Indianapolis Times, Volume 42, Number 201, Indianapolis, Marion County, 31 December 1930 — Page 4

PAGE 4

sen rPP J• H OH/ AMO

One Civic Resolution This city, if it makes any resolution for the new year, well might determine to demand the right to own and operate its transportation system. When George J. Marott, civic-minded citizen, and John White, for years in the front of fights for better things, present plans for such system, the people will do well to listen. Facts in the situation are so clear as to make it difficult for any one to deny that public ownership not only is desirable, but inevitable, if the best interests of all the people are to be served. The Insull plan is impossible. Its high valuation for decrepit lines and cars stamps the proposal with unfairness at the start. Its high rate of return for these same fictitious values makes the burden continuous. It is significant that the spokesman for the Insull interests first came with the arrogant attitude that not one line or comma would be changed. This city could take the proposal worked out for the benefit of those whose investments have been impaired by private management or walk. The threat was made that no other plan would be financed by bankers. Now the attitude is changed and the arrogance is gone. Instead, there is the plaintive plea to civic clubs that no official has presented a basis on which compromises can be effected. If any more were needed to show that the proposal was unfair at the start, this changed attitude furnishes the basis. No one desires to take any advantage of the security holders who find that the values of their investments have dropped because of the policies and actions of the private operators. Nor will any fair-minded person believe that the people, as a whole, are under any obligation to make good the money they so have lost. The city does not reimburse those who have lost money in banks or private investments. The city does not restore real estate values. There is a fair basis on which the city can buy the present system, and that is at its real value. The suggestion the security holders can ’“protect” themselves by bidding in the lines is fine. At the present time the system is in the hands of a receiver. Os course, the proper time for these security holders to have protected not only themselves, but the public, was before the receiver was named. They did not press forward then to save the public. The threat of poor service and poor cars is childish. The public still has rights. Good service is the basis of the right for the company to use the streets. If it default in that, the people can protect themselves. The plan of Mr. Marott for bus lines has its fine points and is in line with progress. The hour may not have arrived for this. It will come. His suggestions on financing the system bear the. stamp of wise judgment and a knowledge of dealing with large affairs. It is not the suggestion of a radical dreamer, but of a hard-headed business man who knows finance and can use his pencil with the best of the boys who deal with big money. It should be very easy to draft a bill for the legislature which would permit the city to own and operate the transportation system. It would be very easy to take the management out of politics. Asa matter of fact, much of the present trouble may be due to the fact that private ownership has been in politics, and bad politics, for years. If no other measure is secured by Marion county legislators, the one for public ownership of utilities should be passed. It is based on justice, good business, and the best interests of the city. Future generations, as well as those who at present ride the cars, will applaud such movement and benefit from it. Private ownership has proved too costly in too many ways to be tolerated longer. That §500,000,000 Near at hand is the time when, the half billion dollars having been appropriated, the federal farm board’s worth can be judged finally. A generous congress, unwilling to stop in mid-course the farai board experiment, has given that board the princely fift of <150.000.000 sum, it should be pointed out, in excess of both the so-called drought relief appropriation and the misnamed emergency unemployment relief appropriation. Before long congress undoubtedly will appropriate •100,000,000, completing the authorized half billion dollars for these agencies. In making this sum available to carry out the administration’s 'farm relief’ program, congress, almost two years ago. passed the federal agricultural marketing act. This was, among other things, a statement of policy. Briefly, this policy was that the farmers of the nation should organise to help themselves, should lower production to a point more nearly equal to national needs. Paternal Uncle Sam, through congress and the Resident, agreed to finance these co-operative efforts,

The Indianapolis Times <A SCRIPP9-HOWARD NEWSPAPER t Owned and published daily (except Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Cos., 214-220 West Maryland Street, Indianapolis, Ind. Price in Marion County, 2 cents a copy; elsewhere. 3 cents—delivered by carrier, 12 cents a week. UOYD GURLEY. ROY W. HOWARD, FRANK O. MORRISON. Editor President Business Manager PHONE—Riley 8651 WEDNESDAY, DEC. 31. 1930, Member of United Press. Scrlpps-Howard Newspaper Alliance, Newspaper Enterprise Association. Newspaper Information Service and Audit Bureau of Circulations. “Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way.”

