The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

y i ¢ Fy bs --n "ieople. Nearly Everybody In Winnetka Reads The Talk WINNETKA WEEKLY TALK VOL. VIII, NO. 48. WINNETKA, ILLINOIS, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1920 TEN PAGES PRICE FIVE CENTS COMMERCIAL ASS'N OPPOSES PLAN TO ABOLISH JUSTICES Resolution Denouncing Plan Introduced at Consti- tutional Convention by Amos Miller of Kenil- a worth, Delegate From This District, Will Be Sent to All Commercial and Busi- Clubs in the State The New Trier Commercial asso- ciation has gone on record as being opposed to the proposed action of the Constitutional Convention to abolish Justice courts. At a meeting in the Library hall at Wilmette Wednes- day night a resolution was passed expressing the disapproval of the association and a copy of the resolu- tion will be sent to all of the com- mercial clubs in the state and to Amos Miller of Kenilworth, who is the delegate from this district to the Constitutional Convention. " The resolution follows: The Resolution Whereas, Amos Miller, one of the delegates to the Constitutional Con- vention of the Seventh district in which we live, has introduced a pro- osal in said convention providing or the unification of all the courts of this state under the head, "Control and management of Supreme Courts the judges, sheriffs and clerks of the Circuit Court should be appointed by or on the recommendation of the Supreme Court and the District judges, constables and clerks, to be appointed by the circuit court and doing away with all justices and police courts; and Whereas, this proposal is support- ed and indorsed by Hiram T. Gilbert, the American Judicature Society, the Chicago Daily Tribune, The Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Motor club and other propogandists; therefore Be it resolved that The New Trier Commercial association representing practically all the merchants, busi- 'ness and professional men of Wil- _ mette, Kenilworth, Gross Point, Win- netka and Glencoe, is unalterably op- posed to doing away with the just- ice courts and to any plan of appoint- ing judges. We indignantly refuse to give up the rights to elect our own judges, justices and other officers and to govern ourselves. We resolve further that we unalter- ably oppose the proposition to con- solidate all of the local government of Cook county and refuse to con- sider coming into Chicago or to come into the jurisdiction of the proposed Metropolitan courts of Chicago and Cook county. We reaffirm our ad- herance to the principle of local self- government for all municipal com- munities desiring it. Resolved further, that we favor building up and improving the just- ice court system, the poor man's court, because of their efficiency, availability and substantial justice, without the necessity of hiring law- yers (except in important cases) and without any expense to the taxpay- ers. We believe that justice courts, hear and dispose of seventy percent of all the cases of the people with- out any expense to the tax payer. While the higher courts of Cook county alone cost $3,200,000 a year taking in $1,200,000, leaving a deficit of direct cost to the taxpayers of $2,000,000 a year to hear and dispose of the other thirty per cent of the cases. Resolved finally, that we request the secretary to send a copy of this resolution to all commercial and business men's associations of the state and request them to take simi- liar action. Also to send a copy to each of the delegates of the Consti- tutional Convention. Boyer Takes Stand Judge John F. Boyer of Evanston, president of the Cook county Just- ice of Peace and Police Magistrate association, made a strong appeal to the members to voice their disap- Moval of the abolishing of the Just- no "The office of Justice of 'he Peace", said Judge Boyer, "has heen in existence since 1682. It was yrought over here from the English It seems rather funny that after all these years it should sud- denly be discovered that Justices of the Peace, Police Magistrates and Constables are dammed raskels." " 1 can't see why Amos Miller wants to abolish the system unless there is some motive back of his ac- tion. Franklin Childs, another ard- ent opposer, recently represented the Chicago Motor club. I have tried lots of speeders whom Childs de- fended, but I have never fined one but what I could look him in the eye and tell him that I thought that I was right. When we stop to think that there were over 400 deaths in Cook county last year caused by speeders we must realize that it is a very serious matter and must be dealt with in a serious way. Would Avoid Politics "If we were to abolish the justice system and have instead district judges, these judges would owe their soul and body to the power which had appointed them. Would that be putting justice into politics or not? The justice of the peace is the