THE MICHIGAN.
DAILY
-I
CHIGAN DAILY
and managed by students of the University of
undet the authority of the Board in Control of
Publications.
0Le everymonmingexcept Monday during the
y year and Summ .r Session.
Member of the Associated Press
sociated Press is exclusively entitled to the
epubioation of all news dispatches credited to
t otherwise credited in this newspaper. All
republication of all other matters herein also
. at the Post Office at Ann Arbor, Michigan, we
se mail matter.
ptions during regular school year by carrier,
helps individual students with their problems,
points out their weaknesses and enforces study
hours.
In this connection it is important to note that
many houses require freshman study tables,
which again are utnder the direction of the aca-
demic adviser and upper-classmen who assist
him.
In the field of outside activities, the student
joining a fraternity immediately has. a group
with which he associates himself. Group parti-
cipation sports such as basketball, baseball and
speedball are thus open to him. In addition, he
receives advice and encouragement from his
brothers in choosing one of the many forms of
outside activities available to students on the
campus.
Association with a fraternity also provides the
freshman with immediate social contacts on
campus. He soon becomes a member of an in-
timate circle of friends of his- own chosing: These
friendships, as fraternity reunions so vividly
testify, often become life-long, and open valuable
business and social contacts for the student both,
through th active chapter and through its
alumni.
Fraternity social activities have in the past
been misinterpreted by picture magazines and
local gossip in much the same manner as Gover-
nor Dickinson's famous conception of high life
in the big city. On the contrary, all 'fraternity
functions are under the close supervision of the
University authorities, and are always well-chap-
eroned.
That fraternities have been an integral part.
of most American college campuses for over half
a century surely indicates that they perform a
valuable service to the student, and as they have
successfully met all challenges in the past by
improving the function and facilities offered, so
again they will surmount any threat to their
existence offered by the new dormitory expan-
sion program.
-Karl Kessler
OR NATIONAL. ADVEftJ.SIN G mY
Ivertising Service, In.
Wishers Representatie
AVE. NEW YORK, N.LA. Y.
I.Los AnOELES " SAN rRAfeCISCO
420 MAQIS4
CHICAGO ' Bosr
Associated Collegiate
Editorial Staff
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B. . . S .a
Busitess Staff
Press, 1938-39
Managing Editor
City Editor .
Women's Editor
Associate Editor
Associate Editor
Associate Editor
Associate Editor
Assocate Editor
-
Philip W. Buchen Business Manager
Paul Park . . . . . . . Advertising Manager
NIGHT EDITOR: HARRY M. KELSEY
SUPPLEMENT EDITOR: ETHEL Q. NORBERG
The editorials published in The Michigman
Dail' are written 6y members of the Daily
staff and represent the views of the
writers only.
Greetings
To The Freshmen
WITH THIS ISSUE of The Daily, the
staff extends its greetings to the in-
coming class of 1943. In this edition the editors
have tried to sum up for the information of the
freshmen all the many activities that may in-
terest them. during their college. years, thereby
helping to becomeacclimated to the new environ-
ment which they have decided to enter next fall.
To you freshmen, we hope that somewhere in
these pages you will find the outside activity that
will season the heavier work of the classroom with
the spice of campus life. For it is outside of the
classroom that the student makes his most last-
ing friendships and acquires the memories that
will brighten his reminiscences of college life in
later years.
That the University considers this true is evi-
denced by the many. activities that it fosters. The.
athletic teams, whether intercollegiate or intra-
mural, the concerts, the social activities, the de-
bating teams, the committees and affairs spon-
sored by the Union and League, the theatricals
and the publications all are enthusiastically sup-
ported on the campus. Here is a list of activities
that has never "before been surpassed for any
generation of students.
Because you are not given a personal invita-
tion to. take up some special activity, do not be
deterred from entering it when you .come to' the.
campus. It is difficult for a great majority of
students to take the first step toward being a
tryout for a position, but if you will just remem-,
ber that everyone who has made good before you'
has had to face the same obstacles, you will be
less overawed about entering into the activity of
your choice.
We who will be starting next year to try -to
find the road to success envy you your future,
which is still-so long before you, as a student at
the University. Michigan is one the oldest and
most important state, universities, and as ,such
has acquired a tremendous background of schol-
arly research and equipment in all fields of edu-
cation offered in its curriculum. As an institu-
tion it is vitally concerned with the advancement,
well-being and happiness of its students. To thef
freshman is accorded the place of the privileged
younger member of the University family, a pest
at times, it is true, but holding the hopes of the
older members to carry on to greater, heights the
traditions and activities that have occupied each
one in turn.
The staff extends to you of 1943 our friendli-
est greetings and our best wishes for happiness
and success as fellow-members of the great body
of Michigan students..
