Decatur Daily Democrat, Volume 23, Number 156, Decatur, Adams County, 2 July 1925 — Page 1

Vol. XXIII, Number 156.

HAWKINS TESTIFIES IN OWN DEFENSE

FRANCE PLANS TO MAKE EARLY DEBT PAYMENT Country Announces Com--Bing Os Debt Commission To U.S. In September RECOGNIZES DEBT Official Acknow lodgement Os War Debt To U. S. Is Made — I By A L. Bradford, United Press Staff Correspondent f Paris. July 2—French Ambassador , Daezehner at Washington has been . instructed to inform the United States government that France is Bending a commission to Washington BSn September to negotiate a settiefe'ment of France's debt to America, it £ was authoritatively stated today. Foreign Secretary Briand intends i to make a public announcement soon f cf the French government's decision S to move for an immediate settlement * of the debt and Ambassador DaeschH ner has been instructed to inform the state department that FramA offt- ; daily recognizes her debt. Formr Premier Herriot had semi-officially recognized it, but this move will be a full acknowledgment. The commission which France I sends in September will be to negoF tiate a definite settlement of the pend ■ ing debt funding problems. Briand's statement, expected within a few days, will probably outline the steps already taken through Daesch ner to acquaint America with French readiness to arrange terms. J .ilututhec it will probably be a signal for informal negotiations to agree upon the broad principles of settlement in advance of dispatch of the commission. Incidentally, former Premier Herriot, who is preparing for a vacation I in the United States, is remaining in Paris pending the British announce \ nient. Italian Commission Coming Rome, July 2—Finance Minister De Stefani will head an expert commission which is to he sent to Washing..ton in connection with Italy’s debt funding negotiations, the United Press ■was reliably advised today. K Premier Mussolini told the cabinet j such a commission will go to America (CONTINUED ON PAGE THREE) NEXT GIFT DAY TO BE AUGUST 15 Decatur Merchants Decide To Hold Two Distributions That Day The Decatur Advertising Association held their regular meeting last evening an ddecided that the next Gift Day be held in this city on Saturday. August 15. plans for making it one of the best ever held here being discussed and decided upon. The gift distributions will be made both morning and afternoon with the first . ut ten o'clock in the morning and the next one at 1:30 o'clock in the afternoon. The entire list of gifts will be made up of coupon books. S2OO to be awarded in the morning and S3OO in the afternoon. The Auto Day tomorrow is expected to attract a large crowd of peop’e and the association decided last night to continue the events which have proven so popular. Many of the stores have special bargains for to"morrow and merchants are expecting a big trade day. Stores in Decatur will remain open until late tomorrow night, owing to the fact that they wil be closed all day July Fourth. Barber shops also will remain open until 10:00 o'clock tomorrow night and will close all day Saturday. Many of tomorrow’s sales will be on summer merchandise and unusually low prices in ail lines of merchandise. Tickets given with Friday purchases will be used in the August 15 distribution, it was announced last night.

DECATUR DAILY DEMOCRAT

I ELK HEAD 1 ( LOUIS FORMAN 1 BLOOMINGTON, 111—For the first t time in the history of the organlza- t lion, the Illinois Order of Elks, in annual Convention at Murphysboro. ' elected Louis Forman of Bloomington, a farmer, president. f A boom has also been launched for him for national president, Forman, although a tiller of the soil, has long I been prominent in the Elks organiza- <j ticns and is believed to stand an ex- . cellent chance of attaining national a

SHERIFF FINDS : RUN-AWAY GIRLS: I ~ "1 Girls Missing Since Sunday 1 Morning Located Near ‘ Fort Wayne I c Sarch of Miss Mabel Stetzel, of c Monmouth, and a Miss Wheeler, of e Decatur, and their young men com- i panions from Geneva, who had been s missing since last Sunday morning. € came to an end this morning when 1 g the girls were located at the home of ( the Whee’er girl’s uncle a few miles j south of F tWayne on the Decatur- Ft. u Wayne road. The boys, Jetorne Ford 1 and a Zimmerman boy, were not with the girls when Sheriff John Baker arrived, but were said to be in Fort Wayne. j The Stetzel girl, who is fifteen years | old. was returned to her home, but the other girls remained at the home of her uncle. The Wheeler girl is only fifteen, also, it is said. The girls said, they left Hie Wheeler home in this city early Sunday morning and went [ to Geneva, with the boys. From Geneva they went to Bryant, back to Geneva and then to Fort-Wayne. The boys were to return for them thi»\ morning, it is said. The girls gave no reason for their trip, other than the fl desire to have a good time. s o I FORMER DECATUR t LADY DIED TODAY • p e Ruby Sheets Smallback a Died At Bryan, Ohio, b This Morning t Mrs. Ruby Sheets Smallback, age n 37, former Adams county resident. a died at her home in Bryan. Ohio, at II 11:30 o’clock this morning, following a year’s illness of tuberculosis. Mrs. v Smallback was a daughter of Mr. and p Mrs. Noah Sheets, who reside in f: Fort Wayne. She was born in Adams 1 county and lived in Decatur for some 1 time. Mrs. Smallback xs survived by her *■ husband, two children, her parents, e and the following brothers and sis- >' ters, Chris, Solomon and Noah I Sheets, of Root township; Mrs. Sa- ° mantha Shockley, of Bryan, Ohto. f’ and Helen Sheets, of Fort Wayne. Funeral services will be held in h Bryan, but the hour and day for the'd services have not been announced t