to get into the market when the emergency arose and "stabilize” prices of our chief commodities. So the board was organized; it set to work Generally, the results have been these: Grain prices hit the toboggan, and now, though still very low, ai slightly higher in our principal markets than elsewhere. Grain dealers have raised a great clamor against the government in business and in speculation. Cotton prices collapsed like a pricked balloon, and still are very low. Cotton dealers have protested that their livelihood is being taken away; they have cried out against the government buying cotton and holding it, like the sword of Damocles, over a weak and falling market; they have declared against the government in the speculating business and have urged a survey of the economic effects of the board’s operations. The board’s funds sank so low that the additional $150,000,000 was needed so badly congress was asked to act before it adjourned. It did. Now, what is the outlook? The answer was given tersely by Alex Legge, chairman of the federal farm board. Legge said: "We do not know.” Fire the Commissioners At the present moment there is only one way in which the United States senate can oppose nullification of the federal water power act. That is by removal from the federal power commission of George Otis Smith, Marcel Garsaud and Claude R. Draper, whose first.act in office was dismissal of William V. King and Charles A. Russell, the two commission employes who have fought for enforcement of the act, for protection of the public’s power resources and regulation of private companies. Pleasant promises of future rectitude are not convincing from these commissioners now. Re-employ-ment of one or both of the ousted men, while the senate temporarily holds a gun over the commissioners, would be no guarantee of conversion and devotion to the law. The senate already has been notified by the November balloting how the people feel about the matter. It does less than its duty if it does not transmit this warning to the administrtaion. Working for the Mayor Big Bill Thompson, mayor of Chicago, is running for- re-election. Shortly after he announced his candidacy, it developed that some 500 city employes who did not look favorably on his ambition to serve another term had been dismissed summarily. Simultaneously, city department heads were served with this ultimatum: “No one who is not in favor of Thompson's renomination must be left In office anywhere in the government—especially in offices controlled by the school board. See to it that every man and woman who is working in those school departments is for Thompson—first, last, and all the time.” There is nothing especially out of the way in this, of course. It is the sort of thing that happens in most city governments when a mayor runs for rcelection. But it is worth remembering that it is just this sort of thing—this demanding that city employes make the re-election of a politician their major concern over a period of months—that explains, in large measure, the woeful inefficiency of the average city government in the United States. The Corporation’s Boss Whatever may be the merits or demerits of the decision of Judge Jenkins in the Youngstown Sheet and Tube case, he makes one statement which could be read with profit by many other judges and by all corporation officers. “No matter how powerful the corporation, how extensive its property holdings or financial interests its working and very existence ever, are subject to the direction, approval, and will of the people, expressed through government, laws and courts,” he pointed out. “The operations of a corporation must, to repeat, accord with the standard of conduct held by its creator, the state and its people,” A scientist has obtained light from onicn roots, says a news item. In the future, perhaps, they'll be charging us scents per kilowatt hour.

