Indianapolis Times, Volume 43, Number 283, Indianapolis, Marion County, 5 April 1932 — Page 5

APRIL 5, 1932

PUBLIC PROVES ABILITY TO RUN UTILITIES WELL Depression Has Been Spur to Municipal Ownership, Says League Head. Follnwinc I* thr *ffond of two article* on ( arl I>. Thompson - * belief that the teore*inn ha* proved public owneeahip of Ulilitie* more deairable than private ®wner*hlp.

BY HAROLD E. RAINVILLE I nlted Tres* Staff C'orrepondrnt CHICAGO, April s.—Graft in politics is the greatest obstacle to overcome in successful operation of public owned utilities, believes Carl D. Thompson, secretary of the Public Ownership League of America. # "And the present depression has done more than any other one thing to eliminate such grafting,” Thompson toid the United Press in explaining why he thinks there is a ‘‘•silver lining’’ inside the clouds that overhang the world of finanee. "This depression," he continued, “has made Americans civic conscious. With city after another tottering on the brink of bankruptcy, people have been made to realize their position. Movement Gains Impetus “They are beginning to learn that they must abandon the theory of every man for himself. They are finding out they must have honesty in office." This arousing of social interest and "civic consciousness’’ Thompson characterized as the greatest step ever made toward clearing the way for successful operation of public utilities It is one of the two ways the depression has helped the cause of this orcanization. Thompson said. The other was by proving that even in a time of general depression public utilities could operate at a profit. While many privately owned utility companies suffered severely, public owned utilities everywhere h%ve operated “very much as usual,” he said. Public Capable Manager In many cases, he said, the utilities not only have “kept even," but Lave earned enough to shoulder the extra burdens of unemployment and increased taxes. Sixty-five towns have eliminated taxes by making power plants or water works pay city expenses. ' At the same time, he said, the publicly owned utilities have been able to charge lower rates that those privately owned. “Flood control, domestic water supply, irrigation, electric power, transportation, gas—all can be had with municipally owned utilities at a much cheaper rate than from private companies," he said.

ORATORICAL CONTEST TO BE HELD IN CITY Butler Sponsors Divisional Competition in Interstate Affair. Speech department of Butler university will sponsor a central divisional competition in the interstate oratorical contest Friday night at Central Christian church, Walnut and Delaware streets. Speakers competing, announced Professor W. Norwood Brigance of Wabash college, central divisional manager, are: Paul Duncan. Butler university; Don Moore, McKendree college, Lebanon, 111.; Lowell Ditzen, William Jewell college, Liberty, Mo., and H. Clyde Reeves. University of Lexington, Lexington, Ky. Judges will be Profs. Lionel Crocker, Dehison university; Carrol P. Lehman, Western State Teachers college; Harold T. Ross, De Pauw university; Fred S. Sorrenson. Illinois Normal university, and Myron G. Phillips, Wabash college. Professor Brigance will preside. VETERANS HEAR SCHAUB New Organization Is Outlined at Tomlinson Hall Meeting. More than a thousand ex-service men met Monday night in Tomlinson hall to hear a discussion of the purposes of the newly organized National United American Veterans, Inc. "Justice for the veteran through nonpartisan participation in politics is our aim," declared Edward G. Schaub. national commander. Schaub stated that the organization wil try to elect men to office who will work for legislation favoring ex-service men. Other speakers were Ralph E. Green, national vice-commander, and Herman H. Hiles, national adjutant.

Low Round -Trip Coach Fares Each Week - End CHICAGO .... $5.00 (.•uni on ‘'ll trains from noon Fridays until early morning trains Sundays. Good returning until Monday night. Next Saturday CLEVELAND . . . $4.00 Leave 11:30 p. m. Return Sunday night. DETROIT .... $4.00 TOLEDO .... 3.50 Leave 10:15 r. m. Return Sunday night. Next Sunday ST. LOUIS . . . $4.00 Leave 12:35 a. ni. or 2:45 a. m. Return Sunday night. MCf) 5°^ nd TrS t Louisville. Goln* •DU Tndavs and Saturdan: return MondAT. TM Particular, at 11J Monument Circle. Kiler 3322. and l nion Station. Rllev 3355 BIG FOUR ROUTE

