Indianapolis Times, Volume 41, Number 97, Indianapolis, Marion County, 2 September 1929 — Page 4

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Labor Day This day is set aside by law for labor. The manner in which it is spent suggests how far this country has traveled since it was first established in 1882 in order that organizations of workers could have one free day in which to plan or to celebrate. Today there are few labor meetings and few speeches. One or two leaders broadcast, but it is probable that the great majority of members of labor unions are too busy with their automobiles to take the time to listen. Labor day came into existence because of a necessity. When industry first called men from the fields and the organization of capital began to change relationship between the man who hired one or two men and worked at their side at forge or bench to one in which executives never saw those who did the work, the great battle was one of wages and hours. The treatment was harsh. The condition was one of either open or potential warfare. Long hours and low wages was the desire of every employer. Shorter hours and higher wages was the necessity of every worker. It required many bitter fights to establish the right of workers to organize. Advances in wages were obtained, in most cases, only after battle. The early days of industry offered to no worker the hope of ownership of homes or of comforts. He could not expect to use the things he manufactured and to which he gave his life. There was a deep chasm between the living conditions of those who labored and those who owned. Well, just as an experiment, go out to the state fair this afternoon and attempt to pick out the man who works in a factory from the one who may own stock'in that factory. He may be the same person. You will have greater difficulty should you try to pick out the wife or daughter of the worker from the wife or daughter of the owner. They dress alike and deport themselves in the same manner. They graduate from the same schools. They have the same tastes and for the most part, have them satisfied. The introduction of labor-saving machinery and some glimmer of enlightened selfishness has so changed conditions that it is difficult to arouse any enthusiasm by talking of a “working class.” Class consciousness is gone. The line is too ephemeral to be recognized. It shifts too quickly to become permanent with any one. The hatred has gone. There is a basis for final industrial peace. That does not mean, of course, that all problems are solved. It only means that the old way of regulating wages and hours by force have gone. The old policy of grinding down the wage earner to the bread line of poverty is disgarded as unprofitable, as well as unjust and infamous. The problem of management of industry will one day be provoking. It will come if there is no recognition of the one great fact that the function of both ownership and labor is the efficient production of necessities, comforts and luxuries and their distribution on the basis of the satisfaction of every one who contributes. The problem of leisure wall one day be as urgent as was the problem of lack of leisure. The creation of a social conscience that recognizes human brotherhood as the basis of all relationships is a goal yet to be achieved. But Labor day has lost its old significance. There has been progress. There is still progress. And when ever there is progress there is always hope that peace and not warfare will settle the problems of life. If you need confirmation, ask yourself who would recognize the stereotyped figure of Labor with his square cap. his bared arm, his uplifted hammer, if it were used today in cartoon? % Opportunities of the Future Every generation, says Henry Ford, leaves more opportunities than it found. Ford, of course, referred chiefly to those opportunities that are connected with jobs. But his remark holds good all along the line. Everything that is done today is going to beget a challenge for the next veneration. We know pretty well what our own opportunities hive been. We have made the most of some of them, and we have slipped pretty sadly on some others. But the next generation—what sort of opportunities will we leave for it? It is hard to tell what will happen in the world in the next thirty years, but this much seems certain; the human race is reaching a point where its chances to lift itself by its own bootstraps, on the one hand, or to ruin itself eternally, on the other, are greater than they ever were before. Things have happened too fast in the last couple of decades, and the pace shows no signs of slackening. The world's possibilities for advancement have been enormously increased, and so have its possibilities for destruction. Sometimes it almost seems as if we would either reach the millennium or chaos during the next ■one thing, the earth has shrunk. Magellan cir|b three years and the Graf ppelin did it in |ek& It takes a day a h&Jf to cross the

The Indianapolis l imes (A BCKIPFS-HOWABD NEWSPAPER) Owned and published daily (except Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Cos., 214-220 W Maryland Street, Indianapolis, Ind. Price in Marion County 2 cents—lo cents a week: elsewhere. 3 cents—l 2 cents a week BOYD GURLEY. ROY W. HOWARD. FRANK G. MORRISON. Editor. President. Business Manager. PHONE—Rliey 5551 MONDAY. SEPT. 2. 1929. Member of United Press, Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance, Newspaper Enterprise Association, Newspaper Information Service and Audit Bureau of Circula-titons. “Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way ”

American continent now, as compared with six weeks a few decades ago. New York and London are closer now than New York and Boston were in Revolutionary times. New methods of transportation and communication have given every human being a billion next door neighbors. Besides that, we have new tools. For the first time, it is possible for men to make things infinitely faster than they can use them. We are reaching a stage where—in theory, at least—there will be no shadow of an excuse for poverty or want. It may be that the brotherhood of man is just around the corner. Universal peace, universal plenty, universal understanding—all of these things are genunine possibilities for the next generation. But the reverse is true, likewise. If universal peace is possible, so is a universal war that would blot out civilization. If we fail to get universal plenty, we may well get a financial and industrial oligarchy that will bring in the most terrible despotism known to history. It is going to be up to our children to decide among these opportunities. The least we can do is give them the training and the teaching that will enable them to decide wisely.