REASON

THESE last few days have been very discouraging to rising young bandits in Indiana, an unusually large number of them having been sent to the penitentiary and to the happy hunting grounds, as a result of the swift work of vigilantes. an a There's a distinct difference between bandit and other law breakers, he having calculated very carefully the chances of getting caught and being sent over the v oad, and the statistics of yesterday were very comforting to him. The figures proved that it was about as safe to be a bandit as to be a piano tuner, and the returns were much more gratifying. a a a This was when the bandit had nothing to fear but the cobwebby machinery of our criminal courts. They knew how to take the ball away from the goddess of justice and play with it all summer, and if necessary they jumped upon her and broke her slats. n a a BUT it’s different since the people have formed the habit of grabbing shooting irons and starting on a man-hunt. This affair at Clinton and this one in Kosciusko county have done more to bring frigidity to the feet of the stickup artist than all the criminal trials held since Heck was a pup. The bandit simply can't warm up to a bunch of volunteer pursuers, armed with rifles and shotguns, and who are so undignified as to shoot. ana The public posse doesn't care for court room language. Apparently it doesn’t care any more for technicalities than a vegetarian for pigs’ feet Nothing could be more mortifying to a bandit, accustomed to the hocus pocus of criminal practice than to do a neat job of bsnditing and then find himself pursued by a bunch that doesn't understand him when he wants to make a motion to quash, or a motion for a change of venue or a motion to postpone the case for ten or fifteen years. ana A CRIMINAL lawyer isn't worth much to a bandit hiding in a cornfield when the bullets of the vigilantes are clipping his ears. Crooked politicians are of no avail when a bunch 6f farmers and townspeople take the trail and perjured witnesses and padded juries are no good at all. a a a And not only are these meat-eating pursuers dangerous as killers, they are dangerous also as creators of a public sentiment that brings the accused to immediate trial once they are brought to town with several thousand trailing along, demanding that they get the limit. It would seem the people of Indiana have acquired the habi tof the man hunt and if they have they can end the bandit business as the vigilantes of lowa did it.

Y FREDERICK LANDIS

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

M. E. Tracy

-SAYS:

We Are Great for Science and Origiymlity, Until It Comes to Doing Something Simple, Seyisible and Obvious. Then We Balk. T TOUSTON. Tex., Dec. 31.—Last | day of the year, and who would know it but for the calendar? It took men thousands of years to figure out a calendar that would stay put for more than ten or a dozen generations, and they still have done nothing to brag about. What excuse is there for Jan. 1 coming when it does, save tradition. It doesn't fit the vernal equinox, summer solstice, or anything else. Papa did it that way, so we continue, regardless of what it costs children by way of headache, or older folks by way of bookkeeping. When you want to know why politicians won't repeal a blue law that has gone unenforced for centuries, look at the calendar. It is the greatest monument yet erected to conservatism. a a a Balk at Sensible Things SEVEN months with thirty-one days each, four with thirty, and one with twenty-eight, for no other reason on earth except that we lack the spunk to change it. Mr. Eastman has spent a good part of his life trying to show' us the stupidity of continuing such course and the ease with which it might be changed, but to no purpose. We are great for originality and sience, until it comes to doing something simple, sensible, and obvious. Then we balk. Our ability to move forward in some respects is matched only by our inertia in others. We can perceive the desirability of a League of Nations—some of us at least—or an international language, but not of changing the almanac, though it would do nobody harm and make nobody mad. Maybe that’s why we remain so indifferent. Maybe we can’t get inertested in a thing unless it promises a fight. a a a Relics of Past 1 ALWAYS have regarded the Gregorian calendar and English arithmetic as the two prize leftovers of a dead past. As long as one-fourth of a gallon and one-eighth of a peck are not the same thing, though called a quart, I shall refuse to believe that "the voice of the people is the voice of God.” As long as we must go on teaching tots to say, “Thirty days hath September, April, June and November —” to pound the names of the months into their poor little cranea, I shall refuse to admit that our great pedagogs are taking education seriously. It takes the average child two or three years to get the calendar straightened out, and twice as long to suspect what arithmetic is all about, chiefly because of the haphazard tables around which both are built. Putting aside all other advantages, adoption of the decimal system and the thirteen-month year would more than pay for itself by what would be saved in the schoolroom. a a a Easier in France HAVING become acquainted with the cubic litre, all a French kid has to do is multiply or divide its various qualities by ten to learn all the tables. The length of its side is a basis for linear measures, what it contains is a basis of dry or wet measure, and its weight is a basis for all computations which have to do with gravity. The average French kid has time for a lot of other things, while ours is trying to reconcil grams, pennyweights, feet, bushels and barrels. Talk about extravagance! In what line have we wasted so much time or money as in dragging each generation of children through this useless quagmire of unintelligence? a a a Solution Easy to Find ICAN think of no benefaction that would do more to lighten the universal load than the metric system and a scientifically arranged calendar. Why we should persist in the clumsy, meaningless methods bequeathed to us by people who knew no better, I, for one, can not understand. Why we should hesitate to make the necessary changes now that we know how is even more of a mystery. You just can’t square such a stupid, apathetic attitude with the spirit of progress which we pretend to love and possess. No wonder outsiders think we are queer. No wonder they find it hard to understand how we can build all the machinery with such a system of arithmetic, or keep such accurate accounts with such a calendar.