only remedy that a poor man has. The municipal courts are not a poor man's court. He is not even allow- ed to plead his case but must be rep- resented by an attorney. Where would the business man be who had to hire an attorney to collect a $10 bill? J. P. Not a Grafter "Last year the justices were al- lowed to advance their fees one dol- lar and the constables were allowed a fifty cent increase for their serv- ices. This is the first increase in years. During the last five years the cost of living has increased by leaps and bounds yet because we are granted one dollar for handling a case we are grafters. Is it fair? Not Talking For Himself "I am not talking for myself, for my time is limited, but I am talking for those who are to follow me. I believe that the justice courts are! the only place where a poor man can right the wrongs which he suffers. I am interested in the wellfare of the people of the future as well as today. "I know there are many men who are justiceswho are not fit to hold the job. But is it right to condemn the whole for the faults of the few, A bad justice of the peace can easily be eliminated by the proper use of the ballot. A justice cannot have friends everywhere. Jesus Christ had ene- mies who hung him to the cross." Judge Falk and Leo Dean also spoke favoring the justices and the resolution was passed without a dis- senting vote. N.T. C. A. DOES NOT FAVOR NEW FEDERAL COMMISSION Report of Dr. L. C. Ayres Shows Work of Illinois Highway Com- mission Preferable At the meeting of the New Trier Commercial association Wednesday night at the Library hall, Wilmette, Dr. L. C. Ayres of Glenview made a report on request of the Federal Highway commission to have a com- mittee from the association co-oper- ate with it in its work. Dr. Ayres cited the action of the Chicago association of commerce in refusing to back the Federal commis- sion. "There is nothing to be gain- ed," he said, "as a Federal commis- sion would only complicate matters and interefere with the work of our own Illinois association. The Feder- al association would only make a lot of political jobs. Last year the Illi- nois commission let contracts for eighteen million dollars worth of hard roads but only four million dol- lars worth was completed because of the lack of labor." A resolution was passed that the request of the Federal commission be refused. Dr. Ayres was extended a vote of thanks for his report. Herbert Sherer, township highway commissioner, told of the work ac- complished during the past year. By following the plan of personal super- vision a great deal more work has been accomplished than ever before. With the help of an advisory board Mr. Sherer has made a definite plan to be followed. All roads will be the miform width of sixty-six feet and ditches have been dug accordingly. A complete report of Mr. Sherer's work will be published next week. IMPROVES FROM OPERATION William Eckhart, son of J. F. Eck- hart of Winnetka, underwent an operation at the Evanston hospital last Friday. His condition is report- ed to be improving. $60,000 Memorial Hall For Winnetka School Mr. and Mrs. Louis Kuppenheimer Offer Splendid Hall in Memory of Their Daughter Jane A gift of $60,000 by Mr. and Mrs. Louis B. Kuppenheimer for the erec- tion of an assembly hall in the new upper grade school on West Elm street, as a memorial to their little daughter, Jane, was announced by the Winnetka Board of Education this week. The conditions of the gift were that the proposed upper grade school should be erected as planned, on the West Elm street site owned by the Board of Education, and that at least $300,000 would be spent in the erec- tion of the complete building. The assembly hall will be known as the Jane Kuppenheimer Memorial. It will seat from one thousand to twelve hundred people, and will be an inte- gral part of the modern intermediate school which the Board of Educa- tion plans to erect on its twelve acre site, four and one-half blocks west of the present Horace Mann school. Not only will it serve as a place of assembly for the pupils of this school, but it will also give the vil- lage an adequate hall for general meetings at a place situated as near the present center of population as community house, and in such a po- sition that within a few years it will probably be in the exact center. While this assembly hall will be six. blocks from the station, it has been pointed out that this distance is not prohibitive even for those who are going to come on the cars, and that in bad weather busses could easily be run from the station to the as- sembly hall when big public meetings were being held. Jane Kuppenheimer, in whose mem- ory the assembly hall is being erect- ed, was a pupil in the fourth grade of the Skokie school last year. Her death last summer was felt as a real loss by the teachers and pupils of her school. Friends of the Kuppenheim- ers and members of the Board of Education have expressed their pro- found appreciation to Mr. and Mrs. Kuppenheimer for memorializing the little girl in a way which would benefit all the children of the village. