Muncie Post-Democrat, Muncie, Delaware County, 6 August 1925 — Page 1

THE POST-DEMOCRAT

VOLUME 5—Number 28 ” ' MUNCIE, INDIANA, THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, im Price 5 Cents a Copy—$2.00 a Year. WHERE DID YOU GET iT, MR. HOFFMAN? IS QUESTION PEOPLE ARE ASKING YOU

TAX REDUCTION PUN LAID BEFORE PRESjmiDGE Madden Proposes Cut In Maximum Rates From 40 to 15 Per Cent. Swampscott, Aug. 6.—A tax plan proposing a reduction of the maximum surtax rates from 40 per cent to 15 per cent, slashes in the normal income rate and abolition of the inheritance gift and miscellaneous taxes was laid before Presi-d-ent Coolidge yesterday, by Chairman Madden of the House appropriation committee. Giving the executive his opinion as to what further economy could be effected in governmental appropriations, so as to make an appreciable reduction of taxes possible, the committee chairman predicted a surplus for this fiscal year of $370,000,000, of this amount, he held $350,000,000 should be absorbed by lowering taxes and $20,000,000 applied to a public building program. The President received Mr. Maddens’ suggestions with interest, paying particular attention to his discussion of the nation’s finances and the probable drain on the treasury during the next twelve months. 'RoltfS'TftTna ’ Open ~ Later, it was stated at the summer White House, that while the President welcomed suggestions as to tax changes, particularly from congressional leaders, he is holding his mind open on the subject until definite treasury figures showing how great a reduction is feasible are available. While Mr. Coolidge feels that it properly is his function and that of the treasury to submit their recommendations to Congress, he is determined that the actual formulation of a program must be left to the House ways and means committee, which has been called to begin work in October. Before then, accurate treasury data will be available and it was indicated today that the ideas of the President and treasury would be in rather definite shape . Other Government Problems In addition to statements at White Court as to the President’s views on taxation, it was authoritaively announced with reference to other governmental problems.

Senate Committee Plans Land Probe Washington, Aug. 6—The Senate public lands committee has decided to enter upon a sweeping investigation of all matters affecting the administration of the lands, including oil. Beginning at Salt Lake City, Aug. 26, the committee will conduct a series of hearings in practically every public land state in the West. Its itinerary, announced Tuesday, calls for hearings at Helena, Mont., Aug. 31; Missoula, Mont., Sept. 1; Yakima, Wash., Sept. 3; Seattle, 4th and 5th; Portland, Ore., Sth and 9th; Pendleton, Ore., 10th; Baker, Ore., 11th, and Boise, Idaho, Sept. 12th and 14th. Its program for holding hearings in California, New Mexico. Colorado and Wyoming, is not to be announced until after it reaches Salt Lake City. o TAX BOARD URGES | 65 MILLION BOOST

Recommends Assessments Be Raised 5 to 100% In 51 Counties.

Indianapolis, Aug. 6.—Notices were sent out yesterday by the state board of tax commissioners, recommending drastic changes in of review of fifty-one counties. Increases ranging from 5 to 100 per cent were recommended in the assessments fixed in fifty counties. In only one county, Union, did the board recommend a general reduction that was for 3 per cent lower than the valuation set by the county board of review. The board recommended an increase of 100 per cent on all lots, lands and improvements in the town of Cannelton, Perry county. It was the largest increase recommended.

Both increases and reduction were ordered in different classes of property in three counties, Hancock, Orange and Sullivan. The board recommended no charges in the assessed valuation of personal property. Boost Is $65,000,000 As a result of the recommendations, members of the state tax board expressed the belief that the changes will result in the addition

of approximately $65,000,000 to the tax duplicates in the fifty counties.