More Light A neiv chapter has come to light in the story of International and Power Company’s venture into the newspaper field. A month before this company furnished money for purchase of four papers in the Piedmont region of the south, it acquired a valuable hydro-electric power site in that same region. It is planned, according to one of its officials, to erect a large generating plant which would furnish power to one of its paper mills and have three-fourths of its output left over to sell. The International Paper and Power Company used to cry aloud that its only motive in buying papers to sell was to give it a sure market for newsprint. More than ever it seems reasonable, now, to take its protestations with a large sprinkling of salt. Which all goes to show that it is a pretty good idea to keep Industriously probing for facts on any public question, and not be too credulous when a case seems complete. "Wizard of Oz” books have been excluded from the public library at Kansas City as "to fantastic.” Censors ought to get after the newspapers there, too, for publishing the doings of the New York stock market. George Bernard Shaw says there is no such thing as a typical American. Is it possible he hasn’t seen any of the people who pose lor the illustrations in vegetable oil advertisements? The prince of Wales has been taking secret lessons in aviation and is said to have developed into an expert pilot. The less said about that the better, perhaps. There will be no bald-headed folks by 1950, says a prominent hairdresser. Guess the flies will have to give up skating. The way that eighteen-day diet on grapefruit alone has been catching on, it’s a wonder any of us lias an eye left in his head, A California food expert says it is more sensible to overeat then to starve. Those food experts know just everything. A Boston man slapped his wife as she slept, Men are getting bolder and bolder.

REASON

IT is revolting for the papers to persist in taking the name of Love in vain by wrapping it around every sexual excess such as that which sentenced Snook to the electric chair. If there were no difference between love and lust, this world would be a desert a thousand tims more for bidding than Sahara. It is almost time to stop it. What an interesting seance it would be if some medium could materialize all of the ghosts who now are writing the syndicated articles which are signed by celebrities! Washington now has a bronze statue of James Buchanan, the President whose vascillation and indecision perimtted treason to undermine the government. Had Andrew Jackson. Grover Cleveland or Theodore Roosevelt been in his place the plotters w r ould have been driven from the national capital. a a a AND had the automobile been with us in 1861, people north and south might have known each other so well it would have been impossible to make them hate. The visiting is constant now' and the other day in five short minutes in Indiana we saw cars from Oregan, Alabama, Michigan. Texas, Ohio, Virginia, New York, Florida, Maine and Mississippi. a a a It is predicted that the tight hats the ladies are wearing will make them bald headed, but in the meantime if is a great thing for the conservation of bird life. a a a A gentleman in Maryland has invented a machine which.milks four cows simultaneously, but this is little to brag about in view of the fact that we have political machines capable of milking millions of taxpayers at one and the same time. England has opportunity to show she is a good sport by postponing the Schneider cup race long enough for Italy to recover from the death of her great flier and for America to provide a worthy contender. The fine code of aviation demands the postponement. a a a MR. O. N. POTTER, snake expert of Akron, 0., claims that his 32-foot python can digest an army blanket, which should arouse the envy of Tom Heflin, who after years of effort is unable to do anything but chew the rag. a a a Now that the British government has learned that the prince of Wales has taken secret flying lessons, the young man will be compelled to step down among the earth-bound. John Bull will take no chances on the heir to the crown. a a a It is almost time for the baseball writers to furnish the dope for the world series between the Cubs and the Athletics, after which the teams will proceed to run true to schedule and upset said dope completely. a a a After winning fame by almost flying the Atlantic! it must have been something of a jar for Ruth Elded to come in far beck in the ladies’ derby.

E ,. FREDERICK ■ LANDIS

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

M. E. Tracy SAYS: Vacationing Has Become a Great Industry, Organized, Efficient, and, Therefore, Uninteresting. 'T'HIS is the season when all roads lead out of Rome, when people are drifting countryvard and the talk is of flowers, fish dinners and hooch. Vacationing has become a real industry. Thousands of people live on it, while millions live for it. Like other industries, it has become organized, efficient and, therefore, uninteresting. Too much clock, too much time table, too much system. Most people go where they are told, and most of them do what they are told after they get there. Only a few cling to the idea of thinking for themselves, of taking anew road, not knowing or caring what may be around the next curve.

