going to think any less of the Smiths because
Mrs. Smith “has done her own work.”
THE CITRUS HEARING
The recent decreases in citrus rates from
Florida to eastern markets makes it doubly in-
cumbent on Valley citrus interests to have a
case well prepared when the Interstate Com-
merce Commission has its hearing at Dallas
early in September. We should call in the best
rate talent we can obtain for this hearing and
present a case that is conclusive, not merely
for the maintenance of the old rates, but for
a reduction in rates.
Florida’s new tariffs will leave us under a
serious handicap in certain markets unless wte
are able to secure reductions that will meet this
decrease. At present our rates to New Orleans,
for instance, are much higher than Florida’s
rates, and our rates to Atlanta are almost out
of the question. We should make considerable
shipments next season to Washington, Phila-
delphia and New York. If we do it will be be-
cause we have secured rates much more favor-
able than those that now obtain. The traffic
department of the California Vegetable Union
is at work on the matter. Other shippers should
join as sincerely.
POWER TRUST A MYTH
The Federal Trade Commission, at the insti-
gation of the Boulder dam lobby, has occupied
a good deal of its time during the last two years
investigating an alleged power trust. This ac-
tivity has consumed some $400,000 of taxpay-
ers’ monies. After all this the Federal Trade
Commission has not been able to locate a
“power trust.”
What it did find, however, was that power
and light companies have been compelled, in
self-defense, to spend a lot of money in com-
batting false propaganda circulated by Boulder
dam lobbyists and other enemies of the compa-
nies. In other words, it is all right for the ene-
mies of the power companies to spend millions
in fighting them, but if the companies exercise
the right of self-defense they have to subject
themselves to a congressional investigation.
We had occasion the other day to refer to
the action of the Valley Gin Company in refus-
ing to sell cotton to buyers who ship by truck.
These shipments have been held to be unfair to
the railroads and with some reason. They seem
to have served a useful purpose, however, in
bringing about reduced freight rates into Cor-
pus Christi and now they promise to get lower
rates to Houston as well. A hearing on the
question of granting lower cotton rates to
Houston has been called for August 11. It is
probable that the petition of the railroads will
be granted, although trucking interests are op-
posing fail reductions. Whatever reductions
are granted will be a net gain to the farmers.
Cooperation Goes Marching On
The Friend Indeed
(Pacific Rural Press)
If you did not accept the invitation to cool your heels
and your head at Berkeley while having “cold turkey”
served to you on the question of cooperation, you were
undoubtedly the loser.
The weather during the Institute of Cooperation was
all that had been promised. There were cooling fogs
to lave the heated brows—not too much fog, we hasten
to add before some Berkeley booster assassinates us—
but sufficient at times so that the local resident would
pull the old familiar line on his visitor:
“Now on a clear day you could see San Francisco
right over there and could look right out the Golden
Gate toward the Farralones.”
The intellectual fare has been good. ’Tis true that
cooperation is a large and abstract and often an aca-
demic thing to talk about, but eight nations and thirty-
some states have sent their best speakers and intellec-
tual food has been served with considerable spice of
interest and setting up exercises for the smile muscles.
One pre-convention promise has been abundantly
met. The weaknesses of cooperation have been trotted
out along with the strengths. In fact, as good doctors
should, they have looked most industriously for the ills
of coopei’ation.
However, don’t think you could get away with it in
this meeting by rising to remark that “cooperation has
failed,” for among the more than four hundred persons
who have registered are many who know that coopera-
tion has succeeded.
Despite the perfectly natural pessimism which every
movement encounters, and despite the million-dollar
middleman slush fund to kill cooperation, and notwith-
standing the fact that there are plenty of visible wrecks
of cooperation, these men know that the successesfar
outnumber the failures. Wrecks are an evidence that
some one has been trying.
The percentage of failures in cooperation are less
than among other businesses. A good many banks
have failed in recent years, but banking is not thereby
a failure.
In California it was pointed out that the mortality
among canning plants is greater than the mortality of
commodity cooperatives.
The Middle West and the East list a good many co-
operative failures, but earnest men are still building
bigger and better cooperatives on old foundations and
it would quicken your cooperative pulse to hear some
of the stories of cooperative struggles and success.
Grandfather used to say “nothing is as bad as it is
painted—it couldn’t be.”
This may be poor grammar, but it is good sense.
. To paraphrase an old one:
He is gone, but we shan’t miss him;
Send away his vacant chair.
The he referred to is the old-fashioned coopei’ative
evangelist who had a long list of the “cans” of cooper-
ation but none of the “can’ts.”
He promised whatever was wanted. The middleman
would be eliminated. The consumer would be told what
to pay. Such mottoes as: “A good living and ten per
cent,” sprang up and were watered with the salivary
spray of the orators.
It sounded fine, and the growers deserve every bit of
it, but it proved about as attainable as a slice of moon
cheese.
To express it in modern lingo, the grower was over-
sold. Disillusionment followed. Faint hearts turned
away from cooperation. Bolder ones got to work on a
new basis.
The session of the Institute of Cooperation at Berke-
ley is a convention of bolder spirits. They wear the
honorable scars of battles.
