Religion: Reformer

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His admirers call Clinton Norman Howard "The Little Giant," because he looks and spouts like old-time Orator Stephen Douglas. As superintendent of the International Reform Federation in Washington he is No. 1 U. S. reformer. His potential enemies, from Billiards to Theatre, are catalogued alphabetically in the Federation's offices. Lately one of the Little Giant's files—the one on Gambling—has been particularly crammed. What made Reformer Howard broody was the fact that a lot of this gambling was under church auspices. For the last three years, U. S. churches have raised thousands of dollars by the old-time country fair and carnival game, Bingo (or Beano, or Keno).

Mr. Howard noted a recent Gallup poll which announced that half the people of the U. S. approve of gambling, in church or out. He saw that, out of more than 200 Episcopal and Roman Catholic bishops, not more than a dozen or so banned Bingo as a means of raising money. He heard that priests in Trenton, N. J. defied police attempting to enforce the law against gambling, were backed up by a grand jury; that "bingo-mad" women in Detroit hissed, hooted, flew at raiding police; that in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maryland, legislators were urged to legalize games like Bingo.

With anger in his stout heart, Reformer Howard last February visited a Bingo hot spot, Rochester, N. Y., where he once lived after amassing a modest fortune as a picture-frame salesman. For Progress, organ of his Federation, the Little Giant wrote: "This is Rochester under the benign administration of Bishop Kearney, and Rev. Father Charles J. Bruton, who is quoted as boasting that he had cleaned up $65.000 as the share of St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church from Bingo. Can we be surprised that suggestions have been received at this office from Rochester that the new Supreme Pontiff shall be called Pope Bingo I?"

Catholics gasped, then jumped on Mr. Howard. Last week, in another issue of Progress, he explained himself: he had been shocked because Rochester Catholics played Bingo the night after Pope Pius XI died. "Time and Bingo waits for no Pope at St. Margaret Mary Church. On with Bingo, while in Rome they reverently close the eyes of the 'Pope of Peace.' ... [I] quoted what was said . . . BEFORE the election of the new Pontiff. The reflection was not on the new Pope, beloved by all, but on the Catholic churches of Rochester in general, and upon St. Margaret Mary's in particular, who bingoed while the world wept."