Alabama is locked in a heated battle over a $20 million school bond issue that's dividing the state. State Superintendent Dr. R. E. Tidwell is pushing hard for the bonds, claiming they're essential for Alabama to progress—better school buildings, expanded teacher training, new facilities for colleges. But Hugh Mallory of Selma is fighting back with a simple, potent slogan: "More Bonds Mean More Taxes." The campaign is surprisingly well-organized on both sides: Tidwell has enlisted all 67 county superintendents and 10,000 teachers as foot soldiers, while Mallory's Tax Payers' League is resonating with voters worried about their wallets. Even former Mayor George B. Ward jumped in this week, calling the bond plan a dangerous "ring" that threatens state bankruptcy—he's pushing "pay-as-you-go" instead. The vote is set for January 10th, and political observers expect things to get much hotter. Elsewhere on the page: An Alabama man was arrested trying to transport Satsuma oranges into Florida, Mexican federal troops are hunting rebel General Gomez near Veracruz, and a 57-year-old New Yorker shoved off today in a 14-foot boat headed for Miami—he's hoping to row 1,500 miles in three months.

This 1927 battle reveals America's deep anxiety about public investment and taxation on the eve of the Great Depression. The debate between Tidwell (spend now for long-term growth) and Mallory (watch every dime) prefigured the ideological divide that would consume the nation after 1929. The organizational muscle on display—Tidwell mobilizing an entire educational apparatus—shows how Progressive-era expansion of state services had created new political constituencies. Meanwhile, the smaller stories hint at broader tensions: agricultural quarantines (protecting Florida growers), labor unrest in Mexico, and the reckless individualism of the era (that rowing stunt). This was prosperity's final moment before the crash—and you can feel the fiscal conservatism tensing up, worried about what comes next.

• A 57-year-old man named Charles Seilto is rowing a 14-foot boat 1,500 miles from New York to Miami with only "a few sandwiches and some water," expecting to complete it in three months—this casual daredevilry was quintessentially 1920s.
• Herman Bartel of Elberta, Alabama was arrested for trying to smuggle 13 sacks of Satsuma oranges into Florida, showing how agricultural protectionism operated state-by-state even within the U.S., creating invisible trade barriers.
• Very Reverend E. J. Hackett is taking over St. Peter's Catholic Church in Montgomery after 20 years leading Joan of Arc Church in Mobile—where he began in 1907 saying Mass in a wooden shack and built it into a magnificent parish, showing the explosive growth of Catholic infrastructure in the early 20th century South.
• The Vatican's official newspaper refuses to even discuss restoration of papal "temporal power" with Mussolini's fascist organ—just two years before the Lateran Treaty would actually settle the "Roman Question" and end 59 years of church-state estrangement.
• Governor Adam McMullen of Nebraska is publicly attacking Senator Borah's presidential ambitions for being insufficiently supportive of farm legislation, revealing deep Republican fractures just months before the 1928 convention.

• The paper mentions Senator Borah's reported bid to control western delegates at the 1928 Republican convention—Borah would indeed run for president, but his isolationist foreign policy views (opposite to what farming interests wanted) would doom his candidacy, and Herbert Hoover would win the nomination weeks after this article.
• Dr. R. E. Tidwell's argument that Alabama's general fund is 'showing rapid and constant growth' and can easily handle bond debt service would prove tragically optimistic—within two years, the stock market crash would devastate state revenues, making this bond debate look quaint.
• The bond dispute hinges on whether new debt means new taxes, with Tidwell insisting it won't—a debate that echoes in 21st-century politics nearly identically, showing how Americans have argued about spending and taxation in structurally the same way for a century.
• A Santiago, Chile carnival incident involves a husband, wife, and lover in a masked parade duel—pure melodrama, but it captures the era's passion for theatrical spectacle even in violence.
• That French aviator Finot just flew Paris to Berlin in 10.5 hours—routine now, but this was cutting-edge technology in 1927, and aviation was creating the infrastructure (and aspirations) that would reshape global power within a generation.