THE SUMMER MICHIGAN DAILY
WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 1927
_____I
174f xnwr nis offended by this condemnation may
be gained from the knowledge that
a t when Birger's sentence was announc-
ed to a crowd at a baseball game the
Published every morning except Monday stands echoed with tumultuous cheers
during the University Summer 'Session by
the Board in Control of Student Publica in an ovation that lasted for several
tions. minutes. The consciences of the
The Associated Press is exclusively en- people of Illinois is perhaps as deli-
titled to the use for republication of all dews
dispatches credited to it or not otherwise cate as the consciences of the natives
credited in this paper and the local news pub- of Michigan, yet when the supreme
fished herein.'
EntereanM penalty was imposed on this black-
ostoffice as second class matter! mal, guard who plotted the deaths of good
Subscription by carrier, $1.5; by m citizens even that conscience was able
Offices: Press Building, Maynard Street, to tolerate a wild scene of applause.
Ann Arbor, Michigan. -- And Birger himself, hardened gang-
EDITORIAL STAFF ster that he was, turned pale when
Telephone 4925 the sentence of death was annouuced,
MANAGING EDITOR as his victim must have turned pale
PIIi'LIP C. BR.KOKS in their last agony as they died before
Edioril ireto .... Pal . Krnbullets from his machine guns and
City Editor..Joseph E. Brunswick
Feature Editor ..s.Marian L. Welles ombs. We in Michigan are not free
Night Editors from this type of criminal, but we
Carlton G. ChampeH. K. Oakes, Jr. lack the expeditious means of dealing
John E. Davis Orville Dowzer with him and there are cases in
SF.Snderland Iwhich even a death sentence seems
R M. Hyman Miriam Mitchell justified.
Robert E. Carson Mary Lister All in all, the forces battling crime
Betty Pulver seem to be returning to the crest of
Wm. K. Lomason Louis R. Markus t
'the wave, after waging a lsing fih
*7+ amn n
BUSINESSi STAFF
Telephone 21214
BUSINESS MANAGER
LAURANCE J. VAN TUYL
4dvertising....:........Ray Wachter
Accounts..........John Ruswinckel
Assistants
C. T. Antonopulos S. S. Berar
G. W. Platt
Night Editor-JOHN E. DAVIS
-WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 1927
THE BAUMES LAW WORKS 4
It will be hard for the criminal
pamperers and calloused reformers to
admit the fact, but the Baumes law,
stringent New York code making long
sentences mandatory for repeating
offenders has cut down crime in the
state of New York. The persons who
say that punishment is not deterrent
t to crime were apparently wrong, or
at least if punishment is not a deter-
rent incarceration is, and the repeat-
'ing offenders in New York are now
incarceratede-permanently.
The results of the measure are al-
most ubelievable for the first year,
for while crime throughout the coun-
try has showed its usual substantial
increase, the number of cases of mur-
der, manslaughter, felonious assault,
robbery and burglary dropped from
1,765 in 1926 to 1,611 for the corres-
ponding quarter in 1927. The number
of holdup cases dropped from 284
to 207. When one remembers thaj
the law has scarcely taken hold as
yet, and that the results over a period
of years, during which the repeating
offenders will be jailed for life, will
no doubt show even more conclusive
results than have been demonstrated
thus far.
Michigan is undoubtedly very for-
tunate to have going into effect, on
Ajigust 14 of this year, a similar law
for our own state. The large portion
of crimes committed by men with
cri-inal records can in almost al
cases be avoided by the smple expe-
dient of retaining in prison the habit-
ual offenders. Life sentences, what
is more, without the prospect of par-
don or parole except under unusual
circumstances, are not a very enticing
prospect for the man who is on the
verge of committing his fourth felony.
