Indianapolis Times, Volume 41, Number 167, Indianapolis, Marion County, 22 November 1929 — Page 8

PAGE 8

tt tt I tttt t • MOW AttD

Doubtful Policies Once more the state highway commission resents itself in an attitude that suggests lat the sooner Governor Leslie, either by ressure or time limitation, secures anew card, the better it will be for the public. This time the members, or the director, jhnounces that the low bids on cement are p be overlooked and the contract avvurded p concerns which use only coal mined in this state. The board has gone through the formalizes of obtaining bids, as required by law. lie announcement says that the unsuccessul bidders will reduce their prices to meet hat of the low bidder and promise to buy oal in Indiana. That suggests that the interests which ire to receive the contract tried to get a price |hat was more than fair when they submitted ;heir offers and are hardly in a position to for any special favors. The result of giving contracts to higher bidders can only be an ultimate burden. If che word goes out that the state of Indiana does not follow usual business practices—land the law—in giving contracts to the low bidders, business men will no longer take the trouble to submit bids. That would be a very fine situatioirfor a board wishing to favor its friends. It would relieve them of embarassment in explaining their actions. But it would cost the people heavily. Os course, there is nothing new in the handling of cement purchases, except that the amount of money involved runs into many thousands of dollars. It is the largest single purchase made by the state for any .purpose whatever. The difference of a few cents on a barrel runs into a sizeable sum. - The board has not always been so kind to i home industries. If the next legislature should, happily, jj be set free from the clutch of machine politics, it could do worse than look into the building of roads and the expenditure of the twenty millions of dollars a year. It could very easily remove the board, if it desired, from temptation to doubtful practices in the purchase of cement by establishing a state-owned plant to produce this material for the highways. But until that is done, the least the people can demand is that the contracts go to the lowest and not the highest bidders.

The Senate and Prosperity There is close connection between the special session of congress adjourning today in the business situation. But it is not the connection imagined by such critics as Kent, the New York banker, and Babson, the stock market soothsayer. To blame congress for the stock speculation orgy is silly, coming from any source; it is worse than absurd when it comes from a Wall Street banker. Now that the speculators have had their fling, the country can thank congress—or rather the progressives—for maintaining one of the factors of business prosperity. As the President has pointed out repeatedly, industrial prosperity depends on keeping up our export trade. If we lose that outlet for our 10 per cent production surplus, factories will close and millions will walk the streets without work. The strain upon our business structure resulting from the Wall Street deflation, and the necessity for careful planning to preserve prosperity, is shown by the present Hoover conferences with commercial leaders. Those conferences are helpful; already they promise increased production and employment. But nothing that the Hoover conferences can do, nor anything else, will avail us if our overseas markets are shut off by foreign retaliation against a higher American tariff wall excluding their products. That is where congress comes in. Despite the warnings of economists, despite the campaign pledges of President Hoover and the Republican party, the Re-publican-controlled house passed a higher tariff bill, which brought threats of retaliation from about thirty foreign countries. The senate finance committee, representing the same G. O. P. old guard which dominates the house, concurred in that high tariff bill. At that point senate progressives intervened. By blocking the tariff bill, through coalition with a Democratic group, the progressives temporarily have saved our foreign trade at a moment when a falling off in orders would have serious consequences for the entire country. For that service, and for the lobbying revelations, and for uncovering the armament propagandists who helped wTeck the Geneva naval conference and threatened the coming London conference, the nation is indebted chiefly to the senate progressives. Indian Board Reports The fact that the board of Indian commissioners has indorsed the policies of Secretary Wilbur and the heads of the Indian bureau must be gratifying to the latter. It is likewise gratifying to the public to know that the board is in harmony with the acts of the present administration, even though it has in the past shown a disposition to indorse the acts of whatever administration happened to be in charge of the Indian bureau. The board scarcely could have acted otherwise in this instance with public opinion approving the Wilbur course as strongly as it has. The sixtieth annual report of the commissioners makes numerous recommendations for betterments In the organization and personnel of the Indian service, some of which Wilbur effectively has already advocated. Just how valuable the repost will be depends aa