People’s Voice

Editor Times—A number of our Democratic citizens are expressing regret at some of the appointments of our new sheriff, Buck Sumner. We believe that these aforesaid citizens are complaining without due cause, or at least without considering the world wide crisis of unemployment. Mr. Sumner, to our way of thinking, is a big, broad-gauged citizen who thinks from an international standpoint. He realizes that jobs must be created for the unemployed. Realizing this, he has appointed several men as deputy sheriffs who to say the least would fail to be employed by anybody else. The Republican party in Marion county has been shorn of its power and patronage and a right-think-ing person must know that it is almost impossible for a Republican to get a political job under a Democratic administration. Mr. Sumner has shown how to create Democratic jobs for Republican workers and we believe that the Democratic party is indebted to Mr. Sumner for being the first to “blaze the trail” to the political millennium. UNEMPLOYED DEMOCRAT. What is the difference between a mule and a jinny? The mule is a hybrid having a jackass for a sire, and mare for a dam. When the reverse cross is made and the female ass, or jennet, is bred to a stallion, the offspring is called a jinny.

Good Heavens , Where Did They All Go To!

ii : davsos b! I u Bife# i

Five Diseases Prey on Physicians

BY DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN Editor Journal of the American Medical Association and of Hygeia. the Health Magazine. IN a recently published article entitled “The Prevention of Accidents, Disorders and Disease in Members of the Medical and Nursing Profession,” Dr. E. Graham Little quotes some lines of unknown authorship as an introduction to his analysis of the main causes of death in physicians. The lines read: “There are five wolves that hunt for men And all have hunted me: Hunger and cold and fell disease, Aloneness, misery.”

The five wolves that hunt for doctors, in the order of their voracity, as determined from an analysis of the cause of death in a group of 1,578 physicians, were

IT SEEMS TO ME

THE welfare folk have not profited by the lesson which they should have learned from recent revelations about the New York women’s court. It has been amply demonstrated that the ligor of punitive purists furnished a screen behind which blackmail and extortion could exist. I am a little tired of being told that all the professional anti-vice leaders have the best of intentions. I admit it. But immediately I want to ask, “What of it? ’ Ever since the world began, mud-dle-heads have been the readiest accomplices of knaves. And there still is an enormous amount of foggy thinking going on under the bonnets of reformers. The remark is not intended to convey any anti-femi-nist bias. The ladies and gentlemen of the uplift leagues are among the chief enemies of law and order. So set are most of them upon the preservation of standards which seem to them moral that they are indifferent to the legal processes which should be employed. a a a Morality and Crime ONE distinguished crusader raged against some of the pardons issued by Governor Roosevelt to women who were framed by police and pigeons. “It’s nonsense,” said this lady, “to talk of this inmate as an innocent person. Why, the records show that she is the mother of an illegitimate child.” And here is the heresy of the whole hallelujah chorus. They look upon the law as legislation designed for the preservation of virtue. Now, that is a problem well beyond the reasonable and proper province of statutory enactment. The procedure in regard to vice should be precise. When Grover Whalen instituted dragnet methods in rounding up ex-convicts and suspicious characters there was an immediate protest. . .. . .. Sensible critics contended that it was not enough’ for a policeman to say. “I think this person may at some time or other commit a crime.” Indeed, the volume of protest was sufficient to frighten Whalen away from his page one sorties. And yet in general we have followed exactly this same plan in regard to war upon commercialized -vice. The good folk who managed these drives from their grandstand seats never have been much concerned with the validity of the testimony in any particular case. They have been satisfied to throw in their lot with the convenient theory of lyneh law. If the officer turned up in court with some young woman quite obviously no better than she should be, justice was satisfied and the reformers were delighted. a a a Not Spotless, Innocent BUT this is all bad business. I have n doubt that some of the women who were trapped in dragnets were not spotless. Yet courts hardly can command respect unless each case is tried upon its meritc. Surely it should not be enough