Yes, Cooperation is warfare—an industrial revolu-
tion. But it fights no more with the knightly trappings
of fancy, but with the modern weapons of fact.
The men who are discussing cooperation at Berkeley,
and getting on wheels for an inspection trip into Ore-
gon and Washington next week, try not to fool them-
selves. They acknowledge the “can’ts.”
Just what can cooperatives do?
The agreed list is similar to one outlined in these
pages some time ago. Mayhap they can be re-stated in
brief form.
A cooperative can furnish a long marketing arm
which extends beyond the reach of the individual.
It can advertise and create demand.
It can supervise and guarantee quality.
It can reduce some unnecessary speculation by get-
ting closer to the consumer and watching the flow of
products to market.
It can develop by-products.
It can finance processing and storage plants and bor-
row money cheaper than the individual.
It can create a feeling of economic power and put
the problems of agriculture into public consciousness.
It can raise the level of prices.
Finally it can and does sometimes give the coopera-
tive member a better return than the non-cooperator.
The latter point could be vigorously assailed and as
vigorously upheld with examples.
Apparently the “umbrella” can be held too long, al-
lowing the outsider to market his crop while the co-
operative waits for a rising market which may never
come.
The function of a cooperative is more that of selling
than of holding, it would seem, unless you have real
monopoly control, which is rare indeed.
Last Thursday the Institute heard the story of two
cooperatives which have handled the matter of better
returns in an interesting fashion.
The story of how the non-cooperative in the Phila-
delphia “Milk shed” is made to contribute to the coffers
of the cooperative is told on another page.
Milton Sapiro, attorney for the California Pear Asso-
ciation, spoke for Frank Swett, who was busy at the
end of the long distance telephone selling pears, and
told how this association managed.
The plan is simple. The pear association sells to
the canners at a certain price, plus a service charge.
The service charge is returned to the association to
finance its operations. When the canners buy from
the non-member grower they pay him the net price-
in other words, the association price less the service
charge. Thus the non-member finds no umbrella to
shelter him.
We have a number of cooperatives in this state where
the members will tell you they fare better than the non-
member. Meanwhile, the propagandist for the inde-
pendent packer who asserts that he pays more than the
cooperative quotes maximum payments and not aver-
age payments.
Often he ‘ proves” his point by his loudness, but never
by showing you his books.
THE FRIEND INDEED.
By Caroline Coler in The Alamo News
Lots o’ things can give folks pleasure
As they climb life’s rugged hills;
Sometimes life gives out real treasure,
An’ sometimes a bunch o’ thrills.
Folks o’ deep an’ broader vision
Seek in higher things their joy,
But the folks of lighter nature
Worship tinsel and alloy.
Some folks say real friendship’s dyin’
An’ they’re sometimes justified,
Still, along life’s rocky pathway
We find friendships true an’ tried.
An’ it’s mighty nice, you’ll warrant,
TVhen grief s shadows dim hope’s ray,
Just to have some friend to help you
Till they sorta clear away.
Ah! there s nothin’ quite so soothin’
When you’re feelin’ mighty blue,
As the reassurin’ handclasp
Of a friend that’s tried an’ true.
May not gush so much around you
When the sun shines on your way,
But is right there always, somehow,
When there comes a stormy day.
When he grips your hand so firmly
An’ then lookin’ straight at you,
Sez: “Now Pard, you’re lookin’ worried_
Is there somethin’ I kin do?”
How the clouds o’ trouble vanish
’Fore the sun’s bright, dancin’ ray,
An’ the load that’s on your shoulders
Seems to lighten right away.
Of all gifts the good Lord sends us
None seems quite so good to me
As the friend that comes to help you
When your’e needin’ sympathy,
Or a bit o’ real financin’
In some plan you’re puttin’ through
An’ in spite o’ all your efforts,
Fate has held these things from you.
Brothers
THIS IS THE DAY of Big Brothers. Even the
small boy isn’t afraid of the “cop” and will confi-
dently climb up beside the driver of a snorting
fire engine.
Time was when pretty nearly everybody was
afraid of nearly everything. Those were the
days—or nights—of barred and shuttered win-
dows, of shotguns at the head of the bed, money
hidden in an old shoe.
But just as the small boy has learned that the
policeman is his friend, so have men and women
learned that banks are the rightful protectors of
their property.
The prosperity of the people of this community
and that of its financial institutions are closely
linked together. We pledge a continuance of our
best efforts to make our service increasingly valu-
able to the people of our community.
H. B. SEAY
President
JOHN C. JONES
Vice-President
S. H. COLLIER
Active Vice-President
JACK TROLINGER
Cashier
O. W. DUBE
Assistant Cashier
V/ze
FIRST
du BANK
OF MERCEDES
Z/? Greater Bankfire Greater Va//ey
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US
WmttoBnySell.
Rent 0 HOME?
PHONE
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to get a line on what is doing; then many
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Try these columns; you’ll be surprised
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tisement.
The Mercedes News
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The Mercedes News (Mercedes, Tex.), Vol. 5, No. 74, Ed. 1 Tuesday, August 7, 1928, newspaper, August 7, 1928; Mercedes, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth651682/m1/4/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dr. Hector P. Garcia Memorial Library.