SHERIFF CLOSES UP HERRIN KLAN PAPER. | (United State Publisher.) Sheriff George Galligan of Williamson County recently padlocked the doors of the Herrin Herald, the official newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan in southern Illinois on an execution sworn out by Ralph Yearwood, of West Frankfort, who sold the klan a printing plant some fifteen months ago and was unable to get his money. Recent efforts to assess the stockholders'or to sell more stock failed and frequent law suits have been resorted to in forcing collections by paper and supply houses. The paper has been in financial straits since S. Glenn Young was killed in Herrin this spring. The plant will be offered under the hammer by Sheriff Galligan. The Herald was started by fifty-four klansmen in February, 1924. In April its affairs were taken over by incorporating the Herald Publishing Company with an authoried capital of $10,000. The paper has had four editors. One of them absconded with some cuts and materials that were to have been used in the S. Glenn Young memorial edition the Herald was preparing to issue. He was arrested in DuQuoin and later put in jail at Marion on charge of petty larceny. Aside from the Year wood claims, it is said there are several unpaid labor bills, a chattel mortgage on the newspaper press and a number of open accounts that may eventually force the firm into bankruptcy. Most of the stockholders were Young’s bondsmen.

A Red Suspect

One hundred per cent. Americanism has been vindicated again in Muncie. Police Captain Fred Puckett Monday prevented the overthrow of the government by capturing, red handed, at the fair ground, a foreigner with an unpronounceable name. What was at first believed to be a bomb, secreted upon the person of the suspect for the purpose of blowing up the prize bull at the county fair, turned out to be a plug of J. T. tobacco, but the way the fellow spelled his last name was enough to convict him, so he was locked up in jail and the country was saved. A hastily convened session of patriots was held, as soon as the dangerous suspect had been bereft of his tobacco and placed behind the bars and Washington was apprised that the Red Menace had been nipped in the bud in Muncie, Indianny. There seems to be no doubt at this time that the captive was sent to Muncie by Old Ab Krim and John P. Trotsky to poison the chickens at the fair and set up a soviet form of government in Liberty township. Fortunately for Bill Daniels, Muncie’s prominent sovieteer, that gentleman is now in South Bend, otherwise the patriots might have implicated him in the May Day plot of the third of August. Now that the country has been saved it matters little how many filling stations or tailor shops are robbed and nobody will care what becomes of the Hub case or how much money Sheriff Hoffman makes through fplom'' r s! contracts with the. county. Patriotism comes first in Muncie, always. This was demonstrated two years ago last June when the patriots met one night in the same fair ground and started on their grand march over town, with their mugs covered with pillow cases, and knocked peoples’ hats off, in order to prove to the world that Muncie stands for law and order first. V Many people refused to take off their hats when the wizard went by. They should have been arrested by Captain Puckett as Red Suspects and why they were not is more than we were able to figure out. Likewise there was the great meeting in McCulloch park, addressed by that prince of patriots and exponent of one hundred per cent. Americanism, Imperial Wizard Protem E. Y. Clarke and an earlier address in the same park by one “Doctor” Fowler. All these two eminent patriots did was to publicly demand that the Jews, Catholics and negroes of Muncie should be thrown in White River, or something of that kind. Being patriots they were not arrested, but several of their critics have been, from time to time on various pretexts. And by all means we must bear in mind the flood of patriotism that washed Muncie whiter than the driven snow when that priceless pearl of pure womanhood, Helen Damnation Jackson came here and said pieces in the place the insurance adjusters had to settle for later. Captain Puckett stood right there at the door while dear Helen elocuted to thousands who paid fifty cents a head to listen to an expert witness tell the world that priests are all debauchers of female virtue and Catholic sisters women of immoral tendencies. . Captain Puckett and other policemen, sent there by former Chief Van Benbow, were stationed at the entrance to keep down lawlessness. Helen was not arrested for what she said, therefore it must be assumed that there was nothing in her utterances, from the police standpoint, that could be construed as being inimical to our American form of government. Accusing Godly men and pure women of immorality seemed to touch a popular vein, from the official standpoint, so instead of arresting Helen for being an anarchist, there was considerable talk from the sheeted and masked sidelines, of tarring, feathering and burning at the stake those who ventured the opinion that the fair Helen ought to use a little more restraint in her language. So thus, having waded through Ku Klux miasma for three years, and having heard the unrestrained oratory of those who stand for an invisible government and advocate anarchy, violence, disrespect for the laws of our state and nation, we clean our skirts by jailing and finger printing a Red Suspect of foreign extraction who was heard muttering something at the county fair! If all the Benedict Arnolds of the Ku Klux Klan were to be arrested and locked up it would require a Woolworth building to hold their carcases.