The Indianapolis Times (A BCRIPPB-HOWAHD NEWSPAPER) OwnM end published dally (exeept Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Cos, 214-220 West Maryland Street, Indianapolis, Ind. Price In Marlon County, 2 cents a copy : elsewhere. 3 cents delivered by carrier, 12 cents a week. E,jit or President Business Manager PHONB— Rllev MSI FRIDAY. NOV. 22. 1929, Member of I'nited Press, Scrlpps-Howard Newspaper Alliance, Newspaper Enterprise Association, Newspaper Information Service and Audit Bureau ot Circulations. “Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way"

how much assistance the board gives to the bureau In persuading congress to carry out the splendid recommendations that have been made. We call the attention of congress not only to the report, but to the Wilbur policies. Ford and the Golden Egg The conference of business leaders meeting with President Hoover has agreed to stabilize prosperity by retaining wages at present levels. Henry Ford, after attending the conference, went it one better. He announced a general wage increase for his employes. Ford does the unexpected, as usual. Fifteen years ago he was first to establish the $5 a day wage. Later he was the first to establish the independence of a great industry from control by outside bankers. Now, when some companies are cutting wages as a solution of the business strain from stock speculation deflation, he has the courage to raise wages. But simply to call Ford’s action unexpected and courageous would be to miss he point. It is more than that. It is shrewdly intelligent. If prosperity is to be maintained, production must be maintained. And production can not be maintained unless consumption is kept at a high level. The only way to keep up consumption, that is the purchasing power of the great masses of the people, is to keep up high wages and to raise wages that are low. That used to be anew and heretical doctrine, when Ford first reached it. But during the last seven years it has come to be accepted generally by most business irien of the country and by government officials, from presidents down. There thus is nothing very surprising about Ford’s action when it is analyzed—nothing, that is, except that he has the intelligence to practice in a time of emergency what every one has been preaching during the fat years. Every employer in the country soon must face this problem, and the sooner the better. The problem is this: Either the entire method of prosperity through high wages as practiced by the country for the last seven years is sound, or else it is unsound. If it is sound, then now more than ever is the time to apply that method. And the business man who operates on the basis of hard experience rather than upon short-si~hted selfishness and prejudice is apt to follow Ford’s example. One head of a steel corporation attending the President’s conference Thursday had on Wednesday announced a wage reduction. The White House conference decision not to lower wages and Ford’s increase should keep that steel magnate and other doubters in line. Os course the employer who cuts wages will gain for a moment but he will lose in the long run. The goose which lays the golden egg of American prosperity is the large mass market with the highest purchasing power in the world. The question today is whether big business is going to kill the goose which lays the golden egg. Ford proposes to feed it. It is proposed to make the buyer of bootleg liquor guilty along with the seller. Looks as if they’re trying to make it appear that a drinker actually has a part in violating the law. An Ohio woman, suing for divorce, charged her husband was an egotist. For your information, that’s what a man is when he takes away the bid from his wife in a bridge game. It is reported Colonel plans to buy Anne a sport model monoplaile. That would be a big saving on fenders, anyway. A good-natured man is one who can start a fire in the furnace in the morning without losing his soul.

