Daily News from New York, New York • 347

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If. tl' KS-dW fit Kl J- -TS T4- if Mmr MEMBER Or THE AS80CIATFO MESS The AmoHnt(d Pnna rxrlunivclr ratified to the noe fur republication of nil wwi (tinnmchen rrpflitetl lo II or not olhirwine r-retlited in this taper and aliw the ner lllblinlMHl herein. All Harbin of remi Miration of aixvial iiinnalche herein aluo an- rewt-TtHt The Inquiring Fotograpber By JIMMY JEMAIL. The Newt will pay $5 for ererv timely, interesting question tub-milted and used in this column. inlay's award goes to P.

A. Hartal 366 Union St Brooklyn. THE QUESTION. Defense lawyers in a recent strip-tease case say that morals have changed in the past 25 years. Do you think so? THE PLACE.

Along Seventh Ave. South. THE ANSWERS. Mrs. Rita II.

Piatt, Manhattan, THE POLL TAX FIGHT The big poll tax fight now agitating Congress, and holding up consideration of other matters is an old American fight with new labels. At the core of the fight is the old question How far should the right to vote extend' in a democratic country? This right used to extend nowhere near as far as ft does now. Women were not allowed to vote in national elections until the adoption of the 19th Amendment in 1920 a change which must have caused most of the Found-rapid revolutions in their nurse, les, morals have changed consid-erably in the past 25 years, and there is plenty of proof. People are living looser lives and they are more insincere than ever. There Senator McKellar Senator Itarkley to perform some is no doubt in ing Fathers graves.

The Founding Fathers idea was that a man ought to be a pretty substantial eitizen before being allowed to my mind that the average person does not have the same principles I that the average person had 25 years ago." I Charles cus- li 9 Harry Andre, torn tailor: "Yes, morals have changed and for the worse. It was much different 25 or 30 years ago than it is todav. The last World War had much to do with the lessening of the moral standard. You VOICE OF THE PEOPLE KTe ill itbholJ both on request. 1- Virtue girr name and adJreu uitb your letter.

KRKKDOM OF PRESS. EH? will find that there is the let-down in standards after same every Manhattan: You have been such a champion of the fourth estate that I thought you might be interested In the fact that the WPB, war. Mrs. Mary O'Connell. Manhat- tan.

home: "No. i Morals are the 1 same, alwavs. The standards are set in our homes and in our churches. They never chartge. and every one knows the difference between right motivated by a very biased ad-, visoiy board, is seriously considering ordering the discontinuance of majrazines such as motion picture fan magazines, pulp paper magazines, children's comic magazines, etc.

In other words. 1 the WPB would be in a position to censor the type of reading America is to have. Recently, the head of a rationing board in Sheboygan, i refused to give a wholesale distributor a certificate for two tires, unless the distributor dis- continued placing on sale certain I'KASE BY 1CKES Teaneck, N. Donald Duck Ickes decrees that the Eastern states must have a 2.V- cuv in gasoline rations. What I should like to know is whether only the 17 Eastern states are fiuhtinir this war, or whether all 4S are supposed to be in it.

Is it possible that the New Deal is taki'iir its revenue on the Eastern states for dumping so many New Dial candidates ovei-board in the recent elections? ANT. KA STERN KU. SKY'S CIVS LIMIT Brooklyn: our F. D. R.

svants more power from Congress, does he? Well, for my part he can have all the pow -r he wants. Win or lose, let our F. D. R. finish what he started, my friends, and I'll say this again and again and again.

ADORNO. FED I WITH REFORM Manhattan: In the last war. the reformers put over prohibition t- "protect" the men in uniform. In this war, nil types of censorships, repressions and taboos are being revived. Why are such wartime phenomena always peculiar to the United States? I was recently in wartime London, and in the Piccadilly Circus section I attended a burlesque show which rivaled the best that old 42d Street ever pro and wrong.

Times may change and people may not be as moral or ethical, but the same standards go on for all time." AUerton W. Hamilton, Morris i i rK Bronx, let tor carrier: "Yes. Morals have changed and not for the better. This has been due to several factors, this and magazines which this ration loard member did not like. It occurs to me that such actions and proposed actions on the part of rationing boards of one kind or another are a serious encroachment on the free press.

PULP PUBLISHER. POSTWAR PROVISION Boonton, N. A recent Voice letter expressed the hop that something substantial may be done to help service men when they return to civilian life. The Boonton vote, and property qualifications for voting were rather high in some states in the old days. Colored slaves before the Civil War were not permitted to vote.