BIBLE SCHOOL COMMENCEMENT ——— Program Arranged For Closing Exercises Os School Tonight A very fitting program has been arranged for the commencement exercises of th Community Daily Vacation Bible School to be held tonight at the new high school gymnasium at eight o'clock. The public is cordia’ly invited to attend the program, whether they have children in the school. The three hundred pupils have worked hard both in their studies and in preparation for tonight's exercises and should be commended for their splendid work and attntion. The school wil close tomorrow noon and the diplomas will be awarded at that time. However, the names of those receiving diplomas wi l he read at the exercises tonight. The Rev. R. W. Loose, pastor of the Evangelical church, will deliver the commence ment address, which will be of interest to all attending. The entire three hundred members of the school will participate in the program . No admission wil. be charged at the exercises and no collection wil! be taken. The entire program will be in keping with th various studies taught during the five-week course. All people of Decatur and this communiy are cordially invited. In speaking about the Bible School this morning, the Rev. R. W. Loose, pastor of the Evangelical church and president of the Decatur Ministerial Association, said: ■’This evening at the High School Gymnasium the Community Daily Vacation Bible Sctiol will give an exhi’bition of the work lUhas been doing in the Bible School which has been conducted during the past five weeks. This community school is a new movement in Decatur and we believe a decided forward step in the moral uplift of the boys and girls of our city. The evening exercises should, therefore, be of special interest to all our publicspirited citizens as well as to the parents of the three Hundred children participating in the program. A program has been prepared which will both surprise ami thrill the audience. Many people do not realize the remarkable work that has been done by this school through its well-trained (CONTINUED ON PAGE THREE) oBEGIN WORK ON FT,WAYNE ROAD Ray L. Harris, Contractor, Arrives And Begins Pushing Construction Work on the bittimnious highway from here to the Allen county line started at noon today, f Ray L. Harris, Hicksville, Ohio, who lias the contract, arrived Wednesday evening, having completed the surfacing of the road from Bluffton north fourten miles and was busy this morning arranging details for starting the work here. Under his contract, the job must be compiled and the road opened by November 12. With good luck and aver-' age weather, Mr. Harris hopes to beat that by two weeks at least. Mr. Harris will have Often men and ten trucks on the job by Monday morning and expects to push the work as rapidly as possible. Detours will be announced from time to time and efforts made to inconvenience the public as little as possible. Mr. Harris wil! be on the job all the time and expects soon to open a down town office from where he can manage the work. The work of construction wil start from the north end of the road, at the Allen-Adams county line and move this way. All the stone will be unloaded by Phillip Saucers, who has arranged for the work just west of the Decatur Foundry and Machine Works on the Clover Leaf railroad, coming from Bluffton quarries. Considerable work in cutting down hi ls and widening the grade has been done, already, at various points along the right-of-way .

Decatur, Indiana, Thursday, July 2, 1925.

NO PAPER SATURDAY As previously announced, there will be no edition of the Daily Democrat on Saturday, July 4th. I All stores in the city will be dosj ed all day in celebration (Al, Independence Day. The weekly grocery and market ads. which usually appear In the Friday edition, are pt inted in today's paper this week. Read them over and do your Saturday shopping on Friday, so that you and everybody else may properly enjoy the Fourth. Don’t forget that the monthly gift distribution will be held by the local merchants tomorrow, Friday July 3. The attention of the ministers of the city is called to the fact that no paper will be printed cn Saturday, and the church announcements will be printed on Friday.