TANARUS) TT' A FREDERICK REASON By LANDIS

THOSE disposed to blame President Hoover for lack of leadership because he has not been able to bring warring senatorial factions together, should remember that we have had but one President since the Civil war able to effect such harmony, and he was William McKinley. sen All down the line from Lincoln to Hoover, with this one exception, our Presidents have been unable to wave the olive branch, but many of them have waved the red flag. McKinley’s amiable heart and his long experience in congress equipped him for the role of peace maker and those who entered his presehce in anger went away smiling. b b t r ’s For instance, one day the papers said McKinley was about to appoint Philander C. Knox of Pennsylvania to the position of attorney-general, whereupon one of the Republican leaders of the Keystone state went to McKinley, protesting because Knox had been opposed to him in a law suit and had won it, costing the political leader something like a million dollars. a a a McKINLEY heard him through and then said that he was sorry the leader had lost so much money, but that when it came to selecting an attorneygeneral for the whole country, he wanted the lawyer who won cases, not the one who lost them. Then the President switched the conversation to some theme of mutual interest, after which the political leader went away feeling he had spent an enjoyable morning. * m m Babe Ruth demands $85,000 for his services next year, which is SIO,OOO more than we pay the President of the United States, but then Ruth can knock the ■ball over the fence, which Mr. Hoover’s longest hit is tl>o Texas leaguer he knocked in the last presidential campaign. MB* All the ladies and gentlemen who have been deflated by the stock market's collapse are in a position to sympathize with the farmer, for he was deflated immediately after the war and he has been ever since. B B B THE prince of Wales has declared for long skirts because that will help the textile manufacturers and now it Is up to him to come out strongly for bustles to bring prosperity to the excelsior manufacturers. B B B Senator Copeland fears that our statesmen are going to ruin their health by over-work and worry about legislation and so he advocates a reduction of hours. Having seen quite a little of the congressional end of it, we say to you that the average man, engaged in keeping, a family and fighting the wolf, works harder and worries more than all the senators in Washington. B B M Over at Urbana. 111., a man was given a year for stealing sixteen chickens and a bank president was given the same sentence for stealing SIOO,OOO and wrecking the bank. Mttrxtljr w roll along. -

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

M. E. Tracy SAYS: Most People Find It Easier to Excuse the Offense for Which Sinclair PFas Sent to Jail Than the One for Which was Not Punished, THAT “seeing is believing” may be a sound doctrine, but believing no longer can be confined to seeing. The human eye can not see a cannon ball, but the camera can. Not only that, but the camera can record the antics of a stick of dynamite while it is exploding. Motion pictures of the performance actually have been taken by the bureau of mines at its laboratories in Bruceton, Pa. nun The stick of dynimite is placed behind a narrow slot in a piece of armor plate, and is photographed by its own light on a reel of rapidly moving film. The detonation wave, we are informed, travels at the rate of four miles a second, or sufficiently fast to circle the globe in less than two hours. % u tt tt Hoover Likes to Scribble LIKE many other men, President Hoover is a slave to the habit of scribbling when he listens—such a slave, indeed, that he has done enough to destroy its value. There are scores and scores of autographed sheets, decorated with wheels, squares and floral designs traced by his unconscious hand. Mostly they are in possession of children, to w 7 hom he has given them. Some day. w T hen all but a few have been lost, as invariably happens, those that are left may bring a good price, since rarity is the chief virtue of things. tt n tt Roger Babson accuses the senate of wasting time, and the senate proves it by talking about him for an hour or so. Borah, Walsh, Heflin et al. drop the nation’s business to explain not only Babson is wrong in this particular instance, but generally. If he is, why all the tumult, and if he isn’t, what good can the tiimult do? tt >t tt Sinclair Speaks Piece Harry f. cinclair thinks that the imprisonment imposed upon him w r as “in violation of common sense and common decency.” “I have paid the penalty without complaint,” he says, “and have made no personal appeal for sympathy. * “I do not need sympathy, but I do need and seek the respect to which I am entitled as a man 6f honor and integrity who fully recognizes his obligations to respect the statute law, the rules of the courts, and the ethical rules of society.” That would sound fine if it had not been for Teapot Dome. Most people find it much easier to excuse the offense for which Sinclair was sent to jail than that for which he was not. * u tt Though wrongly, perhaps, the public fails to take contempt cases seriously. In its opinion they hinge on offenses against a system, rather than against society, and while that system may be essential to society, it has become too technical and aloof for sympathetic affection. While the public still says “our” schools, “our” town and “our” government, it invariably says “the” court. Worse still, it regards “the” court as an institution in which it has no part, except through a summons to testify or defend itself. On one way or another, the judicial system has walled itself off from the public, created the impression that it is a separate institution, and developed a feeling of fear and embarrassment in those whom it was designed to serve. tt a tt The Lawyer’s Fault ATTORNEYISM has done more than anything else to create such an attitude—attorneyism, that always stands between the client and the jury, the state and the criminal, the defendant and justice. In most other departments a citizen can walk up and speak for himself. In the court, he can not. In the court, he must not only do, but say what he is told. In the court, he becomes a mere puppet, a marionette, dancing to the commands of the very lawyer whom he pays. tt tt tt The outstanding feature of Sinclair's case is that he got into trouble by following t!ie advice of his counsel, while the counsel who gave it goes scot free. Asa matter of common sense, the lawyer who told him not to answer Senator Walsh was vastly more responsible for his being in contempt than he was himself, yet he not only had to suffer the consequences, but pay that lawyer a fee. It is a curious system that compels us to hire lawyers when we enter court, and then punishes us I if the lawyers give wrong advice.

