Muncie Post-Democrat, Muncie, Delaware County, 3 January 1947 — Page 3

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VETERAN SPEAKS (Continued From Page One) Q. About how much per week did you make on that job? A. “$55 for five days and more than $75 when I worked six days, which I often did.” Q. Could you have got your old job back after getting out of the army? A. “That I don’t know. During the war the plant employed about 2500. After the war the force was cut to about 400, but I could have got other good jobs at the time, “making $1.50 an hour.” Q. How much did you get when vou started on your apprenticeship? A. “55c an hour.” Q. How long will it take you to finish the apprenticeship? A. “Four more years. It is a five year apprenticeship. I have served one year, got four more to go. However, four years is the maximum period of government subsidy for an apprenticeship. Based on the time I was in service, I Was eligible to receive the subsidy for three years and nine months.” Q. I suppose you will have your rate of pay raised as you go along will you not? A. “Sure, I am supposed to get a 5c raise each three months, or more if my progress warrants it. I have been doing exceptionally well. I have received two extra raises already. I now make 90c an hour.” Q. Is your work fairly regular? A. “Yes, I have been working 52 hours a week.” Q. That gives you about how much pay for a month? A. “About 208 before anything is taken out. I have about 180 take home pay each month.” Q. You spoke of the Congress and the VA handing you a dirty deal. How do you figure that you have been treated dirty? A. “That is a long story. It goes back to the time of my discharge. At the discharge center, a brass hat talked to us and told us about the provisions of the G. I. Bill. He said there was a great shortage of skilled workers, and assured us that if we would serve some apprenticeship for skilled work the government would help us bear the sacrifice of the apprenticeship by giving $60 a month to the single guys and $75 to the married. That was later raised to $75 and $90. On the strength of that promise, I passed up the other good paying jobs and accepted a five year apprenticeship. Now the VA and the dumbheads down at Washington have passed a bill that took my $90 a month away from me. The government has broken its promise to me and left me holding the bag.” Q. Would you have started the apprenticeship without the promised help from the governmeht? A. “Not on your life. In these days a married man cannot support his wife on apprenticeship pay.” Q. So you think you are left holding the bag, because the government went back on its promise to you, do you? A. “Sure, in fact I am left holding two bags.” Q. How do you figure that? A. “I made my future plans based on the promise of the $90 a month from the government. I got a G. I. loan and bought a house. I also bought a new car. Now that the $90 a month has been taken from me, I am unable to meet my obligations. I may have to give up both my house and my car. It will ruin me and leave me empty handed again. It isn’t my fault. It is the government’s fault. It let me down, by breaking its promise to me. The government has done a lot of squaking about Lewis breaking his contract with them, but they don’t say anything about their going back on the solemn pledge they made to us veterans. That is one bag that I am left holding, and it is heavy with obligation’s.” Q. All right, go on and tell about the other bag you say you were left holding. A. “Well, I have now put in more than a year on my apprenticeship. I like it and would hate to give it up. If I gave it up and took another job in a factory, I would have no senority, and with everybody talking of the coming depression, I would perhaps soon be numbered among the unemployed. That would make bad matters worse. Had I taken a job in a factory when I started my apprenticeship, I would, by now have built up a years seniority, that would have given me more job security. With a wife I was in no position to make the sacrifice of an apprenticeship. I never would have undertaken it but for the $90 a month promised by the government.” Q. So you feel that you would have been better off had you passed up the apprenticeship and taken a job in a factory? A. “I certainly would have. It would have been all right had the government lived up to its part of the bargain, but now I am in a heck of a fix. All because the government went back on its promise.” Q. How much are you sacrificing each month to continue your apprenticeship? A. “I am sacrificing a lot of both time and money. Take my brother for example. He got out of the army five months after I did. He got a job on production in a factory, a job I could have had. In three days he was making $1.50 an hour. He now makes about $1.65. I make $.90 an hour. I figure that I am sacrificing $.75 every hour I stay on the apprenticeship. If he worked as many hours as I do, he would make at least four hundred dollars a month, whereas I make only about two hundred.” Q. Do I understand that you are at present getting nothing from the government to help