DILREX Eliminates the Poisons that Destroy Kidneys. Sold and Guaranteed At All HAAG DRUG STORES

FAMINE HAUNTS MINERS’ HOMES

Corporations Thrive on Misery of Serfs in Kentucky

BY ROBERT TALLEY NEA Rrrvlee Writer (Coovrluht. 1932. NEA Srvice. Ine.) PINEVILLE, Ky.. April s.—This is a closeup story of life as it is today among Kentucky coal miners, written from notes that local authorities sought to confiscate when I was arrested by Police Chief Osborne of Pineville, after I had returned from visiting the homes of miners in a nearby camp. Fortunately, I did not have them with me at the time, so the Kentucky “censorship" was thwarted. If you were a miner hereabouts and were lucky enough to have a job, you would earn about $3.50 a day, assuming that you could produce about ten tons of coal, which is a good day s work. It is impossible to give an exact figure, since miners are paid so much a ton and some miners produce mofe, or less, than others. You would get about three, or possibly four, days’ work a week. Os your $3.50 a day, you would have to spend 5 cents a day for carbide for your miner’s lamp and about 40 cents each day for explosives you used in blasting coal. If you were not actually a coal digger, but a mine laborer—engaged in laying track or something like that—your daily wage would be around $2.25. In either case, you probably would, have a wife and three children to support, since five is the average family.

BEFORE you could draw any part of your earnings you would have to accumulate enough for the mining company you worked for to make the following “cuts:” Approximately $5 a month rent for a company-owned house. Two dollars a months ($1 if unmarried) for t.he company’s doctor, which you pay whether you are sick or well. One dollar and fifty cents a month for coal to heat your home and cook your food, the rate being the same winter and summer. Fifty cents a month for blacksmithing your tools iif a miner). After these “cuts” (and, in some cases, others such as insurance, burial fund, etc.) you would then be permitted to draw scrip (company money) for making purchases at the commissary < company store) which carries in stock groceries, clothing, hardware, tobacco, shoes canned goods, pots, pans and about everything else that a miner's family needs to buy. bub YOU would be issued your scrip by the mine pay roll clerk after he had checked your earnings to see how much you had coming. You would pay this scrip over the counter of the company store just as though it were real money. Then, when pay day rolled around every two weeks, you could draw the remainder of your earnings in cash—provided anything remained. I talked with miners in their homes, to learn the truth of their

What IS a Building and Loan Association? A Building and Loan Association is exactly what the name implies ... a financial institution which enables borrowing members to purchase homes * Jy with money paid into the association by investing members. Every investor and borrower is a stockholder and mutual owner of the association. There are no preferred stockholders. The borrowing members give, as security for their loan, long time first mortgages on improved real estate. The interest on these mortgages form the earnings of the association, which are paid, pr credited, to investing members semi-annually in dividends. To earn money, it is necessary that the funds of these associations be kept constantly at work. Large sums can not lie idle in vaults. Whenever the demands of withdrawing members exceed the rceipts from other members, the laws of the State protect ALL members by requiring a notice of with'j drawal from each one withdrawing. These notices are paid, in the order received, as money is paid into the association in payment of loans and shares. A Building and Loan Association is not a bank. It does not, and can not, conduct a banking business. Investing members, in order to reap full benefit from the compound dividends paid by these associations, should not disturb the accumulation of these dividends by unnecessary withdrawals. Building and loan shares are an investment under the direct regulation of the Indiana State Banking Department. They are YOUR associations. They continue to off er the same weekly or monthly plan of investment that they have done for the last half century in Marion County. Every dollar invested in a local association will make your business better because that money will work .. . and be spent JT , . here at home. Associations of Mar- \ M ion County together form % m a wonderful machine for % E development of employ- I I ment. dividends and in- 3 | dustry. Invest in build- 3 / t ing and loan shares and , * speed the return of nor- 3 mal business. s r ' / THE MAR.ION COUNTY . U&mve,fof BUILDING & LOAN Copyright, 1&32. A. V. Grindle, Indianapolis, Ind. ASSOCIATIONS

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WORKING FOR BRASS CHECKS GOOD AT THE COMPANY STORE—Kentucky miners are shown above grading coal, while the two “coins" are scrip money in which they are paid. Below, a miner’s child with a glass of "half and half" (canned milk, supplied by the state, and water) and an example of a miner's budget.

