Manchester High School - Somanhis Yearbook (Manchester, CT)

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28 SOMANHIS EVENTS tives make the laws which govern us, we indirectly have a voice in the gov- ernment; yet our modern craze for law-contempt constitutes the greatest menace known to such great institutions as the Constitution and the Supreme Court. In 1917 an amendment to the Constitution was proposed by Congress. In 1919 the law known as the 18th amendment became a part of our national rules and regulations! We know that this law prohibited in general the use of intoxicating liquors, but what matters it, just what the law prohibited? The legislators, the representatives of the American people, deemed this law necessary and the law was duly passed by both houses, signed by the presi- dent, and “O-K-e-d” by the Supreme Court. However, legal warfare over the amendment did not end with its ratification by the necessary number of state legislatures. Public interest had been aroused. Vast properties were endangered. Great Constitutional lawyers and eminent counsels, such as General William Marshall Bullitt, W. D. Gurthie, and Elihu Root, were retained and an effort was made to defeat or nullify the amendment in the courts. Two sovereign states,, Rhode Island and New Jersey, brought suit against the United States in the Supreme Court. Seven test cases were de- bated but all to no avail. The decision remained that “by lawful proposal and ratification, this amendment has become a part of the Constitution and must be respected and given effect the same as the provisions of that instru- ment.” However, the average American gives little heed to the Constitutional aspect of the amendment. His interest in the prohibition movement is fixed on other features which to him seem to be of immediate personal concern. So, though he calls himself a law- abiding citizen, he neglects the mandates of the Constitution for a more pressing interest of self-satisfaction, and fails utterly to realize that the constitutional aspect is of far greater importance for the future welfare and happiness of himself, his children, and his country. Therefore, little realizing what he is doing, he does not hesitate to violate the law. Since one law may be broken so easily and profitably, other laws are inevitably broken. Children, then raised in the homes of these citizens, grow up in an atmosphere of law-contempt, and what hope is there to change their opinion outside the home, with such an influence to combat? This, then, is the menace to our future peace and quiet! The present generation has a tendency to consider the law as a thing to be unheeded— unless, of course, some criminal is in danger of his life because he broke some law; then every clause, every word, every syllable in the law that he has broken is evoked to save his unworthy neck! Thus law breaking follows law-breaking until today the sanctity and honor of the Constitution are in danger—in danger from two sources: first, from ignorance of the law; and secondly, from contempt for the law. Let us take a few examples: In the last presidential election over 4,800,000 men and women voted for a party, of which the chief plank in the platform was for destroying by Con- stitutional amendment the judicial system set up by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and their fellow patriots. Did they know what they were doing? Again, Congress proposed by a large majority in each House the so- called Child Labor Amendment. Immediately the legislatures of the States began to reject it as violative of the Constitutional principle. Either Con- gress was badly wrong or the states were in error. Lincoln foresaw just such a danger, as exists today, and in advance he gave us his remedy. Remember his immortal words: “Let every American, every lover of Liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country and never to tolerate their violation by-