Little Variation Offered FOR those who can afford it, there are Pullman cars, firstclass cabins and high-priced hotels. For those who can not, there is the flivver and 500,000 miles of perfectly good road. But the flivver offers little variation. You start out with a road map, follow a route number and race from one filling station to another. As for the country—the hills, green fields, forests, streams and lakes—it just slides by. At the end, there is little to recall, except how the old car took such a hill in high, what a row there was in the second all-night cabin on the right, or where a good meal was to be had at a reasonable price. If the vacation is as important as we say, if a certain amount of rest and relaxation are necessary, if it is a good thing for people to get away from the usual cares and worries, something needs to be done, because under present conditions it serves no such purpose. People are herding in summer resorts just as they herd at home, suffering about as much not only from congestion, but from prescribed rules. In nine cases out of ten, they come home more fatigued than when they left. tt a Summer Estate Gone THE summer estate of forty years ago has become obsolete. So has the quiet hotel and the little cottage off by itself. Where one seeks quiet these days, thousands seek excitement. The old “swimming hole” has become a bathhouse, with a beauty show every so often and the din of merry-go-rounds, roller coasters, dodgeums and houses that Jack built in the background. . Speed boats dash about every pond that is big enough, camps are crowded together on the bank until they resemble nothing so much as a shack oil town, every form of sport has been put on a cash basis and service goes to the highest bidder. No doubt, the program we are pursuing as efficient; no doubt, one is able to plan a. vacation or buy a plan much more easily than was possible when Dad was a boy; no doubt, certain communities have been made prosperous through the advance of real estate and increased prices, but when all is said and done, are people getting as much good out of it as they used to? Aren’t we merely taking our jazz, hooch and excitement in a little different form? B tt tt There Was a Thrill IN the old days, when people had to do more or less shifting for themselves, when it was impossible to buy a two weeks’ trip with all expenses paid, or - step on the gas and follow a road that was smooth and safe for a thousand miles, there was at least the thrill of individual experience, of seeing something that your next door neighbor hadn’t seen a dozen times, and of doing something that everybody you knew hadn’t done. The little old country hotels, where one carried his own ice water and lit the kerosene lamp, may have lacked a certain degree of comfort, but they more than made it up in the rest and freedom they afforded. So, too, the little old boarding house out on some far-away farm may have seemed very different from the city, but in that lay its real attractiveness. The old style vacation forced people to change their habits, to get out of the rut, to realize the presence of a different environment. It brought them into close touch with things primitive, compelled them to recognize nature close at hand, and recreated in their minds an understanding of the sources and resources which underlie civilization. They knew what cows and pigs looked like when they came back home, could ton the difference between a white birch and a spruce, and aware that clams were not caught on a hoqk.

Times Readers Voice Views

| Editor, Times —It is a great joke |to see the way the officials and ! papers play with the tax rates. If I the taxpayers’ association and civic | groups had men with a little more nerve and common sense they would | stop the raising of valuations on property. The officials are glad | every time they get a chance to j raise the valuations, as it gives them a chance to issue bonds for any pet | thing the grafters want to build. ! If The Times would educate the j public to what it costs to pay the interest on all the bonds, they would demand a reduction in valuations or a change in the law on the bonding limit. There are too many overpaid officials now. They should cut salaries and if the men did not like it, let them quit. There are hundreds who would take the jobs at half the salary. JACK COLLINS.

Hygiene Proves Helpful to Students

BY DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN. Editor Journal of the American Medical Association and of Hygeia, the Health Magazine. MENTAL hygiene work among college students is an interesting new development described by Dr. Winifred Richmond of Washington, D. C.. at a recent meeting of the American Medical Association. The mental hygiene movement has grown out of the psychologic testing methods used in the army during the World war. As the enormous increase in students, after the war brought problems that had not existed before, colleges began to find that mental tests and rating scales were useful in advising students about their education and their vocational adjustment. The departments handling this personnel research uncovered many problems they had not anticipated and the psychiatrist gradually came into the picture.