-Robert Mitchell'
RoosevelIt
And:The Court
When Franklin D. Roosevelt writes his mem-
oirs, not the least fascinating chapters will be
those on the "court-packing" plan of 1937.
Perhaps Mr.. Roosevelt, as a private1citizen,
beyond the temporary exigencies of politics, will
admit that he is glad congress refused to au-
thorize the six new justices he demanded. Most
of his supporters already will admit it-willingly.
But it is well to remember that the defeat of
the court plan has been acceptable solely be-
cause, as the President declared in his public
statement Monday, the objectives he sought have
been attained through other means.
In congress Mr. Roosevelt suffered a defeat-
the first major setback of his administration.
But the court's interpretation of the constitu-
tion, all the same, has been broadened and liber-
alized. The change came only partly through the
President's appointment of four neW justices to
fill normal vacancies. In the beginning it came
through the old court's deadly fear in 1937 that
the "packing" plan would be adopted.
Mr. Roosevelt's enemies do not like to admit
this. They forget, however, that the decisions
upholding the Wagner act, which enormously
broadened the archaic definition of interstate
commerce, came during the heat of the court
fight, before the President had named a single
justice.
They forget that, before the Senate Judiciary
Committee began hearings on Roosevelt's plan,
the court reversed its previous rulings on state
minimum wage laws and upheld, in five-to-four
votes, the national railroad labor act. and the
mortgage moratorium law. They forget that, in
another five-to-four vote, it sustained the un-
employment compensation provisions of the so-
cial security act.
They forget the eloquent wrath of Justice Mc-
Reynolds and Butler, denouncing the shift which
saw Justice Roberts, writing a decision in a case
subsequent to the "packing" plan, virtually re-
verse his own majority opinion in the original
AAA case. They forget the shifts of Chief Justice
Hughes..
The political consequences of the Roosevelt
plan cannot yet be measured. The fierce con-
troversy it provoked may be echoed in the coming
presidential campaign.
Reactionaries may cry out again in terms of
"patriotism" and "the American way," as they
did when{ they "defended the constitution against
Roosevelt-neglecting to state that the Presi-
dent, too, was defending the constitution, as ex-
pounded in the dissenting opinions of Justice
Holmes, Brandeis and Cardozo.
Conservative Democrats will be pitted against
!Neew Dealers in the nominating convention and
possibly, also, in the campaign which follows.
The fundamental Democratic split which the
court plan exposed, though it did not cause, may
profoundly influence the election.
But whatever happens politically, Mr. Roose-
velt rightly may take satisfaction in the knowl-
edge that, by his boldness in proposing the dras-
tic "packing" plan, he blasted out of the path of
the American people an obstacle which had be-
come a menace.
lie destroyed an outmoded, constricted view
of the constitution through which the supreme
court majority, wedded to conservatism and la-
boriously plotting precedents, had hobbled con-
gress for two generations and throttled each
sporadic effort to legislate on a national scale in
fields newly recognized as affecting the national
welfare.
He smashed the little oligarchy of men who
were warned by their own colleague, Justice
Stone, against their reckless misuse of authority,
but who= imagined they could deny the need of
130,000,000 people for a federal government with
power to cope with poverty, unemployment and
agricultural depression which had reached terri-
fying proportions..
rc36wn & Qown
By STAN M. SWINTON
Of all the sports fans, we like the fight crowds
least. Take the other night.
The match-maker had obviously made a mis-
take. The one light-colored Negro was over six
feet, lean, thin armed with a grotesquely small,
close-clipped head. The other was extremely'
short, coal black with a flat nose and stocky,
muscular build. They had been fighting for a
round, the short man attempting to burrow in
and body punch but always frustrated by his
opponent's reach. Suddenly the lean, tall man's
arm flicked out and the fist hit the small man a
glancing blow on the eye. It seemed just another
punch, bruising, perhaps, but important. The
small Negro covered up and retreated.
A minute later his legs went limp and he
fell. The coarse-faced ringsiders jeered and
from the press row close beside the ring we
heard the referee caution him about faking.
The words "he's scared of the big boy and
taking a dive' -passed from lip to lip. But the
Negro stood up and the fight went on.
Yet something was wrong with the small man.
Afraid, the fans said. He would tumble to the
floor at the slightest blow. Once he fell when
untouched. The crowd was laughing now, jeer-
ing. Between rounds a coarse-faced, flabby man
shouted "Fine going, Bill. You're doing swell."
The crowd laughed again, they picked it up. The
manager worked over his charge, who paid no
attention to the crowd. The fans were getting
a laugh out of it, pretty funny telling this yellow
fighter that he looked good.
The bell rang for the next round. The
dark, squat fighter rose slowly to his feet, got
half-way across the ring and pitched to the
floor. The referee shouted for him to get up
but he did not.
He was unconscious.
They put smelling salts under his nose and the
face contorted but he did not come to. Finally
another administration was successful . and,
knees sagging, he was half-carried to his corner.