meet your obligations? A. “That is absolutely right. You see by working 52 hours a week I make just a little more than $200 a month, and if I make $200 I get nothing from the government. With everything up the way it is today, a man and wife cannot live on the $180 a month which I have after everything is taken out, to say nothing about meeting the obligations which I have assumed, on the strength of the $90 a month which I was to get from the government.” Q. I suppose you know that the law was changed because many veterans were taking advantage of it, and thereby swindling the tax payers out of billions of dollars, do you not? A. “Sure, I know all that. Q. Do you think the VA, the Congress and the American tax payers should have kept quiet and allowed that swindling to continue? A. “No, I do not think that. The government should have found some way to weed out the gyps without making us innocent guys suffer for their misdeed. It ain’t fair to make the innocent suffer for what the guilty do. It is a poor system that can find no way of punishing the guilty without also punishing the innocent. That takes away all incentive for a guy to be honest and fair in his dealing with the government. I hope that the first thing Congress will do after it gets back to Washington is to change the law so that we can get what they promised us. If they do not soon do something about it I will be ruined, no doubt thousands, maybe millions, of others are in the same boat with me. It is going to be pretty hard for us guys to keep faith in a government that lets us down like that, and ruins us. We did not let our government down. Why should it let us down. I am coming to believe that a promise made by the VA or the government is not worth a bean. I know that is no way for one to feel about his government, but I think I have good grounds for believing that way. I dropped my veterans’ insurance policy, because I am afraid to put any money into anything that the VA or the government has anything to do with. One cannot trust them. They promise you something today and take it from you tomorrow. When we were overseas fighting to save the government, they promised us the garden of Eden with a fence around it. Now that the war is over they take away the on-the job training pay which they promised us. They give us h and rub it in. The way things look now, I suppose they will be asking us to go and fight for them again pretty soon, and again they will promise us everything and give us nothing.” Q. I must say you are all steamed up about it. A. “You are dog-gone right I am. I think I have a right to be Don’t you?” Q. I would not care to answer that . I am not directly affected as you are, and you would not expect me to feel the same as you do about it. On the other hand, you are the one being interviewed, not me. It is your story, not mine. Have you talked to many other veterans to learn how they feel about it 9 A. “Sure, I have talked to lots of them, and I think most of them feel about the same as I do. However I am speaking only for myself.” I think Congress and the VA both better get busy and do something about it, if they know what is good for the veterans and the country. I hope I can manage to keep both my home and my care until Congress and the VA decide to keep the promise they made to me and the other veterans. If I lose either my house or my car, I am going to feel mighty bitter towards both the VA and the government. I don't want to feel that way, but when they let me down and ruin me, I have no alternative. Yes, I want to tell the world we on-the job trainees have been handed a rotten dirty deal, by the very government we fought to save.” NATHANREPORT (Continued From Page One) the charges. According to the report, “ont put in the third quarter of this year was averaging 4% and 5% above levels of a year ago.” The report further showed that complaints of low efficiency are most prevalent where labor-man-agement relations are poor. Moral: Contented cows give more and better milk and irritated ones. A neighbor complained that his cows were giving only a small quantity of a poor quality milk. An investigation showed that he was handling his cows roughly and feeding them but little. The farmer changed his attitude toward his cows and fed them more and better food. The milk increased in both quantity and quality and his profits were augmented. plotagaYnst (Continued From Page One) the Negroes and the Jews, people of other races and religions would be attacked. Of special interest to Christians is the disclosure that th Columbians are saying nothing against Christianity now because they “can’t afford to” but that once the “Negroes and Jews are run out” the campaign against Christianity will begin. The conclusions to be drawn from this pernicious plot are important: 1. Like all Nazis these Columbians hate humanity—not just one group of human beings. Hitler built his following by arousing hatred against the Jews and then used his assembled strength to destroy the rights of everyone else he could reach. The Jews suffer first. We all suffer after-

wards. 2. Those who, by thought, word, or deed, encourage racial and religious prejudice against Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Negroes, or any other group are providing the kindling with which organized bigots can build the fire that may consume the freedom of us all. 3. Now, as never before, every Christian who loves his religion and every American who values his country must enter the battle against racial and religious hate. All Americans must first cleanse their own hearts of this poison and then enlist for the duration in the war against hate, bigotry, and prejudice. Claims U. S. Women Don’t Cook Right Chicago, 111. — If mama prepared dinner tomorrow in the same frame of mind she uses when buying an Easter bonnet, a lot of American families would enjoy their Christmas turkey more, Chef Guido Morri said today. But Morri said the chances were slim. Mama probably doesn’t know how to cook a turkey pro-

perly.