Daily Thought

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.—St. Matthew 4:16. BUB A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love. —Basil. What is the meaning of the word nuance? It means a mere shade of difference between things that are perceptible to the senses of' to the mind. For instance, there are nuances in the shades of pink. Another use of the word would be to say “He is a climber,” the nuance i being that he might be one who I seeks to better his social position or one who climbs ladders, stain or mountain peaks.

Say It With Stamps

, \ t / V OK I Vl|l •I- ■— j COME OK n§KKOrBOTHERING V I V/AHT YOU Hitt - lit PROP lO MEET HIM A LIKE Mr~ cpc ifr Hi cfe ppSN. HOWGLADYOU OH SUNDAY ARE TO MEET WHEHTHE HIF' ’’’VStMEP, - *■.—.—

Scarlet Fever Antitoxin Value Proved

BY DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN Editor Journal of the American Medical Association and of Hygeia, the Health Magazine. SIX years have passed since Doctors George F. and Gladys Henry Dick proved that the germ of scarlet fever exercises its effects on the human body through development of a toxin or poison w’hich produces the general illness, the nausea and the rash. When the person recovers from the disease it is because he develops in his body an antitoxin which opposes this poison or because scientific medicine injects into his body ,or provides -him otherwise with antitoxin to overcome the disease. Asa result of their fundamental discovery, the Dicks were able to develop also a method of identify-

IT SEEMS TO ME By BROUN

HARVARD will win easily from Yale Saturday. I want to get this prediction out in time for all faithful followers to put their bets down. The forecast is certain, because all logic points the other way. Logic not only indicates the defeat, but the annihilation of Harvard. The team has no tradition. Its record is a reproach. How can it fail to win? And, by file way, I want to know' why it is necessary for a football squad to make its entrance at such a breakneck pace. First comes the captain, with his head thrown back, legging it for dear life. The ends and backs manage to keep up with him, but usually there are a few fat line substitutes lagging at the rear and puffing most uncomfortably because of the mad charge. Ban Rush Needless WHAT’S the rush? The players are going to need some of those foot-pounds of energy before the afternoon is over, and it seems to me silly to waste them in a race in which first place counts nothing, and third and fourth and fifth and so on are scored in precisely the same way. Os course. I am aware that the intent is psychological. The mad rush is supposed to indicate to the spectators and to the players themselves that the team is just wild to get at the opposing eleven and to tear it to pipeces. Still, since the other team is giving every evidence of the same frenzied impatience, the net result is a standoff. Nor do I think that the psychological concept is sound. A more determined will is manifest in a slow and steady tread. It was at such a pace that Marie Antoinette went to the guillotine, and, if I remember rightly, Gene Tunney did no more than amble to the center of the ring when first he met Jack Dempsey. Again in that earlier battle at Boyle’s Thirty Acres it was Carpentier, about to be vanquished, who vaulted over the ropes. Dempsey crawled through like a tired tramp encountering barbed wire.