NO DECISION IN STEPHENSON CASE Question Os Which Os Three Will Be Tried First Is Undecided (United Press Service) Noblesville. July 2—With the case of D. C. Stephenson. Earl Klinck and Earl Gentry charged with murder set for trial here Monday, the question of which of the defendants actually will face the jury remained a mystery when court resumed this afternoon. Judge Fred Hines of Hamilton circuit court was to decide whether Earl Klinck who has asked for separate trial will be tried ahead of his __co defendants, _ Arguments on the question took up the entire morning nd consideration of the case was renewed at the afternoon session. Attorneys for the state argued that Klinck should be tried after the two others while defense attorneys in-, sisted that the entire matter was within the discretion of the court. It is unknown whether Judge Hines will rule today or take the question under advisement. - Q ———“ —-- JURY IS DEADLOCKED No Verdict Reached In Trial Os Two Former Officials Os Federal Prison. Atlanta, Ga., July 2.—(United Press) —Reported standing eight to four for I acquittal, the jury in the trial of U J. Fletcher and Rev. Thomas P. Hayden, former officials of the Atlanta penitentiary, charged with accepting bribes from wealthy prisoners, was deadlocked today. When court convened the jury reported there was slight chance for agreement, but Judge* Erwin ordered the jurors to "stick it out for a while.” PRESIDENT HAS BUSY VACATION Many Cares of State Occupy Executive’s Attention This Summer By Dale Van Every. United Press Staff Correspondent Swampscott. Mass., July 2—President Coolidge is discovering that cares of state center about him as thickly here on a vacation as if he were still at his desk in Washington. Though his routine labor has decidedly lessened since he came north to spend the summer, he is still subject to the necessity of making important executive decisions,. He was presented today with two future problems which, while, so far nebulous, threaten to assume imposing proportions before the end of his vacation. The ono is possibility of a nationwide coal strike and the other is the klan convention in Washington, which, though less portentious, may prove extremely vexing. The speech by President John U Lewis of the United Mine Workers (CONTINUED ON PAGE TWO)

SLIGHT QUAKE IN SANTA BARBARA No Damage Done By Tremor Which Occured At 10 o’clock Today (United Press Service) Santa Barbara, July 2—A very slight earth quake shook the city at 10 o’clock today No damage was done by the quake. Santa Barbara. Cal., July 2—There was snap and martial precision in the streets of quake-rocked Santa Barbara today. The marines, four crack companiec under Major Frank E. Evans, have landed and the situation is well in hand. Haggard, whiskered police and volunteers who have been on duty continuously since the first violent upheaval of the earth started the city’s destruction early Monday were relievdd today by the smartly uniformed new-comers, who marched and wheeled by squads to their posts of duty with the rhythm of the world’s finest soldiery. Pup tents, pitched with military neatness on the high school football field, and the tramp of marching men an air of order and security with the dawn and Santa Barbara, after a night of real security with never a tremor of the earth, went with a will to the work of reconstruction. Restaurants opened their doors this morning. Some business houses opened impromptu headquarters in tents and shacks just outside the zone of destruction. The green billsides al>bve Santa Barbara, which ie-sLerday were dotted with the tents of anxious inhabitants, were practically deserted today. Nearly everyone returned home. Th engineers' commission was to make its report at 9 a.m. Engineers from San Francisco and Los Angeles are making the first official, complete survey of the ruins and will make anofficial estate of the damage. It is understood this may be approximately $10,000,000. Fortunes in valuables and jewelry are being removed from wrecked buildings in the downtown district, details of marines escorting the salvage parties to the city hall. There has been no pillaging. NEGOTIATIONS AREBROKENOFF Chinese Negotiators In Shanghai Situation Resign Today (United Preps Service) Peking. July 2 —Negotiations for adjustment of the Shanghai situation were broken today when the Chinese negotiators schduled to meet informally Saturday with foreign diplomas, resigned. Th,eir resignations resulted from an unwillingness to restrict the proposed discussions solely to the Shanghai episode. They held that more farreaching fundamental problems should also be considered by the two parties. Peking, July 2 —Chinese aud foreign negotiators, concerned with the Shanghai situation, will meet informally Saturday to arrange preliminary details for a formal conference to be held later. On the one hand the Chinese desire to discuss immediately th dundmntal problems, while the powers intend to discuss only the ilnanghai May 30 episode. The powers' representatives believe that a radjustment of regulations concerning the international sttlement at Shanghai, together wit ha revision of treaties such as the Chinese desire must wait upon subsequent action by negotoators with wider authority than the local envoys possess.

Weather Generally fair tonight and Friday; not much change in temperature.