The crowd wasn't laughing now. And then the
gross humorist arose.
"Good fight, boy," he said.
A giggle ran through the crowd. The
phrase was repeated. The Negro seemed
happy that they thought he had done his1
best. He waved his gloved fist at them as he
was aided from the ring. The crowd rocked
with laughter.
That squat Negro had been fighting by in-
stinct since that glancing, seemingly harmless
punch knocked him out. Instinct-primitive
instinct if you will-carried him on, made him
fight back and stay on his feet, the courageous
battling animal with the will to fight who stops
only when his body collapses. -
But the fight crowd thought it was funny.
Look around you at the fights sometime at
the gross faces, high-belted trousers, the wo-
men with lips contorted by blood-lust, sad-
distic, uncivilized, willing to pay to see men
smashed, uninterested in the science of the
sport, eager only to see men fight, slug, hurt.
When a blow thuds against a nose and starts
blood a ripple of emotion goes through the
crowd just as it went through the same crowd
in the Coliseum when a gladiator fell, wound-
ed with the fresh crimson blood throbbing
onto the sweat-spotted sand. We don't
like it.
.1 * *
Someday a good fighter is going to knock the
block off Benny Goldberg, the bantamweight. And
although it probably puts us in the category of
the crowd des-cribed above, we want to be there.
We don't like fighters who rabbit-punch in the
clinches, who use laces and elbows. We don't like
strutting egoists, who, after their opponent has
gone nine rounds on heart despite the fact he is
out-fought and over-matched, wave to the crowd
and do a jitter-bug step in the ring to show their
opponent's helplessness. We don't like it at all.
Someday Goldberg will meet a better man and his
curly hair will be mussed and gory with blood,
his nose will be smashed down and his eyes cut.
We've never wanted to see that happen to any
fighter before. But we'd like to see it happen to
him.
* ** *
SIDELIGHTS: The ring-sider shouted to
his friend "60 to 50 on Goldberg."
One of the press row veterans wheeled
slowly around, looked the fellow up and down
and said:
"Cents, I presume?"
And just to show we are persecuted what
with goats, and all, we'd like to ask whether
anybody else ever had a careless manager
dump the water-bucket into their lap?
grateful that it was not necessary to overcome
the old court majority by packing the member-
ship. It was better to have the issue settled with-
out definitely setting that example.
But if the court's prestige now is higher than
before Mr. Roosevelt proposed his plan, not least
of the reasons is that, heeding the warning, it
began correcting its blunders. Due to the Presi-
dent's courage and tenacity, the disturbed people
no longer see every congressional effort to solve
our national problems overturned by an arbi-
trary court stubbornly repeating the letter of its
own precedent instead of expounding the spirt of
the constitution.
Mr. Roosevelt's adversaries can deny it, but
they cannot change the fact.
(By The Associated Press).
Following is the text of President
Roosevelt's message to Pitt Tysonl
Maner, President of the Young Dem-
ocrats of America, and read to the
Young Democrats' convention by
Maner.
Please convey my greetings to the
convention.
Never was there a more timely,
gathering than that of Young Demo-
crats at Pittsburgh. Recent events
have demonstrated the necessity of a
restatement and a , reaffirmation of
democratic principles, and no group
can undertake this mission as well as
the young men and young women of
our party.
Democracy Has Meant Progress
From the beginning, democracy
has meant progress and its battle ever.
since Jefferson's time has been a
steady conflict with the forces of re-
action and special favors. Every
time the policies involving greater op-
portunities for the common man have'
triumphed, our political enemies have
sought to minimize those policies and
to neutralize the decisions of the peo-
ple. Today is no exception to that
classical course of events.
Uniformly the party of Nicholas
Biddle of Jackson's time, of Quay and
Hanna of the Cleveland era and of
the Theodore Roosevelt period, has
bowed to the progressive wing to the
extent of pretending accord with the.
objectives of the progressive adminis-
trations but has found fault with the
methods requisite for putting and
keeping these principles at work.
Uniformly have they appealed to such
elements in our own party as dreaded
the departure from ancient habits or
were responsive to the powerful agen-
cies that financed and controlled
local politics. Probably the hoariest
story of corruption in American elec-
tions is the history of those moneyed
magnates who contributed vastly to
the campaigns of candidates of both
parties wtih the idea that they could
continue control regardless of \the
way which the political cat jumped.
Just as there are progressives in the
Republican ranks so there are reac-
tionaries in our own party. Political
affiliation is often the child of heredi-
tary principles, begotten in the first
instance of issues of terrific impor-
tance in the beginning but which
have no more significance at present.
than the inflamed controversy of a
century and a half ago as to whether
the capital of the United States.
should be at Washington or some-
where on the Susquehanna River.