Strategy AND so if I ever get to coach a football team, my squad will come to its big game merely ambling on for the encounter. There will be among the men casual conversation about “Sweet Adeline” and the latest novel of Ernest Kemingway, That is, if I happen to have any players on the team caDable of reading anything but headlines. Let Yale and Princeton run their fool heads off. The Harvard team of a dream will be drilled to believe that football is a game. They will want to win. but nobody will be allowed to tell them that their hope of heaven rests upon a victory over Yale. The practice of over-magnifica-tion of college football not only is silly, but Ineffective. I don't re-

ing the germ that causes scarlet fever—a skin test which shows whether or not a person could resist the disease, a method of inoculating people against the disease and antitoxin which could be injected into patients for the treatment of the disease and also for its prevention. They recently have collected the results of observations made on 32,440 people on whom skin tests for scarlet fever have been made and on 11,584 people who were found in the skin tests to be likely to catch the disease when exposed and who therefore were given graduated doses of the scarlet fever toxin or small doses of the antitoxin to aid them in resisting scarlet fever. All of these people were exposed to scarlet fever in one or more epidemics. The complete study indi-

member ever seeing a team lose because it took its big game too lightly, r but I have watched dozens and dozens of elevens go down to defeat through too much anxiety. Take ten golfers aside and say to each ,one, “Your head will be chopped off if you slice this drive,”, and nine of those ten golfers immediately will proceed to slice. I have watched many an excellent team lose for no reason except the fact that it was too emotionally bent upon victory. And in this mood every forward pass is tossed a foot too far, and back is half a beat ahead of the proper coordination for each running play. tt tt it Nothing to Lose THIS explains the number of startling upsets seen in this and every other season. Again and again the team w’hich was picked to lose has turned the tables. You see the underdog always come into the game with the sounder outlook. Defeat for it has been so freely predicted that if the reverse comes, it hardly can be hailed as tragic. It can afford to take chances, and if any one of them succeeds, the favorite may be thrown into a panic. The eleven which is picked by all as conqueror fans under a grave handicap. It becomes the symbol of the United States Constitution,

- ■fC DAVMS THE- *****>*

ROBERT DE LA SALLE November 22 TODAY is the 286th anniversary of the birth of Robert de La Salle, famous French explorer, on Nov. 22, 1643. La Salle was the first discoveAr of the Ohio and the first explorer of a greater part of the Mississippi river. The Frenchman was a member of a wealthy merchant family in Rouen, but on becoming* a Jesuit novice he lost the right to inherit his father’s fortune and emigrated to Canada at the age of 24. Inspired by tales of the Indians respecting a mighty river leading south westward to the sea, La Salle organized an exploring expedition and sailed up the St. Lawrence and onto the Great Lakes. He turned southeast from Lake Erie and finally reached a branch of the meandering Ohio. After several other expeditions, La Salle reached the Mississippi on Feb. 6, 1683. He traced the great waterway to the sea and proclaimed the river and all the lands it drained to be the dominions of Louis XIV, king of France. Returning to France, the explorer was fitted out with ships and men to make a voyage directly to the I mouth of the Mississippi. The party was unable to locate the river, however, and La Salle was shot from ambush in 1687, during one of the repeated quarrels with his follower* _

cates that inoculation against scarlet fever is a safe procedure. Os 12,775 people inoculated, there was no evidence of harm in any case. Among the 11,584 susceptible people immunized against scarlet fever in insittutions where it was epidemic, there was not one case of scarlet fever subsequently. One thousand one hundred ninety-one nurses and internes who worked in hospitals for people with contagious diseases were immunized against scarlet fever before they began work, were constantly exposed to scarlet fever during their work, but none of them contracted the disease. Asa result of their study of the use of scarlet fever antitoxin, the Dicks are convinced that its early use shortens the duration of the disease, reduces the number and the severity of the complications. ,

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.