“In fact, at least 65 per cent of the American women don’t know how to cook anyting properly,” he sid. “They never use enough seasoning.” Morri, chef of the Pump room, a hotel dining room that specializes in serving food in flames, said the only American women who knew beans about cooking came to the U. S. from France, Italy and Germany. “I came from Italy myself,” he said. “There the women work hard over their cooking. They regard it as an art. “But American women cook in too much of a hurry, and their husbands regard eating as something you do to stay alive, instead of enjoying it.” Morri said his biggest criticism of U. S. cookery is the absence of proper seasoning. Nearly any dish should be garnished with a bit of garlic and quantities of salt and pepper, he said. “But the Americans are so social minded they sacrifice good eating for what their best friends thing about garlic,” he added. “I don’t think garlic ever can be over-used.” Morri said all the cook books and cooking schools in the world wouldn’t improve U. S. cooking. “It takes originality to turn out even good hash, but American women save their originality for their hats,” he explained. Morri said he cooks turkeys in the same way as nearly everybody else, but he uses a lot of seasoning—both inside and outside the bird. He makes his dressing with bread, mushrooms, chicken livers or chestnut—and garlic. He garnishes sweet potatoes with bananas, oranges, apples, and cherries. “That’s originality for you,” he said, “Any housewife ought to be able to concoct something as good.” Morri said even his own wife wasn’t a very original cook. “I like my own cooking better,” he said, “and so does she.” o — Veterans May Join Nava! Reserves Conforming with the Navy’s intensified program of recruiting all former service men of the Navy, Army Coast Guard, and Marine Corps Into the new program of Naval Reserve, Class V-6 (Inactive), a traveling Navy Recruiting Unit will be at the Post Office Building, Huntington, Indiana every second and fourth Friday of each month. (Hours 11:00 a. m. to 1:00 p. m. and 3:00 p. m. to 5:00 p. m. Men from Portland write or call in person at the Navy Recruiting Station, Muncie, Ind. Benefits of this program are: Enlist in the rating held at discharge; accumulative longevity fo» pay purposes; V-6 men only are selected for the Organized Reserve Divisions; advancement in rating through correspondence courses; may request annfral two weeks cruise with pay; can be called to active duty only in event of a national emergency; no physical examination is required; and there are no meetings to at-

tend.

All ex-servicemen are invited to call at the Post Office on scheduled visits for full particulars on enlisting at home and staying at home in the new Naval Reserve. Information may also be obtained by writing or calling in person at the Navy Recruiting Station, Post Office Building, Muncie, Indiana. % Those interested in joining the V-6 Inactive Naval Reserve must bring their discharge papers with them when applying. Complete registration and enlistment in this program can be accomplished in twenty minutes since the recruiters will have on hand all forms and equipment necessary. Attention to young men between the ages 17 to 13 1-2. The Naval Reserve has now been opened to young men from 17 to 18 1-2 years of age. They may enlist and stay at home and not be called to active duty unless there is a national emergency. They will be required to undergo and take a mental examination. SCARE (Continued tTom Page One) should be thinking about peace on eartlt and good will to men, the reactionary press has created

POST-DEMOCRAT, FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 1947.

4-H Dairy Champions Talk It Over

Three of six national 4-H club dairy production contest winders discuss the milk business over a miniature cow carved from Swiss cheese. At the recent club congress in Chicago, the three boys were awarded college scholarships and all-expense trips to the congress by the Kraft Foods Company. Left to right: Paul M. Fishel, 20, Heuvelton, N. Y.; Charles O. Sauerman, 19, Crown Point, Ind.; and Joe Gersick, Jr., 19, Pueblo, Colo. Paul has been in 4-H club work seven years and has developed a herd of 15 purebred Holsteins, valued at $2,880. Charles has built a herd of 1(> purebred Ayrshires, valued at $2,159, during the past 10 years. His prizes have totaled $506. His income totals $3,327. Joe has developed a herd of 21 purebred Holsteins, valued at $6,300, during the past 11 years. He has won prizes amounting to $733 and his dairyincome totals $9,387.46.

widespread hysteria among the SABER RETURNED. America" people wiih^ar 6 bead j ManiIa _ A sahe ,. „ Ge „ lines which had no basis in fact.' ¥ . . , , . ; „ r . , . ,, Jonathan Wainwnght during his

What is the purpose of all this hysteria? It is to prejudice the

public against labor unions and to create hatred of Russia. It is

retreat to Bataan in Dec. 1941, was turned over to Army authorities today for return to the hero

another step on the road to fas- e 0 f Corregidor after it was found cism which seeks to wreck un- . ,, , „

by ar Filipino on the body of a Japanese general. The saber was given to Wainw-right by his mother when he Was graduated from

West Point.

ions and start a war with Russia.