•DAILY HEALTH SERVICE -

cancer, diseases of the heart, pneumonia, brain hemorrhage, hardening of the arteries. Following these were inflammations of the kidneys, diseases of the heart affecting the valves, influenza, tuberculosis and accidents. When the causes of death among other occupational groups are compared with this list, some interesting points are determined. Among all the professions that suffer from cancer, the occupation providing the lowest ratio is that of ministers. Just why ministers suffer proportionately less with cancer than people in other occupations is not, of course, determined. Cancer has been related to chronic irritation from smoking, from drinking and from various similar causes. This may explain the lessened incidence among the clergy, but it is not absolutely established. The mortality rates for physicians generally are higher than for the

DV HEYWOOD BY BROUN

to prove that a prisoner is a person of doubtful reputation. Reformers should attend night school and learn that immorality is not in itself a crime. The task of making a community pure by law is thankless. In all probability neither New York nor any other city of considerable size wants to be pure. Police officers have no business interfering with any save flagrant and aggressive offenders. In both prohibition and vice

FAILURE AT djJEBEC

Dec. 31

ON Dec. 31, 1775, the American forces under Montgomery and Arnold failed in a dftperate attempt to capture Quebec, “the strongest city in America.” Benedict Arnold had been sent with a small force from Massachusetts to join Montgomery and make a combined attack on Quebee. Before Arnold reached Canada, he had lost more than a third of his men from sickness, exhaustion, and desertion. Finally, after eight weeks of hardship and suffering, Arnold approached Quebec with his sadly diminished army. There was snow on the ground and the weather was extremely cold. Arnold’s men are said to have been half naked, starving, and barefooted, for their clothes “had been tom off by the thorn bushes, and in the agonies of hunger they had devoured even their moccasins.” When the American attack was made, Montgomery was killed at the head of his troops and Arnold was wounded severely. • The following summer, the Americans were driven out of Canada and forced to retreat to Crown Point, on Lake Champlain.

Questions and Answers

What was the cbldest day last winter? Saturday, Jan. 18, with a tempecature of 15 below zero. What fa the address of Walter B. Pitkin, author? 2960 Broadway, New York. If a woman citizen of the United States marries a Canadian does she lose her citizenship? No. When was “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair published? 1906. Were senatorial elections held in November throughout the United States? They were held Nov. 4 in all states except Maine, where the election was held in September.

rest of the population, primarily because of the exposure to which physicians are subjected in answering calls at all hours of the day and night and in all kinds of weather, but also because they constantly are under a high strain beyond that suffered by the rest of tho people. Diseases of the heart, pneumonia, high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries all may be related to some extent to the nature of the occupation practiced. Nurses suffer mostly during their work from influenza, tonsilitis, nervousness, bronchitis, affections of the heart, rheumatism and digestive disorders. These are not causes of death, but causes of disability and are related intimately to the nature of the service given by the nurse and her contact with people who suffer with various diseases. i

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. V

hunting, officials have fallen into the peculiarly bad habit of provoking the offense and then proceeding against the offender. I have not the slightest doubt that a welltrained squad of detectives could unearth an endless amount of immoral conduct if they were willing to meet the transgressors half-way. At that, half-way is a mild statement. Our guardians have descended into the very vulgar fraction of fifteen-sixteenths of : the way. a a a Weight of Evidence 'T'HE cry has gone up from some embattled snoopers that New York is wider open than ever before. Naturally, no man wants to hang for every offense committed against purity in a great city, but I put forward the testimony of myself and every man I know, and it all runs in the same direction. Whatever basic conditions ?nay be, the town is decently mannered. I assume that there is immoritity. Lots of it. But it seems discreet. Not in five years has any stray person said as much as “Good evening” to me on a dark corner, and I refuse to believe that this, is wholly due to my decrepitude. Things were not always thus. Twenty years ago, as a young reporter, I first struck up a casual acquaintance with the sidewalks of New York. In those days they were densely populated from midnight until morn. It was a shameful condition. Again I speak not from moral or ethical considerations. It was, to put it briefly, an intolerable nuisance (Copyright. 1930. by The Times) "