Of course the sob squad which
would abolish prisons will point with
horror to the men who are caught
the fourth time, and on a compara-
tively minor offense convicted and
automatically sentenced for life. They
will mention cases like the New York
negro, who was caught sleeping in a
vacant hotel room, convicted of
breakihg and entering and sent to
prison for life because he had com-
mitted four felonies. This is truly a
pitiable case, and one which should
elicit our heartfelt sympathy. The
poor man had only -committed three
felonies previously, and scarcely de-
served a rigid sentence. Neverthe-
less it is undoubtedly the elimination
of such men that accounted for the
encouraging decrease in crime in
New York state during the first quar-
ter of 1927.
If any evidence is necessary that
the prospect of relentless punishment
is a deterrent to crime, the figures
from the operation of the New York
state law should furnish that evi-
dence. Those who say that the end
of justice is to reform the criminal
lose sight of more than half of the
total end--which should include the
protection of society as well.
One measure we have neglected
in- this state, however, and that is
the enactment of capital punishment.
Right now in southern Illinois one of
the most hardened gangster of the
country has been sentenced to the
gallows. That will be the end of that
gangster. Whether or not the moral
conscience of the people of Illinois
for ten years. with baumes, an
Illinois juries, and the hangman's
noose, even the organized forces of
crime are likely to tremble in time,
and the reformers and pofessional
sobbers should be glad, for the in-
crease of the jail population will give
them more material to work with.
PUBLIC SCHOOL HEALTH A
PROBLEM
Dr. Don M. Griswold's statements
concerning the future of communi-
cable disease control, made at the Sat-
urday meeting of the Health institute,
ought to be given serious considera-
tion by public school teachers and
officials in Michigan.
Sending a child home for 24 hours,
pending a further examination at the
expiration of this period, at the first
sign of a cough, fever or sore throat,
is practical. It will save many lives
by preventing epidemics, and at the
same time Till cut down the running
expense of an enforced closing.
The state no longer considers the
per cent of attendance identical with
school efficiency. Some of the pro-
gressive school men hate caught the
practical value of disease prevention
methods and it is time the policy of
epidemic and disease prevention be-
came a part of our educational sys-
tem.
CAMPUS OPINION
Anonymous communications will be
disregarded. The names of commua
LAnts will, however, be regarded as
confidential upon request.
To the Editor:
After glancing through Mr. May's
review of Fanny's First Play as offer-
ed by the Rockford Players, I con-
clude that Mr. May is:
1. A stockholder in the company.
2. Subject to boquet-throwing
complexes.
3. Infautated with Miss Hughes.
4. One of those super-capable
"critics" who does not need to see a
play in order evaluate it.
5. Inoculated with superlatives and
trying to shake them off like a bad
cold with just as distressing effects.
6. Seemingly so overcome with the
play's superlativeness that he lacks
even the ordinary critical adjectives.
7. Possibly violently interested in
the Women's League, but why?
I am glad he recognizes Shaw's
ability as a dramatist, but he should
learn to differentiate between the art
of the playwright and that of the
actor. Miss Kearns, Miss Loomis and
Mr. Henderson were as usual very
adequate. Mr. Henderson as Duvallet
carried off a trying part with verve.
He has real ability for varied roles.
Rotheir, as Juggins, made the most
.of a miserable part.
Mr. Edgecombe, as usual, grossly
overplayed his part, but he infallibly
make a mess of his roles. He is the
grimacing hair-tearing type, and was
in his element in Pigs, but here-.
And as for Miss Hughes, though I can
almost understand Mr. May's uncriti-
cal infatuation for her, I cannot fully,
even with her gold hair. Her por-
trayal of Mrs. Knox had no convinc-
ing qualities whatever. She should
be used pictorially.
Mr. May, as a publicity agent,
might do well with a one-ring circus,
but not one of his phrases of appro-
bation (we saw none of opprobrium)
is in good standing with reputable
critics, and inasmuch as he could
easily find them in almost any review
(even one from the Daily), it is hard
to understand his utter incapability
for intelligent criticism.
B. A. D
Late in May each year the Univer-
sity of Wisconsin presents a week-
end program for mothers of students
who accept the invitation to visit the
university.