Tax Records Show That Property Holdings of Sheriff Hoffman Have Increased Fifteen Thousand Dollars in Two Years and a Half on Salary of Three Thousand Dollars a Year -—Actual Valuation of Real Estate Over Double That Amount.

! Some years ago the Indianapolis News started an investigation of the head of a certain state department whose home was in Kokomo and whose salary was only twelve hundred dollars a year. The late Billy Blodgett, the widest known newspaper man in the state, conducted the investigation and in one of its ramifications the editor of the Post-Democrat worked with him. The official in question was the head of the state natural gas inspection department at the time when oil operators were flagrantly violating the law which prescribed heavy punishment for those who allowed natural gas to go to waste. On one well remembered trip through the oil field 1 between the hour of midnight and four o’ clock in the morning, we discovered enough gas going to waste to keep all the home fires going in the state of Indiana.

Sleuthing in the Oil Fields. An honest deputy of the state official who had previously acquainted teh editor of the PostDemocrat with the corruption in the oil and gas department, was our guide. That morning, before Blodgett could catch a train for Indianapolis (that was before the day of the automobile or interurban) we were both summoned before a hastily convened grand jury in the county in which the gas was being criminally wasted. In some way the minions of the law had learned of our midnight prowlings, and bless their innocent souls, they wanted to know all about it. Some way we had a sort of a notion that those who were responsible for the issuance of the summonses could tell us things themselves that might not look well in print and that the subpoenas were not issued in good faith, so we both went to bat with the six grand jurors and the inquisitive prosecutor on an agreement that we would ‘‘put nothing out” and we held to the agreement. Nosey Grand Jury. All that grand jury got out of two tired out newspaper guys who had been out all night in a blinding rain

finding out things that the grand jury should have been probing months before, the prosecutor could have put in his eye. We met after the “grilling” in the course of which it almost seemed to both of us that the prosecutor treated us as the criminals and after cussing the prosecutor and grand jury to our heart’s content, we parted at the train and Billy, God rest his soul, wsat - to Indianapolis, and the next day the Indianapolis News had a real story under his signature. Billy always hated a crook and when after one he generally got him. Among other things we recall that he scanned the tax records at Kokomo and discovered that the taxable* of the state official had increased in two years from $2,000 to $22,000, and the Indianapolis News very properly wanted to know where he got it, and how he had saved it, out of a salary of one hundred dollars a month. Almost immediately the official resigned from the office and we do not recall at this time that there was any criminal prosecution, although there was plenty of grounds and many would have been implicated in the damnable conspiracy which robbed (Continued to Page Two.)

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EXPENSIVE JURIES. In the month of June 144 men and women were called for jury service and were paid $1,343.80. In July over one hundred were summoned for juries k and paid $1,095.30. The majority of those called were women and much of the money that was paid out went to dozens who were called but who did not serve. It is becoming increasingly difficult to secure juries here in the trial of criminal cases. Before the advent of that great institution, the Ku Klux Klan, men and women were normal, and could sit as jurors and try a fellow citizen without prejudice or malice. After the klan came, embracing in its membership the circuit judge, prosecutor, sheriff and jury commissioners, both grand and petit juries were made up almost exclusively of klansmen and klanswomen. * Those who % remained out of the protective influence of the invisible empire were generally the ones who were indicted by klan grand juries and such defndants being naturally suspicious of the protestations of jury kluckers who swore they could give the defendant a fair trial, pushed to the limit their right to peremptory challenge and challenge for cause. It has therefore become necessary in the circuit court to summon a long list of talesmen to take the place of those who are disqualified by challenge or other cause. Among the women called for jury service are to be found several who pay no taxes and whose names do not appear on the tax duplicate. The law says the jury commissioners must take the names from the tax duplicates. Where do the jury commissioners find the names not taken from the tax duplicate which find their way into the jury box ?