IT SEEMS TO ME

THE muddle-headedness of American criminal law is revealed in a recent message from Governor Franklin Roosevelt of New York. The Governor commuted the death sentence of Milton Harris, 24, who murdered a young woman. There wos no denial of the prisoner's guilt. He shot the girl in daylight on the street of Buffalo, and then tried to kill himself, but failed. The motive was established. He was in love with the young woman, and she had told him not to call again. She and the members of her family had noticed that her suitor seemed queer and depressed. A remarkable feature of the commutation was that the father and mother of the dead girl, her sisters and brothers, joined in the appeal to the Governor to spare the murderer’s life. It seems to me that the members of the family must be civilized, above the familiar herd demand for vengeance. The jurors who brought in a verdict which made execution mandatory were not satisfied with the law, either. They, too, signed the petition for mercy. Out of such a state of affairs it might be possible to build up an argument against capital punishment. Jurors, as a rule, hate to accept the responsibility of sending a man to his death, and so conviction in capital cases is difficult where the verdict must be “first degree” or “not guilty.” a a a Living Death BUT at the moment I am more interested in the aftermath of the case. Although opposed to capital punishment, I think that the sentence of imprisonment for life is even less logical than execution would have been. Here is the case outlined in part by the Governor of New York state: “This homicide was committed by a fairly well-educated boy of 24, who up to the time of the crime had led a respectable, decent life in a good home. A series of unhappy occurrences had brought about in him a depressed melancholic state of mind. “This is no case of a man with hardened criminal instinct. Though judicially declared legally sane, this youth can not be said to have been in full possession of his reasoning faculties when this homicide was committed. It is clearly a psychopathic case.” tt n u Psychopathic THIS much seems to me sufficient to indicate that our criminal procedure must be made to square with enlightened medical standards. If this is as Governor Roosevelt declares, “Clearly a psychopathic case.” then it is monstrous that such a prisoner should be considered sane in the eyes of the lw. Such a legal standard is faulty. We

Stealing the Picture

.DAILY HEALTH SERVICE L

Dartmouth, Vassar and California were among the first to employ psychiatrists, but by 1927 the movement had progressed so rapidly that at the New England conference on mental hygiene in schools and colleges held in Boston in the spring of 1927 more than twenty colleges and secondary schools maintaining psychiatric services were represented. In the five years since the work began at Vassar 185 girls and six teachers have been referred to tha psychiatrist. Forty-four girls were found to be suffering from severe nervous disturbances; thirteen were quite ill with real depressions; four had serious sex difficulties; four had definite suicidal tendencies and a few minor difficulties that might have led to serious trouble if they had not been taken in time. The difficulties that beset college students are practically the same everywhere. Emotional maladjustments, sex difficulties, actual mental

have not emerged far enough from the old criminal custom which held that any prisoner sane enough to recognize his own name was sane enough to be hanged. Now, how does the community propose to handle the case of this dangerous sick man who has murdered a young girl? It could kill him as an unfortunate and unfit member of society. The Governor of a great state feels that such a procedure is too callous. He provides life imprisonment as a substitute. BBS •Governor Says “ \ CCEPTING the declared policy XY of law of this state that capital punishment should serve as a deterrent to crime,” writes Governor Roosevelt. “I can not believe that such function would be carried out in a case of this kind. Life in prison to a boy of his sensitive nature will be a double punishment.” In other words, Milton Harris, 24, is too sick to be electrocuted, but not too sick to be tortured. Since he is on the verge of mental collapse, he will be put into a cell, where he can easily be pushed over the line into complete insanity. And

fflM

TREASURY DEPT. FORMED Sept 2. /~vN Sept. 2, 1789, the treasury department of the United States, the executive unit of the government controlling the national finances, was established by act of congress. The treasury department organized in 1789 was the successor to the department created by the congress of the confederation in 1781, of which Robert Morris was for a time, superintendent. The treasury is the most extensive and complex of the departments and in rank stands next to the department of state. At its head is the secretary of the treasury, appointed by the President, who is a member of the cabinet and rec 'es a salary of $12,000. He is second among cabinet officers in the line of succession to the presidency. The department, as originally established, was composed of a secretary, a comptroller, an auditor, a treasurer, a register, and an assistant secretary, together with a few clerks. From this the department has grown to be a vast establishment employing some 5,000 persona at Washington, with numerous bureaus, branches and offices throughout the country.

and nervous illness and various types of disciplinary problems are the prinicpal troubles found by the psychiatrists. College suicides, of which so much has been heard in recent years, usually may be traced to depressions resulting from fear and anxiety. Suicidal trends, discovered in time, put the psychiatrist on the qui vive and he may be able to avert a tragedy. Perhaps the greatest hlnderance to the development of a mental hygiene program has been a hostile attitude on the part of faculty members of colleges, according to a number of colleges questioned by Dr. Richmon. The psychiatric department must "sell itself” to both faculty and students. This it has been able to do so successfully that in the institutions where the psychiatric department has been longest established the faculty invariably has almost become enthusiastic and cooperative.

