and by the properly apportioned praise of the coach. There was a much harassed but this time very happy football coach in the Middle West last season. His name is Robert C. Zuppke, and it was he who brought out "Red" Grange, only to have that young man enticed away from the academic shades of the University of Illinois by the famous "Cash and Carry" for Pyle, one of the most pestiferous of the professional promoters. He rejoiced last season in the possession of a team without a star, and that team brought home hit the Conference championship. This rt, meant gorgeous coaching and the apoed the theosis of team spirit. ere st Now that T. A. D. Jones, of Yale, has hwon his long battle at New Haven against a certain group that had been after his scalp because he was not producing st enough victories, the atmosphere has even been cleared up considerably. It does renot follow, however, that all the noisy "Old Grads" are to be condemned without a hearing. There is among themand this applies to every institution—a reasonably large and intelligent group than that knows technical football thoroughly, and that simply demands of the coach that the students receive as expert instruction as they get in chemical laboratory or any classroom. No good coach has any fear of this group. The astute Percy Haughton in his day coached not I only his team and his assistant coaches, but both graduate and undergraduate bodies as well. This is getting to be increasingly the practice, and a good one it is. I tor will be illuminating enough to give lasting friend of the graduate manager Indeed one of the best and most It is a great feather in the cap of amateur sport that the sheep do not as a rule attract the professional gambler. He has tried to break in, but, in the first He has tried to break in, but, in the first place, his "dope" is usually unsatisfactory, and, in the second place, he is quite easily spotted. There was a time when in the football season a small group of gamblers used to follow certain teams. They soon became discouraged, however, for real "tips" were not to be had. And that does not mean that there was no such thing as a real tip. We hear a great deal about "upsets" every fall. But there are really very few of them. Simply the "inside dope" is hard to get, and it is not on tap for the gamblers, in any event. Before the Army-Notre Dame game last fall there were at least two sports writers who knew to a practical certainty that West Point would win, and win decisively. If they had tipped and win decisively. If they had tipped off a few professional gamblers, there would have been a "clean-up" in it for them. But I do not think either of them was even tempted. One of them, I believe, won a dinner from a friend, and that was all that came of it. So in amateur sport the professional gamblers find the picking difficult, practically impossible. HAVE been told many times that not more than ten per cent of the crowds at an athletic event really understood the technique of the sport they were witnessing. It may have been so in the past, but it is certainly no longer the case, and for this we have the coaches and the coaching schools to thank. These coaching schools have spread the theory and practice of the game through thousands of high and even preparatory schools. It is not uncommon to find a small boy picking the plays as craftily and soundly as the quarterback on the field. In football, of course, the spectator misses a great deal Our much-vaunted professional baseby invariably following the progress of ball, unfortunately, has been made a the ball. He can readily correct that by bigger betting proposition than horseneglecting the ball for a time and watchracing ever was-a bigger and a meaner ing the line and the interference. Incione, for the agents of the baseball pools dentally, let me recommend the seat be- have been known to welch with disgusthind the goal-post now and then. Some ing frequency. The fact that the figures such of it as does approach the specta- voluntarily serve a gambling ring does of the play, of course, will be far off, but in the Clearing-House statement also in not help the baseball situation. So long as it is known that the baseball figures form the basis of a betting pool the game will be under suspicion, despite all that Commissioner Landis can do to keep it in the straight and narrow path. It is interesting to note also that there is an organized baseball ballyhoo. One hears little of the fact that in many sections of the West and Middle West there are schools which have no baseball team at all, but many basket-ball teams. The country's total basket-ball attendancefigures for an all-year-round gamewould undoubtedly swamp the figures of the baseball turnstiles. Incidentally, there are no dull moments in basket-ball, and as a body and brain builder it is well out in front. In this sport there seems to be plenty of room for both amateur and professional. W HEN we come to rowing, we find a sport that is undoubtedly the cleanest of all. It is too tough an assignment for the hired man. This might well be considered strange when it is remembered that it was founded in this country by professionals, whose names will live long after they are deadCourtney, the Wards, the Ten Eycks, Bob Cook, Hosmer, Hanlan, Plaisted, Glendon, Gaudaur, and a host of others. But when these men turned to coaching the colleges, professional rowing died a natural death. It might be supposed that the professional rowing coach would be devoted solely to the idea of victory. Yet it is not so. He wants his share, but in these days there is no one instructor who can hope to dominate the river. Generously