The Aim Of Enemies
Always has it been the aim of the
enemies of liberalism to seek to at-
tach to themselves such members
of our party. Sometimes they have
succeeded; . sometimes they have
failed.
When they have succeeded they
have not infrequently been successfcl
in their efforts to supplant a Demo-
cratic administration with a Republi-
can administration. Such happenings,
though they have brought dismay for
a period, have not sufficed to stop
the general and inevitable movement
to make our country a better coun-
try for all of us rather than to make
it a lush pasture for the seekers and
holders of privilege.
Leave Progressive Marks
Every Democratic administration
has left a progressive mark on our
own history and has influenced world
progress as well. But when it has
been succeeded by a typically Repub-
lican administration, progress has
slipped backwards-sometimes a few
feet and often many miles. It has
been said that a great many voters
today want us as a nation to stop,
look and listen. What they fail to
understand is that nations cannot
standstillbecause by the very act of
standing still, the rest of the proces-
sion, moving forward, inevitably
leaves them in the rear. Therefore,
their desire to stand still actually
means moving backward in relation
to the rest of the world.I
Reactionaries Want To Undo
Republican and Democratic reac-
tionaries want to undo what we have
accomplished in these last few years
and- return to the unrestricted indi-
vidualism of the previous century.
Republican and Democratic con-
servatives admit that all of our recent
policies are not wrong and that many
of them should be retained-but their
eyes are on the present; they give
no thought for the future and thus,
without meaning to, are failing to
solve even current social and econ-
omic problems by declining to con-
sider the needs of tomorrow. Radicals
of all kinds have some use to hu-
manity because they have a least
the imagination to think up (many
kinds of answers to problems even
though their answers are wholly im-
practicable of fulfillment in the im-
mediate future.
Liberals Use Existing Plants
Liberals on the other hand are
those who, unlike the radicals who
want to tear up everything by the
roots and plant new and untried
seeds, desire to use the existinguplants
of civilization, to select the best of
them, to water them and make them
grow-not only for the present use of
mankind,' but also for the use of
generations to come. That is why I
call myself a liberal, and that is why,
even if we go by the modern contrap-
tion of polls of public opinion, an,
overwhelming majority of younger
men and women throughout the
The Text Of President Rooseveltr's
Message To The, Young Democra
United States are on the liberal side
of things.
In considering the present and the
future of American politics or poli-
cies, you have the right and the duty
to say to those who want to stand
still-"have you no program other
than standing still? We are not sat-
isfied if you tell us glibly that you
believe in taking care of old people,
that you want the young people to
have jobs, that you want everybody
to have a job, that you believe in a
fairer distribution of wealth-we in-
sist in addition that you give us
specifications of how you would do
it if you were in power."
Do not let the reactionaries and the
conservatives get away with fine
phrases. Pin them down and make
them tell you just how they would do
it.
Democratic Party Will Fail
The Demo ratic Party will fail if
it goes conservative next year, or if it
is led by people who can offer naught
but fine phrases.
Last winter, in speaking at the
Jackson Day dinner, I referred to
the sad state the country would be
in if it had to choose between a Dem-
ocratic tweedle dun and a Republi-
can tweedle dee. I want to amend
that simile, so let me put it this way:
the Democratic Party will not sur-
vive as an effective force in the na-
tjon if the voters have to choose be-
tween a Republican tweedle dum and
a Democratic tweedle dummer.
Will Not Have Active Part
If we nominate conservative can-
didates, or lip-service candidates, on
a straddlebug platform, I personally,
for my own self respect and because
of my long service to, and belief in,
liberal democracy, will find it im-
possible to have any active part in
such an unfortunate suicide of the
old Democratic Party.
I do riot anticipate that ,any such
event will take place, for I believe
that the convention will see the po-
litical wisdom, as well as the na-
tional wisdom, of giving to the voters
of the United States an opportunity
to maintain the practice and the
policy of moving forward with a lib-
eral and humanitarian program. A
large part of the responsibility for
such a choice of fundamental policies
lies in the hands and in the heads
of the younger men and women of
the nation. Be vigilant to keep tories
from controlling your own ranks-
just as vigilant as you will be to keep
tory Republicans from controlling
your own nation.
We who have borne the heat and
burden of the day salute you-you
who are about to live! r (
Very sincerely yours,
(Signed) Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Ii it
Contribution
of The Fraternity
. .' .
CHALLENGED as they will be this fall
.4by the new enlarged dormitory hous-
ing plan,' campus fraternities will have an op-
portunity to demonstrate the distinct and unique
contribution they have to offer toward each stu-
dent's education and development.
Foremost perhaps is the spirit of cooperation
that close association. with his fellow students
instills in the fraternity man. 'Opinions are
shared and discussed among the brothers, and
the individual student can rely upon the aid -of
hip, hrnthois in snlina rhis nwn nir,n ta1 h~h
I