Ideals and opinions expressed In this column are those of one of America’s most interesting writers, and are presented without regard to their agreement or disagreement with the editorial attitude of this paper.—The Editor.

R HEYWOOD 7 BROUN

I want to know in what way the communal good is served by such an Incompetent program? B B tt A Better Way THERE is, of course, a better way. There is a way dictated by every consideration of mercy and ordinary common sense. Naturally the Milton Harrises can not be allowed to run loose, but once we can learn to make the very necessary identification between criminality and sickness the sentence for Milton Harris should be precisely the same as every other passed by a judge after a conviction is obtained; “I sentence this prisoner to be confined in a state reformatory institution until such time as he shall be adjudged cured.” You can not make a sick man well by putting him in a cell block. You can not make a crook go straight'by herding him with his own kind. If Milton Harris is legally sane, then the state of New York is just a shade unbalanced. Can tulips be raised from seed? Tulips raised from seed take four or five years to flower, and they may not be the same variety as the parent stock. The seeds should be planted in boxes, in light sandy soil in cold frames in late winter, as deep as four times the diameter of the seed.

By the Union of Astronomy and Physics. Science Has Made Vast Strides in Recent Years. Scripps-Howard Science Editor OTTAWA, Canada, Sept. 2 Branches of science hardly known two decades ago, some of them even unnamed at that time, are the ones in which the most important discoveries will be made in the coming years. It is the border-line sciences, those that lie in between the old established branches of science in which the biggest advances are expected by scientists today. This was evident here recently at the convention of the American Astronomical Society when Dr. J. S. Plaskett, director of the Dominion Astronomical Observatory at Canada, discussed the work of the observatory. For astrophysics is such a borderline science. It gets its name from the fact that it lies midway between astronomym and physics. Astronomym and physics once were almost unrelated subjects, but by putting the two together science has made vast strides. Problems of the heavens have been solved by experiments in the laboratory, while laboratory puzzles have yielded to solutions picked out of the sky. The modern point of view is one which was summed up excellently recently by Dr. Walter S. Adams of the Mt. Wilson Observatory, when he called the stars “huge laboratories of the sky.” tt q o Furnaces THE astronomers gathered here regard stars as great furnaces or machines engaged in the production of heat and light. In attempting to find out how these huge machines function, the astronomers turn to laboratory experiments. But in the stars, there are temperatures and pressures far in excess of any which can be duplicated in the laboratory. Consequently in studying the stars, astronomers are observing the behavior of chemical elements at immense temperatures. Professor A. S. Eddington of Cambridge, England, calculates that the temperature at the center of a star must be about 70.000,000 degrees. Dr. Adams has desribed the interior of a star graphically. "The interior of a star is a mixture of atoms, electrons and ether waves in the wildest state of confusion,” he says. "The ether waves pour out toward the surface of the star like a great wind. On their way they encounter the mutilated atoms and electrons of the closely packed gases which tend to obstruct their progress. “They finally emerge, perhaps after thousands of millions of years, transformed at the lower temperature of the outside of the star into the light, and heat waves which the astronomer observes.” B B B High Speed PROFESSOR EDDINGTON has *- also given a graphic picture of what the interior of a star is thought to be like. He writes of the tiny atoms which make up the gases of the star and the electrons of which the atoms are composed, as follows: “Disheveled atoms tear along at 100 miles a second, their normal array of electrons being torn from them in the scrimmage. "The lost electrons are speeding 300 times faster to find new resting places. Let us follow the progress of one of them. "There is almost a collision as an electron approaches an atomic nucleus, but putting on speed it sweeps around in a sharp curve. Sometimes there is a slide-slip at the curve, but the electron goes on with increased or reduced energy. “After a thousand narrow shaves, all happening within a thousandmillionth of a second, the hectic career is ended by a worse side-slip than usual. “The electron is fairly caught ard attached to an atom. But scarcely has it taken up its place, when an X-ray bursts Into the atom. Sucking up the energy of the ray, the electron darts off again on its next adventure.” Strange conditions exist in many stars. Recent researches show that some stars have such great pressures that the material in them is compressed to the density of solid iron. Yet the temperature is so high that the material behaves exactly like a gas.

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SEPT. 2, 1929

SCIENCE —BY DAVID DIETZ —