After that war, the Federal Government brought the franchise to the freed slaves by force, over the violent protests of the Southern whites. There were colored majorities in some legislatures for a while. These developments led to the upsurge of the original Ku Klux Klan, and forced into various Southern state constitutions grandfather clauses (you can't vote if your grandfather didn't), poll tax clauses, and other methods of disfranchising most of the colored people. By these devices, white voting majorities have been maintained in the Southern states from around 1870 to the present ffme. The poll tax survives in eight Where Voters Southern states Alabama, Arkansas, Jxe Scarce Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

It is a head tax of $1 to $1.50 a year, and under the poll tax laws you have to pay it in order to be able to vote. Though these poll tax statutes are aimed frankly at keeping poor or neglectful colored people away from the ballot boxes, they also keep a lot' of Southern poor whites from voting nowadays. The result is that the actual voting population of these states flutters around 7r or 87' of the total population. For example, the eight poll tax states in 1940 had a total population of almost 23.000,000, while only about 3,000,000 of the inhabitants voted tn the 1940 Presidential election. In the same election, about 42 of New York State's population voted.

The Roosevelt Administration is now backing a bill to forbid states to levy poll taxes as a qualification for the ballot in national elections. This bill is what the present tl. it fight in Congress is about; and the 7 he Foil I ax fight is giving off plenty of fireworks. And Politics When the bill came up for con sideration in the Senate last Saturday, only 26 Senators less than a quorum were present. Senator Alben W.

Barkley Administration leader, got the Sergeant at Arms to go through the quaint motions of "arresting" enough Senators known to be in Washington to make up a quorum. On Tuesday, Senator Kenneth McKellar, Democrat from the poll tax state of Tennessee, got up in the Senate and put the widow's curse on Dear Alben for having caused the "arrest" of McKellar, among others. He had been besmirched by an old friend, McKellar mourned. Then he went significantly further, by saying that Barkley was no longer his, McKellar's, leader, while Senator Tom Connally (D-Tex.) was. Thus a crack appeared in the Administration's control of the Democratic majority in the Senate.

Senator Theodore G. (The Man) Bilbo, up to now an Administration 100 per center from Mississippi, has jumped the New Deal reservation regarding the poll tax and says he will filibuster the bill to death. All in all, the fight's main effects seem likely to show up in the 1944 Democratic Presidential convention. Even if the bill becomes law, it will only slightly increase the Southern voting population. Other disfranchisement tricks will be found.

It may, however, warm up numerous Northern colored voters cooling loyalties to the Democratic Party. At the 1944 convention, the poll tax state delegations will not have forgotten this New Deal attack on one of their pet symbols of Southern white "supremacy," and will most likely be against the New Dealers, though those states will in all probability go Democratic in the Presidential election. The New Dealers will probably run into further resentments among delegations from various Southern and near-Southern non-poll tax. states. the first World War, the uepres- i li rith un- I I s'ViV mrntand depres wil sion, employmeiv Military Service Committee has functioned for just this purpose unstable times, and in particular prohibition, which fostered a general disrespect for morals and all laws." Mrs.

Estelle C. Edelkraut, Man hattan, home: "Yes, I think so. At least, people are more open in their thoug hts and actions a y. Many have no shame and they don't care. Some things that people smile at today would duced.

None of the other United Nations tries to censor harmless amusements, Mr. License Commissioner Moss. It's time a few militant citizens started a counter-wave to slap down this reform wave. SAILOR. STIFF-MUSCLE BRICADE Manhattan: It seems to me that one of the most cruel, inhuman and stupid acts perpetrated by the present Administration is that of drafting men of 35 to 45 and putting them into the infantry to undergo drastic basic training.

The great majority of these men cannot work, drill, march, hike or take part in setting-up exercises in competition with lads in their twenties. A man of this age, who in civil life was a useful, resected member of an average community, can become in an infantry regiment a humiliated, resentful, disgusted, sick and sore lump of misery. A. JONES. shock the citizens of 25 or 30 years ago.

I don't know, but maybe it's a cycle. I've heard of the Gay Nineties." since the first group of men left here under the Selective Service Act in May. 1940. We shall be glad to send a limited amount of printed forms, which we have found useful, to any other town interested in organizing such a committee. We hope to be of real service to the men upon their return.

WALTER A. PETERSON, Chairman, Boonton Military Service Committee. BRIEF FRIENDSHIP Brooklyn: I would like to get hold of a certain hatchet-faced killjoy who interrupted my brand-new acquaintance with an Aussie flier roaming around town the other evening. Here's to the RAAF; and most of us New Yorkers welcome you Aussies in spite of our handful of killjoys. DOLORES.

COLDER AND COLDER Manhattan: A couple of News reporters recently found no heat limit of 65 in various highclass spots around town. I suggest that you now investigate a few New York rooming houses which have no heat at all due, perhaps, to the Democratic royalty lovers who are making us Americans suffer in order to pull a grandstand play for Europeans. MAN FROM TEXAS. Charles A. Rex, 124th mechanic: "Morals them-s 1 ves haven't changed, but their accept ance, reflected in the standards BEG PARDON Nov.

13, in reporting the death by suffocation of Carol Flanagan, and attitude of many persons. has certainly one month old. The News stated 43b the infant smothered while in her changed. If a woman were carriage in front of 4057 Momiccllo Bronx. Actually, the carriage seen alone on the streets at 3 A.

M. 25 years ago, she would have been talked was in the living room at that al dress. Suffocation was due to a glandular condition in the about. Today, no one thinks anything of it." throat..