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.DEt. 31, 1930

SCIENCE

■BY DAVID DIETZ-

Quantum Theory Is Almost as Puzzling as Einstein’4 Theory of Relativity. PROFESSOR MAX PLANCK according to the news from Ger-' many, has been appointed chancel-* lor of the Prussian Order for Merit of Science and Art. He succeeds the late Professor Adolf Von Harnack. It would be a difficult thing o say which of the great names of today will survive the passing of another century. But it seem? safe H say that as long as books are written upon the subject of science, the name of Planck will endure. The spotlight of public notice seems as erratic as lightning. No one knows where it will strike next. The whole world speaks of Einstein. Perhaps few laymen have heard of Planck. Yet an understanding of the modem scientific view of the nature and structure of . the universe requires a knowledge of the theories of Planck as well as those of Einstein. Einstein gave the world the theory of relativity. Planck gave it the quantum theory. The two theories are interlocked in many ways, and the layman who may not have heard of the quantum theory, may console himself—if it be any consolation—that the quantum theory is almost as difficult to understand as is the theorv of relativity. * a m Revolutionary STRANGE as it may seem, the quantum theory in many ways is more revolutionary than the Einstein theory. Planck originated the quantum theory in 1900. He then was professor of theoretical physics at the University of Berlin. Many other experimentalists and theorists have dealt with the quantum theory since. In fact, so rapid has the progress been, that physicists now speak of the “new quantum theory.” The basis of Planck's theory was that energy can not be gained or lost in a steady stream, but only in small amounts or driblets. These have been named quanta and hence his theory is known as the quantum theory. A consequence of the quantum theory was to displace the view that light and other forms of radiation consisted of waves with the idea they consisted of little bullets of energy or quanta. “Displace,” however, is too drastic a word. For while the quantum theory- explains many things which the old wave theory did not explain, there are many phenomena which can be explained satisfactorily only on the basis of the wave theory. One scientific wit lias said that the physicists use the wave theory on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The Bohr theory of the atom, which holds that the atom consists of a central nucleus around which electrons revolve in orbits, was developed on the basis of the quantum theory. n tt o Wave Mechanics THE new' quantum theory has brought with it anew theory of atomic structure. This is known as the Schroedinger atom. It is based on the mathematical theories known as Schroedinger wave mechanics. It is interesting to note that Einstein, in addition to developing his own theory of relativity did much to point out the importance and develop the implications of the quantum theory. He made the bold suggestion in 1905 that it was necessary to discard the wave theory of light for the quantum theory and this led to formation of the Bohr theory of the atom. Extensions of the Bohr theory of the atom were made by Sommerfeld and others by applying considerations of the Einstein theory' to it. The new quantum theory of Schroedinger, De Broglie, Heisenberg, and others represents an application of the Einstein theory the quantum theory. The reader will not be suM to hear that this has resulted# rather amazing state of ass S which scientists are almost eg fused as are laymen. Suffice it to say that theß as to whether light consisl| waves or particles has been exi,,' to the atoms themselves. Evidence has been brought', ward to show that atoms trons at times behave as wav* As Langmuir said some timfl| a helium atom now may be refßF|ps as a nucleus and two three dimensional space or 1 wave in six dimensional spacf*.^® DAILY THOUGHT | For wrath killeth the ft* man, and envy slayeth the | one.—Job 5:2. Anger turns the mind oi | doors and bolts the entrafi Plutarch.