Go To Church Sunday

Bargain Day Over the Nation

day across the country’s bargain counters today as stores slashed prices and held almost-forgotten clearance sales of suits, dresses, shoes, furs, household goods and some foods. The reductions ranged from 33 to 50 per cent, and in some cases items were going for cost. Cuts in food prices were limited to butter, eggs, a few meats and certain types of canned citrus juices. In all cases ,the price drops could be attributed to either: , 1. Overbuying by stores which ; ordered three dozen dresses, for instance, in the hope the manufacturers would let them have at least one dozen for the Christmas trade. 2. General post-Christmas inventory clearance. 3. Late delivery of Christmas stocks and a desire to “clean out” wartime manufactured items and make way for those of post-war materials. In no instance were the slashes laid to a break in the “seller’s market,” or a “buyer’s strike.” Economists, among them Dr. Melchoir Palyi of the Central Life Insurance Company, Delieves the boom still is underway. Palyi said the bulges in the price line were being straightened out by reductions in luxury item prices, women’s clothing, and farm equipment, but that the general trend still was upward. Here are some of the bargain prices a fast-flying shopper could take advantage of today: Albany, N. Y.—Clothing down one-third to one-half; citrus juices off 50 pet. Buffalo, N. Y.—Lard, pork loins, peas off; furs down to 38 pet. Miami—Men’s clothing slightly cheaper. Philadelphia — Dresses down from $8.95 to $5; shoes from $7.95 down to $4.95; $6.95 sweaters at $3; fur coats in some cases

offered at cost; citrus fruits lower. Madison, Wis.—Dresses marked down one-third to one-half.

Dallas—Ladies clothing market down one-third to one-half; citrus fruit prices off 50 pet. Houston—Furniture, women’s clothing one-third to one-half

less.

San Francisco—Wartime-made clothing off 15 to 25 per cent; new styles and goods down five to eight per cent; women’s wear

EDITOR (Continued From Page One) ploitation. . . . The plain people everywhere all over the world must continue to bring pressure to bear on. their governments both to re* (luce armaments and prepare for peace. It was good internal as well as international politics when Molotov came out for peace. It will be equally good politics fox' our American delegation to become aggressive in working for disarma* ment instead of allowing the Russians to get so much of the credit for leading the way.” o

The nation’s shoppers, for the

Omaha, Nebr.—Fruit juices off 50 pet.; general merchandise off

h“ ! Bu y Savin §s Bonds

SUNSHINE CLEANERS

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That's what we're spending in Indiana for further improvement and extension of your telephone service

Fifty million dollars is a lot of money. But it takes a lot of money to meet big objectives . . . and our objectives here in Indiana are B-I-G. Ovr Immediate Objective ...to End ah Waiting Lists for Telephone Service During the year just past we added 60,000 more telephones—twice as many as ever before in a single year. Although we broke every record in our effort to reduce the waiting lists, the tremendous new demand for service built the lists right back up again. You want good telephone service today and you want it to be better and more useful tomorrow. That’s our desire, too. The new equipment necessary to do this is an important part of our plans. COIMI#I0 Up . . . Finer Telephone Service Than Ever Before We are determined to provide the people of this State with telephone service of a quality far beyond pre-war standards.

During the next few years, the huge construction program will put into use sufficient facilities to provide individual lines for all who want them . . . add the circuits and switchboards necessary to insure ever faster Long Distance calling . . . install facilities for more and more dial telephones . . . extend service of the finest type to all rural homes that desire it. . . expand mobile telephone service ... effect scores of other advances that come as the result of continuous research and engineering development. And the best news we have for you is that we are actually at work on all this today. 0//r $50,000,000 program for the future improvement and extension of your telephone service is under way!

INDIANA BELL TELEPHONE COMPANY

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