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE IS APPOINTED FOR LEGION $350,000 LAUNCH CAMPAIGN TO RAISE ( FOR NEW SCHOOL Laird Bell, President of the Board of Education, An- nounces Opening of House-to-House Campaign to Raise Funds for Building on West Elm Street Site at Greeley School Meet- ing Thursday Evening. A village-wide campaign for the collection of $350,000 to erect a new school building was launched by the Board of Education at an open meet- ing held in the Greeley school Thurs- day evening. The Board presented in full its plans for Winnetka's new school building, illustrating the needs of the schools and the financial situation. Run Into Hotbed The residents of the southeast sec- tion of the village are opposed in a body to the proposed west Elm street site. The sentiment of the meeting clearly showed that the ma- jority of those in attendance were firm in their conviction that the new site would not answer their needs Roland Whitman, who came to the meeting as he said with an open mind, said, "I believe that the school board is convinced in its own mind that it is doing the right thing, but I can see by the sentiment which is expressed here that the people have not been convinced. Allan Wolf, S. C. Hancock and W. A. Thrall were also strong speakers for the opposi- tion. A petition asking for three eight- grade schools in Winnetka has been circulated in the southeast section. It already carries more than two hundred and fifty names and it is said that only two or three people in that district have refused to sign. The petition is as follows: The Petition "To the School Board of the Village of Winnetka: "The undersigned residents and taxpayers of the Village of Win- netka respectfully request that the necessary arrangements be made by you to have full eight grade schools at the Skokie, Horace Mann and Samuel Sewell Greeley schools be- ginning with the next school year, the fall of 1920." Superintendent C. W. Washburne Commander Hardenberg Names the Members of Committee which Will Promote Welfare of Post At a meeting of the local post of the American Legion Tuesday night Commander Hardenberg named the members of the Executive committee. It is planned to have this committee act in the capacity of a board of di- rectors and dispose of all matters which do not affect the entire post. The committee will also be called upon to promote the general welfare of the post. It is made up of the following members: Lee Adams, Ayres Boal, Dr. Frank Blatchford, Harve Badgerow, Henry Barroll, James. Harris, Jr., Paul Kreger, Fred- erick Mason, Hoyt McClain, Samuel Otis, Jonh Reilly, Fred Richardson, Harold Snell, Henry Tenney, John Wood, William Wildman, Carl Zeiss and the Rev. E. Ashley Gerhard. Several sub-committees were also appointed, Entertainment, Harve Badgerow; Legislation and Resolu- tions, Frederick Mason; Rehabilita- tion, Rev. E. Ashley Gerhard; War Risk Insurance, Noble Hale; Routine 'Publicity, Harold Clark; Special Publicity, John Reilly; Finance, Hoyt McClain; Historian, Henry Tenney; House, Ayres Boal. Harve Badgerow, chairman of the Entertainment com- mittee, has named the following sub- committees: Indoor Baseball and Boxing, Paul Kreger; Cards, Herbert Zipf; Music, Instrumental, Arthur Kassner, Vocal, John Wood; Fenc- ing, Fred Mason; Bowling, Clarence Happ. AA Redington, who was sched- uled to speak at the meeting was un- able to attend, but Miss _ Eleanor West and Miss Elizabeth Hinde, the two fair-sex members of the post, were present. They were not called on during the meeting but they were strong rivals to the card tables when the social hour started. Both of these young ladies served in the French army during the war, Miss West as a chauffeur and Miss Hinde as a nurse. Miss West was wounded. The next meeting will be held on February 24. This promises to be an exceedingly interesting meeting as Lieut. Beeze, a Winnetka man who was on the N. C. 4, will tell of that PRESERVE SKOKIE AS PARK FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS "Skokie Day" at Community House Shows Nocessity of Immediate Action to Preserve Skokie "Skokie Day" at the Community House Wednesday, while it. did not result in any definite action being taken by those who attended, forc- ably brought the people the neces- sity of taking some immediate ac- tion to preserve the Skokie for the future. "We must provide a breathing space for the people of Chicago," said Jens Jensen, the noted landscape architect, who spoke at the after- noon meeting. Mr. Jensen told of the historical value of the Skokie and of its future value provided the proper steps are taken now to pre- serve it. Mr. von