and capably the older coaches are bringing along the young men who must take up the burden where they leave off in as highly technical a form of sport as there is anywhere in the world. And these men are as proud of building up the finest type of athlete as they are of turning out winning crews. Right here I want to mention two men who, though themselves professionals, are sticklers for the purest amateurism, and who have given more to the oarsmen they are teaching than could ever be represented by a money return. You will see little notice of them in print. One is Johnny Schulz, now an assistant coach at Princeton, the other William Mehrhoff, coach of the New York Athletic Club oarsmen. For a purer pair of practical altruists one would search far and wide. Schulz spent years of his life without reward attempting to establish schoolboy rowing in and around New (Please turn to continuation, page 189) M Education by "Utilities A Personal Letter from Washington Y very youngster, eighteen months old, knows that if he pushes a switch the light will come on. Doting parent that I am, I did not think this particularly remarkable until I found that the average American citizen knows no more than this baby about electricity or public utilities in general. The Joint Committee of the National Utilities Association made me wise to that (if it is) fact. It is the ground on which they defend the remarkable actions in process of revelation by the Federal Trade Commission, investigating public utilities. The American public knew only so much about utilities as would enable it to turn a switch. So utilities, in self-defense, had to and did educate the public. Utilities are efficient educators. The Federal Trade Commission hearings have been in progress since about the middle of April. In thirty days they have found thirty-eight Committees on Public Utilities Information at work in the States. These committees have scrutinized the text-books in use in the schools, marked for deletion all passages which might inculcate a conception of utilities different from that which the utilities themselves have, and substituted so far as possible-which is fairly far-texts designed to inculcate the utilities' conception of utilities. The head of one of these committees in a Middle Western State testified that his committee and other utilities forces had brought about the removal of certain text-books because those books presented arguments for Government ownership. The books substituted presented exclusively, he admitted, arguments for private ownership. These latter he regarded as fair-because the theory of private ownership is the right theory. This is a fairly typical bit of testi mony. The gaps caused by the removal of books from the schools have nowhere been left unfilled. Other books, written mainly by university professors, have been made available. The central committee of the utilities did, it appears from the testimony, pay an "initial fee" of $5,000 to a Washington magazine writer and public school official, Ernest Greenwood, to write "Aladdin, U. S. A." But most of the new books bore no such marks. In several cases professors received subsidies, bonuses, gratuities, hon By DIXON MERRITT orariums, or whatever the name may be, in connection with the writing of books bearing the purely professorial stamp. The effort has not been directed wholly toward the education of the rising generation. It is in evidence that a former United States Ambassador, Richard Washburn Child, who sometimes writes for periodicals, was financially helped along; and that a Washington newspaper correspondent, Bart Campbell, received a stipend of $150 a month. These expenditures were for research, but for the reaching of the adult rather than the juvenile opinion. What appears to have been one of the most widely used methods of reaching adults was the careful coaching of women speakers in position to make themselves heard in clubs and elsewhere. And one of the avowed purposes of the work with school-children was to reach, through them, parents who could not be reached directly. There is another class of pupils in this utilities school-Congress. TestiTestimony has revealed the fact that the Joint Committee of the National Utilities Association maintains in Washington very extensive organization. Amounts paid as salaries to various men and in other ways are in the record. They appear to total about a million dollars a year. The purpose of this organization-the sort of organization that is commonly called a lobby-was frankly stated to be that of representing the utilities companies on all matters pending before Congress. Among these matters have been, for eight years or more, Muscle Shoals and, for half that number of years, Boulder Dam, the one a tremendous power plant already constructed on the Tennessee River, the other an equally tremendous power plant proposed for construction on the Colorado River. The utilities have not favored the construction of the dam in Boulder Canyon. They have not favored most of the plans that Congress has considered for the operation of Muscle Shoals. Both houses of Congress have just passed bills providing for outright Government operation of Muscle Shoals. No one of the measures that the utilities opposed at other sessions was so objection able to them as this. Boulder Dam is still in the balance, but the utilities ar pear not quite heavy enough to hold their end down, Less has been said in the daily papers about this investigation than ever was said about any other one of comparable importance. It was Senator Walsh, Montana, who directly brought it abou He wanted it made by a committee of the