O. JK.’S COCKTAILS —'■ ■ JT i w - -f * "M j | ******* /• •Wilk 1 IwIHHI k*._ JUSTICE FORD NEW YORK —In the Symington divorce suit before Justice Ford of Supreme court. New York City, when Attorney Max Steuer charged Thomas H. Symington with perjury. Justice Ford, pictured herewith, declared that with the advent of modern times the giving and attending cockail parties was not frowned upon, and that his daughter, Mrs. Esther Ford Wait, had often done just that,.

FORD IS MAKING BID FOR SHIPS Sends Bid For Purchase Os Shipping Board Vessel To Capital Detroit, Mich. , July 2.—(United Press.) —William B. Maye, engineer of the Ford Motor company, is personally carrying the Ford bid for the United States shipping board vessels direct to Washington, it was learned today by the United Press. Maye, in Cleveland last night to witness arrival of the Ford airplane blazing the trail of the company’s second airline express route, left for Washington today, it is expected. A bid for the entire two hundred ships is expected to be entered by the Ford company. Washington, July 2. — (United Press.) — Henry Ford’s bid for two I hundred government ships to be scarpped, reported to be enroute here by courier, will not be accepted by the shipping board or Emergency Fleet corporation, it was said at their offices- today. The time for filing bids expired at noon June 30. o OVERNIGHT AIR MAIL SERVICE Plane Arrives In Chicago This Morning With New York Mail Chicago, July 2— The first overnight air mail plane, New York, to Chicago, swooped down on May wood field here today at 6:18 a m (CST) It was piloted by W. B. Williams of ('leveland. The plane flew here from Cleveland, where it recivd th cargo of mailcarrled from the east in another plane. The first leg of the flight started at Hadley field, N. J. at 7:47 p.m. (EST) yesterday. Arrival here was on schedule, according to officials of the air maul landing field. (United Press Service) Cleveland, 0.. July 2—D. C. Smith, piloting the first New York to Chicago night mail plane, arived here today after having been forced down twice by engine trouble. Smith arived here one hour and a half behind schedule, nearly exhausttd. He had been forced down at Kylertown, Pa., aud Colon, O.

Price 2 Cents.

TELLS OF HIS CONNECTION WITH MORTGAGE FIRM Says He Served As President Os Company For $25 Per Week WITNESS IS NERVOUS Denies He Ever Withdrew Money From Subsidaries Os Company (United Presn Service) Indianapolis, .July 2 (Special to Daily Democrat) Morton Hawkins served for four years as president of the Hawkins company at a salary of $25 a week, he testified today in his federal court irial. Hawkins took the stand to defend himself against charges of fraudulent use of the mails 'in the operation of the Hawkins company and its innumerable loan societies. The government asserts investors lost between four and six million dollars through collapse of the Hawkins companies. Hawkins was called to testify after character witnesses from Portland. his home town, had appeared in his behalf. Hawkins was nervous and his voice was unsteady as he answered the questions fired at him. He soon regained his composure. “From 1918 to 1922 all of my time was devoted to the work of the Hawkins company,” he testified. "I drew a sal;<y of $25 a week front 1918 to 1922 in the fall. "Then there was a change in the organization and I received $l5O a week salary ” Hawkins denied that he had ever withdrawn any money from the subsidiaries. but admitted lie drew $17,000 from the Hawkins company for the purchase of farms. He also said he received a commission in addition to his salary for the sale of certain stocks. The government, through its testimony, attempted to show that the loan societies were milked for the benefit of the Hawkins company, and that the assets of the latter company were d'ssipated through Hawk ins' manipulations. CELEBRATION AT BERNE SATURDAY Plans Made For Entertaining Big Crowd At Sunday School Picnic (Special To Daily Democrat) Berne, July 2—Nearly everything is in readiness for the big Independence day celebration to be held in Lehman's grov, one-half mile south of Berne. The committee in charge of the program is expecting 5.000 people from ail parts of the county, and the day promises to be one of tlie best Sunday School rallies ever held in Berne. The committee in charge has arranged an excellent program, and has done everything in its power to make the day worth while. The forenoon address by the Hon. Oswald Ryan, of Anderson utid the afternoon address by Judge William 13. Hile, qf Elkhart, promise to be a real treat Besides the addresses there will be other attractions, including good music, by the Ladies Musical club, by the community’s mens' chorus, by the "Dunbar Band, and by a Magley male quartet. Besides this there will be athletic events, including a baseball game, foot races, and a rat killing contest. Rev. Frank Ruf, a former Berne boy now living in Fort Waynje, will be in charge of the games. Otto Smith the well known aviator, will be on hand with an airplane and will do stunts and take passengers for rides. Plenty of refreshments will be on hand, and will sell very cheap. Sandwiches and other lunches will be served also.