Hofsten's exhi- bit of Skokie paintings drew won- derful praise and appreciation from all. Professor Jesse L. Smith of High- land Park spoke at the evening meeting of the possibilities of future development in the Skokie. William S. Elliott, president of the Winnetka Park district, told of the early work of that body toward the ultimate end of preserving the Skokie as a park. Mr. Elliott is strongly in favor of the Skokie being made a part of the Cook county forest preserve. Rev. J. W. F. Davies said that the entire nort shore would eventually become a great city and that it was necessary to provide parks now for the future generations. CHICAGOAN TO PREACH Rev. John P. Sanderson of Chicago, D. D., will preach at the Winnetka Congregational church Sunday. Mr. Richards has gone east to fill several engagements at Wellesley college, Walnut Hill school and his former church in Boston. TO LEAVE WINNETKA Mrs. Florence Preston, temporarily employed in the offices of the vil- lage, expects to leave Winnetka about memorable flight. April 1. first spoke of the crowded condi- tions of the schools, and showed the educational value of a centralized upper grade school with ample play- ground space. President Laird Bell of the Board of Education then told of the various financial alternatives which had confronted the Board in its effort to solve the problem of housing Winnetka's rapidly increas- ing school population. He pointed out the general popular subscrip- tion for the erection of the new build- ing. Object to Distance Following Mr. Washburne's talk there was a vigorous discussion. A number of people present objected to the distance of the new school build- ing from the south-east end of the village. They proposed as an alter- native that the Board of Education erect three departmental schools, one each on the Greeley, Skokie and West Elm street site, or that it dis- pense with departmental work alto- gether and revert to the old-fashion- ed eight grade school. In reply to these objections Mr. Washburne said the the board pro- posed to run school busses for such children as could not walk to the new building. He then pointed out the fact that the expense-of building, equipping and running three depart- mental schools instead of one was prohibitive; that such additional building would encroach so serious- ly upon the playground space at Sko- kie and Greeley as to interfere with the highly necessary work in physical education; and that a reversion to the undepartmentalized eight grade s¢hool was educationally a backward step. He showed that a careful scientific study had been made by leading educators in all parts of the country, and that the undepartment- alized upper grades had been shown so conclusively to be inefficient that progressive educational systems everywhere had adopted the de- partmental plan. Schools Inadequate Now "The present housing facilities of the Winnetka Public Schools said Mr. Washburne," are totally inade- quate to the present school popula- tion. At the same time the school population is rapidly increasing, and it is imperative that relief be found at once . "The proper capacity of the pre- sent school buildings--that is the number of pupils who can be housed without crowding--is about 760. Our total enrollment at the end of this school year will be close to 1020. The difference between fhese two figures reppresents the extent of the con- gestion from which we are present suffering. "It will not take much stretch of your imagination to see that our teaching necessarily suffers from such make-shifts as are necessary in view of such crowded conditions. If the school population were not growing, relief would be necessary in order to bring our schools up to anything like the standard which they should attain. But the school population is growing rapidly. The average in-, crease during the past five years has been 1215 per cent a year. On the basis of these statistics, and in order to obviate the present con- gested condition, we will need next year at least 15 more rooms, a year ater 19 rooms, and within three years a minimun of 24 rooms. Require Centralization The question arises whether these rooms should be added to the three present buildings, or whether most of them should beconcentrated in one new building. From both the educa- tional and financial standpoint there is only one answer. In education, as in business, it has been found that efficient administration and organ- ization require centralization. A careful study of educational con- ditions. throughout the country by the ablest American educators has revealed the fact that the weak spot in elementary education is the upper grades. It is in the 6th, 7th and 8th grades that pupils begin to lose in- terest in their work, that discipline problems become acute, that truancy and the tendency to leave' school become marked, and that the training