Music N Drama
ARISTOCRATIC AND ILL-MATED
Elsie Herndon Kearns, who opens
tomorrow evening with the Rockford
Players in her outstanding dramatic
role of the season as Mrs. Tesman in
Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler," re-
gards this character among the
greatest in all the literature of the
theatre.
"In 'Hedda Gabler,'J' she said,
"Ibsen has created a fantastic, neu-
rotic and so thoroughly human!-
character equal to Shakespeare's
LadY Macbeth of Fubert's Madame
Bovary. In this thrilling master-
piece Ibsen never kept more closely
to the bare facts of nature nor re-
jected more vigorously the ornaments
of romance and rhetoric. There is
no poetic symbolism here, no species
of blurring mysticism, no white
horse, or gnawing things, or monster
from the sea.
"Believing as I do," she continned,
"that nothing in the theatre really
matters save dramatic fire, it seems
to me that Hedda Gabler offers an
incomparable picture of a woman at
white-heat. I believe that never has
the neurotic 'witch-woman' been so
passionately painted. Aristocractic
and ill-mated, ambitious and doomed
to a repulsive alliance to a stuffy,
pedantic man beneath her station,
she compels your sympathy while she
stands for every bad feminine trait.
You feel that given other circum-
stances-released from the puffy,
middle-class atmosphere of Victorian
respectability - Hedda would have
been a power for beauty and good."
"Hedda Gabler" is regarded as Ib-
sen's most dramatic and theatrically
effective play, and along with
"Ghosts" and "The Doll's House" as
his finest work. "His portraits," Miss
Kearns continued, "of this unfortu-
nate woman "becomes thrillingly vital
if we realize that the strains upon
it are the impact of accidental con-
ditions on a nature which otherwise
might have been useful and fleckless.
"Hedda Gabler seems to me like a
picture painted by Sargent of a lady
in the London fashionable world. Ib-
sen divines with his brush, as the
painter would, the disorder of her
nerves, and the ravaging concentra-
tion of her will in a sort of barren
and importent egotism. He sees her
superficial beauty, her decadent ideal-
ism, and above all he appreciates
the fascination -we all feel for the
woman who is conventionally bad
and at the same time brilliantly at-
tractive."
"To present this melodrama," Miss
Kearns concluded, "is a tremendous
task, but should it prove successful
surely it will stand as the real ach-
ievement of a season in which every-
one. has been so appreciative and
cordial. After a series of six come-
dies 'Hedda Gabler' should form an
outstanding climax."
OPERA IN THE POPULAR
THEATRE
"The King's Henchman," the Ameri-
can opera by Deems Taylor and Edna
St. Vincent Millay which was pro-
duced to such great acclaim at the
Metropolitan last season and which
will make a comprehensive tour of
the United States this winter, is the
first opera to be booked for a tour
of the regular dramatic theatres of
the country. Hitherto, the compara-
tively few opera companies that have
sung outside of New York and Chi-
cago have been heard in concert
auditorium, college stadiums, or
some such place associated with
things apart from the "regular"
theatre.
"The King's Henchman" however is
being booked largely through the reg-
ular theatres.
This is a fact significant in the
history of opera in America, accord-
ingto the belief of Jacques Samous-I
soud, under whose direction the com-
pany will travel, for it indicates an
increasingly popular interest in this
particular art form. However, it is
made possible by another fact even
more significant and that one is that
"The King's Henchman" is the first
opera by an American composer and
an American librettist to be placed
by the critics on an equal plane with
the works of the better known Euro-
pean composers.
The opera will be sung in English
by a company of distinguished artists
several of whom are at present, or
have been, members of the Metropoli-
tan. Every one of these singers is
either English or American by birth
or has grown from childhood in one
of the English speaking countries.
I,
I'I
..
.I
SKILLED.REPAIRING
While you are here for the summer
get a Rider
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GRAHAM'S
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