living conditions, despite the bars against such action that Kentucky authorities have erected against visiting newspaper men. Word of my visit to a mine camp got to Police Chief Osborne of Pineville, in some mysterious way, and shortly after my return to town I was arrested by him and taken before County Prosecutor Walter B. Smith. Both demanded my notes. They failed to get them—hence this story. Around Pineville, I was told by miners that if they tried to draw out too much money in cash, instead of spending it at the company store, they would be fired. However, this isn’t always an issue. A mine worker employed by a coal company near Pineville told me that he hadn’t drawn any real money since last fall—“not even enough to buy a, postage stamp." His neighbor just across the creek told me he has npt drawn any real money in two years. ana THE first man is a mine laborer at $2.25 a. day now, and is worried over a rumor that this is soon to be cut to $2. Last year

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this time he was making $2.50; a few years back he was getting $6.20 a day. He has a wife, two small daughters and a son. Another baby is due. The family lives in a rickety, two-room frame shack. His two small daughters—s and 3 years old —are among the numbers of mine children now being allotted four cans of condensed milk each week by the state of Kentucky. The miners call this milk “cream." It is mixed half and half with water and into this cornbread is crumbled. On this diet, they fight off starvation. Across the rushing mountain creek his neighbor lives in a similar house with his wife and their eight children. The house is a rickety frame shack, erected years ago. Chinks in its board walls are stuffed with paper and rags, cardboard replaces several missing window panes. The roof is tar paper, like that used on chicken houses. The furniture consists of: Room 1, two cheap iron beds, two cane chairs with burst bottoms, a box on the floor that serves as a trunk. Room 2, another bed, a kitchen

| stove, a few cooking utensils and 1 a home-made table. BUB TO both houses—as well as the others in this camp—water j must be “toted” from the camp well. Coal for cooking and heating must “toted" from the mine. There also are the old-fashioned outhouses. His wife was nursing a 9-months-i Id baby when I called. Another small child was playing on the bare, splintery floor with a tin can. Its shoes were as ragged as its clothes, and not even mates. Soon the husband, who was not working that day, came in. He was a pale, wan man, looking much past 50. “I’m 42 years old and I’ve been in these mines thirty-four years —started as a trap boy at B—but I’ve never seen times as hard as these,” he said when I asked him how he was getting along. "I'm getting $2 a day now for a job on the tipple. My lungs went bad and I had to give up digging coal. j "During the boom days I made $lO or sl2 a day digging coal, and

so did a lot of the other boys. Times was good then." u m a YET. according to the complaint of numerous miners, the mine owners have not reduced their “cuts" for rent, coal, etc., since the days of high wages. They also say that the commissaries charge higher prices than ordinary stores, which seme of the mine operators admit with the explanation that they can not buy as cheaply as the 6hain stores. That the companies require their employes to trade at the commissaries was admitted by a coal operator, who just had finished explaining to me that, at present market prices, he was losing 20 cents on every ton he produced. “We are losing money on coal and we try to cover that with profits from the store." he said. The two m ners whose plight I have described are in a “middle" class, all too frequently found. Eelow them are hundreds of miriers unable to find any work at all and several hundred "blacklisted" men—’ Red agitators." the business men of Pineville call them—who have no jobs and no hope of getting any. They are living in abandoned railroad stations and anywhere else they can find a roof since they were evicted from company houses and their furniture set out in the middle o f the road. * B B tt ABOVE them aie miners employed by companies who provide better houses, some with electric lights and water: at the top. the miners employed by the big corporations like the United States Steel mines at Lynch, Ky., who live on paved streets, get better pay and more hours. These big corporation can do this because they have a Steady outlet for their coal in their mills. But these two men I have described are typical of the miners

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who responded when the so-called "Communist party" workers came here last year to bring their brand of relief to the misery’ of the Kentucky mine fields. The short-lived and abortive strike in January literally was starved oyt—brought about by the adamant and rigidly enforced refusal of Harlan and Bell county

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officials to permit union relief food to be brought in here, on the ground that such food came from Communists or their adherents. Next: The strange manner in which coal operators and bnslness men in the mining area are trying to solve a tangled economic problem by the suppression <jf all civil liberties and human rights.