Local Affairs

> "Battle Royal" is the name for a free-for-all staged by fight clubs when they dump a dozen battlers into the ring to slug it out until only one is left standing. Battle Royal was the name for Florida's pre-primary campaigns last week. Few were the burning issues, but many were the candidates.

For Governor on the Democratic ticket: eleven--including Busman Burton Schoepf, who partly financed his campaign by issuing $1 stock certificates which bore the redemption clause (and a grammatical howler): "When elected, this certificate will entitle the holder to have luncheon or dinner as my guest at the Mansion." For Senator on the Democratic ticket: six, including Incumbent Charles O. Andrews, Governor Fred Preston Cone, Charles Francis ("Socker") Coe, author of Me--Gangster, and Bernarr Macfadden, publisher of Liberty, True Story Magazine, Physical Culture, True Love and Romance. Declared Mr. Macfadden: "Teeming vitality is of course important, but a Government that robs the citizens of their liberties can still take the joy out of life." How to put joy back: elect dynamic Bernarr Macfadden.

Only candidates sure of nomination at the first primary (May 7), equally sure of defeat next November, were the two Republicans, who ran unopposed for Governor and Senator.

> Solemn-looking, thin and hollow-eyed, one of the richest men in the U. S. admitted in a Chicago Federal court last week that he was guilty of a crime. His crime: evasion of Federal income-tax payment in 1936. The criminal: Moses L. Annenberg (publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily Racing Form, etc., etc.). Maximum penalty: five years in jail, $10,000 fine. Without admitting Government charges (soon to be dismissed) that he or some of his companies had also evaded income taxes in 1931, '32, '33, '34, '35 and '37, Publisher Annenberg agreed to settle Federal tax claims for all those years. Estimates of what he may have to disgorge in taxes, interest, penalties: $9,000,000.

> State Controller William A. Runnells was known in Maine as a stern economizer and a man of lofty integrity. Recently, as auditors prepared to report to the Governor on Maine finances, Runnells shot himself (not fatally) in the chest. He called it an accident. Governor Lewis O. Barrows learned of shortages of at least $72,000 in State funds, which Run nells had handled for eight years, was told that Runnells had been a large and lavish liver, a collector of nude snapshots (some of Augusta women). Last week authorities were hunting for the photo graphic subjects, to ask for more details of Controller Runnells' various affairs.

> For 75 years, St. Louis has choked in "smog"--mixture of fog and smoke belched out by furnaces burning southern Illinois soft coal (TIME, March 4). To clear the air, the city recently passed an ordinance requiring smokeless fuel or the installation of equipment to burn soft coal smokelessly. Mining towns of south ern Illinois now vow they will boycott St. Louis merchants (who sell Illinois coal miners more than $50,000,000 worth of products a year).

Said they last week: "Smoke is bad in St. Louis . . . [but] the people have lived in it since the town was started. . . ." St. Louis asked U. S. Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold whether a boycott would not be in violation of the anti-trust law.

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