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SOMAN HES EVENTS 27 Somebody has said that a hope of success is often a guarantee of success. I am placing great faith in this statement, for I am wishing and hoping and dreaming that my dreams and aspirations are of the sort that lead to suc- cess. Ruth Palmer Smith THE CONSTITUTION AND LAW ENFORCEMENT The Constitution of the United States of America is one of the most noteworthy documents in existence today. Since its birth, silver-tongued orators of all ages and generations have praised its magnitude, its expres- sion, its form, its power, and more important yet, its liberty-guarantee, couched in the blunt straight-forward phraseology peculiar to a generation of real patriots. But today there is the danger that the inheritors of this patriotic formula, while enjoying its privileges and blessings, may be raising a generation of children into an atmosphere of law-contempt and misplaced patriotism. Let us look back to the First Constitutional Convention of 1787, held in the city of Philadelphia, and trace the history of the Constitu- tion to the present day. Gladstone once said that the American Constitution was the greatest work ever struck off at a given time by the mind of man; however, he did not take into consideration the fact that very little in the Constitution was original. Its roots lay in the legal inheritance and governmental experience of the colonies and were developed by certain compromises between represen- tatives of the Thirteen Original States. These representatives met in In- dependence Hall in May, 1787, and drew up our Constitution, which was based upon the fundamental principles of the Magna Charta, the Massachu- setts Bay Colony Agreement, and the Constitution of the State of Connecti- cut. The main feature of this document was the novelty of the dual form of government which it created—a government dealing directly with its citi- zens, yet composed of several sovereign states which held a system of checks and balances over the central government. The final document was the re- sult of continuous compromise; but in it was embodied a great governmental principle, a hope of a future for a great country; and this document has ever since been the mariners’ chart for our Ship of State. At first Constitutional affairs progressed splendidly and the country prospered and developed under its jurisdiction, until in 1860 there arose a great question. Should the integrity of the Constitution be preserved and the country whose inseparability it vouchsafed remain one strong nation? or was the Constitution a thing to be regarded when convenient, and disregard- ed when inconvenient? That question was answered, though it took four long, hard, bloody years to answer it. Lincoln had sworn to “preserve, pro- tect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” He did his duty. The integrity of the Constitution was maintained and passed on unharmed to the next generation. Today the Constitution is meeting as great a test as it met during the Civil War, but today the enemy is less obvious. In 1860 our fathers fought in the open; now they are fighting under cover. The enemy now is the ever-present and ever-growing attitude of law-contempt. Law is necessary! Without law we are lower than brutes, for we know that beasts have, and obey, the jungle laws. Self-preservation is the first law of nature. So we have personal laws, family laws, tribal laws, and final- ly governmental laws. Law is the back-bone of the nation; when a nation becomes lawless, it ceases to exist. In our country, as our own representa-

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SOMANHIS EVENTS 29 others. As the patriots of ’76 did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles in her lap; let it be taught in schools, 1n seminaries, and 1n colleges; let it be writ- ten in primers, in spelling books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of Juctice. In short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay of all sexes and tongues and colors and conditions sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars!” Here, then, is a remedy! Let every American citizen take to heart the advice of Lincoln; and the Constitution, the beacon light of American liberty, will never be dimmed! Charles Staver House OUR SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS Way down in the Southern Appalachian Mountains there exists a strange group of unknown isolated people. The ancestry of these inhabitants has been traced back to 1607. When James I confiscated the estates of the native Irish in six counties of Ulster, he planted them with Scotch and English Presbyterians. These outsiders then came to be known as Scotch- Irish. In time, when they came into conflict with the British Government, large groups of them emigrated to America and settled in western Penn- sylvania. Soon they began to clash with the Indians and gradually pushed southwest, finally settling amid the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina, where they still remain. The mountaineers of the South are marked apart from all other people by dialect, customs, character, and isolation. Our typical mountaineer is lean-faced, sallow, level-browed, with rather high cheek bones and predom- inating, hard gray eyes, often searching. He goes about in a dirty blue shirt, baggy trousers, and a huge, floppy hat—always unkempt. As from infancy these people have been schooled to disguise and hide emotions, ordinarily their faces have a stupid look. Many wear habitually a sullen scowl, hateful and suspicious. The smile of assurance and the frank eye of good fellowship are very rare. As a class they have great and restless physical energy. They are great walkers and carriers of burdens. Many of the women are pretty in youth; but hard toil in house and field soon ages them. At thirty or thirty-five a mountain woman is likely to have a worn and faded look, with form prematurely bent, short-waisted and round- shouldered from constant bending over the hoe in the cornfield, or over the hearth as she cooks. They make their own dresses, but the style never changes. The voices of the highland women are low-toned by habit, often sweet, being pitched in a sad, musical, minor key. With strang- ers, the women are shy, but speculative rather than timid, as they glance with “a slow, long look of mild inquiry, or unconscious melancholy.” Al- though the mountaineers are very shiftless, they mean to be crudely cour- teous. The mountain home of today is like the log cabin of the American pioneer. The commonest type has one large room with maybe a narrow porch in front and a plank door, a big stove chimney at one end and a single sash for a window at the other. Everything must be in sight of and acces- sible to the housewife. Linen and small articles of apparel are stored in a chest or cheap tin trunk. Most of the family wardrobe hangs from pegs or