Senate. But the utilities and others wanted it, if it had to be at all, con ducted by the Federal Trade Commission. Walsh got the investigation, but not where he wanted it. When the duty was wished on the Federal Trade Commission, most of the correspondents dismissed the matter from their minds. There would be no investigation, they thought, worthy of the name. Even after the Commission began to bring out interesting, eve startling facts, many correspondents could not bring themselves to believe that anything was going on down there As the proceedings warmed up, a few of the papers managed to get men o the job, but it has continued to be a very poorly covered "story." What other deterring influence there may be, if any remains to be seen or not to be seen. Publicity is the main weapon with which Congress provided the Federal Trade Commission in the organic act. It, all agencies of the Government, should be able to command it. The Commis sion has sometimes seemed not to seek it. The complete frankness of the utilities witnesses deserved better in the way of public attention. The more startling the story they had to tell, th more willing they appeared to tell it. far as superficial appearances go, there has been no effort at concealment or evasion. "Utilities" apparently have though that they were in a fight for their lives If the defensive methods used have not been always nice, they have been neces sary-from the utilities point of view. "Utilities" stand revealed as constituting the biggest thing in our busines life, a giant bidding for the future. "Trying to put a mortgage on posterity." an enemy would say. "Saving Americans from Communism," friends say. In either event, railroads and oil and all of the big, old things are, for the time being, dwarfed. Power is America's problem of the immediate future. W Youth's Questionnaire Submitted to the Older Generation by the Intelligent E young people understand that we shock you elderly people by our candid disregard of established institutions which you revere; and the first and most general question is: What good reason can you give why you should not be shocked out of your complacence? Why should we take seriously a generation of adults whose combined wisdom the world over allowed the world to drift into what it became in 1914-18, and what it has been since? Should we revere the traditions of the so-called civilization that destroyed between ten and fifteen millions of men on the battlefields in that period, and directly and indirectly caused suffering and death to other millions uncounted? Should we profess admiration for the intellects that now control the world— for the governing classes who have learned so little from that frightful catastrophe that the world is still an armed camp, engaged at the present moment in perfecting military engines many times more destructive than those used in the late war? By DON MARQUIS Should we feel grateful to the generations that have saddled us with such enormous debts and taxes as a result of that war that, in America alone, more than two-thirds of the aggregate revenues collected by the Federal Government must be applied to liquidating the costs of past wars and present armaments? Are we to be guided, unquestioningly and with infantile docility, by the moral notions of the precedent generations who have made this planet the place it is? Must we put from us the thought that either there is something inherently wrong with their religious systems or else something lacking in the manner in which they have been practiced? Are the young people of America, who ship, and imitate the mental processes Are we to give three cheers for the Are we to admire the social tone of a generation which makes the sale of liquor illegal, and then decrees that it is the "smart thing" to drink liquor at home and in the speak-easies and night clubs? Where in the world could we have got our ideas from concerning the relations between the two well-known sexes? Can members of the precedent generations hazard a guess? Do you really want us to be guided by all your traditions and your actionsyour traditions that you criticise us for deserting? Or do you want us to be better than you are? If we are to be better than you are, how are we to fall in with the ideas that made the world what we found it when we emerged into adolescence? Or is the frightful load that you have piled upon us-inherited ideas, financial burdens, physical appetites, moral viewpoints, social standards-your cynical and ironical way of saying that you expect us to be worse than you are? If we are to be rebuked for our levity, is it fair to ask you what other quality you have left us to go on with? Would you mind cataloguing the outstanding traits in your generations which you believe should claim our adoration? Are you always capable of distinguishing impertinence from the utmost pertinence in the questions which the younger generation now and then ask you, by way of rejoinder to your somewhat general criticism? Can you think over these questions without impatience or anger? You didn't know what you were doing when you let the world gravitate into its condition of the last ten years-you didn't mean to do it, did you? But is that any reason why we should look up to you for competent mental guidance? Would you mind very much if we tried to bring up your grandchildren, and our children (if we decide to have any), somewhat differently? Or would you grump about a still further departure from your blessed traditions? What, all things considered, is it that you are proudest about in yourselves, and in us, your children, and in your world to which you introduced us? |