Moral Lesson

Chinese rumblings and the misfortunes of a certain Snyder family of Queens Village, Long Island, fought last week for the big black type of Eastern newspapers. In semi-respectable journals, China dominated on the average of five days .out of seven. But in the tabloids and in the full-sized gutter sheets, the Snyders maintained at least a four-day supremacy. It was an unfortunate crime--Father Snyder was killed; Mother Snyder and the other man were indicted for murder; Daughter Snyder, aged 9, was in tears. It remained for some worthy soul to preach a great moral lesson. Mr. Hearst's New York Daily Mirror, which is only excelled in vulgarity by Mr. Macfadden's Daily Graphic, assumed the lofty mission. Beneath the two-inch headline, ''INDICTED!" the Daily Mirror published a full page photograph of Daughter Snyder supported by a nondescript woman in a fur coat and a man looking more like a pious bootlegger than an undertaker. Daughter Snyder's head was bent--her face completely hidden by her hat and her hand. The caption said: "The Daily Mirror will not print a photograph showing the face of the innocent child, but reproduces this picture as a great moral lesson. Do you think Mrs. Snyder would have loosed her passions if she could have seen this picture before she committed the crime?" Newspapermen wondered what caption the Daily Mirror would have produced if--like its rival the Chicago-owned New York Daily News--it had possessed nothing but the usual photograph "showing the face of the innocent child."