the solar system and the supreme court. It is the guardian of law and order and the proposition that a straight line is the shortest distance tfetween two points. Asa sort of chosen people, the members of the favored team can not afford to take chances. Their play must be safe and sound, as befits an eleven on whose shoulders rests all the weight of Euclidean mathematics. They have been forbidden to even contemplate defeat. And so they think of it. Victory is so exceedingly essential that no risks may be taken to gain it. Only heroic leaders of forlorn hopes throw forward passes deep in their own territory. tt tt tt Giants Lose. AS I have said, everything points to Yale on Saturday. Yale has Booth, and I would deny no phase of the little wonder’s greatness. Still, Harvard has behind it a tradition much more ancient. Records which are of all time and not based on any single season make it impossible for the Crimson to lose. Who ever heard of Goliath scoring over David, or of the Giant making so much as a touchdown against Jack of the Beanstalk? Fate is wedded wholly to ironic finales. Against the big blue team, Harvard seems weak and pitiful. How can It lose? It isn’t possible, unless all the legends from the beginning of time were conceived by liars. (Copyright. 1929. by The Times)

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jNOV. 22, 1929

SCIENCE By DAVID DIETZ—

Russia Has Undertaken a Program of Scientific Research That Mag Make It the Most Powerful Country in the World. SOVIET RUSSIA, with its passion for organization on a national scale, has subjected the field of science to much the same treatment it gave industry. Scientific men in this and other countries are watching with interest to see what the future of science will be in Russia. The most comprehensive survey of science in Russia yet made by a journalist has just been completed by the scientific correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. The Guardian man states that he was “the first scientific journalist since the war to tour Moscow and Leningrad laboratories systematically.” This correspondent believes that the Soviet program of science may make it the most powerful country in the world. He writes: “Scientific work In Soviet Russia is subject to social planning. This is natural, because all endowments for research come ultimately from the state. “The institutions for the study of various branches of science have been sorted out and placed In contact with those social institutions to which they naturally are related. “For instance, all institutions in the union for the study of applied botany come under the department of applied botany and are related to the state department of agriculture. “The thousand workers of applied botany work within one planned scheme. Unnecessary overlapping can be reduced under this centralization and the range of experimentation can be greatly increased, because everybody knows what his particular job is, and knows that, in general, it is different from every one else’s.” * a a it Inventions THE Guardian correspondent speaks highly of the achievements of this plan in certain lines of research. “The indexes and- herbaria in the department of applied botany at Leningrad are already a great achievement," he writes. “The information on every kind of cultivated plant is filed there.” He throws an interesting sidelight on * conditions in Russia by adding that the indexes are housed in the former Italian embassy and a disused church, adding “The state of repair of these buildings is no indication of the importance and quality of the scientific work done within.” An interesting state of affairs exists in the relation between the state and laboratories doing researches of an industrial nature. “Institutions doing research of industrial importance frequently receive their endowments from the supreme economic council,” he writes. “They have had to work in relation with the industry upon which their researches bear, and many receive extra endowments from the industry for doing special researches for it. “The laboratory also may sell Its invention to the state. The physico Technical institute has sold a radio-telephone invention to the state, and is buying 1,000,000-volt high-tension laboratory equipment with the money.” “The correspondent expresses the opinion that in general scientific research is well supported in Russia. The endowments, he says, “are probably larger in relation to the superfluous wealth than is. any other country.” tt M a Power THE scientific program of the Soviet government is interlocked with a great industrial scheme, which the Guardian correspondent says is not sufficiently well known in England. It is equally unknown in this country. “The large developments in departments of technical physics hinge on the five-year industrialization plan,” he writes. “The Soviet is building an experimental electrical institute in Moscow which will cost, I am told, 1,500.000 pounds ($7,500,000) for the first installment.” His conclusion is one which is interesting though it is quite possible that many will disagree with it sharply. “What will come out of the Soviet’s integration of science, the state and Industry?” he writes. “In twenty years’ time, quite possibly the most powerful country in the world.”